JANUARY 1976

 

 

Notes on Text

 

"Midnight Rider" was the first single bought by Johnny Marr, nearly three months older than me, and it was Paul Davidson's solo which convinced him that he had to become a guitarist. 

 

Crispy & Co. were actually the Lafayette Afro Rock Band; formed in Long Island but moved to Paris in the early seventies. As the producer’s house band they worked under many aliases, Crispy & Co. being but one of them. As the Lafayette Afro Rock Band, however, they released several superb and much-sampled records; Public Enemy fans will recognise the saxophone line of “Darkest Light.”

 

"The Way I Want To Touch You," as with "Love To Love You Baby," has gone considerably higher up in my estimation in the intervening half-century or so. These days it sounds to me like a Sunflower outtake. 

 

3 January

 

No new chart; repeat of the 27 December 1975 chart.

 

 

10 January

 

PAUL DAVIDSON: Midnight Rider/THE ORGANIZATION: Organized Version (Tropical Records AL056)

 

 

 

What a magnificent, if eerie, start to 1976; a spellbinding reggae version of an Allman Brothers Band song. I haven’t actually heard the original but already know I’d much prefer this one. So elegantly wistful and disturbing, with string synthesiser, police sirens and harmonica punctuating an arid landscape; a superb production by the splendidly-named Pluto Shervington with completely splendid guitar and bass work. It’s like a reggae R Dean Taylor and it deserves to be a major hit.

 

 

 

BARRY WHITE: Let The Music Play/Let The Music Play (Instrumental) (20^th Century BTC 2265)

 

 

 

Barry’s strongest single in ages, and a strange one too; there he is, booking a ticket – just the one – at an airport and dancing in a disco, frantically trying to forget about the woman who’s walked out on him. Perhaps it’s all paranoia happening in his head. But he sounds more desperate and lonely than I’ve ever heard him sound. It’s like he’s trying to kill himself.

 

 

 

CRISPY & CO.: Get It Together/Down In St. Tropez (Creole CR 114)

 

 

 

Excellent jazz-funk workout with spirited rhythm and vocals and a fantastic horn section, but it’s all over in two minutes. Is there a longer version because I’d like to hear more of this?

 

 

 

 

17 January

 

ROXY MUSIC: Both Ends Burning/For Your Pleasure (Island WIP 6262)

 

 

 

Completely compelling and sinister, although it’s much more of an album track than a single; ominous and kaleidoscopic with inspired chord changes, that string synthesiser again, Ferry sounding at the end of somebody’s tether. B-side is the title track from their unspeakably glorious second album.

 

 

 

ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA: Evil Woman/10538 Overture (Jet Records JET 764)

 

 

 

Likely to be their biggest hit since “Showdown”; very clever mix of Philly Sound strings/rhythm and 1968 psychedelia (the phasing, the dagger-like harpsichord figures) with lyrics that could have come from the Peter Green version of Fleetwood Mac. The B-side is a live version from 1974 but you really need Roy Wood to make that song complete.

 

 

 

SHEER ELEGANCE: Milky Way/Satisfaction Is What I Need (Pye International 7N 25697)

 

 

 

Cabaret soul from New Faces. Actually it’s a bit more substantial than that, but it’s just a little bit too nice and accepting of things.

 

 

 

R & J STONE: We Do It/We Love Each Other (RCA Victor RCA 2616)

 

 

 

With a name like that, they should perhaps be a firm of solicitors or wheelwrights. But they appear to be a married duo, and this tries so hard to be sophisticated and American – and the lady (who I think is “J Stone”) does have a really strong voice – but just ends up sounding like Formica and British suburbia, behind the curtains etc. Mr Graham in Science class has explained to us exactly how things are done, so I know what they’re singing about now, and they make it sound – drab and unglamorous. Very dated late sixties production as well (Phil Swern).

 

 

 

THE MIRACLES: Love Machine (Part 1)/Love Machine (Part 2) (Tamla Motown TMG 1015)

 

 

 

There’s the difference between Britain and America. British people are all hush-hush and mustn’t-wake-the-neighbours about you-know-what but Americans just get on with it. Their first hit without Smokey Robinson, and it’s a great, circular whirlwind of a dance track, somehow managing to sound sophisticated AND earthy at the same time. Will need to get the album for the full, uninterrupted version.

 

 

 

 

24 January

 

THE WING AND A PRAYER FIFE AND DRUM CORPS: Baby Face (Short Version)/Baby Face (Disco Version) (Atlantic K 10705)

 

 

 

There’s a lot of talk going on about the imminent forties revival and here comes a tacky but effective disco version of the ancient music-hall song. I guess people preferred to be scared thirty years ago than be afraid now.

 

 

 

DAVID RUFFIN: Walk Away From Love/Love Can Be Hazardous To Your Health (Tamla Motown TMG 1017)

 

 

 

About time the former Temptations singer and brother of Jimmy had a solo hit and this sees him crooning and agonising exquisitely over a typically hustling Van McCoy arrangement. What a fantastic voice – it’s inexplicable why he hasn’t had more success.

 

 

 

PAUL SIMON: 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover/Some Folks’ Lives Roll Easy (CBS 3887)

 

 

 

Not sure there’s much room for Paul Simon in Britain these days; the Simon and Garfunkel reunion “My Little Town” missed the charts completely – imagine that happening five years ago, and to rub salt into the wound, Art Garfunkel’s just had a number one hit all on his own. But I’m uncertain Simon’s bothered about any of that; here he just muses to himself and comes up with some creaky rhymes (key/Lee, coy/Roy?) – it’s really just another list song – but his melancholy is broken down into elements by Steve Gadd’s quizzical drumming.

