SEPTEMBER 1976

 

 

The weather broke very quickly early in the month. By the end of September it was snowing in Uddingston, and perhaps some of my classmates will recall with hilarity my attempting to struggle down the Main Street in order to reach school without breaking my bones. This, I thought, is our punishment for enjoying the summer, for going places and seeing things. Everything comes as a cost. My second year trundled along reasonably nicely. Actually I ought to have been commencing my third year at school by now but I had to repeat a year at Muiredge Primary for some obscure bureaucratic reason which pretty much eradicated the little enthusiasm for school that I had harboured.

"He's ahead of his age group!" "But it's not fair on the others." It was the same when trendy pen-pushers at UGS decided to make third year English a mixed ability class. I'd been one of the top two English students in my second year and the purpose of those third and fourth years was to cut me down to size. Too clever for my boots. "But it's not fair on the others." That inspired me to adopt autodidactism as the real way to proceed. It was also what I understood as socialism, in the West Central Scotland sense - "I want to achieve things, maximise my potential (as they say these days)!" "But it's not fair on the others." "I have a life and I want to live it." "But it's not fair on the others."

But back to my actual second year...

 

Notes on Text

In September 1976 there was an awful lot of jumping around going on in the charts with singles yo-yoying up and down the list. I ascribe this to suboptimal record-keeping on the part of the shops returning sales figures to the British Market Research Bureau, or perhaps the plain absence of available stock. The one major re-entry that month was "Sailing" by Rod Stewart, which returned to the chart a year after it had topped it, since it was being used as the signature tune to a popular BBC documentary series about life on the warship the H.M.S. Ark Royal. Although it only (only?) peaked at number three on this occasion, it was possibly a bigger long-term hit than it had been in 1975. I didn't feel the need to write about it again in 1976.

 

4 September

TOMMY HUNT: Loving On The Losing Side/Sunshine Girl (Spark SRL 1146)

 

The former Flamingos lead singer goes for a Philly Sound sound; pleasant enough, but a little too close to "The Love I Lost" for comfort.

 

 

PUSSYCAT: Mississippi/Do It (Sonet SON 2077)

 

Glutinous MoR ballad from what sounds like the Netherlands' answer to the New Seekers. A really corny moment when the "Peter Gunn" riff begins when the lead singer starts to complain about the jukebox playing "rock-ee-roll." Doesn't she even like electricity? What people think Abba are like, is how this record sounds.

TINA CHARLES: Dance Little Lady Dance/Why (CBS 4480)

 

Boring retread of her number one. With this and Jimmy James and the Vagabonds, one wonders if Biddu wants to reduce all of the acts he writes for and produces to the level of a tin of Heinz Baked Beans.

 

 

MANFRED MANN'S EARTH BAND: Blinded By The Light/Starbird No. 2 (Bronze BRO 29)

 

Intriguing progressive rock cover of a lyrically nonsensical (i.e. "Dylan-esque") Bruce Springsteen song. I find with most pop songs, however, that listening to them is a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable if you don't listen to their words. An abstract wallpaper design.

 

HOT CHOCOLATE: Heaven Is In The Back Seat Of My Cadillac/Sex Appeal (RAK 240)

 

Are Errol Brown & Co. now making records for fans of Confessions Of A Window Cleaner? This sounds positively creepy - driving out to the countryside? I'd call the police if I were her.

 

ACKER BILK, HIS CLARINET & STRINGS: Aria/The Fool On The Hill (Pye 7N 45607)

 

Interesting that Mr Bilk should cover the Beatles, since this is his first hit since they became famous. Learning to play the clarinet as I am at the moment - there are two different fingering systems I have to learn; a lot more complicated than the recorder but infinitely better-sounding - I am often prevailed upon to play "Stranger On The Shore." This is orchestral easy listening of the same kind, quite unlike the rumbustious bowler-hatted Dixieland that he plays on Pebble Mill At One, and I suppose Radio 2 must be playing it. Pleasant enough if you've never heard Anthony Braxton.

 

11 September

 

BAY CITY ROLLERS: I Only Wanna Be With You/Rock 'N Roller (Bell 1493)

 

When in commercial trouble, a cover version is always the safest bet, and the Rollers knock seven decent bells out of their energetic reading of the bustling Dusty Springfield oldie, although I wish the producer Jimmy Ienner had resisted the temptation to add those Radio Clyde strings. 

 

THE WURZELS: I Am A Cider Drinker (Paloma Blanca)/The Back Of My Old Car (EMI 2520)

 

Unable to do the decent thing and settle for being one-hit wonders, the patronising Somerset comedy-neutralisers return with another hideous "parody," and because most British people are frothing at the mouth for Thatcher to become Prime Minister they will make this another unnecessarily huge hit. Acker Bilk is more West Country than these poltroons will ever be.

