This is a Recording

Among the several strands of '60s revivalism in the '80s there was a re-exploration (and re-exploitation) of the classics in the Tamla Motown songbook. A new generation grew to appreciate the musicianship of "The Funk Brothers" and the vocal talents (and songwriting skills) of the likes of Smokey Robinson. Not that his music had exactly faded into oblivion: songs like 'The Tears of a Clown' (a UK No. 1 upon its re-issue in 1970) were oft-replayed oldies that had formed part of the background radiation as I was growing up. In recent years I've acquired a few of Robinson's singles: a '67 copy of 'I Second that Emotion' (a song I'd first come to know via the cover version by art-pop outfit Japan); 'The Tears of a Clown' (from the hit '70 re-release); and his '81 hit 'Being With You' (previously mentioned in passing here ). While the former two numbers were by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles; the latter was a stric...

Among my favourite songs of 1981 was The Teardrop Explodes' breakthrough single 'Reward', a UK No, 6 hit in March of that year. I was thinking it was as good a song as Julian Cope ever wrote, so was surprised to see on the label that it's credited to "Gill and Balfe", the band's guitarist and keyboardist at the time it was recorded. While Alan Gill reportedly came up with the memorable bassline and blaring trumpet fanfare, it seems Cope did provide the lyrics, and was responsible for shaping the song's final frenetic sound. According to Cope, "Gary [Dwyer] could only drum two ways, reggae and soul, so he played it soul and we had a song..." The B-side, 'Strange House in the Snow' is a rather more experimental concoction, with something resembling scraped violin strings prominent in the mix, along with piano (plus the usual guitar, bass & drums) and an unhinged-sounding vocal performance from Mr Cope. Drugs may have been involved.

My copy of 'Nutbush City Limits' is clearly marked "Promotional / NOT FOR SALE" yet I paid a pound for it about three years ago. So far, I have escaped any adverse consequences for contravening that 49-year-old interdiction; as, to the best of my knowledge, has the charity shop that sold it to me.  It has a stereo mix of the song on one side and a mono one on the other.  On the label is a helpful note for DJs that the introduction takes up  22 seconds of its 2:57 duration. I daresay some of them will have taken the liberty of talking over those crucial seconds, which is too bad, as they set up the body of the song very nicely indeed. This outstandingly satisfying groove then becomes a launch-pad for Tina Turner's precise but powerful vocals. It's a tightly-constructed & forcefully-delivered thing of beauty. The song reached No. 4 in the UK (outsold by the likes of Slade, The Sweet and David Cassidy) and did better still in the German-speaking world. I had ...

'Being Boiled' was one of the more unlikely hit singles of the early '80s. A song protesting the cruelty of sericulture, it was The Human League's debut single, first issued in 1978. A reworked version appeared on the band's second album Travelogue in 1980, with a re-release of the original 7" (slightly tweaked with added stereo effects) following a few months later. Only in the wake of the League's breakthrough album Dare , did a further re-issue (seemingly identical with the 1980 one) finally achieve success, reaching the respectable heights of number 6 in January '82. Even then, it still sounded forbiddingly futuristic, despite its having been "recorded on a domestic tape recorder, in mono, in an abandoned factory, at a cost of £2.50" (wikipedia). My copy is one of the re-issued variants, very likely the later one. The B-side, 'Circus of Death' is good too, though I'm not sure it really needed the 25-second spoken introduction ...

Between his stint as XTC's keyboard player ('78-9) and co-founding Shriekback ('82), Barry Andrews released a solo EP ('Town and Country') and this 7" single ('Rossmore Road'): the latter in 1980; and then again in '81 with a different B-side ('Pages of my Love'). It's the B-side of the first version, however (' Win a Night Out with a Well-Known Paranoiac '), that led me to buy the record. I'd known and loved it from the mid '80s, having heard it a number of times on Anne Nightingale's request show on BBC Radio 1. Where 'Rossmore Road' is a deadpan evocation, with a mellifluous chrous, of the titular London thoroughfare (in Lisson Grove, not far west of Regent's Park); 'Win a Night Out...' is an extravagant six-minute-plus fantasia with an agitated & appropriately paranoid-sounding narration alternating with the track's title repeated as a sung refrain.  The rear of the picture sleeve lists...

