It snowed.
Note on Text
I couldn't find the exact 45 mix of "As Time Goes By" on YouTube; that was a curious blend of semi-random dialogue from Casablanca fading in and out of the song like a lucid dream, and I'm not sure what appeal it had to make the top twenty over Christmas except to elderly nostalgics.
3 December
DIANA ROSS: Gettin’ Ready For Love/Stone Liberty (Motown TMG 1090)
So old-fashioned…this is 1977, not 1947.
CHIC: Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)/Sao Paolo (Atlantic K 11038)
Whereas this is absolutely up-to-1977-date but has an elegance and bounce that render it entirely worthy of 1947. Three-dimensional disco kaleidoscope where even the string section is witty.
YES: Going For The One/Awaken (Atlantic K 11047)
More 12” action for unedited progressive rock hijinks. Not nearly as memorable as “Wonderous Stories.”
HOT CHOCOLATE: Put Your Love In Me/Let Them Be The Judge (RAK 266)
Far more “progressive” than Yes could ever hope to be, this is an exemplary pop record and possibly Hot Chocolate’s best, floating and jittering somewhere between a Victorian church organ recital, Kraftwerk electronics, Indian strings (a brilliant John Cameron arrangement) and some remarkable and at times free-form singing by Errol Brown, midway between hymnal and tongue-speaking.
10 December
ELVIS PRESLEY: My Way/America (RCA Victor PB 1165)
Once the mists of worship have cleared – and in Elvis’ case it is most unlikely that they ever will – what will remain standing? The expression of a revolution which embraced the common will? A worshipped cabaret act indulging in progressively more extreme acts of self-debasement?
Somewhere in the past, Elvis had it. You can hear that “it” in his early work and even, if more fitfully, in some of his seventies recordings and performances. You can comprehend fully how the world, or half of it, or possibly only a quarter of it, was swayed irrevocably by his “it”-ness. A man of God followed by those who felt that God had abandoned them. Whereas in his early days he was merrily content just to get both the right and the wrong people going, in right and wrong ways.
But he is now irreparably gone, your Elvis; not lurking amongst us as a regular guy filling up his supermarket basket. Yet the lustre of that initial “it” has proven bright and fierce enough to act as an imperial torch.
The question remains, however; now that he is no longer here…what of him is left for us to cherish, or divide? What do we see, hear, touch or otherwise feel except records, films, posters, memories? Can we even remember what once he inspired – there is no “might” about it; the proof is in the history – in those people who succeeded my parents’ generation yet preceded mine?
Somewhere in that past, Elvis changed things. Those things might include the world, if you prefer to be fanciful. Things were not the same after he appeared…or perhaps it was the case that too much had remained the same.
And as Christmas now approaches – for many, our first without Elvis – how do we choose to remember him? How can we remember him?
However we can remember this man – and for Elvis, the term “man” seems nowhere near enough – I don’t know that anybody truly wants to remember him this way; bloated, confused, probably not knowing what state he’s in, never mind which theatre, bellowing out the old self-defeating anthem of self-will immortalised by his stylistic predecessor in ways which suggest that the Incredible Hulk took over post-war culture rather than Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup or even Dean Martin, in a manner which appears to deny that such a thing as “rock ‘n’ roll” ever happened.
On one side of this “memorial” single we get Sinatra, and on the other what is actually “America The Beautiful” – a gigantic monument to nulled nothingness. Fellow RCA recording artist David Bowie would appreciate the record’s icy palatial vacancy. Nobody’s lives will change ten seconds after they hear this record, and those who do buy it will, I’m afraid, only be remembering the ghost of a memory. The memorial momentum is too vast for this single to fail…but who’s going to remember it in February? Whereas “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Heartbreak Hotel” will most likely still be cherished in 2077.
BING CROSBY: White Christmas/God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (MCA 111)
A depressingly timely reminder that before Elvis, there had been Bing, and that Bing managed to outlive Elvis, if only by just under two months (and that, halfway between those two, Marc Bolan, who many at his peak suspected might be the next Elvis, also died, not yet thirty). It’s been that kind of year.
I saw Crosby being interviewed as part of Tony Palmer’s All You Need Is Love series earlier this year. He wasn’t just the amiable, hat-wearing, golfing old-timer that most will recall him as having been – he was a pioneering pop singer whose career went back to the days of Paul Whiteman and Bix Beiderbecke and who revolutionised recorded singing by favouring the close microphone over the expansive theatre audience as his chosen confidante.
There isn’t much to say about this, the biggest-selling single that there has ever been; it’s almost Christmas and its singer is being mourned. He dreams, and sometimes whistles where words won’t reach, about an idealised Christmas rather than actively inhabiting one. His recording represents the singer’s dream of a better world…one infinitely better than the war-torn 1942 from which the song originally arose (even though, according to both Alan Dell on Radio 2 and my father, the famous version is actually a 1947 re-recording. No matter; the symbol remains). And perhaps people are grasping back towards simpler or at least more comprehensible times when they approach this record annually, as Crosby’s memory inevitably and increasingly dissolves into the evanescent.
