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.

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. 

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". 

Whisky & Sofa - Dirty Den/ Dirty Rag

 

Yet another Eastenders themed novelty record from the mid-80s

Label: Spartan

Year of Release: 1986

Given the current indifference being shown to "Eastenders" by the British public, with viewing figures tanking and BBC Executives furrowing their brows, it's easy to forget just how much of a phenomenon the soap once was. The market for spin-off singles alone was immense - no sooner had actress Anita Dobson hit the top ten with a sung version of the theme tune than scores of other Enders related discs dropped off the production line.

Not all of these were successes. "Left and to the Back" has bravely dealt with some of the odder fare, such as Lofty's attempt at covering Bob Dylan and Gramps' well-meaning festive single, but to be honest I thought I'd heard them all now. Then one day, the "Top Of The Pops Facts" stream on Twitter alerted me to the existence of this unofficial cash-in novelty record.

"Dirty Den" is unusual in being a raucous novelty record which also feels slightly threatening. That's appropriate enough - Dirty Den was, of course, the soap's resident geezer, a no-nonsense man of a certain age with an abrasive personality and criminal associations. Despite the fact that his wit and charm frequently seemed several rungs below Lord Alan Sugar's, he nonetheless found his way into many ladies' boudoirs, including (most troublingly) the one of sixteen year old character Michelle Fowler who he impregnated. 

The tabloid press love a soap opera villain, and Dirty Den was prime gutter rag content. Given the character's utter ubiquity in British popular culture, a novelty Den-themed single from somebody was therefore inevitable even if Den himself (or at least the actor Leslie Grantham) was unwilling to step into the recording studio booth to do it. 

The resulting unofficial output "Dirty Den" attempts to go for a slight dancefloor edge, utilising those squelching bass keyboard notes every low budget record from 1986 seemed to have, and being influenced by slightly more straight-ahead novelty discs of the past. The "whoops!" elements are straight out of John Inman's "Are You Being Served?", while the Den imitating vocals owe a debt to those old impersonator's 45s from the seventies which still clutter up charity shops to this day.

You'll be hard pressed to find a copy of this record in any charity shop though, as it sold in meagre quantities. While the subject matter seemed like a sure-fire winner, the jokes on here are almost non-existent (unless the cry of "Whoops! Whisky and Sofa!" is flying above my head in 2023 - it sounds more like an incident that's escaped from a Frank Spencer themed record than anything else). It's a character outline sketch set to a slight melody, and while the beats and keyboard sounds on this are pretty urban for a novelty effort, there's nothing here to set either radio playlists or club dancefloors alight. 

Len Marten - Champion Red Rum/ Little Soldier

 

Future Coronation Street actor delivers triumphant song-poem about a lovely horse

Label: Jet

Year of Release: 1975

As I already mentioned on our last blog entry about Red Rum, there have been quite a number of songs dedicated to his equine greatness. If the idea of people entering recording studios to sing songs about horses seems odd from a twenty-first century perspective, it's worth noting that Mr Rum was a beacon of cheer during the bleakness of the mid-seventies. Winning endless races and returning money on housewife's bets (and indeed those of vicars, plumbers, retired people and anyone willing to take a punt) he was afforded a celebrity status usually bestowed on top footballers or athletes. The fact he was a horse, and therefore incapable of saying or doing anything daft in interviews, probably helped keep him popular.

Len Marten, on the other hand, was a long-time jobbing actor who had served in the theatre and on the TV series "The Charlie Chester Show". He also dabbled in DJ'ing, songwriting, and television production. The media renaissance man also somehow managed to put this single out as one of the earliest releases on Don Arden's Jet Records label. 

Don Arden was a notoriously unsentimental chap known for dangling business rivals out of high windows, but he certainly knew the marketplace. He could doubtless smell the money in a quick release celebrating Red Rum, but - like so many others who gambled on the equine in music form - he couldn't have been more wrong. "Champion Red Rum" sold terribly, but while it's an absurd use of vinyl, it's not a truly awful affair. Len narrates dreamily about the horse's "guts and heart" while his backing band jangle away in the background, and the chorus turns the ditty into a groovy pub swingalong (I'd be interested to know whether any of the backing group are Wizzard - those horns and the Don Arden connection suggest it's a possibility).

