Everybody's Number One To Someone

 

Well, I said I'd be back with something soon. And how has that turned out? Have I come up with something that you want?

I hope so. My new blog "Everybody's Number One To Someone" focuses on all the tracks which reached number one in the NME indie charts, from 1981 onwards. It's over here, comes with complete Spotify playlists (of absolutely everything that charted within their Top 30 each year). It also takes a brief look at the tracks that bumped around the charts away from the number one spot as well.

In short, it's going to be an absolute feast, shoving all those records into some kind of cultural context but hopefully not being too dry in the process. Even the hippiest and moddest of heads who read this blog might be thrilled to see that The Misunderstood and The Action get early mentions. 

I hope to see you there. It's a different topic and mostly a different era, but I've been slowly plotting, scheming and writing this one since April, there's lots more to come, and I hope you'll agree it's been worth it. 

If not... perhaps we'll bump into each other again soon somewhere else online, but sadly that won't be on "Left and to the Back". 

The End

 

I was sifting through the "Left and to the Back" Facebook mail the other day, and was reminded that somebody once sent me a message with the subject line "Never Quit". They're not going to like this blog entry...

Because unfortunately, I am quitting. I have taken the decision to draw a line under this blog and there will be no further new entries. We'll come on to the reason why in a minute, but before that, let's get the practicalities out of the way, because in the months and years which follow that's going to matter to casual readers most.

The mp3s

I'm going to keep all the mp3s on this blog live until the end of June 2024 (note - sorry readers, most of them are gone now) after which point my subscription to Box will be cancelled and they will be removed. If there's anything here you want but haven't got around to downloading yet, please do it as soon as possible, as it will evaporate after that point.

Still, this isn't necessarily the end of the world. If any of the music is currently unavailable on YouTube I'll probably upload it on my channel there in the not too distant future - so this isn't as drastic as it probably sounds on first reading. Nothing should be wiped completely from existence. 

After the end of June, the blog will exist in a mothballed state with all the writing, sleeve art and scans of record labels remaining available online but all sound files removed. No further updates to existing entries will be run beyond that point, so all very old entries declaring that "nobody knows who this band are" should obviously be treated with a pinch of salt. Share corrections in the comments for the benefit of other readers by all means, but I won't be acting on any of them. 

Bandylegs - Silver Screen Queen/ Lonely Girl

 

Label: Pye

Year of Release: 1975

A huge number of metamorphoses occurred in the seventies as everyone jumped aboard the glam rock juggernaut. It saw everyone from old rock and rollers to balladeers to Denmark Street desk jobbers suddenly wearing make up and trilling and pouting to a trucker's beat. As such, very few stylistic jumps from the period are especially surprising, but nonetheless, the one this group took at the tail end of their first lifespan is quite breathtaking - and not at all glam.

Bandylegs were from Birmingham and consisted of Derek Arnold on bass, Geoff Nicholls on keyboards, Malcolm Cope on drums, Mick  Hopkins on guitar and Mike Taylor on vocals. Mike Taylor will be familiar to a number of readers of this blog as the singer for The Lemon Tree who released a psychedelic pop masterpiece in "William Chalker's Time Machine". This record really doesn't match up to that dayglo performance, and nor should we really expect it to given that it was released in 1975. Instead, the Bandylegs ensemble ooo-weee-oooo their way through a piece of fifties fantasy, singing about the good old silver screen. Its melodies feel replete with soda pops, ice cream and tootsie rolls which surely can't have been very prevalent in Birmingham in the mid-70s, but the band do a fair job of giving you the impression that it's all they've known.

The next steps the group took, however, were alarming. One reason this single has become relatively collectible since is that the group eventually morphed into the Heavy Metal band Quartz, who issued several albums between 1977 - 1983. To be fair to them, the break wasn't entirely sudden - their final single as Bandylegs, "Bet You Can't Dance", has a glam rock fuzz in its grooves, and acts as a reasonable bridge between their middle-of-the-road leanings and the future. By the time their debut single as Quartz emerged, under the name "Street Fighting Lady", it's safe to say they had changed from delicate pop caterpillars to heavy hawk moths. 