At an illicit teenage party thrown by my sister while our parents were out, one of her friends, under the influence of a flagon or so of Strongbow, had put his copy of Motörhead's Ace of Spades on to my Dad's turntable and, as close as he could get to the speakers was shout-singing along utterly enthralled by the title track's chorus, meanwhile accompanying himself on air guitar. Two years her junior (I would have been twelve or thirteen), I was under strict instructions to say nothing to anyone about their revelry: an injunction I have respected until now. I'd heard 'Ace of Spades' before, but witnessing that moment I properly felt some of its mind-altering power for the first time, and learned a new respect for it. I don't exactly recall, but this event may have taken place in 1981, the year that "Headgirl's" (i.e. Motörhead's and Girlschool's) collaborative St. Valentines Day Massacre EP was released. Few would argue it's a hig...

'Concrete and Clay' by Unit 4 + 2 was among the singles my mother bought when she was a teenager, that she later misguidedly gave to me and my sister. The other singles from her collection I can specifically recall ran a gamut between the cool ('Mr. Tambourine Man' by The Byrds; Lee Dorsey's 'Working in the Coal Mine') and the uncool ('Deck of Cards' by Wink Martindale) by way of the likes of The Springfields' 'Island of Dreams' and 'Glad All Over' by The Dave Clark Five. She would have probably owned some Beatles 45s too, had her big sister not already acquired them. Unit 4 + 2 came by their name by virtue of having been a quartet that became a sextet. 'Concrete and Clay' was their sole big hit, reaching the heights of Number 1 in the UK Singles Chart for a single week in April 1965. It's a protestation of undying love clad in a rather lovely Latin-influenced arrangement. There's a promotional film-clip of the ba...

Stanley Brinks, formerly known as André Herman Düne, is a half Swedish, half Moroccan, Paris-born, Berlin-resident singer-songwriter. The Wave Pictures are a three-piece band from Leicestershire fronted by singer/guitarist David Tattersall. Both they and Brinks have recorded prolifically. Jointly they have released at least three albums and as many singles, with 'Orange Juice', issued in 2014, being the first of the latter. It was released as a bright orange 7" on the Fika Recordings label. A week ago I wrote "very often I need to hear an unfamiliar song several times before its charms or its annoyances become fully apparent": 'Orange Juice' is a counter-example, a case where it was love at first hearing. In a nasal tenor, Brinks laments the state of the weather, his own decrepitude, the music he hears on the radio, the dirty streets, and, lastly, the apparent futility of existence. Against all that, a more optimistic chorus rejoins "but I'll get...

Here's a 7" on bright yellow vinyl from toward the end of my phase of buying new singles of individual songs that I'd heard on the radio & taken a shine to. It was released in 2018, and was the third single from The Lovely Eggs' fourth LP This is Eggland . The Lovely Eggs are a Lancaster-based punk duo with a DIY ethos whose music all comes from "one vintage guitar amp, one Big Muff distortion pedal, a guitar and a drum kit." I'd become aware of them a few years beforehand, around the time of their album This is Our Nowhere .  'Wiggy Giggy' is an infectiously catchy number based in part on a children's story about a space traveller who discovers great treasure but finds he has no way to spend it & no-one to share it with. The B-side, 'My Dad', is a more leaden affair - in which singer/guitarist Holly Ross describes a dream wherein she saw her late father.

The cover says 'I Love Rock-n-Roll', the label 'I Love Rock 'N Roll, while the Wikipedia page about the song is headed 'I Love Rock 'n' Roll'. Confusion reigns. Whatever the ultimate truth may be, I bought a dusty copy of the UK version of the single in a picture sleeve, along with some other classics of its era, about six months ago. I don't recall hearing The Arrows' original version of the track in 1975. The remake certainly has some of that mid-'70s platform-soled glam stomp still in it. The line "I knew she/he must a been about seventeen" hasn't aged too well - the song's writer Alan Merrill was twenty-four when it was first released, at a time when Jett herself was about seventeen and just getting started with The Runaways. The B-side is a Jett original 'Love is Pain', an undistinguished number which is nevertheless delivered with conviction by Joan & her Blackhearts.

