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Step back to 1978 – Part 1

November 11th, 2010 11 comments

In 1977 I started to build a record collection; in 1978, the year I turned 12, I began to be really serious about music, buying singles by the Sex Pistols and Jethro Tull alike. And I became a Blondie fan before anyone else I knew was even aware of them. In early 1978 I had my first kiss (which also was the last for a while), went to my first rock concert (ditto), and made a friend whom I recently met again for the first time in 29 years (but more of that at a later stage). The first part of my 1978 nostalgia trip ““ on which songs are chosen only if they have the power to transport me back to the time ““ covers the first three months or so of the year.

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Blondie – X-Offender.mp3
What a difference a couple of months make when you”re 11. In the autumn I had bought a single by teen herbert Leif Garrett; in winter I bought a single by NYC punk scene regulars Blondie. Or, better put, my not yet impressive penis bought it. I saw the cover of the re-released X-Offender single (it had originally been issued in 1976), and fell for Debbie Harry. Like a week or so before with the Runaways record, I tingled with excitement at the thought of hearing Debbie Harry sing. The very sexy spoken intro followed by the rapid drums and that guitar which sounded unlike anything I had heard before instantly broadened my musical horizon. I am still impressed with my nascent trendspotting talents: Blondie”s breakthrough with Denis was still a couple months off, but I already was a fan, even if I knew only X-Offender and the rather good b-side, Man Overboard.

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Long Tall Ernie & the Shakers – Do You Remember.mp3
A few years before Stars on 45 afflicted us, fellow Dutch nostalgia merchants Long Tall Ernie and the Shakers visited their Sha Na Na stylings upon us in medley format. Actually, it isn”t at all bad, as these things go. In the song lead singer Arnie Treffers introduces the notion of nostalgia and memories of Buddy Holly, and then the rest of the band lets go with songs like Little Richard”s Lucille, the New Beats” Bread And Butter and the Everly Brother”s excellent Bird Dog (one of my constant earworms), occasionally enquiring of us whether we can remember. Obviously I couldn”t, having been not even nearly alive in the 1950s. In fact, those early days of rock & roll seemed very distant to me in 1978, so that the song was something of a history lesson for me. Considering that the songs in the medley were all about 20 years old at the time, today”s corollary medley might include songs by Tracy Chapman, U2, Kylie Minogue, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Crowded House and Babyface.

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Uriah Heep – Lady In Black.mp3
Uriah Heep – Free Me.mp3

Originally from 1971, Lady In Black was re-released in Germany in 1977, and became a Top 20 hit. This and Free Me, which I bought in March or thereabouts, are the only Heep records I have ever acquired. But Lady In Black is important for a very good reason: it reminds me of my first kiss. I would like to say that it was a beautiful moment, like Kevin and Winnie”s first kiss in The Wonder Years. Alas, it was more the product of a bet. My friend, who was just half a year older than me but much more advanced, dared me and my “girlfriend” to French kiss. So we accepted the dare, rather unsure about what to do with our tongues once our open mouths met. Our tongues touched lightly before we both withdrew them in mild disgust, yet excited by the sensation. It was dark and it was winter. I felt her warm breath exhaling on my face, which was probably more sensual than the meeting of lips. And, er, her long hair was blowing in the mid-winter wind”¦

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Tom Robinson Band – 2-4-6-8 Motorway.mp3
Around the time I bought this, Tom Robinson was causing a bit of a furore with his song Glad To Be Gay, sentiments that were not often publicly expressed. At a time when punk was finally seeping into the German consciousness, Robinson”s proclamation was so counter-cultural as to include him in the movement. Of course, like many others who were included under the punk banner, Robinson was more of a pub rocker. Or pop rocker. Still, his lyrics were militant for their time (Motorway itself has a gay subtext, of course), and I think I can credit Robinson for making an important contribution to my unconditional rejection of homophobia.

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Bonnie Tyler – It”s A Heartache.mp3
In February 1978 I saw my first live concert, a multiple bill organised by Bravo magazine, headed by Slade. It was not in our city, so my friends Jens and Andreas and I took a train to the town where the gig was held, about 250km away. Jens, the leader was 12, Andreas and I were 11 (and some fraction which I”m sure we were willing to state as an indication that we were, in fact, closer to being 12 than 11). Times have changed, I think. I have no memory of how we found our way from the station to the arena, but we got there. The bill included a British teen outfit called The Busters (whose identifying gimmick consisted of having black hair and wearing identical denim jackets), Schlager singer Bernhard Brink (who had a white man”s “fro) and Bonnie Tyler, who was just then having a big hit with It”s A Heartache. A year previously ““ hell, two months previously ““ I would have liked the song. Now I had tasted Blondie, and Jens and I were into punk. Tyler was for the housewives. We enjoyed Slade though. Dave Hill, he of the stupid haircut, no longer had a stupid haircut: he was now completely bold, at a time when shaved heads were very unusual. I cannot say whether it was a good gig, but I remember emerging from the hall into the cold winter’s evening air soaked in sweat.