The Bunch - Red Rover Red Rover/ Happy Like This

 

Label: Beacon

Year of Release: 1969

"Happy sounds are really happening and Red Rover Red Rover is right in today's idiom, a stomping "bubblegum" number with driving bassline and a catchy sing-a-long chorus.

Of course, the heart of the "bubblegum movement" is in New York and that's where The Bunch come from.

They're a talented foursome who generate a great feel both on record and in live performance. Discovered in their home city by the forward-thinking Sire Records company, this lively group are sure to win a powerful British following too with this strong chart challenge".

Thus spake Beacon Records on their press release for this 45, but can you spot the deliberate mistakes, readers? Firstly, there was never really a "bubblegum movement" as such, with neither kids storming city hall demanding more frothy pop discs, or groups of teenagers swanning around the town centre dressed up as members of The Archies. 

Secondly, there was to be no strong chart challenge either here in the UK or the USA for this one. In fact, Beacon getting their mitts on it is a bit of a mystery - they certainly weren't picking up a track with a proven success rate, so we can only assume they bought the rights for it cheaply, crossed their fingers and hoped it would take off here as an exotic and of-the-moment North American disc. 

Thirdly, even if it had been a chartbound sound Stateside, Sire Records weren't directly responsible - rather, the track saw its release on the Candy Floss label across the pond, and far apart from that, the group weren't actually called The Bunch in America but The Puddle. It's not altogether clear why Beacon changed their name for the British market, especially as there was already a group called The Bunch operating here of "We're Not What We Appear To Be" fame; were they ignorant of the other band or hoping to potentially cadge a few of their sales from confused fans? Your guess is as good as mine. 

Hopefully the above facts can serve as a statutory lesson as to how unreliable press releases are as historical documents. Naughty Beacon Records. 

Reupload - Solent - My World Fell Down/ The Sound Of Summer's Over

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1973

The fact that the John Carter and Geoff Stephens penned "My World Fell Down" failed to chart when issued by The Ivy League is probably one of the great injustices of the sixties. Seldom has one song approximated the West Coast sound so faithfully and so well, and with such a sumptuous melody, only to fall by the wayside.

It was improved upon further in 1967 by Americans Sagittarius, who fleshed its sound out further still with disorientating sound effects which seemed to be knowing nods to Brian Wilson's Smile sessions, all acting as the cherry on the top of an utterly superb song. That fared somewhat better, climbing to number 70 in the US Charts, but its failure to become a significant hit doomed the track into being swept up by Nuggets, Rubble and other rarities compilations in the decades down the line. 

Whoever Solent were - that's not entirely clear, though someone called "Bobby S" has claimed vocal duties over on the 45Cat website - they obviously couldn't believe the song's lack of luck, and had another crack at it. This time round, the song is given a politer, smoother mix and almost more nostalgic, sorrowful harmonies. The track by now seems to be harking back to a sixties surfing shoreline as a distant memory (not that such things were that common in the UK to begin with) and the flipside adds to that mournful air, asking very gently where those surfing summers went to. "Don't worry baby" one of the singers sighs, and you almost get the sense they're mopping Brian Wilson's brow, trying to get him down to the south coast of the UK to work his magic. 

Carl Gresham - It First Began/ Comedy Version

 

Label: None
Year of Release: not issued

Acetates are an expensive folly in the average record collector's life. If you see one in a second hand record shop or on Discogs or eBay, the price is usually ratcheted sky-high, the seller knowing that the scarcity and uniqueness of the offering is going to make it very enticing. Yet when you do purchase one, what you usually get is a songwriter warbling over some basic piano melody they've written, or a half baked beat idea from some smalltown group whose ideas and style hadn't moved on from 1962.

