Mark Allain - Be Mine/ Best Friend

Mystery 45 found on the pavement

Label: Island

Year of Release: 1973

Flashback Records in Islington have a fascinating and extremely tempting stock clearance policy. Their harder-to-shift wares gradually get shifted to large shelves and boxes on the street outside their premises, where they are radically reduced in value to £1, 50p, 25p and then ultimately nothing. If they can't get rid of certain records at all, they'll often just make them free to passers-by.

Even at £1 I've found some lovely items on the pavement outside alongside the tat - a box set of Motown classics, for example, which may have been in horrible reprocessed stereo but for the price of one shiny golden coin I was barely in a position to complain about. Then last weekend, this obscure Island 45 was nestling for £0.00 amidst the unwanted eighties Elton John LPs, scratched Readers Digest compilations and football supporters records. 

It's unusual for an artist on Island Records to be so tough to trace. Most people who recorded for the label had a notable pedigree among fans of their genre at the very least, and collectors have already done a sound job of tracing their career and subsequent whereabouts. Unless I'm very much mistaken, though, Mark Allain appears to have recorded this one single for the label in 1973 before disappearing forever. 

I expected a naff ballad from a folkie singer-songwriter, but actually "Be Mine" is a more robust effort than that, with sophisticated jazzy backing rhythms combining with bouyant pop melodies. It's the kind of material you could imagine Brian Protheroe producing around the same period, daytime radio fodder which nonetheless isn't too plastic sounding.

45Cat user Gian_paolo makes the point that the flipside "Best Friend" also features some strong guitar work which points towards a possible big name player in Allain's studio ranks. Try though I have, I can find no evidence of that, or indeed anything else much.

If anyone is able to get to the bottom of this, do please put me out of my misery.

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