 

 

THE REAL THING: Can't Get By Without You/(He's Just A) Moneymaker (Pye 7N 45618)

 

Soundalike follow-up already destined to become an equally big hit. So why does it sound like they are singing: "I can't get by without you - go away!"? They really ought to make their minds up.

 

18 September

 

ELVIS PRESLEY WITH THE JORDANAIRES: The Girl Of My Best Friend/A Mess Of Blues (RCA Victor RCA 2729)

 

I've just heard this on J*mmy S*v*l*'s Old Record Club and have no idea why it's been re-released. What will they be putting out next - "Hoots Mon" by Lord Rockingham's XI?

 

 

KIKI DEE: Loving And Free/Amoureuse/I've Got The Music In Me/(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am (The Rocket Record Company ROKN 515)

 

A catch-up E.P. for new listeners won over by "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" to remind them of what the great Bradford singer has also been doing of late. Let's hope she gets a proper, if belated, chart career.

 

25 September

 

CAN: I Want More/More (Virgin VS 153)

 

Well, who would have expected this - the great German band get a hit with what is more or less a disco record! My father is a big Can fan - because he considers them jazz - and inventive albums like Tago Mago and Soon Over Babaluma make the Moody Blues sound like Hope and Keen's Crazy Bus. Wonderfully minimalistic yet firmly swinging;; like all of their songs, you're disappointed that it doesn't last an eternity. Not sure if this will be a really big hit, but its presence in the charts makes them (the charts) different.

THE RITCHIE FAMILY: The Best Disco In Town (Part 1)/The Best Disco In Town (Part 2) (Polydor 2058 777)

 

Energetic medley of various recent hits for the clubs that should give the group the big hit they were cheated out of last year with "Brazil."

RICK DEES AND HIS CAST OF IDIOTS: Disco Duck (Part 1)/Disco Duck (Part 2) (Instrumental) (RSO 2090 204)

 

So superficially awful a novelty record that it's actually brilliant, complete with a Donald Duck impressionist (presumably Dees himself?) on lead vocals and a compelling melody and beat. This is going to be enormous and you can't and won't want to get away from it. Sharper than Ray Stevens and in a different comedic universe from the Wurzels.

 

 

 

AUGUST 1976

 

 

You can guess the fundamental problem that I, and not just I, had. You’ve been out into the world, you’ve seen a portion of the world that is far bigger and expansive than anything you’ve witnessed or experienced at home…and then you have to come back home. Out in New York I was treated like a grown-up, an equal. My father felt as though he was in the company of his peers.

 

Not once during that month in New York did I feel homesick. I might have felt a bit sick about coming home, though. But what could I do? That’s your lot, your break from life, now away back home with you. In normal circumstances that is understandable; I had already heard horror stories about what Blackpool was like in the winter. But normal circumstances these were not.

 

Back to Uddingston, juvenilia and the infuriating minutiae of everyday living. Back to being a twelve-year-old, about to start his second year at the Grammar. This is when and where I knew that if I wanted to get anywhere in life, I’d have to do what my mother had done before me – leave the place of my birth and go somewhere else.

 

I was young; I could still do that. But my father wasn’t, and couldn’t. I became philosophical about things; finish school, get my qualifications then get the hell out and I can have a lot more New York moments to savour in my future. But my father felt trapped, defeated in a life he didn’t really want and for which he had never been remotely ready. That – he – wouldn’t really begin to change until the summer of 1979, when we went on a month’s holiday to Italy. We, that is my mother and I, were meanwhile the regular, available recipients of his outward expressions of frustration. You might understand why I had to get the blazes out of things in the early autumn of 1980. To my father, my mother and I were persistent reminders of the life he couldn’t have, of the voluntary shackles.

 

So I kept a low profile in August 1976, began to get about and see friends more often. My second year at Uddingston Grammar would prove a little more promising than the first had done, despite my needing to deal with the duality of witnessing David Murray and Oliver Lake blowing in person, and inwardly shuddering at my classmates’ ceaseless fixation with comic books, Doctor Who and football. You can see why I still have problems having to deal with this sort of stuff from alleged grown-ups on social media. I had, and still have, little patience for it.

 

Hence I got more friendly with my teachers, which was possible because I generally had better teachers than I’d done the year before. My English teacher John Shaw in particular was a marvel. He knew exactly where I was coming from as a writer and encouraged it – who else in my year was using words like “succinctly” in their writing? The predictable downside was that I became known to my classmates as a “sook” – the Scottish expression for a pupil who sucks up to their teachers. Which was fine by me. I could talk with my teachers like I was a fellow adult, and they took me seriously in turn. If that made me a “sook,” so be it.