Reupload - Izzy Royal - Coronation Street/ Dub

 

Proof, if proof were needed, that there's been a reggae cover version of everything...

Label: WEA
Year of Release: 1985

I don't know why so many reggae artists have a penchant for covering well-known but unlikely songs, but the habit runs deep. Beatles fans will be aware of the Trojan box-set of reggae Fabs covers, and readers of this blog will doubtless remember such gems as "Rupert The Bear" and "Space Oddity".

To say I was surprised by the existence of this 45 would be an understatement, however. The soap opera "Coronation Street" is familiar to just about anyone with a British birth certificate, but its bluesy, world-weary instrumental theme - perfect for singing "Oh Coronation Street" along to over and over again if you're that way inclined - wouldn't seem to translate well to any other genre at all.

This single proves that a lilting reggae beat was just waiting to be dropped on to the song after all, as the whole thing hangs together astonishingly well. The cheeky dub version on the flipside even manages to give it a thunderous, clattering, stoned atmosphere.

Paul Henry - Benny's Theme

 

Paul Henry, aka Benny off Crossroads, treats us to a vinyl monologue

Label: Pye

Year of Release: 1977

If a North American wanted me to give them an unequivocal example of the cultural differences between our societies, I've sometimes wondered if some video clips of Benny from the soap opera "Crossroads" would do the job. While I've no doubt that Americans have had close equivalents to Benny in both TV and film, it's rare for the innocent idiot of any soap to capture the American public's imagination to such a degree.

And capture our hearts Benny did. True, the character weaved his way into the popular lexicon in ways which weren't always positive - being called a "Benny" at school was far from a compliment, for example - but there was also a sense that he was held close to the pinnies of most of Crossroad's mature female audience, his harmless boyishness resulting in huge public affection. 

Paul Henry, who took on the role, obviously spent a lot of time considering how the character should be played, but his guiding principle remained straightforward. Benny, he once claimed, was someone so breathtakingly stupid that if somebody walked into a room claiming that it was "raining cats and dogs outside", he would assume that canines and felines were literally being dropped from the sky. Ignorant of metaphors, similes, irony, duality of meaning or even a life beyond that of being a simple handyman, he was an innocent abroad with woolly hair, puppy eyes, a bobble hat and some simple needs and dreams.

This being soapland, Benny had his fair share of disappointments and tears, of course, and this record gave him a chance to air his doubts and miseries simply and sweetly while Simon May weaved a tear-jerking orchestral tapestry behind. Inexplicably, the track wipes the syrup off the table halfway through and suddenly develops a more optimistic discofied edge, before jerking straight back into keening strings and misery again without explaining why. Henry does his best with the material available, sounding like nothing so much as a distressed abandoned Labradoodle if it could talk. 

It is, of course, remarkably bad. I try to see the good in just about any record I upload, but there's no disguising the fact that this record was just a horrible misconceived idea - but one that's so out-of-whack with any other novelty pop hits or trends that it's miraculous it found its way out. It even sold in reasonable enough quantities to slip into the Top 40 at number 39, such was Benny's ubiquity at the time. 

Reupload - The Bingo Boys - Bobbie Bingo/Love Is Blind

 

Novelty number of the bingo appreciating kind

Label: Oriole

Year of Release: 1961

Bingo appears to be a declining business in Britain, with bingo halls no longer featuring in every town centre in Britain. Eighteen years ago, after my wife and I got hitched, we moved into a newly built block of flats next door to a derelict bingo hall in East London. Its interior was no longer filled with the sound of numbers being announced and frantic scribbling. It was, however, possible to hear the odd coo of a roosting pigeon and the occasional shout of "What are YOU lookin' at?!" from the building's resident homeless person as he wandered outside (nobody could ever accuse him of begging, he seemed to spend his life trying to get people as far away from him as possible with threats of violence if necessary). 

Fortunately readers, I've moved on in life, though the bingo hall in question still remains derelict, unloved and unused. Back in 1961, though, it would have been filled with the buzz of activity and this little 45 might have been a good theme for it. "Bobbie Bingo" is a number so chirpy and cheeky you can almost imagine the performers winking as they sang it. With a melody not a million miles away from "Me Old Mate Ghandi" off "Alas Smith and Jones", it's certainly very much of its time, with one eye on music hall ditties of yore and the other on the "freak novelty hit" prize.

