APRIL 1976

 

 

Between 15-24 April – during Easter – we returned to Blackpool for one final time. We weren’t going to go there in the summer because we were due to go on holiday to New York. We travelled there and back by coach (Park’s of Hamilton again) surrounded by a boisterous bunch of families enthusiastically singing along to the Sydney Devine cassettes being played by the coach driver. The notion of the end of an era came to mind.

 

The long week was blowsy and inconclusive. There weren’t nearly as many people about as would still be expected in the Fair Fortnight. On one hand this meant more room for us to wander and explore the town; on the other, the town was rather drained of character. I remember excitedly coming across a rare second issue of Marvel’s Unknown Worlds Of Science Fiction (in which Bob Shaw’s Slow Glass series premiered) in a newsagent’s just off the North Shore seafront. In another newsagent’s, just behind the Tower, sat in the outside rack a single copy of the 200^th edition (dated July 1976; Marvel liked to go to print early) of Captain America, which was officially embargoed from import for some obscure reason (possibly to avoid clashing with the unconvincing Captain Britain, a character dreamed up by a young UK Marvel Comics editor called Neil Tennant). The comics were more interesting than their surroundings. Blackpool seemed to be winding its existence down as unobtrusively as possible. Big stars didn’t really perform there any more. Most of my parents’ friends and colleagues had elected to take their summer holidays in Spain and the Canary Islands instead. We were off to New York three months hence; who were we to masquerade as purists? I haven’t been back there since. I’ve seen the horror stories in the papers and used Google Streetview. Leave the memory where it belongs.

Notes on Text

 

When "Love Me Like I Love You" came out and got commercially stuck at the foot of the top twenty, a special edition of the BBC 1 children's current affairs programme Search, presented by John Craven, was broadcast, asking the question: were the Rollers finished? The same level of gravitas was applied to their commercial diminution as to an everyday global crisis (of which latter there were plenty in 1976). In the following week, the single suddenly sprinted from 17 to 4, as though the group's remaining fans were offering a gesture of final support. That was quite touching to witness.

 

"Silver Star" constitutes a partial genesis of House music, doesn't it - the pounding piano, "Ecstasy on their faces"? Signed to two different record labels, as a member of the Four Seasons and as a solo artist respectively, Frankie Valli had to keep a relatively low profile within the group; indeed, "Silver Star" and "Fallen Angel" were performed on the same edition of Top Of The Pops.

 

Although I have opted not to include "Convoy G.B." here for the benefit of those anxious to avoid the dreaded Hairy Cornflake - God bless you, Paul Burnett, but you, the reader/listener, really aren't missing anything - I have included its B-side, a semi-instrumental which has nothing to do with either Burnett or Travis and everything to do with Wayne Bickerton and Tony Waddington, who wrote, produced and mostly played it. And yes, it sounds like Mozart Estate/Go-Kart Mozart/Denim - and yes, of course that observation should be the other way around.

 

 

 

3 April

 

CARPENTERS: There’s A Kind Of Hush (All Over The World)/(I’m Caught Between) Goodbye And I Love You (A&M AMS 7219)

 

 

 

Pleasant – I use that adjective as the deepest insult – Herman’s Hermits cover suggesting that the duo have become rather stuck and bland in their ways.

 

 

 

THE BEATLES: Paperback Writer/Rain (Parlophone/Apple “The Singles Collection 1962-1970” R 5452)

 

 

 

This is obviously back in the charts because of its use as the theme to the BBC1 book review programme Read All About It; it is what you want it to be – and the B-side really is quite extraordinary and maybe even prophetic in what it does and how it sounds – but either it’s ten years too late, or I’m ten years too young, to get it.

 

 

 

 

DIANA ROSS: Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To)/No One's Gonna Be A Fool Forever (Tamla Motown TMG 1010)

 

 

 

A very sad and desolate ballad which Diana Ross seems to be singing to herself. I shouldn’t be moved by it but to me it sounds like growing up and leaving everything and everybody behind and finding nothing and nobody to take their place, and I shouldn’t be thinking about things like that at my age. Something of the elegy or requiem about this record.

