George Chandler - The Best Dreams/ Dream On

Salman Rushdie's disco dreams for midnight's groovy children

Label: Burnley Building Society

Year of Release: 197?

Whenever the Nationwide Building Society broadcast a new television advert featuring a poet, my social media feeds fill with howls of protest. Among the usual complaints that the poem accompanying an advert for a financial institution isn't exactly "The Wasteland", there's a tendency for howls of "Sell out!" to be heard from other writers too. 

I feel somewhat ambivalent about all this. Making a living as a writer is absurdly tough and not everyone has the means to plough through the hardest times without taking up distracting full-time day-jobs. If an advertising agency drops by your door with a quick and lucrative offer - as agencies did in the past with John Cooper Clarke, who for awhile was the Honey Monster's companion in the Sugar Puff adverts - it's going to be very difficult to say no if the cash buys you a year off working in the council post room. 

"No! They're off the artistic roll-call!" scream the Bill "orange drink" Hicks fans on Twitter, forgetting that Hicks did actually add the disclaimer "but if you're a starving artist [and do an advert] I'll look the other way". 

"But how can they expect to be taken seriously ever again?" yell the writers, and I'd argue that's entirely their own business to resolve... and anyway, the roll call of writers who have been down this road before and "got away with it" is immense, so it's probably nothing to worry about. 

The highly critically acclaimed and wardrobe-hiding author Salman Rushdie, for example, previously held a successful career at the advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather, where he penned several successful campaigns and slogans including "Naughty But Nice" for Fresh Cream Cakes, and "That'll Do Nicely" for American Express. This is interesting from an advertising historian's perspective, but it's this little 45rpm wonder, seldom referenced on Rushdie's CV, which is most relevant to "Left and to the Back".

Back in the late seventies, the now-defunct Burnley Building Society took the generous step of giving away a free Disco single about the brilliance of their organisation to new clients, a move which must have had many customers saying "Oh, you shouldn't have!" The single itself is a perfectly acceptable, inoffensive piece of work with accomplished production and musicianship behind it, but the lyrics over-egg the ecstasy of opening an account with the Burnley. "Dreamin' 'bout a country garden/ dreamin' 'bout feeling free/ skies of blue can come true for you/ 'cause the best dreams begin with B!" penned Salman Rushdie all those years ago, in a move which is doubtless now causing numerous Nationwide poets to collapse with laughter. 

Reupload - Paul Curtis - Video 2000

 

Futuristic synth blast aiming to promote flop video recording unit

Label: Philips

Year of Release: 1979, at a guess?

"Video 2000! What were all that about then, eh?" are words which Peter Kay has almost certainly never, ever started any stand-up routine with. In the video recorder revolution, Video 2000 was the Oric Atmos to VHS's ZX Spectrum and Betamax's Commodore 64, or perhaps the Liberal Democrats to VHS's Tory and Betamax's Labour, or... oh, I don't know, why don't you think of some rubbish and poorly fitting analogies for yourselves?

The simple fact is that I have never, ever met in my life anyone who owned a Video 2000 machine. I knew of their existence, but everyone owned either VHS or Beta machines, and rued the day they chose Beta when that format eventually bit the dust (my family, to their eternal regret, were relatively late Betamax adopters). Video 2000 machines may as well have been ghostly myths in my neck of the woods in Essex - I don't think I even saw a player for sale in the local Dixons or Currys. Apparently they were superior to the VHS and Betamax formats in almost all ways, from sound to picture quality to tape durability, but this cut little ice with the buying public, and the format was junked in 1986 to precious few tears.

Still, this synthetic promotional single from the late seventies gives you some idea of the kind of excitement Philips wanted to generate around Video 2000. The sleeve appears to show the player arriving in a blur from outer space, like some kind of alien tech us privileged humanoids had managed to acquire from the ashes of Roswell. The single backs this image up with dramatic whooshing noises, hyperactive slapped basslines, and the kind of synthesiser melody favoured by the Channel 4 Testcard in 1982 and the opening credits of short-lived science fiction series (probably with the face of each actor freeze-framed as their name appears on screen). But above all else, it sounded like the FUTURE. Or at least, it did at that time.

Reupload - David Essex and Jeff Wayne (aka The Us) - You're OK With Us/ Tomorrow

Label: Sound Department
Year of Release: 1970

In some respects, I suspect that life was easier for the non-hit singer or songwriter in the sixties and seventies.  Not only were there more venues out there to play and a greater demand for live music, there was also the sheer range of work available for anyone plucky enough to step forward and offer their services.  Budget albums and EPs consisting of cover versions of the hits of the day would often find themselves home to quickie Elton John and David Bowie vocals, for example.

