It has to be. Andrew Ridgeley’s 1990 ‘comeback’ single Shake truly is car crash stuff. The video is appropriately nasty, but ignore it if you can and just listen to the song: after the cak-handed, overwrought acoustic intro, there’s this ‘intriguing’ and ‘dramatic’ pregnant pause – during which, it seems, Ridgeley trips up and falls into a drum kit. Incredibly, they kept that bit in the final recording and somehow passed it off as a real drum intro.
Few remember Ridgeley’s solo debut (and, thus far, only) album Son Of Albert. Fewer still own it, or remember it with any affection whatsoever. Arguably, it is the the worst record ever made – of course, we’re not allowed to say that accolade applies to Freddie Mercury’s Mr Bad Guy anymore, because he’s dead. But that’s another discussion for another day. (more…)
The über stylish German act, Goombay Dance Band, featuring the incomparable Oliver Bendt, performing their only UK hit, Seven Tears. This spent three weeks at Number One in 1981. Wouldn’t happen nowadays.
Good old Facebook. Without it, I really wouldn’t have a life. OK, I’ll qualify that: without it, I wouldn’t consolidate what makes up my life in such a structured fashion. I’m not “into” autobiography (I found writing my own “about” section for this blog and for a State featured writer blurb hugely difficult) but the older you get, the more you realise that you are the sum of your memories. And what defines a person like me more than the things I collect – namely, books, CDs and ticket stubs.
Three friends ‘tagged’ me in a Facebook reminiscence about listing the first 50 gigs you went to that come into your head. I know I’m terrible for accentuating the negatives at times but sometimes they’re the funniest memories. However, all my great gigs came flooding back to me as well as some truly terrible ones, and, as always, I couldn’t simply list them, I just had to explain myself. And, after I’d written them out, I realised there were some silly omissions – but rewriting and rejigging weren’t in the rules. The other rule I applied to myself was not to include gigs I reviewed when I first became a journalist – so the list goes up to 2003 only. The hardest part was actually assembling them in chronological order, as I’m writing this on holiday without any ticket stubs or diaries to even check; however, I know I’m pretty much on the button with most of them, such is my peculiar type of memory – great for trivia, crap for remembering birthdays, phone numbers, appointments and what on earth I went upstairs for.
So here are those 50 gigs which which make up my so-called life story – self-indulgence sometimes rocks. (more…)
Due to overwhelming demand (and the extraordinary patronage of ANITA ALOHA , star of a 1960s Kellogg’s commercial), it seems we may have a ‘Bring Back Puffa Puffa Rice’ Campaign on our hands. Personally, I’m all for keeping the past in the past but, if they can bring back Wispas, we could be in with a shout. Firstly, here’s the ad featuring our friend Anita Aloha, followed by last year’s post as it appeared, then…
Generally speaking, I’m not one for nostalgia. Get a bunch of people of a certain vintage together in a living room or a bar and a strange mist descends over their eyes – before you know where you are, they’re dredging up half-memories of Spangles, Captain Pugwash, school medicals (including “the cold spoon”), Creamola Foam and Thalidomide.
Still, sometimes, a fleeting recollection of a certain product will conjure up tastes, smells and emotions of a bygone, never-to-return era; not a demand for an immediate return (because most comebacks don’t work), just remembrance of youth and a gentler time of your life. (more…)
When Jim Carroll posted details about the latest round of Electric Picnic acts on his blog, one reader was so bewildered by the inclusion of Kid Creole & the Coconuts that they replied, “Kid Creole !!?? Mother of God! Anybody for Patrick Hernandez?”
Now there would have been a reason for me to go without comfort for an entire weekend. Patrick Hernandez’s biggest and, let’s be honest, only real worldwide hit, Born To Be Alive from 1979, is still one of my favourite songs. It’s like all your electric Giorgio Moroder dreams come true. Oh, and the video simply can’t be beaten for non-stop paving-the-way-for-Gary-Barlow dancing. Sigh. It could be that I’m just entirely, soppily nostalgic about this song, but the 10-year-old me was a very happy soul and it just takes me back there; maybe 1979 wasn’t the sunniest summer on record but it certainly seems like it listening to this. (more…)
40 years ago today, this rather brilliant piece of music was No.1 in the UK charts. Coincidentally, my poor mum was enduring an experience she said she “wouldn’t wish on anyone” – namely, giving birth to me. I think I’m correct in saying she hasn’t had too much cause to regret it since, despite consistent exam failures, chronic late-development of my early potential and the fact that I talked about death a lot as a teenager. Well, nothing much has changed, really.
The second series ofAshes To Ashes began last Monday night on BBC1. It’s by no means as great as its predecessor, Life On Mars, but it’s a lot of fun nonetheless; Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) is still the finest current comic creation on TV. Anyway, this isn’t a TV review, it’s about the clothes.
The 1980s is generally the most unfairly maligned decade of the 20th Century. Yes, people in the UK were living under the Thatcherite junta for the entirety of it, which was horrific, but, pop music-wise, it kicks the 1990s’ arse up and down the street and back again. Yet, what gets the most vicious criticism is ’80s fashion. (Or at least, that used to be the case – now, Top Shop looks like it had an accident and woke up in 1982.)
It was an extraordinarily colourful time, as any viewing of Top Of The Pops from that era will show you. Like any era’s fashion, the clothes had to be worn properly and with conviction in order to be carried off, the gentleman’s suit being no exception. And no one, but no one, in popular music can wear a suitlike Bryan Ferry. (more…)
Ah, Hogmanay. ‘Tis the season for anyone with a dodgy beard and/or a crappy ’70s hairstyle to pretend they’re in Abba. And that, as they say, is just the girls.
