Linda Jardim - 60 Miles By Road Or Rail/ Energy In Northampton

Buggles vocalist sings futuristic pop tale of aliens landing in Northampton

Label: Northampton Development Corporation
Year of Release: 1980(?)

The late seventies and early eighties were a peculiar period for local councils and authorities, who all seemed to be competing with each other to find innovative ways of attracting both new residents and external investment. Having a flashy theme tune seemed to be one of the weapons in their arsenal - catchy numbers like "South Woodham Ferrers" and the Gerard Kenny-esque "You've Never Seen Anything Like It - Central Milton Keynes" are frequently held up for mockery now, but probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

This, though, is one of the most utterly absurd. Clearly one of the promotional team at the Northampton Development Corporation had been listening to one Gary Numan album too many, and decided that the best way of making the city sound like the settlement of the future would be to adopt a strange synth-pop tune about aliens landing there. 

This idea was clearly cautiously green lit but not given the most attention, as the A-side here - the snappily titled "60 Miles By Road Or Rail" - has the same tune, but is lyrically more straightforward, conservative and everyday, chronicling the love affair of a London woman with a Northampton man and her exciting journeys up and down the M1 to sleep with him. Oddly, the song doesn't seem to focus much on Northampton's beauty spots or unique features, and instead the city means one thing only to this lady; it's the centre of Love. We're not given any hints about how the affair ended, which means we never do get to find out whether she got fed up with shlepping up and down the motorway and asked him to move to London with her. Nonetheless, it's actually a very appealing tune with lots of genuine eighties pop suss behind it, succeeding in making me feel nostalgic for the days when modern developments and new towns weren't supposed to give you the blues. 

The flip is where the oddball alien bananas pop can be found, and by God does everyone push the boat out here. From the humming synths in the intro to the alien voiceover, to the lyrics about neutron wars on other planets and the location of fresh energy resources in Northampton (which I would have thought the Northampton Development Corporation would have been against being stolen by intergalactic forces - it's a bad thing in Sim City, after all) it's the noise of every conceivable futuristic button being pushed to overload. I have no doubt everyone involved approached this with their tongues firmly in cheeks, but despite this it's extraordinarily thoughtfully arranged and performed, from those Meat Loaf styled tumbling piano lines to the dispassionate alien voices throughout.

Linda Jardim was an old hand at this kind of thing, also being a backing vocalist for The Buggles, and indeed was a successful session singer in general. She also pushed out a bona-fide solo 45 in Ireland in 1980 entitled "Don't Stay For The Sake Of The Children" (if anyone has heard this, let me know). Sadly, she passed away in 2015. 

The other key player here is writer and arranger Rod Thompson, who had previously been responsible for discs such as "Cruisin' With The Fonz" and Guy Gregory's slightly sleazy sounding 45 "The Slower You Go (The Longer It Lasts)". 

Locating a copy of this has made my year already, and thanks are due to the pair of them for producing something so unexpected. 

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