Just come across a very interesting post on the BBC Radio Labs Blog pages.
The BBC World Service is looking to preserve endagered sounds for posterity – they believe that sounds deserve the same kind of attention as the photographic records of bygone days get.
What a brilliant idea… So, if you’ve got a mic and the inclination, why not contribute?
There’s also a natty little bit of integration with iPhone technology – and I know loads of you love that shit, so knock yourselves out.
This is an article I wrote as part of a series for the now-defunct, and sadly missed (by me, anyway) Film & TV Memorabilia magazine, it was printed by them a year ago this month… It concerns itself with the Top Ten from this week in 1977, so it seems kinda apt. Here it is…
1. Rod Stewart: I Don’t Want To Talk About It/First Cut Is The Deepest 2. Sex Pistols: God Save The Queen 3. Kenny Rogers: Lucille 4. Barbra Streisand: A Star Is Born (Evergreen) 5. Joe Tex: Ain’t Gonna Bump No More 6. Jacksons: Show You The Way To Go 7. Carole Bayer Sager: You’re Moving Out Today 8. Van McCoy: The Shuffle 9. 10CC: Good Morning Judge 10. The Muppets: Halfway Down The Stairs
Number One
Having decamped to the US two years earlier – partly in pursuit of Britt Ekland (understandable) and partly because of a row over tax (also understandable) – Rod Stewart, sat on top of the charts in mid-June. The double-A side was pulled together from tracks previously heard on his successful (and predictably titled) Atlantic Crossing LP of 1975, which had also contained the uber-hit Sailing, and its follow-up A Night On The Town (1976). As well as appearing on different LPs, and being performed by different musicians, neither of these two songs was written by Stewart himself. In fact they were the work of Danny Whitten and Cat Stevens respectively.
Whitten’s tale is now part of rock folklore, he having been a member of the squally rock trio Crazy Horse (best known for their role as foils to Neil Young) until his death from a drugs overdose in 1972. By that time he’d been central to the creation of the awesome Cinnamon Girl and Down By The River from Young’s Everybody Knows This is Nowhere set of 1969 and was, to a lesser extent, also involved in 1970’s After The Goldrush – an LP that many would cite as Young’s finest recorded work.
I Don’t Want To Talk About It comes from Crazy Horse’s eponymous 1971 LP (by which time the band was a five-piece); and with this in mind it is a shame that such a strong songwriting talent is now best known as being the tragic inspirational force behind Neil Young’s bleak 1973 Tonight’s The Night LP (and the fan-baiting unfriendliness of the accompanying tour) or as the subject matter of one of the Canadian songwriter’s darkest, and yet most exquisite, compositions: The Needle And The Damage Done.
Ironically, I guess, Rod Stewart had already lifted Tonight’s The Night – suffixed with ‘(It’s Gonna Be Alright)’ – as a song title for the biggest hit from the decidedly radio-friendly A Night On The Town. It’s certainly true to say that the tone of that rather lascivious seduction song – which featured whispers from Ekland (then his beau), and somewhat foreshadowed the pop/rock success of Rod later in the decade – could not have been further from the tone of Young’s work.
Number Two
Many people will tell you though, that Rod was not actually number one – or at least shouldn’t have been – in this week’s chart. Oh, no. The real story of this June 1977 sat brooding at number two. The Sex Pistols’ God Save The Queen – a record that, amongst its many charms, came packaged in one of the most controversial pieces of cover art ever to envelop a piece of 7” vinyl – had finally seen the light of day just the week before the Queen’s Silver Jubilee celebrations were to reach a crescendo. Virgin, who released it, were the third record label to hold the ‘Pistols on their roster in 1977; EMI having lost their bottle in January, after a story had broken about Steve Jones vomiting on pensioners at Heathrow airport, and A&M having dropped them in March when they – almost immediately after famously putting pen to paper at the gates of Buckingham Palace – unceremoniously trashed the label’s offices during a party. Another, much-publicised, fracas between the band’s infamous ‘Bromley Contingent’ and ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris just six days later simply served as the final nail in that deal’s coffin.
Four days before this chart was published, and coinciding with height of the Jubilee celebrations, the band – having rather cruelly sidelined their musical driving force, Glen Matlock, in favour of punk poster-boy Sid Vicious – was in trouble again. This time it was as they attempted to promote the single (then sitting just outside the Top Ten) with a gig on a Thames barge. The barge was raided by Police after scuffles broke out and many of the band and their friends arrested. Of course, headlines were created too; the effectiveness of which can be seen in their single’s leap to number two. This brings us around to the question of whether it really was kept from the top spot.
Yes, the controversial lyrical content of had got it banned from the BBC and Independent Radio – but did it also lead chart compilers to conspire in cooking the sales figures? It is widely held, though never proven, that that figures were massaged to favour collecting returns from the (many) stores that had decided not to sell the single at all. However, others will tell you that this story in itself is simply more Malcolm McLaren-inspired hue and cry. Hey, you decide… I don’t think we’ll ever know.
The Rest
The necessity of The Sex Pistols, and other bands of their ilk, can be seen in the remainder of the chart in this week. In comparison, it’s a pretty middle-of-the-road selection; the relative banality of which is held in sharpest relief by the smooth disco orchestrations of Van McCoy – another artist who would die tragically young (at just 39, two years later), being best known for his whistle-along classic The Hustle. Around him are gathered names such as Carol Bayer Sager who, following the lead of fellow songwriter Carol King, had decided to step forward and sing herself. Sager began her songwriting career with a co-credit on Wayne Fontana and The Mindbenders’ hit A Groovy Kind Of Love in 1965,and would go on to win an Oscar in 1981 for Arthur’s Theme(Best That You Can Do). Talking of which, at four is Barbara Streisand, with a song that would win her a bald bloke too; as composer of Evergreen from the film A Star Is Born, in which she also starred.
The genius of The Muppets being a subject for another day, the final note I want to make is on 10CC. Having lost half of their volume the previous year – with the departure of Kevin Godley and Lol Creme – remaining members Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman were hitting back with a new LP, Deceptive Bends (an album graced by a gloriously surreal Storm Thorgerson/Hipgnosis front cover) and providing proof that they could pen hits on their own. I’m drawn to concluding with them not only for the chance to comment on the fact that the two (or should that be five?) remaining CCs had previously been members of the aforementioned Mindbenders, for they had, but also for the far more frivolous (and funnier) point that they were (at least apocryphally) another band from the proud lineage of name selection that included The Lovin’ Spoonful, Pearl Jam and (to some extent) The Sex Pistols too. So maybe they’re not so different, eh?
I’m currently researching a feature on the Fairlight CMI, which first made its way to UK shores from Australia 30 years ago this year – Peter Gabriel was instrumental in the setting up of the company Syco in order to import them, and thus got one of the first ones. But I digress…
This clip I stumbled across features the glorious partnership of Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones, putting the machine through its paces. Of course, the CMI would go on to become so central to the sound of sooo many 80s tunes that it became its own cliche – but in the hands of a master, well, it kinda makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, don’t it?