I have barely listened to this three-track 7-inch EP since aquiring it the year before last. It was issued alongside CCR's Chronicle compilation LP in 1977. Chronicle was one of my Dad's very favourite records, meaning I heard these songs a great many times at a formative age and feel like I could replay them on demand in my head. They are all excellent - I still enjoy them when I hear them: it's just that they're so well-embedded in my memory the need for a reminder and refresher hasn't really arisen. Dad also had the Cosmo's Factory and Pendulum LPs, but not, for whatever reason, the earlier ones. I'm pretty sure he has since obtained them - on CD at least. As a nine or ten year old, the merits of 'Bad Moon Rising' and 'Proud Mary' were obvious to me (I liked 'Up Around the Bend' even better). It wasn't until years later though, that I came to enjoy 'Green River' as much. Now it may even be my favourite of these thre...

The P-Funk section of my record collection begins and ends with this '76 single on the Casablanca label. Obviously it's better than nothing, if not by much. I did once also own a copy of Funkadelic's Maggot Brain on CD, but that got lost somewhere along the way. It's a shorter version of a track from their '75 album Mothership Connection . where it went by the reversed title 'Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)', as it likewise did on some other releases of the 7". I learn from an annotation on genius.com that "If you listen to 'Give up the Funk' as a single, outside the context of Mothership Connection , it’s just a good funk dance track with lyrics that seem to serve no purpose beyond rallying you to the dance floor. In the Mothership Connection story, though, this is the climax of an alien invasion..." Having not heard the album, I was unaware of that subtlety. Even so, it does work remarkably well as just a good fun...

Kiran Leonard was no more than eighteen when this double A-side 7" was released in 2013. It was his first commercially-issued recording, but had been preceded by other, self-released material. An album, Bowler Hat Soup , followed soon after, with both these songs included. Both records came out on Mary Epworth's (sister of famed producer Paul) "Hand of Glory" label. I gather there were 300 copies of the single pressed, of which 50, including mine, have picture sleeves. In all likelihood, I would have obtained it from Piccadilly Records in Manchester. Marc Riley had been playing both tracks on his 6 Music radio show, oftener 'Port-Ainé'. After a few listens I was intrigued enough to order a physical copy.   'Dear Lincoln' begins in abrupt & staccato fashion, going on to pack a surprising amount into its 112-second duration. 'Port-Ainé' is slower & moodier at the outset, before building to an impressive climax. Leonard's later releas...

It's doubtless no accident that the majority of my 7" singles date back to the few years either side of 1980. Had I been a better-adjusted youngster, the period ca. '79-'82 might well have have been when I'd have bought singles with my pocket-money, instead of obsessing over aeroplanes, imaginary spaceships and, later, computers. For example: acquired three or four years ago, this 1980 copy of Martha and the Muffins' big hit single 'Echo Beach' in a picture sleeve. I'm a little surprised to learn it only reached No. 10 in the UK - it seems like it ought to have been more successful than that. Had the likes of eleven-year-old me actually bought it back then, who knows, that might have made a difference. The faintly sci-fi undertones of the phrase "far away in time" were likely a part of what attracted me to the song in the first place. I still love the images it conjures up, and, of course, it's a very catchy tune. The B-side, 'Te...

I have relatively little disco music on my shelves. I used to have damaged copies of Herbie Mann's Discothèque and Car Wash by Rose Royce, but now I'm left with some records by Barry White and his protegés Love Unlimited (which might be considered proto-disco); a couple of 7" singles ('Funky Town' & 'Supernature') and this glorious 12" one, which brings together three tracks by those masters of the genre, Chic: 'I Want Your Love', 'Le Freak' and 'Chic Cheer'. A 6:53 re-mix of 'I Want Your Love' occupies the A-side, with the other two tracks on the reverse. The label helpfully gives the BPM values for all three: 116, 120 & 113 respectively. I did enjoy some of Chic's music when it was new, 'Le Freak', in particular, though as disco was falling sharply out of favour by the time I reached my teens, I wouldn't have admitted as much to my peers.  Back then I would have been responding to the overall ...

