500 singles (pages 5,6 and 7) and a Smash Hits bonus

As a special treat for you today – 3 pages of the ‘500 singles’ list and a bonus picture of a 30 year old copy of Smash Hits found in the loft in the same box as the singles list.

It’s not just any old Smash Hits mind, it’s the Japan break-up edition. Contained inside is an interview with David Sylvian in which he is generally pretty miserable and moans about some of his earlier music – fairly representative of every David Sylvian interview I’ve ever read!

As usual, Mick Karn looks cool.

If you’re well behaved you might get more from this issue of Smash Hits at a later date as it also includes features on A Flock of Seagulls and Blancmange, a competition to win a Commodore VIC20 and a ‘what on earth has happened to The Rubettes’ question on the letters page – but for now it’s back to pages 5, 6 and 7 of the ‘500 singles’ list.

Page 5, as you can see starts with ‘Save the last dance for me’ by Drifters and ends with ‘December 1963’ by The Four Season. At least that’s what the list says – I’m fairly sure that there was more than one of them!

The Inbetweenies (Copyright Ian Dury) on page 5 are three by Duran Duran (before they were rubbish – sorry BT kids!), one by the aforementioned Ian Dury, Sheena Easton (I’m not proud of this), three by Echo and the Bunnymen (I am proud of this), Elias and his zigzag jive flutes (Tom Hark), four by ELO (including ‘Sweet talkin’ woman on purple vinyl), ‘The original bird dance’ by The Electronicas (rather than the vastly inferior remake), The Eurythmics (Sweet dreams), the fantastic ‘Wikka Wrap’ (list spelling rather than correct spelling I think) by The Evasions, The Everly Brothers, Falco (Junge Roemer not Rock me Amadeus), Fall out Club (nearly missed and included in the margin as an afterthought), five by The Farmer’s Boys (I loved The Farmer’s Boys – still do!), Bryan Ferry, Fischer Z, Fleetwood Mac (Tusk, still a revolutionary single), three by the amazing Flying Lizards, Eddie Fontaine, Foreigner and a very lonely Four Season.

I’ve given a lot of thought to my favourite page (which I know is rather sad) and I think I’ll choose at the end, but I hope you’ll agree that page 6 will be a serious contender. It has quality and variety, but it may also have, in number 186 (D.I.S.C.O. by Grops) the worst single on the whole list.

Page 6 starts with John Foxx, which I hope you’ll agree is always a good thing and moves on through Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Fun Boy 3, Funkapolitan (‘As the time goes by’ one of the world’s great under-rated singles), Future Daze (two by them but not sure why), Peter Gabriel (2), Genesis (Many to many, which I now know is spelled incorrectly), Robin Gibb, Ginger (not Baker just Ginger!), Glass Torpedoes (never seen another copy of this), ‘Angel Face’ by The Glitter Band (who of course started life as G**y G*****r’s backing band), God’s Toys (Everybody’s got a mother), Peter Godwin (only one because most of my Peter Godwin collection is on 12” singles, yours is probably the same!), Graham Gouldman (from the soundtrack to a cartoon that I can’t remember the name of), two by Grandmaster Flash (‘the message’ and ‘it’s a shame’ which is not the same as the Talk Talk track of them same name), Zaine Griff, Grops (with their vastly inferior version of D.I.S.C.O. – a fairly clever feat to pull off), H₂O, George Harrison, Havana let’s Go (check them out on YouTube – you’ll love them! Unfortunately only ‘Torpedoes’ seems to be available), three by Heaven 17, Trevor Herion (also worth checking out), two by Nick Heyward, Jennifer Holiday, Honey Bane (her version of the Supremes’ ‘Baby love’) and Hot Chocolate.