The world of Hallmark Records aside, adverts back then seemed to be filled to the brim with original music, meaning better cash was available if you were happy to go into a studio and sing about the benefits of a regular bowl of cornflakes or the delightful smell which can be dispersed via the latest household cleaning product.  The vast majority of artists who contributed to the music industry in this dubious way have since sunk without trace, doomed to only be remembered through strange earworms heard by bored shoppers in modern supermarket aisles (after all, which one of us can't walk past "Shake n Vac" without hearing the sodding tune in our heads?)  As always, though, there are exceptions, and here's a star-studded one.

Back in the sixties and seventies, a deodorant called "Us" was produced, which came in a terrifyingly bulky and ugly white can, making it look like a WD40 dispenser or a paint spray by modern standards.  The accompanying advert for the product consisted of a band (some of whom look like future "Top Gear" presenters, though they're not) playing in a sweaty nightclub with confidence.  Presumably the average viewer could witness these cool kids smiling on stage and would equate the wearing of the bathroom product with super-fun times.

"You're OK With Us" was the tune the band "played", but the special promotional single the manufacturers Johnson Wax released sounds somewhat different - and that's because this version has star-in-waiting David Essex contributing vocals.  Arranging the instruments and on songwriting duties is Jeff Wayne, future "War of the Worlds" man who at this point in his career was dashing off ditties for hundreds of adverts and apparently making a fine living from doing so.  Despite its dubious origins, the track is actually likable enough to pass, and whilst numerous ebay sellers have been trying to pass it off as a "garage rock" or "psychedelic" single ever since, it's really much more of its time than that.  Despite the rather distorted guitars, it's typical of the kind of tune that emerged at the cusp of the seventies as the more commercial end of radio pop gradually slid into the messiness of glam.  I wouldn't bother playing it myself at either a glam or sixties night - unless somebody persistently requested the track, that is, which seems unlikely - but it's definitely a fascinating curio, and an insight into the workings of two people who would later go on to have a huge influence on music in the seventies.

The flip "Tomorrow" stems from a bath salts advert, of all things, and sees Essex and Wayne managing to pre-empt John Lennon's "Imagine" by a few years.  It's another of those mournful songs which expresses nostalgia for a late sixties ideology which by that point had barely passed - "But what about the songs we used to sing/ of Brotherhood and love?" demands Essex forcefully. "Remember when we sang that we shall overcome?" Steady on, sir, there's no room for politics whilst one is enjoying a relaxing bath.  Did you not read your briefing papers on the way into this session?  Whatever the appropriateness of the tune, it joins Elton John and Roger Hodgson's early non-hit "Imagine" and Denis Couldry's "Tea and Toast Mr Watson" as being a nostalgic, hippy-sympathising track somewhat peculiarly recorded either during the summer of love or shortly after it.

You won't need me to tell you that David Essex became a massive star with a string of hits in the UK a mere few years after this work, and would be reunited with Jeff Wayne on "The War of the Worlds" project in both an acting and singing capacity (during which he seemed to suggest that he would be a President in some underground sewer community - which is inappropriate talk for a man who had previously promoted deodorant).  To think that it may have been due to this advert work that the pair met - platinum history created by underarm scent receptacles.

Sorry for the pops and clicks on the B-side.  This promotional single was pressed very quietly (apart from the announcer's thunderous but unenthusiastic declaration at the start, which sounds more like a terrible YouTube "mock") and it was very difficult to wipe out the surface noise without also removing some of the more subtle parts of the record.

Paul Curtis - On The Move (Video 2000)

Label: Philips

Year of Release: 1979, at a guess?

"Video 2000! What were all that about then, eh?" are words which Peter Kay has almost certainly never, ever started any stand-up routine with. In the video recorder revolution, Video 2000 was the Oric Atmos to VHS's ZX Spectrum and Betamax's Commodore 64, or perhaps the Liberal Democrats to VHS's Tory and Betamax's Labour, or... oh, I don't know, why don't you think of some rubbish and poorly fitting analogies for yourselves?!

The simple fact is that I have never, ever met in my life anyone who owned a Video 2000 machine. I knew of their existence, but everyone owned either VHS or Beta machines, and rued the day they chose Beta when that format eventually bit the dust (my family, to their eternal regret, were relatively late Betamax adopters). Video 2000 machines may as well have been ghostly myths in my neck of the woods in Essex - I don't think I even saw a player for sale in the local Dixons or Currys. They were just something that didn't touch my world. Apparently they were superior to the VHS and Betamax formats in almost all ways, from sound to picture quality to tape durability, but this cut little ice with the buying public, and the format was junked in 1986 to precious few tears.

