OCTOBER 1975

 

 

Notes on text:

 

I didn’t know it at the time, but apparently Bob Marley and Judge Dread were really good mates. You judge things by what you hear, not necessarily what you know.

 

The last “terrible Hurricane Smith-Sings-The New Seekers” single by ABBA was “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do,” which only made #38.

 

"What A Difference A Day Made" was arranged by guitarist Joe Beck, who was also outstanding on Miles Davis' Circle In The Round and the Gil Evans Orchestra's Blues In Orbit albums - both highly important records to me in the very early eighties. 

 

“Love Is The Drug,” after making great progress, got stuck at number two behind the “Space Oddity” reissue. Bryan Ferry was loudly vexed about the situation at the time and I’d have to agree with him. Bowie, coked to his eyeballs out in L.A. and trying to finish Station To Station, probably didn’t even know it had come out again. Probably nobody except management at RCA, gazing dolefully at the sales figures for Young Americans, knew why it did.

 

“Theme One” by The Chequers, who were (and possibly still are) a funk-reggae band from Aylesbury, is not the George Martin composition.

 

4 October

 

BOB MARLEY AND THE WAILERS: No Woman, No Cry/Kinky Reggae (Live At The Lyceum, London) (Island WIP 6244)

 

 

 

Recorded at the London Lyceum, where I saw Keith Tippett’s Centipede nearly five years ago, and there is definitely a similar sense of shared community in this recording. Everybody in the theatre – musicians, audience, maybe even the ticket-sellers – are responding to each other with such intensity it’s like a Sunday morning church service. We never go to church on Sundays in Uddingston because it’s all about being seen, wearing certain smart clothes and being a respected citizen of the parish rather than anything to do with worship. Also it is dreary and boring, thy will be punished forever, amen. If you’re Catholic it’s worse; you do as you’re told or you burn in hell, and even if you’re good you sometimes burn in hell anyway to set an example.

 

But this is religious worship as it should be done, with the church organ in particular – makes me think of both “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” and “When A Man Loves A Woman.” If it’s reggae, then the rhythm is toned down very heavily and at times is indistinguishable from a heartbeat. But this performance sounds extracted from something greater than you-like-this but we-like-THAT. It’s overpowering but in a good way. It inspires you to be somebody or something better. It’s the most intense hit single of this year. This is probably what people said about “Like A Rolling Stone” ten years ago, and there’s a new Bob in charge – not Dylan, but Marley. The next pop superstar comes from the Third World. I think even Elvis would approve of that. “Everything’s gonna be alright” – that is what people need to hear.

 

 

 

THE GOODIES: Nappy Love/Wild Thing (Bradley’s Records BRAD 7524)

 

 

 

From the sublime to the wretched. Imagine following Bob Marley with this teeth-grindingly sick record. The Troggs cover works reasonably well because it has good jazz musicians on it but isn’t what they’re singing about on the other side illegal?

 

 

 

MUD: L’ L’ Lucy/My Love Is Your Love (Private Stock PVT 41)

 

 

 

The band’s first single for their new label and without Chinn and Chapman – they’ve written this lame rocker themselves and in their not-too-distant RAK days this would have been a B-side only. I suspect they’re on the slow way out.

 

 

 

MORRIS ALBERT: Feelings/Come To My Life (Ven A Mi Vida) (Decca F R 13591)

 

 

 

Brazilian MoR ballad – not exactly Antonio Carlos Jobim, but Wogan’s been playing the heck out of it and despite it already having been out for about a year, an obvious big hit. You don’t see too many hits on Decca these days but once upon a time Humperdinck would have gone to number one with this. Another one for the housewives.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREAD: Big 10/DREAD AND I: Rasta Chat (Cactus CT 77)

 

 

 

It’s really depressing how on one hand you have Bob Marley trying to make the world better, and on the other boozy bricklayers who watch Love Thy Neighbour and buy lowest common denominator rubbish like this for a laugh and wonder why no woman is ever going to go anywhere near them.

 

 

 

 

 

ABBA: SOS/Man In The Middle (Epic EPC 3576)

 

 

 

Now this is something different. Written off as one-hit wonders after “Waterloo,” they have unexpectedly come back with a very strong song; well-constructed, performed and produced, melancholy without being melodramatic, and not one Eurovision bing-bang-bong hooray in sight. What an improvement on the last terrible Hurricane Smith-Sings-The New Seekers one.