Page 7, as you will understand if you know me, is dominated by The Human League and Japan but there are some other treasures too (and rather too many by Engelbert Humperdinck for comfort);

As you will see both my numbering skills and my grasp of the alphabet seems to dessert me on page 7, where we start with five by The Human League (all brilliant, but Empire State Human just gets better and better as the years go by ), three by Engelbert Humperdinck (more by ‘The Hump’ than by John Foxx – something’s very wrong here), two by Icehouse, two by The Icicle Works (including ‘Nirvana’), The Imposter (Declan to his Mum), In Embrace, ‘Steamhammer Sam’ by Intaferon (only the second single ever to use the ‘mouldy old dough’piano), I start Counting, three by Michael Jackson (he was very good, but the ‘King of Pop’ was actually Anthony Newley who features on page 10), The Jacksons, Rick James (is it me, or are a lot of the people on these three pages dead now?), six (SIX!) by Japan (including ‘Second that emotion’ on pink vinyl), and then, in no specific alphabetic order, Billy Joel, Gloria Jones (Tainted love – what else!), Grace Jones, Johnny Pearson Orchestra, France Joli and Tom Jones – there’s more Tom on page 8.

Join me soon for pages 8 and 9 when we reach the halfway point (sneak peak – Joy Division – Mick Karn – Leisure Process – M – Kate and Anna McGarrigle – Modern Romance – Naked Eyes and many more!)

500 singles (pages 3 and 4)

Long, long ago, in the days before @helendisneygirl was a twinkle in the eye of @mummypace and me (@boxofpeppers), a disparate (and probably also desparate) bunch of us held a 24 hour record playathon type thing.

500 singles in 24 hours, all lovingly written on a list that has been hidden in a box in various lofts for around 27 years.

You already know about numbers 1 to 66, so here, as you can see, are numbers 67 to 132, David Bowie (Rebel, Rebel) to Dramatis (Ex Luna Scientia) and all points in between including Phil Collins before he was uncool.

As you can see from the attached pages 3 and 4, this section includes (as usual) some good stuff along with some decidedly indifferent stuff!

This section starts with two from Bowie, Box of Toys, Boystown Gang (the definitive version of ‘ain’t no mountain high enough), The Brecker Brothers, Bette Bright, The Bureau (with Mick Talbot), Kate Bush, The Buzzcocks, Irene Cara (Flashdance, not Fame), The Cars, CaVa CaVa (cruelly forgotten), Cerrone (got to be Supernature), Cheap Trick, China Crisis, Petula Clark (why not?), six by The Clash, Coati Mundi, Nat King Cole, Paul Collin’s Beat, Phil Collins (‘in the air tonight’ so not too bad!), Russ Conway (I love Russ Conway, I’m just not sure why), Elvis Costello (four in total),

Bing Crosby (‘White Christmas, naturally), Culture Club, The Daintees (two of theirs, ‘roll on summertime’ and ‘trouble town’), England Dan and John Ford Coley, Bobby Darin, Darts, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky Mick and Titch (Xanadu), Dead Kennedys (only 14 places away from Phil Collins!), Desmond Dekker, Delta 5 (the fabulous ‘anticipation’), Depeche Mode, Devo, Dexys Midnight Runners, The Dickies (seven by them, all no more than about two minutes long, five on coloured vinyl), Dire Straits (only one), Lonnie Donegan (you can’t say this isn’t varied), Donovan, Dr Calculus (aka Stephen ‘tin-tin’ Duffy), Die Doraus & Die Marinas (‘Fred vom Jupiter’ on Mute records) and last, and definitely not least, ‘Ex Luna Scientia’ by Dramatis.

Join me soon (ish) for pages 5 and 6, from The Drifters to Tom Jones – not very 1985!

500 singles (pages 1 and 2)

Way, way back in 1985, in the days before mobile phones, laptops and iPods a small group of us decided to hold a sponsored 24 hour marathon to play 500 7” singles. Every now and then I come across the photographs, but yesterday, while rummaging in the loft, I found the list!

The list includes most (but not all) of my 7” singles at the time, all of which still live happily (with thousands of more recent friends) up in the aforementioned loft.

I consider the list to be a historical document (for me at least!). It’s not a list of my favourite singles by any means, just 500 that I happened to own at the time.

On twitter recently a number of ‘Top 100s’ have appeared. I’ve enjoyed them immensely as, like most music addicts, I think nothing reveals more about anybody than their taste in music. So I thought I’d do something slightly different and blog my ‘500 singles' list.

The list was originally handwritten by me (@boxofpeppers on twitter) and my wife, Susan (@mummypace on twitter) who wasn’t my wife then! Then we typed a second copy of the list on my Olympia typewriter (sadly long gone).