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Sweet – Love Is Like Oxygen.mp3
My affection for Sweet was such that I bought the Level Headed LP when they made their comeback on the Polydor label, a big financial outlay which requireed much sacrifice (that is, at least that of three singles). By now, Andy Scott was wearing a middle-aged men”s beard, as though he was going to join the Beach Boys; Steve Priests looked sober and serious, and Mick Tucker and Brian Connolly were about to shear their locks. The music now was much more prog than pop rock. The lads obviously wanted to be taken seriously. Well, they might have been, had they not produced an album that was even more boring than one by Barclay James Harvest, and less deprived of the Zeitgeist than Emerson Lake Palmer. The lead single, however, was pretty good, like a song by the Electric Light Orchestra.

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Darts – Come Back My Love.mp3
The inclusion of Long Tall Ernie may have tipped off the reader that I rather enjoyed the odd bit of retro-rock & roll, even if I fancied myself at the time as a bit punk (though I didn”t dress punk, or act  punk, or hated society any more than my non-punk mates). Among the revivalists, The Darts were the greatest. I remember buying the Darts LP, alongside The Tubes” What Do You Want from Live, on a trip to Stockholm. I still have the Darts album; the Tubes LP was lost long ago. Daddy Cool/The Girl Can”t Help It was the bigger hit, and it was that song which turned me on to Darts. But soon I preferred the cover of the Wrens 1954 song, which featured in The Originals Vol. 3 (as did the original of Daddy Cool by The Rays).

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Sex Pistols – No One Is Innocent.mp3
Sex Pistols – My Way.mp3
At the time it seemed the height of impertinence: Sid Vicious ““ we didn”t know yet just how undeserving of adulation that miscreant junkie was ““ first warbling and then quite amusingly violating My Way, by way of telling Sinatra: “Oi, old geezer, your song is shit!” We had no idea at the time that Sinatra himself hated the song and, if he had cared to acquaint himself with Mr Vicious” interpretation, he probably applauded its defilement, in the principle of it, if not in execution. My Way just is too easy and obvious a target to be subversive, really. Roping in Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs for what was initially presumed to be the a-side was a touch more seditious. Musically, the song was, well, not very good. Biggs deserved to be locked up just for singing in public.

Of course, at the time I also had The Sex Pistols” Never Mind The Bollocks LP. It is fair to say that my brother, two years younger than I, did not like their music much. So one day he scribbled on the vinyl with a ballpoint pen, apparently in retaliation to my alleged act of iconoclasm involving his poster of Winnetou, the noble Native American friend of Old Shatterhand dreamt up by the 19th century German author Karl May (who had never been to the USA, never mind the Wild West, but whose stories are still hugely popular in Germany). As far as disproportionate responses go, my brother belonged in the camp of those who sought to exterminate and subjugate Winnetou and his people”¦

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The Stranglers – Nice “n Sleazy.mp3
My friend Jens had a fine collection of punk albums, which I tried to match with punk singles. Of course, time would show that most of the stuff we called punk wasn”t punk at all. Still, Jens had albums by the Damned, Boomtown Rats, Ultravoxx and so on. I had Holiday In The Sun and later No One Is Innocent/My Way. And I had this single, a fine track with expert sneering featuring one of my favourite rock riffs ever, though I had no idea what sleazy was (till I looked it up and found the answer richly satisfying). The pun, of course, passed me by, seeing as I was still learning English. Same day I bought a single by an outfit called The Killers (not to be confused with the currently successful band). That single “” it had a German shepherd on the cover ““ was utterly horrible.

