Cheap multi-genre flexidisc fun - "it's for charity, y'know!"
Label (of sorts): Lyntone
Year of Release: 1964
"Yes! Here it is folks! The very first Sheffield Rag Record, presenting for your entertainment four well-known sound (sic) of Sheffield:
Los Caribos: purveyors of West Indian Carribeat music. The university is fortunate in possessing such an outstanding example of this genre.
The Addy Street 5: the University jazz band. The only traditional band to reach the finals of the inter-University Jazz competition.
The Vantennas: extremely popular beat group, both in the University and in the City.
Dave Allen Big Band: regular performer in the university union. Well-known throughout Sheffield".
Ah, rag week at university. The history of the concept is a slightly complicated one with less than honourable origins. Rags in the nineteenth century were often noisy and destructive and involved pitched battles between rival universities, frequently leading to destruction of property or injury of persons - football hooliganism for the wealthy, essentially.
Some students disliked their good name being sullied by the tribal actions of a violent and aggressive minority, and set out to subvert the principles and aims of Rags, making them about delivering positive things for local good causes and embedding the university more firmly into the local community. As time moved on, Rag Weeks emerged which involved fund-raising in innovative ways - the publication of jokey "Rag Mags" or production of student-friendly novelty items to raise money. These steadily became annual fixtures on the university calendar.
By the time I went to university in the nineties, Rag Week seemed to mostly involve students standing around in the student union shaking plastic buckets filled with coins and screaming "RAAAAAG WEEEEK!" at the tops of their lungs. Whether this was because time had shown this paid just as many dividends for local charities as producing inventive or humorous items, or the nineties were just a very shouty, screechy time anyway, or both, I will probably never know. I just threw 50p in the bucket and tried to get away as quickly as possible. I didn't ask questions.
This means that products like this 1964 flexidisc from Sheffield University feel like strange artefacts from a more ambitious time. Recording these university groups and getting the record pressed up for public consumption shows an unbelievable degree of commitment and effort, while also handily providing us with a lasting memento of the sounds of campus life during that period.
While the fragile nature of the medium causes this history to be occasionally muffled by scuffs and groove wear, it shows a university embracing beat, West Indian sounds and jazz as well as the unstoppable and obligatory Big Bands, a traditional feature of universities right through the century.
All examples here are competent and professional sounding, but as you'd expect none highlight stars in the making. "Left and to the Back" readers are probably going to be most interested in The Vantennas (the only pop group to be named after BBC licence detecting vans?) They turn in a thumpingly acceptable performance with a cover of The Hollies' Miller and Ford penned "Baby Don't Cry", though the polite, restrained backing vocals and sparse, steady rhythms seem as much like the product of the pre-beat boom era as they do of 1964 - University Rags might have traditionally involved chaos and destruction, but there's nothing going on here to incite that feeling on record.
The rest do very much what the enterprising student (or students) set out in their blurb, although The Dave Allen Big Band regrettably turn out not to have any associations with the Irish comedian of the same name.
Charity is frequently given as an excuse for all kinds of cheap plastic tat being pushed into people's hands, but if you were a Sheffield student at the time there's little doubt that this EP would have acted as a great audio reminder of your life there; your mates, the bands you saw, the dances you went to forever immortalised on flexible plastic. I'd far rather have owned something like this than my graduation handbook.
Despite that, though, and despite calling this the "first" Sheffield University Rag Record, there's sadly no evidence that any others were released (edit - this is actually incorrect! Thanks to Mark Lamarr for pointing out that there was also a rag record featuring Joe Cocker, more details of which can be found here). There was further flexidisc activity, though, as The Sheffield University Arts Festival put out another EP purely consisting of tracks by Los Caribos later the same year.
Apologies as always for the slightly ropey sound quality on these files, but a much better version of The Vantennas track can be found on YouTube.
If the previews below aren't working properly, go to the source.
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