 

 

 

THE BEATLES: Hey Jude/Revolution (Parlophone/Apple “The Singles Collection 1962-1970” R 5722)

 

 

 

This is one of the first pop records I remember listening to and seeing. They showed this on Top Of The Pops in 1968 and all these people climbed onstage and joined in, including elderly men in Napoleon hats. It was footage from the David Frost show, I think, but to me it seemed like the Beatles wanted to include the whole world in their song, like there was nothing that wasn’t possible, nobody whom you couldn’t reach or touch. I still think that way about the world, even though I’ve already and repeatedly been proved wrong. It felt like everything, including the Tuesday morning in 1968 at the Vale Café in Tollcross where this was playing on the jukebox and then I heard “Mony, Mony” and after that “Fire” which made me scared.

 

I don’t know how the Beatles can be made to matter in 1976. It seems to me that everybody’s chasing a long-gone dream from a time that has now elapsed and turned into something greyer and more sober than they’d been expecting. Remember how it used to be, forever, and never mind the young people growing up now who want their own music and are bored with their older brothers or sisters telling them all the time how much better the sixties were than now. If they were that great, I thought to myself, why didn’t we just stay there? The long fade-out of “Hey Jude,” as though defying the song to end, because that would mean life had ended. It touches something in us still – but what if it’s something we ourselves cannot, or do not want to, touch?

 

“Revolution” – I don’t agree with the political content of the lyrics, but Status Quo would do well to rock as hard as this.

 

 

 

SAILOR: Girls, Girls, Girls/Jacaranda (Epic EPC 3858)

 

 

 

The Temperance Seven get locked in a spaceship for this follow-up – a deliberately old-fashioned twenties romp with a bouncy synthesised bassline that will largely appeal to mums and dads who still want to be “with it.”

 

 

 

ABBA: Fernando/Hey Hey Helen (Epic EPC 4036)

 

 

 

After coming back with some really smart pop records, the Swedish quartet relapse into prewar sentimentality with this stentorian and static ode to battles, complete with marching drums, flutes etc. Vera Lynn could have sung this in 1948 and that is presumably why it’s going to be so big a hit in the Britain of 1976, because we seemingly can’t stop wanting to remind ourselves of the war. Fighting for whose freedom? The B-side is much snappier.

 

 

 

 

10 April

 

THE BEATLES WITH BILLY PRESTON: Get Back/Don’t Let Me Down (Parlophone/Apple “The Singles Collection 1962-1970” R 5777)

 

 

 

How is any new music expected to make itself known when it gets squeezed out of the charts and the public’s attention by all these old Beatles records? You know, they’re not going to reform if you screw your eyes up tightly enough and pretend they have. It is interesting, however, how it’s their more recent singles that have sparked renewed interest rather than “She Loves You” and so forth. This is only seven years old so it sounds as though they’re all getting ready for their solo careers, i.e. not too dated.

 

 

 

 

SHEER ELEGANCE: Life Is Too Short Girl/Love Is The Reason Why (Pye International 7N 25703)

 

 

 

A better-constructed song than “Milky Way” but so eager to be inoffensive that it inevitably ends up offending the listener. Good luck to them, but this says nothing about anything to me.

 

 

 

BRASS CONSTRUCTION: Movin’/Talkin’ (United Artists UP 36090)

 

 

 

This is the essential difference between American and British soul. Britain is too polite and mustn’t upset the neighbours, whereas America just gets on and does it – better played, better produced, better in every way. Exciting funky shouter to which even a slab of concrete would be moved to dance.

 

 

 

SILVER CONVENTION: Get Up And Boogie/Son Of A Gun (Magnet MAG 55)

 

 

 

This is probably going to give the three ladies a major hit single at last – a slinky, catchy and irresistible groove, like the Vernons Girls on Venus.

