It was shaping up to be a nice summer, although I received parental hell for staying in and reading books etc. when I should have been out in the lovely hot weather. Doing what, exactly? It was Uddingston Main Street for heaven’s sake. I was too old for the play park - even though I actually got stung by a wasp in a very painful position (me, not the wasp) in said park that month - and too young to go anywhere really interesting. I did get the feeling that really my father would have preferred to see me going out with a nice girl, not that any girls, nice or otherwise, were exactly lining up to go out with me.
My perilously-underachieving first year at school was mercifully over and I hoped the second one was going to be infinitely better. Thanks to the Hamilton Advertiser cover I was a minor celebrity in the eyes of my “peers” but did my teachers or fellow pupils treat me any differently? Oh, no. It was felt, very deeply, that there was something “up” with me. Something “abnormal.” And nobody who felt that knew what the hell it was or what to do with or about it. I either got patronised or shrunk away from.
Music? It was an escape from all of that, “all of that” being synonymous with “the world.”
I didn’t win any prizes because of my crapness at Technical Drawing, which dragged my exam score average sufficiently down to disqualify me from the top or even the middle rank. The moral? Don’t be special. Be average. Average gets you places.
5 June
BILLY PAUL: Let’s Make A Baby/My Head’s On Straight (Philadelphia International PIR 4144)
Not being played anywhere on radio because apparently it’s a bit naughty, how you make babies. I got taught that in Science class. It sounds quite boring, really.
OUR KID: You Just Might See Me Cry/I Can’t Live Without You (Polydor 2058 729)
Really old-fashioned sounding MoR bubblegum from New Faces would-be Osmonds impersonators. They look and sound scared, like they’re going to get beaten up if they don’t get to number one.
MISTURA FEATURING LLOYD MICHELS (TRUMPET): The Flasher/Life Is A Song Worth Singing (Route Records/Pye RT 30)
Funky instrumental akin to CCS taking their dogs out for a walk. Do they mean that kind of flasher, though, because that’s almost as rude as trying to make babies?
THE REAL THING: You To Me Are Everything/Keep An Eye (On Your Best Friend) (Pye International 7N 25709)
New Faces gives us Our Kid, but Opportunity Knocks retaliates with The Real Thing and I know which side I’m on. It is essentially “Love’s Theme” with lyrics but the song bears an easy swing and the singers can actually sing. Delightful and should beat Our Kid to the top.
12 June
LEE GARRETT: You’re My Everything/Love Enough For Two (Chrysalis CHS 2087)
Slightly strained-sounding but reasonably elegant pop-soul midtempo chugger.
DION: The Wanderer/Little Diane (Philips 6146 700)
It says something about the British mentality that Dion’s gloriously epic version of “Born To Be With You,” produced with Spector last year, got played nowhere and flopped completely, whereas this ancient vessel lopes back into the hit parade with ease. I don’t believe his swaggering, though; he says he’s been with all these girls, so why does he ultimately sound so empty? Does the actual Dion di Mucci know that this has come back? Would he even care?
CANDI STATON: Young Hearts Run Free/I Know (Warner Bros K 16730)
Grown-up disco where the singer testifies that, whatever life and specifically men throw at her, she can take it. Very neatly arranged and finely executed; it’s better than Our Kid (but then, what isn’t)?
THIN LIZZY: The Boys Are Back In Town/Emerald (Vertigo 6059 139)
What a comeback – their first hit since “Whiskey In The Jar” – and what a rocker, gleefully and drunkenly stomping all over the place. It’s like somebody just opened a window and let life into the room.
ROD STEWART: Tonight’s The Night/The Ball Trap (Riva Records RIVA 3)
The idle work of a rich man who has nothing better to do of a Wednesday afternoon than record a languid – some might say turgid – MoR rock trudger with deep breathing from Britt Ekland and troubling references to a “virgin child” which presumably has nothing to do with Christmas because it’s still June. Isn’t this what the punk rock thing is supposed to be getting rid of? Wish they’d get on with it and do it.
19 June
FLINTLOCK: Dawn/Thunderman (Pinnacle P 8419)
Yet ANOTHER juvenile pop group, this time from You Must Be Joking on ITV where children my age do funny sketches and WHY AREN’T I ON IT – do you have any idea what I have to put up with every time I see this happening? Anyway this group are dull despite having the star of The Tomorrow People on drums and thinking they are going to become the new Rollers. The problem is this song doesn’t have any song. They might just be the new Stevenson’s Rocket, though.
MAUREEN McGOVERN: The Continental/Lullaby Of Broadway (20th Century BTC 2222)
The forties revival mutates into a thirties one with this somewhat scary-sounding period piece of a cover. Does anybody remember what the thrilling thirties led to?
THE SHANGRI-LAS: Leader Of The Pack/Remember (Walking In The Sand) (Contempo-Raries CS 9032)
THE SHANGRI-LA’S: Leader Of The Pack/Give Him A Great Big Kiss (Charly Records CS 1009)
Extraordinary. One with the apostrophe, the other without, and the sales of both have apparently been combined to bring this song back to the charts, despite it having been in the top three just four years ago. Don’t you think there’s something rather unhealthy about a chart with so many oldies in it, or do the British public really only have the memory span of an everyday goldfish?
BRYAN FERRY: Let’s Stick Together (Let's Work Together)/Sea Breezes (Island WIP 6307)
A peppy, reworded Canned Heat/Wilbert Harrison cover with clenched-teeth horns, excitable yelping from Jerry Hall and a singer who hasn’t yet decided whether he hates us. Haven’t we already had the reworked “Sea Breezes” as a B-side?
26 June
DEMIS ROUSSOS: Excerpts From “The Roussos Phenomenon” (E.P.) (Philips DEMIS 001)
Track listing: Forever And Ever/Sing An Ode To Love/So Dreamy/My Friend The Wind
The first E.P. to get into the charts since Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs Robinson E.P. in February 1969, according to Tony Jasper’s book, taken from the television documentary and likely to give us the next Engelbert Humperdinck – housewives nursing their suburban sherry, dreaming of a dashing bearded scavenger coming and taking them away to a new and exotic land. “Forever And Ever” – not a Slik cover version – is so trebly and oily it sounds as though recorded in aspic, rescued from deep sea wreckage, with backing singers personifying the ghosts of lost chances and fled hopes. Was it ever here, this phenomenon, that man, or did he flee on the tail of the most convenient comet?
JOHNNY NASH: (What A) Wonderful World/Ooh Baby You’ve Been Good To Me (Epic EPC 4294)
Bumptious, pointless Sam Cooke cover version. He ambles on and we’re supposed to applaud him for being stupid. My father suffered a furious fit listening to this.
T•REX: I Love To Boogie/Baby Boomerang (T.REX/EMI MARC 14)
Is this supposed to be a comeback? Profoundly basic and suicidally polite rockaboogie plastic bag boogie. Thing.
THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND: Boston Tea Party/Sultan’s Choice (Mountain TOP 12)
A remarkable exercise in tension-building – Alex is angry, in fact he is VERY angry, but manages to keep it all in check for this sardonic-verging-on-ominous Bicentennial tribute, as if he’s squatting on a powder keg, just waiting for everything to explode.
MANHATTANS: Kiss And Say Goodbye/Wonderful World Of Love (CBS 4317)
Doom-laden modern-day doo-wop ballad and a sequel of sorts to “Me And Mrs Jones”; maybe Mr Jones has found out (or Mrs Manhattan-Leadsinger) and the chap has no choice but to cut his losses and run. Half-spoken, half-crooned, and a community hall full of evacuated souls will swoon.
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