And then, of course, there's stuff like this which surely had a backstory, but I'm damned if I know what it is. Carl Gresham was a highly influential man about town in Bradford, being a record store manager and club DJ at the turn of the sixties, and occasional actor - he was Tom Courtenay's stand-in for "Billy Liar" - and a "personal appearances" agent to the stars, offering them work opening supermarkets and department stores (which begs some serious questions about that 'supermarket opening' scene in the film "Billy Liar", which does not feature in the novel at all. Was this a sneaky, knowing nod to Gresham's sideline business?)

Gresham - or "The Gresh" as he was known to friends and associates - gradually grew into something of an establishment figure in Bradford, appearing in pantomimes and having his own weekend breakfast radio show on Pennine Radio, so it wouldn't have been unexpected to see him pushing out a novelty single at some point.

The trouble is, though, this sounds like a very early sixties demo with very simple Freddie & The Dreamers styled melodies, which dates it ahead of Gresham's rise to minor fame. On the A-side you've got a frivolous, cheery melody buried in a terrible mix which he chirps along to serviceably. It's a pleasant enough early beat offering but nothing to crack open the cheque book for. 

Over on the flip, however, is a very strange "comedy" version of the song, which was apparently arranged and conceptualised by the director and producer David Mallet, who worked with Les Dawson and Kenny Everett later in his career, as well as becoming one of the most successful music video directors of all time. In this The Gresh whacks out, screaming and shouting, making panicky asides about "falling down the hole in the middle of the record" and generally acting the giddy goat. It's not clear what this piece of work is connected to or why an acetate of it was pressed. It's possible it was to accompany a comedy show or idea which never got commissioned, but equally likely it was just Gresham dicking around in his remaining studio time.

The Going Thing - Sweet Sunday/ Windy Day

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1971

Say hello to the only group (to the best of my knowledge) ever to emerge from the Ford manufacturing line - unless, of course, we're counting Ford Timelord of The Timelords. Back in the sixties, Ford were seemingly keen to make their cars seem sexy, zingy and a little bit more rock and roll; less "any colour you want, so long as it's black", and more "all the colours of the swinging rainbow, baby".

In Australia, the group The Going Thing were pulled together to groove and bop on a popular television advert to make cars seem more like something to dance about. There was nothing special about the ad, particularly not by modern day standards, but the zesty young folk in it clearly caught the public's imagination well enough that Ford began pumping out LPs by them for promotional use. "Christmas 1968 With The Going Thing", "The Going Thing 1969" and "1970" all appeared on Ford's own record label, and included gems such as "The Warranty Song" (please do click on the link to hear that one), "I Dig Rock and Roll Music" (where they sadly don't sing about loving "Duane Bleeding Eddy"), "Ford - It's The Going Thing" (of course) and an array of sunshine covers of popular hits.

American producers Tom and John Bahler were responsible for the group's sound and approach at this point, and offered $50,000 a year to Karen and Richard Carpenter to work on the project, which the pair sensibly refused, choosing to instead continue with their own work. Nonetheless, even without any contributions from the Carpenter siblings, the outcomes of this period were likably fluffy and pie-eyed enough to become of interest to collectors - the "1970" LP in particular goes for some inexplicably eye-watering sums given its contents, frequently attracting eBay bids upwards of £100. 

Once the Ford gig was up, the Australian label Sweet Peach picked them up and attempted to market them as a group with things other than family cars on their minds. The resulting LP "Good News" is a less kitschy collection of songs, and as such is seemingly of less interest to collectors. 

Following that album's disappointing performance, Decca surprisingly chose to give them a leg up with this single, which was issued not just in Australia but the UK as well. Like a lot of their material, its quality does belie its somewhat naff origins. "Sweet Sunday" is an intriguing cross between gospel and technicolour harmony pop, and while it's difficult not to sing The Velvet Underground's "Oh Sweet Nuthin'" over the first few bars, the group manage to carry the cheer of the ditty in a manner that wouldn't embarrass The Fifth Dimension. It's feelgood music handled with incredible care and some UK journalists even predicted a hit.

