SEPTEMBER 1974

Back to Muiredge Primary School for my final year there. Teacher: Miss Thomson. It was challenging. And, probably as recompense for not going away during the summer, I managed to persuade my parents to go to Blackpool for the Illuminations at the end of September. Only for one week, though.

 

A lyrically-modified “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” was being used at the time as the music for a “hilarious” Esso cartoon commercial. The tenor saxophonist on “Pinball” turned out to be Tony Coe but I didn’t know that at the time. Budgie, starring Adam Faith (who also co-produced “Long Tall Glasses”) and Public Eye, starring Alfred Burke, were both popular ITV drama series of the seventies, featuring down-at-heel protagonists whose inherent good nature was almost invariably exploited by unsavoury others. Budgie has not aged well half a century on, but Public Eye still stands up.

 

7 September

 

ANDY KIM: Rock Me Gently/Rock Me Gently (Part II) (Capitol CL 15787)

 

 

Neil Diamond on Who Do You Do? Actually he is from Montreal and co-wrote “Sugar Sugar” and this is a lot funkier than “Longfellow’s Serenade.”

 

 

 

CAT STEVENS: Another Saturday Night/Home In The Sky (Island WIP 6206)

 

 

Cat always sounds so angry on his records. I CAN’T KEEP IT IN SNARL SNARL. I’M GONNA GET ME A GUN BANG BANG SO THERE. Now it’s I GOT PAID BUT NOBODY LOVES ME GRRR. A Sam Cooke song. Why? He needs to cheer up.

 

 

 

BRYAN FERRY: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes/Another Time, Another Place (Island WIP 6205)

 

 

Doing the Esso Blue song. So delicate you hardly dare breathe on it.

 

 

 

DIANA ROSS & THE SUPREMES: Baby Love/Ask Any Girl (Tamla Motown TMG 915)

 

 

Music from when I was born. Have Motown run out of new records?

 

 

 

 

14 September

 

THE KIKI DEE BAND: I’ve Got The Music In Me/Simple Melody (The Rocket Record Company PIG 12)

 

 

This is good. Starts cool but builds up. Elton John clearly pounding the piano. Good old Kiki - she’s been on the scene for years and finally gets to have hits her way, without Saturday night TV dancers.

 

 

 

THE COMMODORES: Machine Gun/There’s A Song In My Heart (Tamla Motown TMG 902)

 

 

It’s a new Motown record! Ominous, bubbly instrumental that Johnnie Walker is already using as background music.

 

 

 

 

21 September

 

10cc: Silly Love/The Sacro-Iliac (UK Records UK 77)

 

 

Yet another single from Sheet Music – doesn’t everybody have it already? Very obviously an album track.

 

 

 

DON COVAY: It’s Better To Have (And Don’t Need)/Leave Him – Part II (Mercury 6052 634)

 

 

Old-time funky soul singer and this certainly swings. He also does “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” better than the Bubbly Bath Foam Stones.

 

 

 

BRIAN PROTHEROE: Pinball/Money Love (Chrysalis CHS 2043)

 

 

My father likes this one. Moody, down-on-his-luck ballad, pacing up and down the landing looking for his Pale Ale. It’s like Budgie or Public Eye set to music. Great saxophone solo, too. The singer’s voices double up at the end, like he’s becoming schizophrenic. One to ponder.

 

 

 

ELTON JOHN: The Bitch Is Back/Cold Highway (DJM DJS 322)

 

 

FINALLY we get an uptempo rocker from Elton, his first since “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting.” I presume he’s singing about himself.

 

 

 

LEO SAYER: Long Tall Glasses/In My Life (Chrysalis CHS 2052)

 

 

Odd thirties-style (but with seventies guitars) honky-tonk tale about a guy who goes to a restaurant but has to dance before he’s allowed to eat. Going to some very strange places, is Mr Sayer.

 

 

 

28 September

 

(Author’s Note: No entries for this week because I was on holiday. I did a two-week catch-up the following week; see forthcoming entry for October 1974.)