My most interesting discovery this month was Science Fiction Argosy, an anthology of short stories - and two novels - edited by Damon Knight, which my father brought back from Uddingston Library one dreich Saturday afternoon. I retained that enormous book for eight months; nobody else in the village seemed interested in taking it out. That copy had no dust cover; just a rusty red-coloured spine. Yet to me it was like the Bible. It appealed to my recently-developed perception - chiefly inspired by Low, or more properly Ian MacDonald's review of same, and to a slightly lesser extent by the ingestion of far too many Marvel comics - particularly the Steve Gerber ones (Doctor Strange, Man-Thing, Howard The Duck) - and Isaac Asimov anthologies, complete with self-deprecating what-me-a-wise-guy? introductions by the author himself - that humanity was busy dehumanising itself into compliant, soulless robots. We remain on track for that to happen, by the way, provided we don't get forcibly hauled back into sixteenth-century medieval feudalism first. One big dance hit of the period was the ominous-sounding "Welcome To Our World Of Merry Music" by Mass Production, which to me seemed to crystallise and sum up the problem.
From that perspective, Science Fiction Argosy seemed to sum things up wholly for me. At the time I inhabited an unkempt couch, or sofa (I don't think one could have called it a chaise longue), in my bedroom which I treated as my private study. Everything I knew was in there - somewhere - including the anthology. The two novels featured, by the way, were The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester, which my "best friend" Alex never stopped going on about, and More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon. All of it was magnificent writing, however, and fully justified my profoundly-felt feeling that, pace Mr Bester, tension, apprehension and dissension had indeed begun.
Notes on Text
"(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)," the Stranglers' first single, peaked at only #44. Some commentators were suspicious that its sales figures were swapped with those of the Silver Convention song because The Powers That Be didn't want that punk rock in the "Fun" Thirty (not that the Stranglers were ever punk rock, but there you go). The fact that the Stranglers went on to have three consecutive top ten hit singles in 1977 - not to mention two top-selling albums - whereas Silver Convention never troubled the charts again would seem to indicate the reverse.
5 February
BOSTON: More Than A Feeling/Smokin' (Epic EPC 4658)
Titanically huge in the U.S.A., and quite rightly so, a ridiculously catchy, though patient, pop-rock juggernaut, brilliantly constructed, performed and produced. One could imagine building a new continent to this soundtrack.
TAVARES: The Mighty Power Of Love (E.P.) (Capitol CL 15905)
Track listing: The Mighty Power Of Love/I Hope She Chooses Me/My Ship/Strangers In Dark Corners
For new fans attracted by last year's hits, a handy four-track summary of the group's previous and very excellent work. "My Ship" is particularly groovy.
SILVER CONVENTION: Everybody's Talking 'Bout Love/Thank You, Mr D. J. (Magnet MAG 81)
Disappointingly flat and conventional MoR Eurodisco plodder; their producers may have run out of idea.
BOZ SCAGGS: What Can I Say/Harbor Lights (CBS 4869)
Few artists seem more up to date in mainstream pop today than Boz Scaggs. His modified blues growl gels so immaculately with the extremely classy arrangement and performance of this fantastic song. Superb pop music in any decade. Should become the big hit "Lowdown" really should have become.
THE BROTHERS: Sing Me/Love Don't Change (Bus Stop BUS 1054)
Mauritian family band from Opportunity Knocks offer pleasant but bland lightweight MoR-reggae. Bus Stop's first hit since Paper Lace, however, so the label must be hoping that Hughie Green doesn't get the sack.
12 February
MR BIG: Romeo/Goodbye World (EMI 2567)
With the Sex Pistols dropped, this unprepossessing band are clearly EMI's new great hope for 1977. Horrendously dated dinky prog-MoR rot with stupendously stupid backing vocals sounding like Freddie Mercury having chewed too much Bazooka Joe. This is bad enough to become a big hit but who's going to buy an album by them?
THE "DETROIT" SPINNERS: Wake Up Susan/If You Can't Be In Love (Atlantic K 10799)
More Thom Bell greatness; what more is there to be said?