Sadly, it wasn't to be and the tiny number of copies of this which have turned up for sale in recent years would indicate it sold very poorly. Like a lot of Oriole product, though, it's fascinatingly low budget and English - while they were often squeezed out of the marketplace by the larger labels, their cheap and cheerful attempts to get inside the hit parade often feel as if they say more about that era in Britain than EMI's fussy, precise productions (for example).

Reupload - Carnegy Hall - The Bells of San Francisco/ Slightly Cracked

 

A psychedelic Christmas single? Oh, go on then

Label: Polydor

Year of Release: 1967

Let's face it, it's doubtful anyone's surprised by the fact that a psychedelic Christmas single was released at the tail end of 1967 - what's truly surprising is that the market wasn't flooded with kaleidoscopic Christmas elves and festive carols with groovy phasing. (Though at the very least Syd Barrett said that "Apples and Oranges" had a 'touch of Christmas' about it, I suppose).

Sadly, anyone expecting anything authentic here is going to be sorely disappointed. It's a rather flippant novelty cash-in, and while it starts promisingly with its bells and an ominous whirring sound, it quickly descends into child-like whimsy. While we're informed that Father Christmas is on his "psychedelic way", the track itself is more akin to Scott MacKenzie on a tight budget than Soft Machine. "Ting-a-ling-a-ling, ting-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling, a very hippy Christmas Day" the track continues, making you wonder if this was one of the key markers towards the "hippy wigs in Woolworths" moment in society. 

The songwriter Geoff Stephens seems to be the driving force behind the track, who by this point had already chalked up an impressive tally of enormous hits for Manfred Mann ("Semi Detached Suburban Mister James"), Dave Berry ("The Crying Game"), The New Vaudeville Band ("Winchester Cathedral"), and The Applejacks ("Tell Me When"). He would later go on to write "There's A Kind of Hush", "Sorry Suzanne", "Silver Lady" and "Lights of Cincinnati" among others, so the fact this record flopped probably hasn't featured in his nightmares much over the last fifty years. 

Bob Rogers & Playground - Take Advantage/ Get Yourself Together

 

Respect to all milkmen and women everywhere

Label: Express
Year of "release": 1971

Hello readers. Do you remember drinking water out of hosepipes? Do you remember when binmen WERE binmen and bikes WERE bikes? Do you remember eating out of tins of Spam during power cuts and feeling grateful, and your Dad giving you a slap if you refused to suck the jelly on the top of the can up with a straw for his own grotesque amusement? DO YOU? And did it do you any harm? And do you remember the milkmen? Hold up, though...

Door to door milk deliveries may feel like they belong among Internet memes celebrating somewhat forgotten ways of life, but are very much still "a thing". My milk, for example, is delivered by electric float from Parker Dairies of Woodford Green who service the suburban East London area (they haven't paid me to say they're very reliable, but I will say it anyway - when I move house they'll lose my custom and somebody else should rebalance things by stepping into the fray). When I first started utilising their services during the lockdown of 2020, however, my next-door neighbour - who wasn't born in this country - was outraged, responding furiously: "Why are they just leaving drinks on your doorstep? They could get stolen. RING THEM AND TELL THEM TO DO THEIR JOBS PROPERLY! They should knock on your door and give it to you!" I tried to explain to her that milkmen knocking on my door at five in the morning wouldn't be welcome, but she walked off shaking her head at the drivel I was apparently spouting. Such is the lowly profile of the milk roundsperson in 2022. 

Back in 1971, however, business was booming and Express Dairies saw fit to hire seasoned performer Bob Rogers and plonk him in the studio to record a promotional flexidisc extolling the virtues of cow udder juice. Bob was by this point a popular cabaret performer with holiday camp residencies to his name, playing covers of the pop hits of the day, but had previously been a member of the instrumental beat combo The Ted Taylor Four who were with the Oriole label for five singles between 1958-1961 ("Fried Onions" is an interesting one).

For "Take Advantage", however, he croons away about the special deals your local milko could offer you, making it clear - as Benny Hill also did in adverts of the day - that you could also obtain other non-dairy products from him, including chicken, bread, potatoes and eggs ("take advantage, save your legs!") in all weathers. From a 21st Century perspective, this feels like an early example of direct food delivery which in its digitised form is the mainstay of all supermarkets who are serious about modernising their services. In truth, Unigate and Express and all their other milk round rivals and cohorts were offering such services halfway through the twentieth century. It's enough to make you weep with pride.