C.T.A.-102 - More Strangers (In The Cave Again)/ A Thousand Days

Label: Gale

Year of Release: 1980

Paul Carman was an unlucky chap, recording a lot of music in the seventies under the "Dolphin" moniker (we covered his rocksteady version of "Hey Joe" some time ago) which tended to take existing hit singles and tear them apart, forcing them into new shapes and guises. When it worked, it worked unbelievably well. His smooth FM take on "Goin' Back", for example, is an interesting version which adds a small droplet of sixties trippiness to the otherwise slick hug of the mid-seventies production.

He was a perfectly good songwriter in his own right, though, as this single - issued under the strange C.T.A.-102 moniker - proves. "More Strangers (In The Cave Again)" is a shimmering, pulsing New Wave track which in places sounds like Colin Newman out of Wire being ordered to write a hit. It's another example of a performer from another era managing to adapt to the changing tide with astonishing ease, but clearly falling flat on their faces because nobody in the punk or post-punk scenes liked a "pretender" (unless they were sticking two fingers up and mucking about for their own amusement like The Strawbs). 

Fortunately, there's better news for the modern man in that a freshly mastered version of the track is available on Bandcamp for streaming and buying, and the link can be found below.

Reupload - Zenith - A Fool That Was In Love/ Silent Words

 

Sophisticated but well-written mid-seventies pop from ex-White Plains boys

Label: Dawn

Year of Release: 1975

Dawn was a perplexing label. Started by its parent label Pye as a home to more progressive and hippy-friendly artists (akin to EMI's Harvest or Decca's Deram) it started off on-spec with huge hits from the hairy festival jugband act Mungo Jerry and lesser-selling pieces of wonderfulness from more subdued acts such as Heron. Eventually, though, these beardy releases gave way to all manner of commercial rock and pop, including releases from The Glitter Band and Brotherhood of Man. 

This 45 definitely exists at the end of Dawn's catalogue marked "sophisticated pop". Only the stray sound of a sitar low in the mix shows any concessions to the label's past - the rest of the track is taken up with hooky choruses and zingy but breezy orchestral arrangements, having more in common with Edison's Lighthouse than anything likely to have got John Peel excited.

Still, it's deftly done, and certainly could have been a hit - the song is determined to make maximum impact, and pushes itself forward with hook after hook on top of a pristine arrangement. That possibly shouldn't be too surprising, given that the group were formed from the remains of White Plains, and their sound practically invented the slick, careful but potent 70s pop formula. 

Staff of Basingstoke Hospital - Close Encounters of The Medical Kind (EP)

Label: Rushton Records

Year of Release: Who knows?

Followers of my Twitter feed will know this record has been driving me up the wall for weeks now - not due to its musical content, but purely because I'm sure I read about its existence or heard about it on a podcast at some point in the last couple of years; however, I can find no evidence anywhere, either in my house, on my hard drive or online. 

Given that it's too late in this blog's history to regret not keeping a better notepad, I'll press ahead based on what I think I know - which as it happens, isn't a lot. It would be tempting to write "Close Encounters Of The Medical Kind" off as a strange spoof, perhaps a cheapo prog-lite project Matt Berry attempted shortly after "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace" completed its series on Channel 4, but so far as I can ascertain this is the real deal; a revue troop of doctors and hospital staff in Basingstoke recording the best of a self-penned science fiction musical they performed. 

The central theme of the musical isn't easy to ascertain from this EP, but it would appear to involve evil forces attempting to destroy a vital moon in the universe who must be stopped by a member of Basingstoke Hospital staff known only as Luke "Superdoc", who we can only hope is on a hero's wage.

Musically, this record has a spindly, muddy, low-budget production underpinning music which sounds live and occasionally veers towards prog, pop, twee psychedelia and the Rocky Horror Show. Neither the vocal or instrumental performances are exactly professional, with very occasional weaknesses coming forth in the mix, but surprisingly, nor are they howlingly bad; somebody, somewhere put a lot of thought into this record (who ever would have thought medical staff had the time? They certainly wouldn't now) and clearly wanted to leave audiences with a suitable audio keepsake of a jolly and not entirely serious stage revue. 