THE NEW SEEKERS: I Wanna Go Back/The World Belongs To Me (CBS 4786)
Reformed and on a new label after their solo "careers" seemingly came to nothing (although Lyn Paul remains absent), this bounds placidly towards us like someone you haven't seen for three years gasping "Do you remember me?" then becoming mildly offended when you admit you don't. So mainstream and empty you could build a paddling pool on it.
THELMA HOUSTON: Don't Leave Me This Way/Today Will Soon Be Yesterday (Motown TMG 1060)
A good old-fashioned chart battle looms, with Thelma and the "Love Hangover" team taking on Teddy Pendergrass and Philly. This is actually a superb interpretation of the Gamble and Huff song with the band - especially the "Honda-Honda" bassist - completely on fire. Harold Melvin & Co. have the head start, but this version also deserves to be big.
BRYAN FERRY: This Is Tomorrow/As The World Turns (Polydor 2001 704)
On a new label, and did somebody play him an early copy of Low? Byron Ferrari seems to be going for knowing clinical futurism here but he and his band manage to rock out more convincingly than Roxy have done for some time (hence, I guess, the long-term break).
MANHATTAN TRANSFER: Chanson D'Amour/Popsicle Toes (Atlantic K 10886)
Seemingly omnipresent on British light entertainment television these days, the vocal quartet go for the "Whispering Grass" nostalgia market with this shamelessly backward-looking cover of what my father assures me is an old song from the fifties not actually written by anybody French ("Je t'adors" sounds more like "Shut that door"). Since most people are scared of the present, never mind the future, this will do really well, but nice to see them on the B-side covering a song by Michael Franks, whom we saw in concert when we were in New York last summer and by whom we were very impressed.
19 February
EARTH, WIND & FIRE: Saturday Nite/Departure (Kalimba/CBS 4835)
I was wondering when Earth, Wind & Fire were going to get a British hit and now they've done it - long overdue. Terrific, sophisticated and intricately-constructed jazz-funk-soul-pop. The parent album (Spirit) really needs to be heard; a great tribute to co-producers Charles Stepney (who died unexpectedly, midway through making the album) and band frontman Maurice White (who completed the job).
RUBETTES: Baby I Know/Dancing In The Rain (State Records STAT 37)
Continuing with their attempts to become Britain's Eagles, the boys return with a soft-rock loper and clever lyrical plot. Certain to go top ten but I doubt the record will excite many.
RACING CARS: They Shoot Horses Don't They?/Four Wheel Drive (Chrysalis CHS 2129)
Much-tipped to be big in '77, these Welsh pub-rockers hit with an ominous, suspended animation slow-motion lament inspired by the film about poor people being forced to dance themselves to death (they did show it on BBC1 at the weekend quite recently - very late because it is very scary). Sounds like a requiem for all of poor humanity, as they obligingly degenerate into obedient machinery.
26 February
ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA: Rockaria!/Poker (Jet/United Artists UP 36209)
Rather corny but overall quite splendidly decadent pop-operatic romp which mixes up B Bumble and the Stingers with Madam Butterfly. Good climactic ending.
REAL THING: You'll Never Know What You're Missing/Love Is A Playground (Pye 7N 45662)
Oh, I think we are; nondescript midtempo pop-soul ballad which even Paul Buckmaster's string arrangement can't escort out of the mire.
O'JAYS: Darlin' Darlin' Baby (Sweet, Tender, Love)/A Prayer (Philadelphia International PIR 4834)
Rather embarrassingly demonstrating to the Real Thing who are the real soul bosses, this is very like "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine" in tempo and structure, though lyrically a lot happier. The B-side is quite remarkable.
DAVID BOWIE: Sound And Vision/A New Career In A New Town (RCA Victor PB 0905)
Overall, I am not looking forward to growing up.
The main reason why I am not looking forward to growing up is because I am deeply worried about the world in which I will be "growing up," if that is even allowed.
It's happening slowly but steadily. Somebody - or some people, or perhaps even some things - wants us to stop being humans. To stop questioning and start obeying. I get this all the time at school and at home. It's never, oh look, you CAN do this, you CAN go higher and succeed. No, it's always: you CAN'T do this you CAN'T do that you CAN'T say these things you CAN'T borrow grown-up books from the school library you CAN'T not wear the correct uniform you CAN'T like things your parents don't IF ONLY THEY KNEW you CAN'T be yourself and if you try we'll hit and condition you back into being nobody's self.