Hugh Lloyd and Bill Pertwee - Uncles/ Friends and Neighbours

Legendary British actors josh musically about their familial responsibilities

Label: Spark
Year of Release: 1971

Novelty singles involving children were something of a phenomenon throughout the seventies and eighties in the UK, and most of them were pretty damn grim. "There's No-one Quite Like Grandma" is traditionally near the top of the tree when people are asked to vote on the worst singles of all time, along with "Grandad", "The Sparrow", "It's Orrible Being In Love When You're Eight and an Half" and the festering sludge of kiddie-flops that lay beneath the hard outer crust of that particular cowpat.

And while we're on the topic of flops... this is one such. It's a recording by the British actors Hugh Lloyd and Bill Pertwee backed by their "nephews and nieces" (except in reality, of course it wasn't - these were all handpicked children getting their first taste of showbiz). While it's had a kicking online over the years, nobody has actually been kind enough to upload it so we can all hear what it sounds like.  Seems like a job for me, doesn't it?

Surprisingly though, it turns out to be gentle, humorous fare which won't gain many repeat listens from anyone, but will raise a few smiles along the way. Lloyd and Pertwee play the roles of clueless bachelor duffers to perfection, coming across like carefree tweedy men for whom a walk in the park with their extended family is a kind of exhausting bliss. It's easy to picture them fishing sweets out of their pockets with a friendly nod while laughing gently at the chaos around them, proper gents of the Werther's Original persuasion. 

While I would certainly have a more irritable view of this single if it had been a hit and I'd had to hear it fifty times, in truth there was never much danger of that. Unlike Mums, Dads, loveable grandparents and even affectionate Aunties, Uncles have seldom enjoyed a lot of public recognition. Peter and Gordon's slightly Mulligan and O'Hare-esque track "Uncle Hartington" probably more effectively sums up the popular view of an eccentric middle aged man who tends to add little to his nephew's lives and clutters up the place when he visits. Maybe we all need to hire a PR company to improve our lot.

Willy Flascher and the Raincoats - (Everybody Wants To Be A) Streaker/ Run Rabbit

 

In the past, our privates were all famous for fifteen minutes

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1974

At some point in the early eighties, I was sat in the living room while my Dad watched the cricket. I cared not for the test match, but my attention was briefly caught by a man running stark bollock naked across the pitch while my parents sighed. "Another attention seeker's disrupted a game," my Dad muttered, while the rest of the family gazed up for a split second before going back to our own interests. A streaker again. BORING. By the eighties, streaking felt like the realm of sad arses desperate to be noticed, drunken rugger buggers and sex pests, and it's probably not much of a coincidence that the phenomenon didn't really grab headlines much throughout that decade.

In the seventies, though,  something about streaking was deemed sufficiently cheeky and carefree - and not dodgy at all - and captured the media and the public's imagination. Ray Stevens "The Streak" got to number one in 1974 on the back of all the anarchic public nudity, and no doubt the mysterious Willy Flascher here (no points for the choice of name) fancied a slice of the tittybum pie profits.

If Ray Stevens' record was all whoopsy-daisy larks and laughs, like a cornball Benny Hill number retranslated to smalltown America, this one is more of a bar-room novelty ditty with woodworm infested piano and oompah rhythms - somewhere between Gilbert O'Sullivan and Lieutenant Pigeon without quite capturing the wit or eccentricity of either. "You can have a lot of fun when you're flashing your bum" they sing as if they know from experience.

The B-side is more interesting, having an almost glam grooviness to it which is utterly unexpected given the unvarnished spit and sawdust scruffiness of the plug side. It sticks rigidly to its groove without changing tack much, but is brief enough to not wear out its welcome. 

U.K. Joe - Smoke Gets In Your Eyes/ Deadwood Central

Short, snappy northern singalong-an-Esso-advert

Label: Bell

Year of Release: 1972

The Platters version of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" was one of my Dad's favourite singles, frequently spun and gently sung along to, although in retrospect I do wonder how much he just enjoyed the OTT melodrama of it. There was always the faint trace of a smile around his face as he listened to the record as if he loved the way they were milking the whole 'big boys don't cry' situation. "Tears?" The Platters seem to be saying. "No my friend, these aren't tears, it's just this club is so damn smoky. We should go somewhere different in future". "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" pushes the scenario to such an extent that it could almost become a comedy sketch about men in denial. 