 

John Shaw – he was a bit of an expired hippie whose favourite band, in 1976-7, was Amon Duul II. Oh, how we youthful morons laughed. Well, everybody did, frankly; nobody took German rock, experimental or otherwise, seriously because they all had shaggy, lanky hair, uncomfortable-looking flares or were they discarded circus tents, and unspeakable beards. Under his encouragement and guidance I wrote an astounding avant-garde multimedia science fiction epic entitled Leap Into Version Five (which still exists; I kept the notebooks in which I wrote it – don’t get too excited, though, because it’s now unreadable).

 

And the summer was still extraordinarily hot, although it was almost impossible to cope with the transition from Lower Manhattan back to Bothwell Castle. The music? It was what it was, and this is what I had to say about it at the time, while mostly waiting to return to what I did hope would be a better and more interesting year.

 

Notes on Text

 

At the time I thought “The Killing Of Georgie” might just beat “Dancing Queen” to number one but of course it proved to be the other way around. In retrospect I’m not sure the Britain of 1976 was quite ready to have an openly pro-gay song at the top of its chart.

 

 

7 August

 

WINGS: Let ‘Em In/Beware My Love (MPL R 6015)

 

 

 

Amiable Gilbert O’Sullivan-ish midtempo piano pounder which suddenly transforms into a military march with piccolos and kazoos. Probably as big a hit as “Silly Love Songs” because one feels at the moment that McCartney is the only solo Beatle who’s even trying things out. He still understands what pop music’s about, even if his approach sometimes comes across as slightly embarrassing.

 

 

 

STEVE HARLEY & COCKNEY REBEL: Here Comes The Sun/Lay Me Down (EMI 2505)

 

 

 

Speaking of the Beatles, Harley is seeking another hit with an uptempo, prog rock-style cover of the Abbey Road tune, doubtless released to capitalise on this scorched summer. Rather knowing, but it should get him back in the top ten.

 

 

 

BILLIE JO SPEARS: What I’ve Got In Mind/Everytime Two Fools Collide (United Artists UP 36118)

 

 

 

Back Ms Spears comes for the second consecutive summer with more country and western double entendres. The trouble with this music is that, even though it’s supposed to be about sex, it sounds really unsexy. Perhaps that’s its point.

 

 

 

BEE GEES: You Should Be Dancing/Subway (RSO 2090 195)

 

 

 

Those concerned that “Jive Talkin’” might have been a one-off comeback need worry no longer – this is a really powerful dance record with KC horns, heavy rock guitars, an Escher staircase of chord changes and a falsetto Barry Gibb seemingly shrieking for his life. Who’d have thought the “Massachusetts” guys could have come up with this? My father also likes it, though argues that the chorus should really be: “What’cha doin’ in the disco at night?/You should be SLEEPIN’, YEAH!”

 

 

 

 

14 August

 

THE STYLISTICS: Sixteen Bars/I Will Love You Always (H & L Records 6105 059)

 

 

 

A once-great vocal group now sinking ever further into cabaret hell. For Humperdinck fans only.

 

 

 

LOU RAWLS: You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine/Let’s Fall In Love All Over Again (Philadelphia International PIR 4372)

 

 

 

A deserved huge hit to be for the veteran singer, who sounds so rejuvenated by Gamble and Huff’s boat-rocking hustler – their strongest song in some time - he could be a stand-in for the Six Million Dollar Man.

 

 

 

THE CHI-LITES: You Don’t Have To Go (Vocal)/You Don’t Have To Go (Instrumental) (Brunswick BR 34)

 

 

 

Still chasing the “Rock Your Baby” bandwagon two years on, though dotted by a curious Dixieland woodwind arrangement, this is faster than usual for the Chi-Lites but doesn’t really amount to anything at the end. And in 1976 we surely should have moved beyond putting instrumental backing tracks on the B-sides of singles.

 

 

 

BRYAN FERRY: Extended Play (E.P.) (Island IEP 1)

 

Track listing: The Price Of Love/Shame, Shame, Shame/Heart On My Sleeve/It’s Only Love

 

 

 

Speedily on the back of the success of both “Let’s Stay Together” and Demis Roussos – and looking rather like Ron Mael on the cover – the Roxy man jumps on the E.P. bandwagon with yet more cover versions. The Everly Brothers song is the lead track with trumpet intro leading into a raucous Roxy-type romp. “Shame, Shame, Shame” is the old Jimmy Reed blues belter, not Shirley and Company, the Gallagher and Lyle cover is interesting, and the Beatles one sounds thrown away like a disinterested cigarette carton.

