Newstalgia

It happens all the time. An ex-school teacher, nice fellow, intellectual and all that, turns around and knocks out a song and it becomes a big hit. The former teacher in this case is an Englishman named Geoff Stevens, 32, who even sang along in the recording, he says, "just for a giggle." Last week Stevens' Winchester Cathedral, released only six weeks ago in the U.S., had sold 1,000,000 recordings, become No. 1 on Billboard's list of bestsellers, and made stars out of the recording "artists," a British group of young men (19 to 26) called the New Vaudeville Band. Ed Sullivan put them on his show when they arrived in the U.S. on tour recently, and Johnny Carson grabbed them for a Tonight stint. Even Walter Cronkite, who heard that the seven-piece band was appearing in a New York borscht belt hotel called the Pines, chased upstate after the boys on the day after Thanksgiving to do a bit on them for his news program.

The New Vaudeville Band is just what the name says; no mod rock 'n' roll about it. Its members play ordinary band instruments for the most part, but their music warbles like a combination of Spike Jones, Rudy Vallee and the A & P Gypsies. They sing through megaphones with a quavering quality that is strictly vo-do-de-o-do, wailing about a boy who got dumped by his girl at, by, near or in the Winchester Cathedral:

You stood and you watched as my baby left town . . .

She wouldn't have gone far away

If only you'd started ringing your bell.

It's a snappy, melodic tune, made catchier by the sound, which promoters have already dubbed "newstalgia." That, says Composer Stevens, is "a bit of a revolting phrase," but accurate nonetheless. The band helps project the same image by dressing up in old-timey clothes ("early bad taste") and lolling around the stage like lazy good-for-nothing aristocrats. To make the point, one of the members, Alan Klein, has taken on the title of Tristram, the seventh Earl of Cricklewood.

Last week the band was getting an extra push from other recording outfits who have rushed yet new versions of Winchester to the stores. RCA Victor's group, the Palm Beach Band Boys, is actually a Manhattan pickup combo led by an RCA executive who croons while holding his nose. He must be doing something right.

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