There's a long history of songs for men who are incapable of being honest about their emotions, from "Smoke" to "I'm Not In Love" to "Words" by FR David and God knows what else in between. All tend to slather the emotional repression with thick, treacly arrangements which almost over-emote, and it's long been a source of fascination to me the way these tracks demonstrate the expressive limitations of the average man by pushing the melodrama to the max. "This is my outlet, and I'll scream within the walls of it if it stops me going completely mad", seemed to be the message of the singers.

"Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" ended up getting a second, somewhat trivial wind in the early seventies, though, when it became used in adverts for Esso Blue paraffin, led by a mysterious everyman character called Joe. "They asked me how I knew/ It was Esso Blue/ I of course replied/ with lesser grades one buys/ smoke gets in your eyes" ran the tune afresh, and the subject subsequently moved itself on to more blokeish practical matters which everyone probably felt more comfortable with. 

This led to the release of two new versions of the track, one reggae take by Blue Haze which managed to peek into the Top 40 briefly in 1972, and... this. An utterly baffling take very similar to one which appears on the end of an Esso flexidisc. In it, a northern character called UK Joe appears to be leading a bar or club filled with people in a sing-a-long lasting just over a minute-and-a-half. The crowd sing competently after his shouted cues and the band behind him blast out their best forties Vera Lynn arrangements, but it's hard to understand how anybody would have needed to own it. It's a burst of music, a jingle, a brief idea to raise a slight smile and little more. It's a truly unimaginable A-side, but here we are, discussing it as such. 

Jonny Rubbish - Living In NW3 4JR/ The Other Side

If one Johnny Rotten sometimes exaggerates and lies, but the parody of Johnny Rotten always tells the truth, which one is actually right wing?

Label: United Artists
Year of Release: 1978

Novelty takes on punk rock were all the rage within minutes of the scene becoming mainstream news. Given that one of the primary objectives of punk was that anyone could do it, the doorway was left wide open for amateur aspiring comedians and social commentators to feel they could parody it too - it doesn't take a stand-up comedian more than a day to learn how to play a few chords badly, after all, making the movement easy pickings for quick and cheap laughs.

Enter Jonny Rubbish stage left, or Jon Gatward as his family knew him. He was a "punk comic" who supported The Stranglers on tour, being canned and spat off stage while he stood around in a dustbin mocking the careers of John Lydon, Paul McCartney and The Bee Gees with slightly heavy-handed parodies of their styles.

Only two singles of his seem to have hit the record shops, this one - by far the superior effort in my opinion - and a festive parody of The Bee Gees called "Santa's Alive" which is so awful I'm surprised The Stranglers didn't garrotte him for it. Both 45s are blunt takes on dominant trends and topical issues, with some lines which veer close to student revue stylings and others which are unexpectedly funny. NW3 4JR refers to the area of Belsize Park Gardens in South Hampstead, an area much sought after by the cream of North London society, and the track opens with Rubbish sneering "I am a Capita-LIST!" It's completely impossible to ascertain whether he's talking about himself as a defined comedy character or mocking the idea that John Lydon was ever a bog-standard prole with the kids' best interests at heart, but the track continues with all the savagely conservative, aspirational gusto of a man who sincerely wishes to attain the status of Hampstead.

The production is incredibly on-the-money though, sounding gritty, distorted, grainy and strangely thrilling, reminding us that underneath the alleged Great Rock and Roll Swindle lay some bloody astounding material which would have sounded exciting in just about anybody's amateur hands, even a comedy man in a trashcan.

The B-side, on the other hand, is largely some very dodgy spoken-word nonsense about Rabbis going on strike which might have halfway worked in Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's hands, but here just sounds badly thought through at best.

Trevillion & Nine (with Deuce) - Anyone For Tennis

Novelty disc satirising Cliff Richard and Sue Barker's "relationship"

Label: Service

Year of Release: 1982

If there's one thing I love about novelty records, it's how timelocked so many of them are - so often dependant on the hot trends, catchphrases, follies or events of the few weeks or months around their release date that viewing them from five, ten or fifteen years distance can feel absurd, never mind forty.