We borrowed the double disco decks as we often did for discos at the time and on some long forgotten date (presumed to be 1985 by the presence of Band Aid’s ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’) my little brother Andrew (@PANDASOURCING on twitter) and me played these records in a church hall to a group of fifteen people all sponsored to endure my singles for 24 hours. I presume that the church hall venue explains why none of my Sex Pistols singles feature on the list – The Dead Kennedys ‘California Uber Alles’ is included at number 110 though. For musical balance Des O’Connor’s ‘I pretend’ puts in an appearance at number 302, nestling between Gary Numan and Hazel O’Connor (no relation!).

At the end (once I find a decent optical character recognition programme) I will include a full list of the 500, but the handwritten lists seem much more exciting so they’ll be the ones included until the publication of the full list.

Pages 1 and 2 will feature today, starting inevitably with ABBA (Knowing me, knowing you) and ending with David Bowie (Let’s dance). As you can see in between those musical colossi (or colusses?) we played singles by Adam and the Ants, Afraid of Mice, The Alarm, Albania (the group not the country!), Herb Alpert (the mighty ‘Spanish Flea’), two singles by Laurie Anderson (I bet many didn’t realise she made more than one!), Paul Anka, Artery, The Associates, Aztec Camera, the B-52s (four singles, back-to-back), The Babys, Bad Manners (‘Special Brew’ – hooray!), Bananarama, Band Aid, Barracudas (the excellent ‘Summer Fun’), three singles by Bauhaus (which I’m sure went down a treat), The Beat, The Beatles, The Beautiful Americans, The Bee Gees, The Beverley Sisters (‘Little Donkey’, obviously), Big Country, Mr. Acker Bilk, Bim (whatever happened to……), Cilla Black, Black Lace (sorry!), Blondie, The Blow Monkeys, The Blues Band, Blue Zoo (the brilliant ‘Love moves in strange ways’ mine may be the only copy that still exists, and may be the only copy that ever existed), B Movie (Remembrance Day), Boomtown Rats (five singles), Pat Boone (‘Speedy Gonzales’), Bop and David Bowie who spans over from page 2 to page 3.

Not all of these are great as you can see, but many of them are. If any of your favourite artists are missing (Blancmange for example) the most likely reason is that I only had their works on 12” single instead!

Tune in over the next few days and weeks for pages 3-16. Don’t worry if you’re hoping for ‘Justice not vengeance’ by Popular History of signs, it’s right there at number 335 on page 11. I may also be persuaded to show the photos too.

She spoke just like a Baroness

Three LPs today totally representative of their year of release,

Nina & Frederik by Nina & Frederik
Confusingly there were two consecutive Nina & Frederik albums called Nina & Frederik (not sure that this is where Peter Gabriel got the idea from!) and this is the one featuring the fantastic 'Eden was just like this', 'Man smart, woman smarter', Maladie D'Amour (later to return as Cha Cha Cha D'Amour) and the quaintly(!) titled 'When woman say no she means yes', which may have seemed mildly amusing to people in 1958, but this is a principle which can lead to a long custodial sentence in 2012.
Nina and Frederik were real life Baron and Baroness and this is an interesting and amusing LP with some great fake Jamaican accents.
Interestingly Nina appeared in the film 'American Gigolo' with Richard Gere - apparently (I never watch films like this myself of course!)

XL-1 by Pete Shelley
An LP as firmly rooted in 1983 as Nina & Frederik is in 1958 featuring Martin Rushent production and (get this!) a computer programme for the ZX Spectrum, which, when loaded, shows lyrics and graphics synchronised to the music on the LP.
It seems quaint (there's that word again!) now, but in 1983 this was ground-breaking.
Pete makes some great music, unfortunately not much of it on this album!

Year of the Cat by Al Stewart
An album that couldn't be more 1976 if it had dreamy lyrics, gatefold cover and Portrait of the Artist as a man in a wide-lapelled white suit (it has!) Still much beloved of Ken Bruce and Steve Wright (You're never more than two tracks away from either 'On the Border' or the title track here if you tune into Ken weekday mornings on Radio 2).
This may all come together to remind you exactly why punk happened.
Having said all that, I love this LP and listen to it at a ratio of at least 5:1 when compared to 'Never Mind The Bollocks'

Soundtrack to this post - Frontier Psychiatrist by The Avalanches and Unbreakable Heart by Duglas T Stewart and Company

Music in cars (Part 1)

I’m going to veer wildly away from vinyl for one day only today to think about earlier musical memories when listening to music in cars.