The Whales - Come Down Little Bird/ Beachcomber

Label: CBS

Year of Release: 1968

Televised talent shows are unforgiving affairs - they enable club acts or even aspiring bedroom singers to give a mass audience their best shot, but if they lose (and especially if they lose ignobly) they are likely to forever be considered damaged goods. A performer who didn't impress either a panel of judges or a television audience of several million people may even never work professionally again. 

And the winners? Well, the preferred narrative is that they will become new superstars, but even in today's market that's usually only the case for a brief period of time. The victors in talent contests usually sell well in the media aisle to supermarket shoppers for the first six months after receiving their gong, and are regarded as a safe booking by live venues and cruise ship events organisers, but only in rare cases do they really shake Britain or the world with their abilities. 

Barnsley's The Whales, for example, were Opportunity Knocks winners in 1968 and were given a fantastic opportunity to break through afterwards; a contract with CBS was duly inked, and the group were paired with the brilliant Mark Wirtz to produce a debut single. "Come Down Little Bird" was the outcome, and while it has since been compiled on "Piccadilly Sunshine", making it well known amongst the popsike cognoscenti, it was perhaps a bit too lacking in pizazz for the mass market. Wirtz clearly offered them a solid enough tune, but not one which sounded like a hit - the chorus is gently lilting rather than forceful, while the verses are too childlike and gentle to compensate. It's not bad, it's just clearly no "Teenage Opera".

Halifax Building Society - Rock Solid (EP)

Label: Air-Edel
Year of Release: 1978

"By the way, if anyone in here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself" - so grumbled Bill Hicks to a live audience on his CD "Rant In E Minor", adding "do a commercial, you're off the artistic roll call". He certainly wasn't the first to complain about creative people selling out with adverts, and the idea that engaging with advertising is evil, even if undertaken simply to make a quick buck while in a financial corner (which even leftists like Ken Loach have done in the past) was a dominant one for decades. It's something which tends to get brought up less frequently now, but still occasionally gets trotted out when a respected artist "whores themselves" for a major business on prime time television.

This was certainly the case when a couple of young people I'm acquainted with (but won't pretend to know well) received some crisp bank notes from the Nationwide to do some adverts recently. I had to watch with dismay as a cascade of abuse filled up my social media timelines, and while the Bill Hicks "Off the artistic roll call!" line was not repeated, it was certainly paraphrased a number of times, despite the fact that Hicks added the disclaimer "If you're a struggling artist [which they were] I'll look the other way". These, it seems, were people not worthy of their calling for taking the Building Society ruble in order to spend more time developing their careers ("Real poets don't have careers!" one angry individual shouted, while staying oddly silent about John Cooper Clarke's Sugar Puff adverts). 

Building Societies have always had one eye on the youth market, though, way before banks seemed to get their claws into teens and children. As organisations, they've always been keen to emphasise the possible to people who have perhaps heard rather too often that what they are demanding is unattainable. These days, that seems to be the very idea that a young person can actually have a mortgage, and in the seventies... well actually, the opening sales pitch really wasn't much different then either.

This promotional EP was put together for the Halifax Building Society in 1978, and seems to be, once again, about young whippersnappers saving enough to buy a house, or at least be somewhere they feel they belong. It's a very decadent promotional item indeed, coming housed in a glossy, full colour gatefold sleeve with a printed paper inner sleeve inside, very akin to the plush affairs major labels used to create in the nineties for up-and-coming alternative groups (all it would need is a colour vinyl pressing to complete the effect). It's also pressed up on proper vinyl rather than a flexidisc, and only the sprayed silver "plasticrap" label looks cheap.

It also opens very unexpectedly with a desperate, agitated slice of Pete Townshend aping rock. "Where Are We Going" begins like "Pinball Wizard" (itself used in a bank advert for NatWest in 1988). "Lose all our money in the Palace Arcade/ I swear the one-armed bandit knows that we just got paid!" exclaims the Townshend clone at one point, before adding "When we get together, everybody thinks we're bad/ but all we're doing is searching for things we never had". 