What is left of a human being when they're not allowed to be human? School's a con; I know that already. A swizzle, as Paul C [classmate; I remember his surname but omit it here because he might still be in this world] sometimes says. Again, never what you're GOOD at, always what you MUST do (for whom?). You must come to school precisely on time. You must obey your teachers without question.
You are being prepared for work. It has nothing to do with education, or learning.
Knuckle down, settle for tenth best, rejoice in the averageness of you. Growing into a world that would much rather do without you. A world fully happy if humanity were to convert itself overnight into machinery, unquestioning machinery.
You are expected to live your life in accordance with a predestined plan. School, exams, university, career, car, house, family. I don't know anything about the last four of those and suspect neither do my parents (if they read this they keep VERY quiet about it). They don't teach you about life, just facts that you are expected to regurgitate in a certain order.
You are expected to grow up in a world made of serene plastic.
This extraordinary record - yes, the whole album is extraordinary, but as a pop single; this? - illustrates, dramatises and describes my fears fully.
It is such an upbeat song, this one - listen to those drums. But it's also a very strange song. You expect vocals to come in and they don't; not comprehensible ones, anyway. A downward glissando of string synthesiser, as though Christmas had come ten months early or two months too late, which is cut off ABRUPTLY like a life support machine being switched off.
That voice - Mary Hopkin, who when I was four was already looking back and saying those were the days (and that's a strange and unconventional pop record too), a reminder of childhood, the past, the world we have possibly already LOST.
Then a baritone saxophone breathing very closely into my left ear followed by OH THE SHOCK that sudden DEEP voice like he's singing from inside my BRAIN.
He's going to live in a room that's all blue and electric (but not necessarily with any electricity), that has nothing and nobody in it except himself and he himself is likewise no BODY, probably TIED to that chair, and he will wait until summer, or next year, or after he gets his degree, or some time KNOWING FULL WELL IT WILL NEVER COME OR HAPPEN.
He sings as though death is preferable to, and more vivid than, this "life."
"Don't you wonder SOMETI-YI-YI-YI-YIMES...'bout sound and vision?" Quick fadeout with machine-gun drums as though ready to demolish the entire structure.
This record could easily describe the current lifestyle of fellow RCA Victor recording artist Elvis Presley, if you believe what I've read in the music papers recently.
But what it principally describes, this deliberately lopsided song, is the world in which THEY want us to EXIST (as opposed to LIVE). Nothing but obedience and waiting for extinction.
Someone deep within the bones of this record is crying out for...something, or someone ("Be My Wife" on the album makes that very clear). Behind the window pane lies politely suppressed pain.
Is that the world for which I am being prepared? A world I could never hope to recognise, even if I followed all the rules that have been given to me?
I feel myself as though I'm already sitting in that blue room, all the time, observing the world through a dusty but unbreakable porthole. On the other side: humans, living as humans live. On this side: I see but fail to comprehend or assimilate. In 1977 I connect with nobody. I'm not the thirteen-year-old other thirteen-year-olds or people in authority who are an awful lot older than thirteen years old demand that I be. I don't - CAN'T - follow their script. Behaving like a "normal" person is as unachievable a goal in my mind as playing the tuba; I just can't do it. But grow up, become a receptive machine (receiving only what THEY want you to receive) - we'll all be marooned in our blue rooms, despairing, unhappy, unfulfilled, unrecognised, uncared for and, worst of all, uncaring.
David Bowie, Tony Visconti and Brian Eno are really warning us to STOP.
But what if it CAN'T be stopped?
stop
MARY MacGREGOR: Torn Between Two Lovers/I Just Want To Love You (Ariola America AA 111)
Creepy-sounding MoR weepie, co-written and co-produced by Peter of Peter, Paul and Mary, seemingly sung by a weeping ghost. It's just been number one on Billboard and will no doubt prove popular here with middle-aged home owners who are really the only people who worry about things like that. Teenagers will simply shrug their shoulders and go and pogo to the Damned. Who could blame them?