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Brian & Michael – Matchstalk Men & Matchstalk Cats & Dogs.mp3
One of the great discoveries in 1978 was the weekly radio broadcast of the latest UK charts ““ it might have been the Top 10 or Top 20 ““ by which I got to know all the latest tunes (like Brian & Michael”s number) before they would finally make it in West-Germany. So I would sit with my grandmother”s cassette-radio portable and recorded most songs. The recorder very usefully had a fade-out button, so the shock of the inevitable cut forced by jabbering DJs was not as brutal as it otherwise might have been. At the time, I might have bought records by the Sex Pistols and the Stranglers, and by Gerry Rafferty and Kate Bush and the Rolling Stones ““ but I was still 12. Of course I liked Matchstick Men & Matchstick Cats & Dogs, even if I didn”t buy the record, because that certainly would not have been at all cool. And how could a song featuring a children”s choir be cool? Here it was the St Winifred”s School Choir, who would later torment Britain with songs about their collective grandma. On Matchstalk Men, they are singing the children”s song The Big Ship Sails On The Alley-Alley-O. Matchstalk Men, incidentally, was a tribute to the northern English artist LS Lowry, who died in 1976 and is mentioned in the song.

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Wings – With A Little Luck.mp3
I admit it: I liked Mull Of Kintyre, which I bought the week it came out in 1977. By the time With A Little Luck was released, Kintyre was still a massive hit in Germany, and I was beginning to get sick of it. In fact, I liked With A Little Luck better; so much so that I bought the London Town album (or it might have been on the Greatest Hits album, which I think came out before that, and which I also bought. Anyone know which came first?). It’s a charming little tune, with a synth that actually sounded warm. I liked the “with a-little-luck-a-little-luck-a-little-luck” bit, and the double “we can do it”, which sounds like it was a production mistake. Now, do I have an unnecessarily dirty mind when I detect a sexual meaning in this line: “With a little love, we could shake it up, don”t you feel the comet exploding”?

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More Stepping Back

Music For Bloggers: Vol. 8

September 11th, 2008 5 comments
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Oh, my week was made by the lovely responses I received to my lament about not getting enough comments. I really wasn”t angling for compliments, but those that came really built me up, buttercup. People reading my semi-coherent ramblings to their computer-illiterate aunts in Canada… Wow! So I”m deeply touched and very grateful for all the nice comments. Don”t be shy, shower me with comments. Comments are fuel for the blogger. But, as I admitted, I”m guilty of not always commenting myself, so this series is probably as much about assuaging my own feelings of Catholic guilt by giving props to bloggers whose work I appreciate as it is about promoting them. As always, if your blog has not been featured yet, it might do so in the future.

dustysevens
The name gives it away: another blog dedicated to the glories of crackling vinyl. A few weeks ago, when choosing songs for my contribution to the Vinyl Record Day blogswarm, I was torn between uploading the clinical CD rip of Je t”aime”¦moi non plus, or a vinyl rip I got from who knows where. I went for the CD rip, but the crackling of the latter recreated the memory of growing up with the song in ways the digital version couldn”t. ally of dustysevens has some pretty rare stuff, and some that”s fairly easy to find . Take Sad Sweet Dreamer by the Sweet Sensation. If you need to have the digital version, it”s HERE. But if you grew up with it, you might want to capture what I might call the Birkin Effect, where the crackle is part of the instrumentation and, indeed, atmosphere of the song. For that, visit dustysevens (and other vinyl blogs). And if you don”t really dig vinyl rips, you can still visit to sample ally”s lovely, slightly off-beat humour and some of the surprising illustrations she finds (hand shadow tips, anyone?). The song dedication to ally’s blog is a vinyl rip I made last night, from the apparently rare-on-the-Internet Save The Children soundtrack of a docu on the 1972 PUSH Expo concert in Chicago featuring the cream of African-American musicians, including Sammy Davis Jr singing one of my all-time favourites.
Sammy Davis Jr – I Gotta Be Free (live) (vinyl rip).mp3

All Eyes And Ears
This is a blog I discovered after its owner commented to my No-Comments lament. What made me check out All Eyes And Ears was Dane”s remark that she was thinking of chucking the blog biz because of low hit and feedback rates. So I wanted to see if she should do so. Oh, but she shouldn”t. There are, of course, a lot of photography blogs about, and quite a few that combine photos and music, as Dane”s does. The excellent Art For Art”s Sake springs to mind. What I really like about All Eyes And Ears is the subject matter of photos: apparently unremarkable landmarks in humdrum Ohio brought to life with a keen eye for atmosphere, structure and symmetry. Who knew that a washed-out sign on a filthy wall next to a horribly dull building could be so beautiful? Dane’s art has style. And the songs she selects to illustrate her illustrations are so well-judged: Monkees, Brigitte Bardot, Glen Campbell, Carly Simon, Chuck Berry and so on. But hurry, it”s all on YouSendIt. I am still looking for a good pic of a financial institution located at a riverside in Dane”s homestate”¦ (thangyooverymuchfolks, I’ll be here all week)
Olivia Newton-John – The Banks Of The Ohio.mp3