Part 2 (as you can see from the title this is part 1) will feature my pre '85 music only policy in my 1985 Mini Mayfair (of which also probably more later), but this part features listening to 8-track cartridges in my Dad's 1971 Rover 2000 when I was about 13 years old.

Dark green, with a tan leather interior, this was the first car that I ever drove - on a private campsite in Scotland during the 1977 Silver Jubilee celebrations.

Unlike our other cars before this one that only had radios, and even some of the ones afterwards that still only had radios (although they were that 1970s luxury - 'push-button radios'!), this car had a luxury '70s in-car entertainment option, an 8-track cartridge player. My Dad had so few cartridges to play that I am sure I can remember pretty much all of them. For anyone who is unsure about cartridges, they were about the same size as a slice of 'doorstep' toast (see ad above) and had all of the tracks on an album split across 8 tracks of a broad tape - sometimes (believe it or not!) the tracks didn't fit entirely onto one track so they would be split across two tracks and there would be a gap in your listening pleasure while the first half of a song ended and the second half was located and started.

I'm not sure whether cartridges had a better sound quality than cassette tapes as I haven't heard one for almost 35 years, but in my memory they sound fantastic!

The cartridges we had (and played over and over again because we had so few of them) were;

Simon and Garfunkel - Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits
As the years have worn on I am starting to think that Paul and Art's best work may have been when they worked separately (a sacrilegious thought in some quarters I know!) but my love of all things S&G related still remains....

Gladys Knight & The Pips - The Best of Gladys Knight & The Pips
I love music like this now, but at the time this was my least favourite of the cartridges that my Dad owned - and we tended to listen to it less frequently than the others.

Diana Ross and The Supremes - a Greatest Hits album (presumably 20 Golden Greats)
Of all of these albums this is definitely my favourite now, probably my second favourite then and almost certainly one of the best 'best ofs' ever released.

The Carpenters - The Singles 1969-1973 and The Singles 1974-1978
These collections of songs take me right back to the '70s whenever I hear them, but when you listen to some of the studio albums now (I listened to Horizon the other day) it's sometimes difficult to see what all the fuss was about! Calling Occupants was one of our favourites, but we also loved 'Goofus' and as it's not on either of these two albums, we must have had at least one more Carpenters cartridge!

Abba - Arrival and Greatest Hits
All thoughts of Abba seem to be seen through 'Mamma Mia' coloured glasses now, but we sometimes forget how they towered over everything in the mid/late seventies. Probably played more frequently than all of the other cartridges put together!

Soundtrack to this post - Granny Cool by Sugar (it's Rifftastic!) and Come Live With Me by Heaven 17

Jonathan Richman 'Sings' and plays guitar sometimes

Two very Sunday morning LPs today,

Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers by Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - Bought second hand for the bargain sum of £1.50 (!) this has always been (and will always continue to be) one of my favourites. Sounds as fresh and innocent today as when it was released back in 1976. I've seen Jonathan live a few times and it's always an event, no more so than when he agreed to play 'Party in the woods tonight' for our daughter, Helen. Just to be awkward though I think this may finish a close third behind 'Back in your life' (which I only have on cassette - shame!) and 'The Modern Lovers Live' (which I have on vinyl and will be featured when I find it - probably in the boxes in the loft!).
The sleevenotes state - 'Jonathan Richman 'sings' and plays guitar sometimes.'

Streets I have walked by Harry Belafonte - A Japanese LP bought for £1 on which Harry sings songs from around the world, including Waltzing Matilda, This land is your land and Sit Down (nothing to do with James, this is 1963!). Just one of the best voices ever.

Soundtrack to this post - Mona Lisa by Nat King Cole

No quality control !

Here goes with next batch...........

Strangeways Here we come by The Smiths - Their last but not their best (although apparently both Morrisey and Marr think it is!). 'Girlfriend in a Coma' is the high point - but maybe only in my mind!