 You could be forgiven for forgetting about the 1982 tabloid furore around Cliff Richard and Sue Barker's romantic relationship. Pictures of them playing tennis together - and never doing very much else, seemingly - littered the gossip pages and even the news stories for a season or two, with lots of desperate "are they or aren't they shagging?" speculation as the thinly disguised subtext, similar to the press stories about the pandas in London Zoo. As I remember it (and I really should thoroughly research this, but you'll hopefully forgive me for not wanting to waste too much of my life away) Cliff Richard denied all the speculations, arguing that Barker was just helping him develop his tennis skills. Hmm. It didn't sound plausible to some, but let's face it, it was almost certainly true and the pair seem strangely distant and barely mention each other these days, akin to the kind of relationship commonly enjoyed between sports trainer and their ex-client rather than two lovers.

That clearly didn't stop the media and public from peeking behind the hedgerows and into the tennis courts, though, and this single taps into that strange fascination by imagining what the tennis might be a metaphor for. All the puffing, panting and groaning from the balls being hit perhaps being a substitute for something else? 

These people had obviously put more thought into all this than I ever bothered to, and it's a very strange record indeed, taking whistled snippets of "Summer Holiday" at the start (without a songwriting credit, I notice) before leaning into what actually sounds like a very strange radio comedy sketch on 45. It was released on its own label, didn't sell in quantities which could even be described as miniscule, and made virtually zero impression on the public. Such is the fate of the novelty record that misfires and mistakes casual nosy interest for public obsession.

Penny Lane - Unemployment/ [Same Both Sides]

Stupendously strange and quirky novelty disc about rural US poverty

Label: Ford
Year of Release: 1971

The thing about crate-digging is that you occasionally turn up an obscurity which has no real monetary value and also (arguably) a less than modest amount of artistic merit, but its existence becomes an unsolvable puzzle. Why was it released (or never properly released)? Is there a joke here you're missing? Why has the artist and everyone involved with the record disappeared into a unGoogleable black hole? And is it really your job to unknot all these complexities in the first place?

This record is a classic example of this syndrome. "Unemployment" was seemingly only ever put out as a double-sided promo copy then never given an official release. It's a rather grating novelty record sang in a southern twang by a slightly unhinged sounding woman which is backed by puffing flutes, bar-room piano riffs and drumbeats which are just slightly on the wrong side of funky. It appears to be a surreal lyrical exploration of rural poverty, filled with dead dogs, drowning horses and venomous snakes, but it lacks enough of a comedy hook to be a successful novelty record and is far too deliberately disjointed to pass as a serious one.

My best guess is that Penny Lane was a comedy character at the time - and I would guess had nothing to do with the groupie Pennie Lane from around the same period - and this was an attempt at spinning their jokes into a successful 45. It's common enough for novelty comedy records to be utterly baffling when shorn of their cultural context, and this one has spun my head several times around while I've tried to make sense of it.

Palace Court Brigade - Whistlin' In The Sunshine/ Girls Grow Up

 

Sixties whistlemania continues - or doesn't

Label: CBS

Year of Release: 1969

"Whistling" Jack Smith - an anonymous session whistler whose moniker, to my mind, always made him sound like some dodgy bloke who sold knock-off car parts in the local pub - was a brief sensation in 1967 when his single "I Was Kaiser's Bill's Batman" stormed the charts. He's continued to be a viral Internet sensation since where videos of him (or at least "his" stand-in Billy Moeller) prancing and flouncing around have proven to be the UK's equivalent of Russia's Trololo.

Such commercial success created by mere whistling tunes obviously led some other studio musicians to try their hand at the format, but none broke through in the same manner. Artists such as Roger Whittiker had obviously worked whistling into their acts already, but seldom (if ever) did anyone whistle their way through entire tunes without putting their vocal chords into action before Smith surprised us all.

This single is another such attempt at scoring a hit solely through a merry whistlin' tune, and... well, it's hard to say much about it apart from it's everything you'd expect. Horns parp, backing vocals "aah" contentedly, and there's lots of lips pursing and blowing. It's one to skip merrily through Sping's fields to, but in all honestly, it's not a great lost novelty track - just something that CBS obviously wanted to take a punt on being a possible hit and emerged short-changed from.