 

 

 

THE WALKER BROTHERS: No Regrets/Remember Me (GTO GT 42)

 

 

 

The Tom Rush song cleaned up and ironed out a little. Interesting they’re back after so long away, but Scott Walker in particular sounds like he’s singing to himself – inward rather than towards us. Great crashing guitar solo to disrupt complacency, but the production is a bit too polite and flat, and overall this is not as dynamic as it could or should have been.

 

 

 

OSIBISA: Sunshine Day/Burn To Burn (Bronze BRO 20)

 

 

 

One great advantage of there being no overall “trend” in pop is that you get a lot of excellent artists getting into the charts who should have been having hits years ago. This is tremendous, chanting and determined South African pop-funk-jazz and the fact that it’s still winter shouldn’t deter folk from dancing to it in July. It’s like opening a window and letting in the light.

 

 

 

BARBARA DICKSON: Answer Me/From Now On (RSO 2090 174)

 

 

 

Good to see the Dunfermline John, Paul, George, Ringo...and Bert singer getting a hit in her own right – smoothly bubbling reworking of an old Frankie Laine song, expertly produced by Junior Campbell.

 

 

 

DONNA SUMMER: Love To Love You Baby/Need A Man Blues (GTO GT 17)

 

 

 

Being played hourly by Radio Luxembourg, and not very much at all on Radio 1, this is probably the most controversial pop single of its type since Sylvia’s “Pillow Talk.” Donna Summer makes no attempt to disguise or dress up what she’s singing about; it’s abundantly clear from those groans and moans, the likes of which I have not heard since “Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus.” I don’t really know what to make of it. I suppose if you go to certain shops in Soho, like Adam Faith did in Budgie, this is what you might hear. “Dirty old man Muzak” is my father’s opinion. I wouldn’t know anything about that and perhaps it repels me a little, listening to this. Aren’t we supposed to be better than this – but then again, if we don’t do “this” then we don’t get any children, Mr Graham told us, so I don’t know. I read in Record Mirror that the L.P. version lasts for seventeen minutes. How on earth are they going to fill up the time?

 

 

 

SLIK: Forever And Ever/Again My Love (Bell 1464)

 

 

 

In Glasgow we already know Slik because they had a big hit here with “The Boogiest Band In Town.” They even did a Radio Clyde jingle based on that song. But this is very different – all Gothic organs and monastic chants to begin with, then it suddenly turns into a Bay City Rollers song for the chorus (it’s Bill Martin and Phil Coulter again, back to try their luck). It’s like two songs fighting each other. Clearly it’s going to be very big, but it’s…unsettling. The name of the solemn singer is Midge Ure. What a name.

 

 

 

 

31 January

 

THE CAPTAIN AND TENNILLE: The Way I Want To Touch You/Broddy Bounce (A&M AMS 7203)

 

 

 

Why “Love Will Keep Us Together,” America’s biggest-selling single of 1975, wasn’t a hit here I’ll never know (unless it was because the Captain and Tennille didn’t come over here to promote it). This rather muted but not displeasing ballad – and, like too many other songs in the charts at the moment, concerns itself with nudge-nudge wink-wink say-no-more matters – has on the other hand proved popular, possibly with Co-op shoppers bored with special offers on Heinz Baked Beans in aisle 28 and what’s the recipe today Jim.

 

 

 

THE FOUR SEASONS: December, 1963 (Oh What A Night)/Slip Away (Warner Bros K 16688)

 

 

 

Their comeback continues to flourish with an almost insultingly catchy and in places sneakingly funky midtempo pop number, so sure of itself you only hear Frankie Valli singing lead in the middle-eight. This might be their biggest hit here since “Rag Doll.”

 

 

 

DONNY AND MARIE OSMOND: Deep Purple/Take Me Back Again (MGM 2006 561)

 

 

 

No longer even pretending to appeal to the youth market, the Osmonds’ commercial reserves have now contracted to a nostalgic brother-and-sister duo doing an early evening television variety show and singing the old songs purely to please their old fans’ parents. It’s a sad way to go.

 

 

 

GLENN MILLER AND HIS ORCHESTRA: Moonlight Serenade/In The Mood/Little Brown Jug (RCA Victor RCA 2644)

 

 

 

And so he returns, as we had been expecting – not the man himself, but certainly his music, and it seems to fulfil this need of a lot of people to look back to times that were more comfortable for them; even if the history of World War II has shown that it was one of the most uncomfortable times ever for humanity. But I know there has been a revival in discos – James Hamilton and Chris Hill among the DJs responsible – and there’s also the element of camp to consider (Bryan Ferry’s G.I. Joe look, and to an extent also David Bowie, so it’s actually quite logical that this should be the next “MaxiMillion Series” triple A-side to hit after “Space Oddity”). Of course the music is fabulous – although I am more of an “In The Mood” fan than a “Moonlight Serenade” one (what a great pop record “In The Mood” really is – all those stops and starts, tension and release!). Where, however, is it all going to head and take us?

 

 

 

WAR: Low Rider/So (Island WIP 6267)

 

 

 

It’s absurd that War have been going for several years now without a British hit but thankfully that omission has now been corrected; a great, slinky driver of harmonica/low vocal-growl-led Latin-funk, like Canned Heat and Alexis Korner stumbling into each other on a warm Wednesday mid-afternoon in South Central Los Angeles.