MELANIE’s ‘Brand New Key’ Gets Brand New Start with 1971 Concert Recording & Visit to Ad-Land

The song’s official title is “Brand New Key,” although it’s just as well known as “the bicycle song,” “the roller-skates song” and even (thanks to the Wurzels’ 1975 UK chart topper) “The Combine Harvester Song.” Wharecer you want to call it, though, “Brand New Key” topped the US chart for a month at the beginning of 1972, and it remains many people’s point of entry to Melanie’s long, spectacular career.

Now, as “Brand New Key” reaches out to an entire new audience via the latest Apple Watch app ad, Cleopatra Records today release a unique version of the song, recorded live at New York City’s fabled DeMille Theatre in late 1971, just as the song commenced its headlong rush up the chart.

The venue itself is noteworthy – Broadway had never hosted a straightforward rock or pop concert… but there again, Melanie’s concerts were rarely straightforward. Not with an audience as loyal, and vocal, as her’s.

Performing before a jam-packed crowd, themselves reveling in the unfamiliar surroundings of one of the city’s most legendary halls, Melanie was both launching her latest album, Gather Me, and celebrating her “Brand New Key”’s conquest of the airwaves – although nobody could have predicted just how successful (and career defining) it would become.

Taken from the forthcoming (release date – July 17) live album First Nights On Broadway, “Brand New Key” opened the show, building out of a brief, but so delightful chorus of the old standard “Give My Regards To Broadway.” And, although the record had barely been in the stores for more than a few days, it was as if every person in the audience knew the song – the roar of applause that greets its’ opening lyric proves that.

In later years, Melanie would admit that the “finished” version of “Brand New Key” sounded nothing like she envisioned it when it was first composed, going on to record several new versions that took it far from its familiar parameters. Tonight, too, she’s taking chances with the song, as she acknowledges when she is finally forced to stop playing and confess, “I’m so ashamed. I started in the wrong key.”

SINGLE: https://orcd.co/melanie_broadwaybrandnewkey

It’s an electrifying performance, and an exquisite introduction to the show – 16 songs, recorded across two nights of shows, First Nights On Broadway is a glorious stroll through Melanie’s career so far, with earlier hits “Beautiful People” and “Lay Down (Cancels In The Rain)” ringing out alongside vivid selections from the new LP, yet closing with a song that would not be released for another three years, the semi-autobiographical “The Actress” – “when they asked her to play music, she sang until she died.”

Melanie passed away in January 2024, just as Cleopatra Records launched what Goldmine magazine described as “one of the most significant reissue campaigns of recent years.” This includes most every one of her official album releases, alongside an archive-busting collection of rare and previously unreleased material dating back to her teenaged years, and including recordings with stars as far apart as Jan Akkerman, Jimmy Cliff, Rick James’ Stone City Band and Billy Joel’s regular accompanists.

For details of the full catalog, a full color free download The Complete Collection, is available here.

Track listing