What we have here is a three-track "Maxi-Single" issued in 1977 including the third, first and fifth of the Small Faces' A-sides: 'Sha-La-La-La-Lee', 'What'cha Gonna Do About It' and 'All Or Nothing'. I'm far from the biggest Faces fan, but knew and liked the songs and thought it worth the outlay of a pound to give them another hearing. The label bears a few words that might strike fear into a purist's heart: "Electronically Re-processed Stereo" (though this only applies to 'What'cha Gonna Do About It'). To this casual listener's ears, however, it all sounds excellent: no-one involved in the recording, mastering or pressing can have put a foot wrong, and these songs practically jump off the disc, very much alive. 'All Or Nothing', in particular, here relegated to the B-side, sounds outstandingly good. Wikipedia tells me: "according to Kay Marriott, Steve's mother, Steve wrote this song about hi...

Here's another relic of the period, in the middle of the last decade, when I sometimes bought singles inspired by things I'd heard on the radio. This one came out on the Ra-Ra Rok label in 2016: 'Human Baby' by Phobophobes. It's a clear vinyl 7". This is a band that emerged from the same South London milieu that spat out the likes of Goat Girl and Fat White Family. It's slightly unusual in having two tracks on the A-side: 'Human Baby' itself, a satisfyingly shambling number with some clever lyrics & a strong chorus; and 'The Ground is Friend to All', a poem by deceased former band member George Bedford Russell (who had succumbed to a heroin overdose). The latter is read, unaccompanied, by the novelist Will Self, its contents amply illustrating what a tragic loss Russell's death had been. On the B-Side, 'Free the Naked Rambler' is a topical song about Steven Gough, then much in the news, whose determined insistence on public n...

I was unaware, on seeing the exotic figure of Steve Strange in Bowie's video for 'Ashes to Ashes', and then, more prominently, in the one for Visage's 'Fade To Grey', that he was a South Wales Valleys boy like me, from Newbridge, about twelve miles' drive away from my grim home town. I was very much taken with both the song and its video at the time, though the latter looks more than a little ridiculous now. The song, however, still sounds great - which perhaps owes more to the talents of Billy Currie and Midge Ure than Strange himself, who wasn't that much of a singer. He was, however, the focal point of the band, and of a broader moment in pop culture, in his brief tenure as arbiter of all that was fashionable in London. On the B-Side, 'The Steps' is a moody instrumental incorporating heartbeat-like drums and synths suggesting organ chords and brass fanfares. I had always supposed 'Fade To Grey' was the debut Visage single, but no - w...

I caught Frankie Goes to Hollywood's debut TV appearance when a performance of 'Relax' was aired on The Tube in February 1983. I was impressed by the song, and meanwhile conscious of its being daringly risqué for early evening viewing. After it had been reworked and polished up by Trevor Horn et al , it sailed to No. 1 despite a temporary ban by the BBC. I found my copy of it in a Swedish junk-shop about twenty years later. Thanks to Discogs I know it's a 3rd press UK version of the 12" single on which the A side is misidentified as the 'Sex Mix' rather than the so-called 'New York Mix' it really is. The 12" single was issued in a money-grabbing plethora of versions with a variety of sleeve designs, this one being known as the "Two Bodies" sleeve. On the B-Side are the band's version of Gerry & The Pacemakers' 'Ferry Across the Mersey' along with the original version of 'Relax'. One hopes drugs were invol...

Here is a 1974 7" single by Kevin Ayers on the Island label. It was released a few months after his ambitious (but, to my mind, lacklustre) album The Confessions of Dr. Dream and Other Stories , and one month after the June 1 1974 concert featuring Nico, John Cale and Brian Eno; which may have been a happier occasion had Ayers' dalliance with the then Mrs. Cale not been brought to light shortly before it. 'After The Show' itself is rather a tepid number, and an odd choice for a single. The attraction for me is all in the B-Side, 'Thank You Very Much', a song I dearly love. Ayers sings it soft & low, accompanied only by acoustic guitar. It's a refreshingly simple and direct recording, in sharp contrast with the overcooked production that prevailed on Dr. Dream .  Neither of the songs on the single were on Dr. Dream nor on Ayers' next album Sweet Deceiver . I bought it two or three years ago from one of my usual haunts in Chepstow. It cost me a poun...