Yes, it’s the time of year when hundreds of clearly inebriated people pay good (a.k.a. scarce) money to sit in the function room of a soulless country or suburban hotel, consuming a sub-carvery 3-course meal and a bottle of vinegary plonk, in readiness for the night’s star turn: four eejits in white, shiny outfits attempting to convince you they are Sweden’s finest export before flatpack furniture and Dime bars. Everywhere you look, these patently talentless buffoons are trying to raise the spirit of Bjorn, Benny, Frida and Sexy Bottom, without the remotest shred of self-respect, knowing full well that their audience: A) have paid upfront and B) will be too arseholed to realise the band don’t look or sound anything like Abba.
This is where I take serious issue with the word “tribute”. Are the living bands at all happy with these (largely dreadful) impersonators? Are the dead revolving and revolting in their graves? There are thousands of these so-called “tribute” acts everywhere, impersonating everyone from U2 to Jeff Buckley (now there’s a Happy New Year party), all of whom must have benefitted fully from the sheer stupidity and gruesome opulence of the economic boom; surely to God these nixers (at least, it’s to be hoped they aren’t lucrative enough to be full-time jobs) are about to bite the stoor as people dig out their piggy banks for the first time in over a decade. Who, in 2009, is going to cheerfully pay to hear the words: “Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to completely lose any semblance of my own personality and pretend to be Benny”? And more like Benny out of Crossroads, apparently.
Anyway, next year, as everyone will be reading instead of going out, I’m going to write cheap “tribute” versions of great novels, starting with Wuthering Heights-esque and quickly followed up by Dracul-ish. That should pack out Easons with punters desperate to avoid the real thing.
Happy New Year to you all, whoever you are – or think you are.
The shops are still open today but it looks like it’s finally curtains for Woolworth’s. From its origins in New York from 1878, F.W. Woolworth has been a fixture of the British high street for longer than most of our grandparents can remember. It is a genuine institution, a retail mainstay, as much a part of the fabric of British society as Coronation Street, red telephone boxes and cricket. But that could all be going down the pan as yesterday the company went into administration, with 815 branches still open, a gigantic £385m debt hanging over their heads and 30,000 staff who aren’t feeling too optimistic about their prospects.
The old tag-line, ’that’s the Wonder of Woolies’, still nestles snugly in the recesses of my memory. It doesn’t mean that my shopping experiences were wonderful, it’s just that Woolies was always there and my childhood, teenage and 20s are full of Woolies-related memories. I bought my first record in Woolworth’s in Saltcoats in 1978 – it was ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush, and it’s still one of my favourite songs. Also in that branch in 1985, I hid the 12″ of ‘Never Understand’ by the Jesus and Mary Chain in the easy listening section because I couldn’t afford it at the time; however, I was spotted by the world’s crappest store detective, who promptly put it back – sadly, it wasn’t there the following Saturday when I actually had the necessaries. When I was in a particularly dreadful bedroom band in the mid-1980s, I borrowed an atrocious Winfield (Woolworth’s brand name) organ for a recording session – it sounded like a mouth organ filled with fluttering moths being blown by a hairdryer. I also wrote the “seminal” song ‘Werewolf In Woolworth’s’ about my (allegedly) lycanthropic Classics teacher, who then turned out not to be a werewolf after all.
My last (and probably last ever) experience of Woolies came when I lived in Chiswick, west London, during the 1990s. Not only did I have a severe crush on one of the managers there, I used to regularly buy their marked down, ex-chart singles. The classics I bought: ‘How Do You Do’ by Roxette, ‘Humpin’ Around’ by Bobby Brown and ‘Suicide Blonde’ by INXS. The things you buy when you think you’re getting a bargain.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed someone comes up with a rescue package – but, sadly, even if they do, the likelihood of the 1970s‘ off-shoot chain, Woolco, reopening are remarkably slim.
Such a sweet song and yet, for some bizarre reason, it haunts me in a way that makes me shudder. It was one of those songs that soundtracked a part of my very young childhood and not necessarily the bits I want to remember. Lennie Peters and Dianne Lee couldn’t have happened in any other era than the early 1970s. They were ridiculously naff. How naff? They were like K-Tel, Polyvelt shoes, Ronco and Blue Nun wine rolled into one. With Old Spice and Brut splashed all over it. They came to prominence on Hughie Green’s conveyor belt of naffness, Opportunity Knocks in 1973. Having won seven or eight shows on the trot it was inevitable that a record deal would follow and Welcome Home did indeed hit No1 in May 1973. For a good chunk of my childhood, they were on every TV chat show, game show and variety show – they even had their own short-lived variety show, just as they were about to sink into end-of-pier obscurity. All we really have left is this warm, gorgonzola-scented glow of Welcome Home on Top Of The Pops to remind us what they once were. It’s not an awful song, and it really ought to remind me of cosy winter adverts for the South of Scotland Electricity Board or Cadbury’s Drinking Chocolate – but it just doesn’t. It only takes me back to endless, cold, bleak, wet winters. Sometimes, you just get nostalgic for having to wear uncomfortable raincoats and wellies, for getting bored in the space between playgroup ending and dinner time, and for wondering why women were ever suckers for Lennie Peters’s voice – never mind why my dad always described Dianne Lee as “a crumpet”.
What was the rest of Peters And Lee’s musical catalogue like? Litres of pee, sadly.
Generally speaking, I’m not one for nostalgia. Get a bunch of people of a certain vintage together in a living room or a bar and a strange mist descends over their eyes – before you know where you are, they’re dredging up half-memories of Spangles, Captain Pugwash, school medicals (including “the cold spoon”), Creamola Foam and Thalidomide.
“Welcome Home…”