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Friends

I distinctly recall seeing Jeffrey Daniel's famous 1982 appearance on Top of the Pops promoting 'A Night to Remember': which introduced "body-popping" to a fascinated British public. The song, and the three other hit singles that followed it ('I Can Make You Feel Good', 'There It Is' and 'Friends') were very often on the radio and TV that year - and I found them pleasant enough, but my musical attention (such as it was, when I glanced up from my new Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer) focussed more on the likes of Madness, Soft Cell, The Fun Boy Three, XTC and Yazoo.

Why then should it be that on picking up a copy of Shalamar's Friends at a charity shop six months ago, seeing those song-titles in the track-listing should provoke such a heady surge of affectionate nostalgia? Snippets of the music began playing in my head, and I thought that for the £1 asking price it was well worth taking it home to see how I'd enjoy the album. I liked it very well indeed - and it's found its way back on to my turntable a few times since. I can't say I've formed a considered opinion of the "other" tracks yet, but the album flows together nicely as a well-crafted unit, and there are no duds on it.

The copy I bought is a German-made one with a nicely-designed gatefold sleeve featuring fine pictures of this photogenic group: on the front, Howard Hewett is shown holding a bass, and Jeffrey Daniel a "Flying-V" style guitar - I don't know why Jody Watley couldn't also be furnished with an instrument. As it was, the three of them only contributed vocals to the album, with Hewett and Watley also getting a few co-writing credits between them.

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