Bob Evans Recording Album #3 in Nashville
I”m a great fan of Bob Evans” second album, Suburban Songbook, which I picked up at a gig he played in Cape Town (supporting the excellent Farryl Purkiss) last year. So I am very much looking forward to the Australian singer-songwriter”s third album, which he is currently recording in Nashville, where he also made Suburban Songbook. My anticipation is tickled further by his blogiary (is that a word for a blog-diary? Hey, in the cyberworld you can make up your own words), his account of how the recordings are going, where he gets drunk and who paid for supper. Even if that sounds a bit mundane, it”s not boring, because our man Kevin ““ for his Mom does not call him Bob ““ is quite an amusing chap, in a self-deprecating manner. I think it”s great to read about the process of recording an album from the first-person perspective of a normal musician, rather than the tales of excess involving groupies, drugs and debauchery. Not that Mr Mitchell ““ for his parents are not Mr and Mrs Evans either ““ would necessarily object to those elements of stardom. Bob/Kevin doesn’t read my blog, I don’t think, so I shall dedicate one of his own songs to him.
Bob Evans – The Great Unknown.mp3

Retro Kino
Do you remember the “80s film The Legend Of Billie Jean? Oh yeah, now that I mention it, you do. Helen wotserface was in it, right? We all thought she’d be a big star. Yeah. OK, Summer School? No? Mark Harmon teaches a bunch of proto-slackers in a summer camp? Ring a bell? Did you fancy Kirsty McNichol or Tatum O”Neal (or, indeed, Matt Dillon) in Little Darlings? Nah, I preferred Kirsty ““ though she probably wouldn”t prefer me (alleged and rumoured lesbians are funny that way. Anyway, probably for the better we didn”t get married). Andrew McCarthy. Whatever happened to him? I quite liked him, y”know, but I reckon Weekend At Bernies II killed his career flat. He was in Weekend At Bernies II, wasn”t he? Ah yes, if you were young in the “80s, then Retro Kino is going to bring back memories, some good and some perhaps unwelcome. A fairly new blog ““ just two months old ““ it provides well-written and informed comments on the almost forgotten piece of “80s cinema, plus posters and some video clips. A splendid trip to some kind of wond

erful nostalgia destinations. The dedication is from a film which surely will feature on Retro Kino at some point.
David Foster – Love Theme From St. Elmo’s Fire.mp3

Retro Music Snob
Retro Music Snob surfs the blogs so you don”t have to. The blog”s deal is to highlight posts of interest from other blogs, with a summary of said post. For the reader it is, of course, a great way of discovering new blogs, and for the blogger it”s a useful exercise seeing at a glance what other bloggers are up to. Earlier I said that comments are fuel for bloggers. Spare a thought then for RMS whose gig is quite unlikely to involve a fusillade of reaction. As a regular visitor and one who really appreciates this wonderful and well presented service, I hope to say “thank you” with this tenuously-linked song dedication:
Wings – Listen To What The Man Said.mp3

Previously featured:
Music For Bloggers Vol. 1: Totally Fuzzy, Not Rock On, Serenity Now (RIP), Stay At Home Indie Pop, The Late Greats, Tsururadio, 200percent, Jefitoblog (RIP), Television Without Pity, Michael’s World
Music For Bloggers Vol. 2: Fullundie, Mr Agreeable, Greatest Films, Peanut’s Playground, Just Good Tunes, Csíkszereda Musings, Mulberry Panda, The Black Hole, Secret Love, Hot Chicks With Douchebags
Music For Bloggers Vol. 3: Girl On A Train, Maybe We Ain’t That Young Anymore, Earbleedingcountry, Spangly Princess, Ill Folks, Deacon Blues, One-Man Publisher, CD Rated
Music For Bloggers Vol. 4: Pop Dose, Todger Talk, Holy Goof (RIP), Echoes In The Wind, Sunset Over Slawit, The Hits Just Keep Coming, The Ghost of Electricity, Guitariotabs
Music For Bloggers Vol. 5: The Quietus, Barely Awake In Frog Pyamas, The Great Vinyl Meltdown, Fusion 45, Inveresk Street Ingrate, The Songs That People Sing
Music For Bloggers Vol. 6: my hmphs, Visions of Wrong Terrence, Don’t Burn The Day Away, Mine For Life, 3 Minutes 49 Seconds
Music For Bloggers Vol. 7: Uncle E’s Musical Nightmare, Jens Lekman, Ain’t Superstitious, AM Then FM, Psd Photoshop Disasters, SIBlingshot on the Bleachers, Dr Forrest’s Cheese Factory, NME & Melody Maker

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