BONNIE TYLER (and the Bonnie Tyler Band): It’s A Heartache/Got So Used To Lovin’ You (RCA Victor PB 5057)
A lot throatier-sounding than on “Lost In France” one year ago, the Swansea singer returns with a gutsy and catchy midtempo soft-rock lament which is clearly heartfelt – the way her voice breaks with each “break” is, from certain angles, heartbreaking.
DONNA SUMMER: Love’s Unkind/Autumn Changes (GTO GT 113)
Spector pastiche from I Remember Yesterday – Moroder imagining the sixties happening again, but this time confined to a spaceship, or one could consider it as the Wall of Sound being reassembled by an assembly line somewhere on Pluto. Throaty tenor solo that threatens to turn into Pharaoh Sanders at times.
17 December
CARL DOUGLAS: Run Back/Runaway Bus (Pye 7N 46018)
Rather flat sixties pastiche by the “Kung Fu Fighting” man which sounds like Johnny Johnson and the Bandwagon turned it down.
DOOLEY WILSON WITH THE VOICES OF HUMPHREY BOGART AND INGRID BERGMAN: As Time Goes By/DICK POWELL: I’ll String Along With You (United Artists UP 36331)
An obvious attempt at another “Trail Of The Lonesome Pine” Christmas commercial coup but nowhere near as immediate or straightforward; if anything, “As Time Goes By” is an abstract dream about a song, as Wilson’s voice and piano are repeatedly interrupted by famous lines of dialogue from Casablanca, drifting in and out as though under ether. Not a lot of laughs to be yielded.
JOHN OTWAY AND WILD WILLY BARRETT: Cor Baby That’s Really Free! (cover) or Really Free (label)/ Beware Of The Flowers (Cos I'm Sure They're Going To Get You Yeh) (Polydor 2058 951)
A contender for the unlikeliest single ever to become a hit, what sounds like a post-psychedelic busking duo seemingly make up the song as it goes along, cheerfully defying imperialist contrivances like melody, rhythm and continuity – and it’s a lot more entertaining than the Barron Knights. It’s a bit like what Hawkwind might sound like if their electricity supply were suddenly turned off due to non-payment of outstanding bills. I think it’s great – certainly not punk rock, but exceptionally compatible with it, happy to lend punk a cup of sugar if it runs short.
JULIE COVINGTON: Only Women Bleed/Easy To Slip (Virgin VS 196)
A year ago she was Evita, and six months ago she was still clinging to the wreckage of Rock Follies, but now she re-emerges, quietly triumphant, singing Alice Cooper’s ballad in the way that Alice Cooper could never hope to sing it – sometimes, Vincent, it’s hard to be a woman – in a terrific arrangement and with a remarkable supporting cast; produced by Joe Boyd and John Wood, and with a fully-credited-on-the-label backing band including John Cale, Ray Russell and Dave Mattacks, this is a remarkably strong record, and one that would have been absolutely unimaginable four winters ago.
DONNA SUMMER: I Love You/Once Upon A Time (Casablanca CAN 114)
The Donna Summer chart battle with herself, thanks to two competing record labels, continues; “Love’s Unkind” is clearly the catchier song and bigger hit, whereas “I Love You” is the emotional climax of the spectacular double album Once Upon A Time and really needs to heard in that context.
24/31 December
BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS: Jamming/BOB MARLEY: Punky Reggae Party (Island WIP 6410)
“Jamming” is a lovely, catchy and rather melancholy hymn of a song – goes very nicely, if unexpectedly, with “Watching The Detectives” – but Lee “Scratch” Perry has produced the other side and it shows, with its mentions of the Damned, the Clash and, best of all, “NO BORING OLD FARTS/NO BORING OLD FARTS!” Indeed not; far fewer of these in 1978, please.
THE MUPPETS: The Muppet Show Music Hall (E.P.) (Pye 7NX 8004)
Track listing: Don’t Dilly Dally On The Way/Waiting At The Church/The Boy In The Gallery/Wotcher (Knocked ‘Em In The Old Kent Road)
Ostensibly for the children at Christmas but really for the old folks and Good Old Days fans; mostly performed by Kermit, Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear, and there’s a slight awkwardness in a fundamentally American phenomenon like the Muppets attempting to get to grips with the popular entertainment of Edwardian Britain. I suppose if Barbra Streisand had been cast as The Duchess Of Duke Street the end result might have proved similar.
YANNIS MARKOPOULOS: Who Pays The Ferryman?/Fanfare For Charon (BBC RESL 51)
Polite “Zorba’s Dance” variant – Mike Oldfield could have come up with it - of a theme song to a strange and melodramatic TV drama serial set in Crete that should go down well at suburban parties with its wayward violin and somewhat sinister bouzouki.
DAVID SOUL: Let’s Have A Quiet Night In/Mary’s Fancy (Private Stock PVT 130)
He makes the proposal sound like a threat. Too late in the year and not catchy enough to be another “Don’t Give Up On Us,” but Hutch’s pop audience may gradually be giving up on him.