 

 

 

 

11 October

 

SPARKS: Looks, Looks, Looks/Pineapple (Island WIP 6249)

 

 

 

Forties big band swinger – is there no place Ron and Russell Mael won’t venture? I love it of course but they’re getting away from the teenagers and more towards the arty crowd.

 

 

 

ELTON JOHN: Island Girl/Sugar On The Floor (DJM DJS 610)

 

 

 

My father really likes this one – it’s catchy and structurally diverting, but the comedy Jamaican accent I could do without.

 

 

 

ESTHER PHILLIPS: What A Difference A Day Made/Turn Around, Look At Me (Kudu KUDU 925)

 

 

 

Disco Nina Simone, but a lot less fussy about things; producer Creed Taylor clearly believes in the Miles Davis saying that "less is more."

 

 

 

SMOKEY: Don’t Play Your Rock ‘N’ Roll To Me/Talking Her Round (RAK 217)

 

 

 

I do get the feeling that if Mud had stayed on RAK, Chinn and Chapman would have tried to get them to do stuff like this. The main riff comes from “His Latest Flame.” Singer Chris Norman sounds like he has both a sore throat and mild indigestion.

 

 

 

DAVID BOWIE: Space Oddity/Changes/Velvet Goldmine (RCA Victor Maximillion Series RCA 2593)

 

 

 

Why has this suddenly come back? Didn’t Young Americans sell very well? And the Apollo missions have finished. I’m not sure people are bothered that much about the moon any more. But people just keep looking back, even to 1969, when things were still possible, or so people imagined. When Stylophones were the future. But this isn’t even a happy song – the astronaut goes missing, or suffocates, or something like that. It’s like we just want to punish ourselves. We probably couldn’t live without doing that, all the time. And David Bowie wants to do something else – BE somebody else - now, so why won’t you let him?

 

18 October

 

TRAMMPS: Hold Back The Night/Tom’s Song (Buddah BDS 437)

 

 

 

The “Zing Went The Strings Of My Heart” men are back with what James Hamilton might call a good solid swinger. I’m sure this is catchy enough to prove a much larger hit.

 

 

 

ROXY MUSIC: Love Is The Drug/Sultanesque (Island WIP 6248)

 

 

 

They’ve gone disco, but what a dance record this is – sound effects intro, rippling swing into the song itself, Bryan Ferry sounding anxious but not defeated. He sounds a little like Adam Faith – and a lot more like Jake Thackeray! - but reminds me more of Cliff Richard because he’s obsessed with the idea of love but blinks at the reality and slopes elegantly away from it. The car-keys rhythm track offers fulsome swing. This record really knows where it’s going, even if it’s towards a luxurious brick wall. This absolutely should be their first number one.

 

 

 

GLEN CAMPBELL: Rhinestone Cowboy/Lovelight (Capitol CL 15824)

 

 

 

Likely to prove Campbell’s biggest UK hit in nearly five years, and nothing whatsoever do with country music apart from the subject matter (and possibly only the song title), this is a smart and heartfelt song about leaving the bright lights and big city behind and going back to what he knows and loves – see also “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” and “Midnight Train To Georgia” (in that sense, “Rhinestone Cowboy” is almost a 1973 song!). My father thinks it’s a song about wanting to be gay but he has a problem with that type of thing.

 

 

 

 

25 October

 

GEORGE McCRAE: I Ain’t Lyin’/You Treat Me Good (Jay Boy BOY 105)

 

 

 

George, with K.C., doing his usual Miami disco thing. Lacks the exuberance of “It’s Been So Long” but should keep fans happy.

 

 

 

DEE CLARK: Ride A White Horse/Ride A White Horse (Part 2) (Chelsea 2005 037)

 

 

 

This singer apparently goes back to the fifties – here he’s in a sort of Jim Gilstrap/George McCrae groove. Slightly stiff in places but will keep unfussy dancers satisfied.

 

 

 

JOHN MILES: Highfly/There’s A Man Behind The Guitar (Decca F 13595)

 

 

 

Much played on Radio Luxembourg; punchy bubblegum, a bit like a rockier Pilot.

 

 

 

THE CHEQUERS: Rock On Brother/Theme One (Creole CR 111)

 

 

 

Don’t know this group at all – are they the Government? Strange flute-led pop-funk, like an earthier “The Hustle” but it never really gets going and inexplicably turns into a spy film theme at times.