 

 

 

ISAAC HAYES MOVEMENT: Disco Connection/St Thomas Square (ABC Records ABC 4100)

 

 

 

Who can deny that disco is where pop has led itself to – every week we hear new inventions and rhythms, and even Isaac Hayes, coming back with his first big hit since “Theme From Shaft,” finds himself firmly at home. Phenomenal instrumental electronic brass mover, as though John Shaft were now jamming with Kraftwerk.

 

 

 

BAY CITY ROLLERS: Love Me Like I Love You/Mama Li (Bell 1477)

 

 

 

Written by Eric and Woody, with a clear intention of reviving the old Coulter and Martin formula, this is windy where it should be breezy. The old carefreeness has been replaced by a new hesitancy and the song’s title makes only marginally more sense than “Love Like You And Me” did a year ago. A low (for them) chart entry position indicates the Rollers’ time may be fading.

 

 

 

 

(N.B.: The next two sets of entries were both written on Sunday 25 April, after I’d come back from Blackpool – M.C.)

 

17 April

 

RODGER COLLINS: You Sexy Sugar Plum (But I Like It)/I’ll Be Here (When The Morning Comes) (Fantasy FTC 132)

 

 

 

Ploddy, soggy porno-soul that makes Dick Emery sound like George Clinton.

 

 

 

ERIC CARMEN: All By Myself/Last Night (Arista Records ARISTA 42)

 

 

 

The former Raspberries leader comes back with a soppy Manilow-esque ballad that owes much to Rachmaninov and will no doubt find favour with housewives unmoved by or unfamiliar with the work of genius that was “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record).”

 

 

 

KEITH EMERSON: Honky Tonk Train Blues/Barrelhouse Shake-Down (Manticore K 13513)

 

 

 

Not to be outdone by Greg Lake, Keith shows he can make a hit single too with this energetic and very faithful big band reworking of the old Meade Lux Lewis piano classic – who knows, it might even inspire ELP fans to investigate the work of the original boogie-woogie masters.

 

 

 

FOX: S-s-s-single Bed/Silk Milk (GTO GT 57)

 

 

 

Their strongest song yet and potentially their biggest hit, a very comely and breathy, yet also very self-aware (the backing vocals are like raised eyebrows) soft-funk-pop workout with an extraordinary “talk box” guitar solo. At last, great pop music.

 

 

 

 

24 April

 

ANDREA TRUE CONNECTION: More, More, More (Pt. 1)/More, More, More (Pt. 2) (Buddah BDS 442)

 

 

 

Blending well with “S-s-s-single Bed” and even “Love To Love You Baby,” this is equally sensuous dance-pop with an extremely catchy chorus, beautifully assembled by writer/producer Gregg Dimond and mixer Tom Moulton. Unlike the Beatles, this sounds completely in the present tense of pop. Watch it explode.

 

 

 

THE FOUR SEASONS: Silver Star/Silver Star (Warner Bros/Curb Records K 16742)

 

 

 

The New Jersey veterans’ astounding lucky streak of second-coming smashes continues with this great, pounding, piano-driven train song, complete with solemn balladic interlude; I wish Brian Wilson were in good enough condition to come up with something this powerful and inventive. The B-side is the full-length album version.

 

 

 

FRANKIE VALLI: Fallen Angel/Carrie (I Would Marry You (Private Stock PVT 51)

 

 

 

Valli’s relatively low profile on the Four Seasons’ current run of hits is probably due to the presumed need to concentrate on his solo work. Firmly in the “My Eyes Adored You” line of grandiose ballads, this isn’t in itself the greatest of songs, but Frankie works hard to make you believe that it is.

 

 

 

 

LAURIE LINGO AND THE DIPSTICKS: Convoy G.B./Rock Is Dead (State Records STAT 23)

 

 

 

Dave Lee Travis and Paul Burnett with the inevitable C. W. McCall send-up (“Plastic Chicken” and “Super Scouse”). It will of course receive maximum airplay on Radio 1 but is unlikely to be remembered in six months’ time.