Systems of Romance by Ultravox - In the days before Midge when Ultravox were a essentially a punk band (this is still 1978 remember). Listened again to this today and not as good as I remembered it. This is, however, a building block on the way to Metamatic by John Foxx (which I will probably find in a few weeks) - one of the best 10 electronic albums ever!

After Dark by Kitty Wells - Just an amazing album with a cover that screams '1950s America'. When the label states 'Vocal with Instrumental Accompaniment' you pretty much know what you're going to get. Laura Cantrell recently released an album called 'Kitty Wells' dresses and I can confirm that Kitty is wearing a very pretty pale blue one on this cover.

Fly by Yoko Ono - Everyone should hear this album once. Brilliant and unhinged in a way that people like Lady Gaga can only dream of. Features the classic 'Don't worry Kyoko (Mommy's only looking for a hand in the snow)'. When I put this track on the record player this morning it frightened the cat!

And as it was World Poetry Day this week I thought I'd give a snippet from 'Mindtrain';

shining the clouds

shining the trees

shining empty buildings

shining my mind

thought of killing that man

thought of killing that man

and dub dub train passed through my mind

and dub dub train stabbed through my mind

pain, train, pain, train

Sentiments I think we can all identify with!

If John had still been around it would have been John and Yoko's 43rd wedding anniversary this week  - sadly they only actually made it to 11.

Soundtrack to this post – Beetlebum by Blur, Green Onions by Booker T & the MGs and Please don't let me be misunderstood by Nina Simone

In no particular order

So here are the first LPs grabbed pretty much at random - there's not a great deal of quality control in my collection, but I guess one man's 'Superstition' is another man's 'Ebony and Ivory'. It would be a bit dull if all of these records were great - often it's the embarassing records in a collection that make it interesting!

Here goes!!!........

Equinoxe by Jean Michel Jarre - with the imaginatively titled Equinoxe parts 1-8. This is one of my orginal 'box of 50' records from 1978 and if my memeory serves me correctly it was bought from Grattans Catalogue (remember when Kays and Grattans catalogues had an LP section - wow!)

6 Original by Devo - Inhabiting the strange middle ground between EP and LP this 6 track record on yellow vinyl claims to contain a 'slice of assorted singles for seventeen minutes from Devo!!' Sounds as fresh (and crazy) now as it did 34 (!!) years ago. I bought this second-hand somewhere, but have no memory of when or where!

Love and Dancing by The League Unlimited Orchestra - Owned and cherished since new (1981 - when else could it have been!). Essentially a fantastic Human League remix album that owes a huge debt to Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder. I own this on vinyl, cassette and CD - how sad is that!

Going Deaf for a Living by Fischer Z - Fischer Z made some fantastic albums, sadly this isn't one of them. Although it does include the excitingly titled 'Four minutes in Durham (with you)' - at least it's exciting if you live in Durham. Roger Whittaker apart, Durham doesn't loom very large musically. I paid £3 for this apparently - hmmm!

Night full of tension by Robert Gorl - Not so much mine this one - this one actually belongs to Susan and it's a 1984 LP on Mute Records. A former member of D.A.F. (who can forget hearing 'Der Mussolini' played loud at Heroes in Sunderland?) and friend of Annie Lennox who turns up on this LP singing in a strange German accent. Electronic music with an atmospheric German vocal was pretty big in 1984 - sadly, with the exception of Kraftwerk, not as popular since then! One of the few things I got from failing a German A-level was a love of music like this.

Talking Book by Stevie Wonder - My appreciation of Stevie has developed fairly recently and this album (bought for 49p at Help The Aged shop) includes some classic Stevie tracks. Also features both Jeff Beck and Ray Parker Jr - but not at the same time!

The Springfields Sing again by The Springfields - A very unusual album and if you've ever seen 'The Mighty Wind' you'll never hear this album in the same way again, particularly 'Lonesome Traveller'. Difficult to believe that this is the same Dusty as the one who recorded 'anyone who had a heart' - it's still great though!

I get my Dusty appreciation from my Dad, so I was listening to Dusty on our radiogramme long before I had any records of my own - in fact if I close my eyes I can still smell those valves warming up!

Soundtrack to this post Autumn Almanac by The Kinks and Empty Shell by Cat Power