Reupload - The Magnificent Seven - Reggae Bagpipes/ Roll Out The Barrel

 

If you like a bit of reggae with your bagpipes, join our blog

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1972

Pop and rock, of course, have continually evolved as they've adopted and mixed and meshed various apparently conflicting styles. If during the sixties British groups hadn't had one eye on music hall ditties and the other on rhythm and blues, so much interesting material might never have been written and released.

But a combination of reggae and the sound of the bagpipes? Really? Never has the Simpsons slogan "Nuts and Gum, together at last!" felt more applicable. It's not as if "Reggae Bagpipes" is a mess, which is to the credit of everyone involved. While it doesn't have a particularly authentic production or arrangement going on, it would be just about credible enough to pass were it not for those droning great pipes playing "Scotland the Brave" throughout. 

Reupload - Prince The Wonder Dog - Sausages (Wheels)/ We've Got A Dog

 

A novelty single by an actual real-life talking dog! - Well, kind of...

Label: Columbia

Year of Release: 1979

The TV programme "That's Life" washed endless pieces of absurd popular culture flotsam ashore in the seventies and eighties, but few have lived on in the public imagination as much as Prince the talking dog. Owned by the mild-mannered Paul Allen, a man who looked like a member of a twee indie band before such things really existed, the canine apparently had an impressive human vocabulary and was especially obsessed with the word "sausages". 

In reality, of course, all of the dog's words were formed by Paul Allen manipulating its jaw while it growled. He confessed to "That's Life" that his long-term ambition was to teach the dog to say the words by itself, but inevitably this plan never really came to fruition. This is deeply unsurprising as scientists also haven't managed to get dogs to talk of their own accord either - if nothing else, Allen was a man with lofty ambitions. You can see a full clip of his "That's Life" appearance here.

Prince ended up becoming a huge hit with viewers, to the extent that a single was almost inevitable. Amazingly, BBC Records and Tapes passed on the possibility and EMI took the dog on instead, resulting in this peculiar single. The A-side is a two-and-a-half minute musical skit on the dog's experiences in a recording studio dealing with a "music industry mogul" (inevitably, one of Esther's comedy stooges putting on a Hollywood voice). It should be abysmal, and there may be readers out there who will argue it is - it was certainly featured on the "World's Worst Records" blog several years ago - but I find it unnaturally funny. Something about Allen's gentle, understated manner, the use of the song "Wheels Cha Cha Cha" (always a good comedy stand-by) and the dog's ludicrous vocalisations make it far more amusing than it has any right to be. It's unashamedly cheap sounding and unbelievably silly, but if Danny Baker had discovered Prince The Wonder Dog rather than Esther Rantzen, a lot more of my readers would probably be appreciative of his existence. 

K Creation - Chariots of Fire/ Charmers Mood

 

Crude reggae veteran Charmers tackles Vangelis

Label: KR

Year of Release: 1982

On many occasions I've posited the theory that if a song is popular enough - whether as a hit single, part of a soundtrack or even a television theme - there's probably a reggae cover version of it somewhere out there. The list of examples is absurd and endless, from television soap themes (such as Coronation Street and Neighbours) to Elvis Costello tracks. The genre has a flexibility it's seldom given credit for and can absorb anything in its path, transforming any unlikely idea into a lush Jamaican soundscape. 

In this respect, Vangelis's theme to "Chariots of Fire" is perhaps not as ridiculous an example as it sounds. The track already dripped with honeyed sophistry so it's not as if any DJ or reggae artist stepping into its orbit really needed to do much beyond add some sweet skanking; and that's exactly what happens here. This isn't a radical reworking, just a reggae rhythm screwed on to the theme, with some lilting female vocalists (needlessly, in my opinion) singing the title being the only truly surprising addition.

What is alarming is the name of the artist behind the idea, the veteran (and oftentimes Lee "Scratch" Perry collaborator) Lloyd Charmers whose other reggae classics have included graphic titles such as "Yum Yum Pussy", "Bang Bang Lulu", "Red Bum  Ball", and plenty more besides. His output was mountainous, though, and included many numbers which didn't have adult themes, so it would be wrong to suggest that this record is exactly like Judge Dredd taking on Jean Michel Jarre - it's just slightly like that.