 

 

 

 

21 August

 

BARRY WHITE: Baby, We Better Try To Get It Together/If You Know, Won’t You Tell Me (20^th Century BTC 2298)

 

 

 

Now beginning to sound somewhat dated, is Barry; entirely formulaic and unlikely to excite many.

 

 

 

JAMES AND BOBBY PURIFY: Morning Glory/Turning Back The Pages (Mercury 6167 380)

 

 

 

Sprightly bustling soul-pop and double-speed follow-up to “Puppet.” Very decent.

 

 

 

STARLAND VOCAL BAND: Afternoon Delight/Starland (RCA Victor RCA 2716)

 

 

 

Belated UK Top 30 entry for America’s bicentennial number one. Twee close harmony crooning, and we know exactly what they’re singing about, but why does it sound so bereft of…sex? They sing the song as though they prefer the idea of sex to its practice. Can’t see it displacing Elton and Kiki here.

 

 

 

JESSE GREEN: Nice & Slow (Instrumental)/Nice & Slow (Vocal) (EMI 2492)

 

 

 

That rarest of things, British disco with credibility, and in an interesting reversal of the norm, Mel Cheren’s “Disco Mix” of the instrumental seems to have found more favour with dancers than Green’s (actually not bad) vocal original.

 

 

 

ABBA: Dancing Queen/That’s Me (Epic EPC 4499)

 

 

 

Having woken up from “Fernando,” Abba now seem to be going for the KC & the Sunshine Band market with the “That’s The Way (I Like It)” topline and “Rock Your Baby” rhythm track seemingly given a Demis Roussos-style arrangement (possibly with a touch of Silver Convention), all cascading and processed strings and keyboards. The lyrics still sound written by someone for whom English is perhaps a third language – there really isn’t any “rock music,” little bit or otherwise, going on here - but the group seems unstoppable at the moment and this should do their usual commercial business.

 

 

 

ROD STEWART: The Killing Of Georgie Parts 1 & 2/Fool For You (Riva RIVA 4)

 

 

 

This time, however, Abba have competition – a six-minute and sixteen-second long epic (longer than “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “I’m Not In Love”) that probably constitutes the first hit single to feature an explicitly gay protagonist. The first part sounds musically like a cleaned-up variation on “Walk On The Wild Side” and the song’s lyrics are occasionally clunky, if heartfelt (“There ensued a fearful fight” sounds more like William McGonagall than anything else). The second part is slow and elegiac. Having just come back from New York, I can attest with a small degree of authority that taking a short cut home late at night is not advisable – but this shouldn’t detach from what is clearly an important and courageous record and a likely smash hit. Stewart’s best (and certainly longest) single since “Maggie May.”

 

 

 

 

28 August

 

JUDGE DREAD: Y Viva Suspenders/Confessions Of A Bouncer (Cactus CT 99)

 

 

 

Embarrassing.

 

 

 

CLIFF RICHARD: I Can’t Ask For Anymore Than You/Junior Cowboy (EMI 2499)

 

 

 

The third single from his very strong I’m Nearly Famous album, showing off Cliff’s rarely-exposed falsetto voice to good effect.

 

 

 

TWIGGY: Here I Go Again/In Love Together (Mercury 6007 100)

 

 

 

Trying for credibility, God bless her. Specifically she sounds like she’s trying to be Marianne Faithfull and there’s nothing wrong with Country Joe McDonald’s song, but the basic problem is that she can’t actually sing.

 

 

 

GHEORGHE ZAMFIR: The Light Of Experience ('Doina De Jale')/Brîul Oltenesc (Epic EPC 4310)

 

 

 

One afternoon on Blackpool’s North Shore, in the sunshine, earlier this year, was when we heard this being played on the transistor radio. We were dumbstruck and spellbound. What was this? It sounded like a faraway cry, the most distant of prayers. It was quite long but very patient; the principal musician seemed in no hurry, wanted to express everything he could through this strange instrument called the Romanian panpipe. No tempo, not much at all other than a constant and slowly-evolving drone behind the panpipe player. It was as if the world had stopped, paused, for a few minutes. There were no words but the player seemed to be saying and expressing everything.

 

This elegant nothingness. This kaleidoscope of concentrated emotion. The presenter said it was the theme to The Light Of Experience, a late-night Sunday religious programme on BBC1 that we didn’t watch because we aren’t religious, or at least my father and I aren’t – at the moment. But we all found this compelling listening.

 

Several months later, this performance has suddenly materialised in the pop charts and occasionally I can appreciate why they exist.