Reupload - Fuzz Face - Mighty Quinn/ Voices From The Sky

Label: Page One

Year of Release: 1968

Anything I write about the progression of "Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo)" from a "Great White Wonder" Dylan bootleg track to a major hit for Manfed Mann is probably going to be a bit of a waste of energy - everyone knows the story, after all. Dylan's songbook was continually plundered throughout the late sixties (and indeed beyond) by bands desperate for both cred and hits, and the adventures of Quinn the Eskimo were possibly the poppiest of options on offer, as well as handily buried on an unofficial release.

While Manfred Mann had shot to number one with their version of the track by February 1968, Fuzz Face here - who I'm 99.9% confident were some sort of American studio group - were latecomers to the party, issuing their version in April of that year. In fairness, it puts a slightly different spin on things, loading an instrumental version of the track with guitar effects, sitars, organs and decidedly "groovy" backing rhythms, making it prime fodder for anyone's house party. You can dance to this with much greater ease than the Mann's rather stompier take. 

Commercially, though, there wasn't much room in the charts for two versions of the same song at roughly the same time, and this sank on both sides of the pond. A shame, but it wasn't at all unusual for instrumental versions of pop hits to do this, however innovative or otherwise faintly psychedelic they were.

Ulysses Smith - Jet Aeroplane/ The Next Train In The Morning

 

Label: RCA

Year of Release: 1968

For a songwriter who experienced such huge success with Sandie Shaw, and a reasonable run of hits in his own right as a solo artist, it's surprising how many of Chris Andrews' compositions failed for other people. What should have been a guaranteed badge of hit status and press attention sometimes slipped unhelpfully under the radar.

In this case, the oddly named Ulysses Smith is the benefactor of Andrew's helping hand. His real name was actually George Davies, a Barnsley-born singer and guitarist with the hitless act Me And Them. The group recorded for Pye in 1964, but none of their singles had any impact, from the inappropriately peppy Buddy Knox penned pop of "Think I'm Gonna Kill Myself" to their cover of The Beatles "Tell Me Why". 

Following their failure, Davies appears to have struck out on his own under a new name to try his luck under Andrews' production and songwriting guidance with this 45. In common with a lot of Chris Andrew's later work, it's a record which whiffs of Soho basement bars, with its brassy arrangements, swinging rhythms and punchy vocals sounding as if they would be more at home on the live circuit than tightly hemmed in a recording studio.

It probably wasn't confident or strident enough to be a bona-fide hit. Still, the occasional bursts of reverb and fruity brass on the flipside make it a much more groovy listen.

The Fantastics - Waiting Around For Heartaches

Label: Deram

Year of Release: 1970

Unlike most of the artists who get featured on this blog, The Fantastics were arguably proper pop stars. They produced a hit single in 1971 in the form of "Something Old, Something New", which despite only getting to number 9 feels like a deathless disc - never far away from an advertising campaign or a mid-afternoon oldies playlist.

Prior to their run in the top ten, though, they were an American act called The Velours who released an eye-watering number of singles across the pond, including the in-demand soul disc "I'm Gonna Change". They changed their name to The Fantastic Temptations and hopped over to the UK to cash in on the demand for the Temptations material on the live circuit, mainly performing covers of their hits for soul-hungry audiences. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they were forced to eventually change their name to The Fantastics - tribute bands weren't really "a thing" in the sixties and confusion was always best avoided - and that name change also coincided with a brace of original recorded material. 

They slipped out a version of "Baby Make Your Own Sweet Music" on MGM in 1968 before moving to the Deram label and releasing "Face to Face With Heartache" followed by this effort. In this case, the B-side, a cover of the Four Tops "Ask The Lonely", has had the largest share of the attention, popping up on so many Northern Soul compilations that you can head over to Spotify or iTunes to enjoy it with enormous ease. 

While that cover is deftly done and unsurprisingly popular with the in-crowd, it's meant that the pep and strut of the A-side has been unjustly ignored over the years, so it's presented here for your attention. "Waiting Round For Heartaches" is, as you'd expect, energetic and thrusting while dripping with heartbroken melodrama, and as such it's surprising that it's heard so infrequently in the outside world.