Still, this synthetic promotional single from the late seventies gives you some idea of the kind of excitement Philips wanted to generate around Video 2000. The sleeve appears to show the player arriving in a blur from outer space, like some kind of alien tech us privileged humanoids had managed to get our hands on. The single backs this image up with dramatic whooshing noises, hyperactive slapped basslines, and the kind of synthesiser melody favoured by the Channel 4 Testcard in 1982 and the opening credits of short-lived science fiction series (probably with the face of each actor freeze-framed as their name appears on screen). But above all else, it sounded like the FUTURE. Or at least, it did at that time.

"You can't beat the system, no no no!" sing some soulful ladies, before backing this up with an even more ecstatic line about the player's fantastic ability to record many more televisual hours than its boring VHS or Betamax rivals, and with a 16 day pre-record clock facility. Trouble is, Video 2000 couldn't beat the market system, no no, and indeed, no. For reasons of timing (it was launched after the other formats) and distribution, it just didn't capture the public's imagination, and it would have taken a lot more than a slightly funky promotional synth single to put that right.

Still, in a funny kind of way, I am glad this exists, just because everyone needs the space for one chirpy disco record about defunct recording technology in their lives.

Unknown Artist - Spread A Little Warmth With A Bush Nelson Fan Heater

Label: None
Year of Release: Unknown

Ah, the fan heater. We've all owned them, haven't we? We've all lived in cheap rented accommodation without central heating and by winter pulled the fan heater out of the cupboard, knowing damn well that doing so would send the pay-as-you-go electricity meter spiralling downwards faster than HMV's debts. We've all enjoyed that peculiar, prickly and deathly smell of burning dust going up our nostrils before hitting our throats, the intense heat on our legs, then feeling as if the house is still in the Arctic as soon as we walk as little as two metres away. We have.

What I would guess none of us have associated with fan heaters is cocktail/ dinner party swing music. Maybe if you'd never had the need to own a fan heater you would consider them some kind of decadent luxury, the last touch to a living room for a toff who requires their feet to be especially toasty, but otherwise… it doesn't compute. I associate fan heaters with bad indie records being played out of a cheap Saisho hi-fi unit, because that was my soundtrack in life when I last had to use one constantly. The Sinatra styled cool of this promotional record is baffling, but to be fair to its creators, most adverts-on-vinyl are. You can't blame Bush for trying to inject some sophistry into the proceedings, even if it only convinced about three people in the end.

The lyrics are naturally an ungifted comedian's paradise, leaving plenty of space for obvious potshots, so I'll avoid spoiling the surprises here. The performance, on the other hand, is slick and difficult to fault. It's unlikely we'll ever find out who the musicians behind this were, but they sound as if they probably cropped up on considerably worthier records in their time - this definitely isn't a terrible bar-room jazz ensemble who have been wheeled in to do the job cheaply.

As for me - because I know you're about to ask - I still have two fan heaters in my possession, and one actually is a Bush (the other is a Pifco, making me something of a fan heater brand whore). This is because I live in an old listed building in London without proper central heating and single glazed windows, because installing double-glazed ones would ruin the frontage. If ever a record was made specifically for my present living circumstances, it's this one. The target audience is clearly me and some of my broke "arty" neighbours.

The B-side is a slightly longer version of the A-side, by the way, the extended mix, if you will. I don't think they felt releasing this one on twelve inch was worth the budget.

David Essex and Jeff Wayne (aka The Us) - You're OK With Us/ Tomorrow

Label: Sound Department
Year of Release: 1970

In some respects, I suspect that life was easier for the non-hit singer or songwriter in the sixties and seventies.  Not only were there more venues out there to play and a greater demand for live music, there was also the sheer range of work available for anyone plucky enough to step forward and offer their services.  Budget albums and EPs consisting of cover versions of the hits of the day would often find themselves home to quickie Elton John and David Bowie vocals, for example.

The world of Hallmark Records aside, adverts back then seemed to be filled to the brim with original music, meaning better cash was available if you were happy to go into a studio and sing about the benefits of a regular bowl of cornflakes or the delightful smell which can be dispersed via the latest household cleaning product.  The vast majority of artists who contributed to the music industry in this dubious way have since sunk without trace, doomed to only be remembered through strange earworms heard by bored shoppers in modern supermarket aisles (after all, which one of us can't walk past "Shake n Vac" without hearing the sodding tune in our heads?)  As always, though, there are exceptions, and here's a star-studded one.  Back in the sixties and seventies, a deodorant called "Us" was produced, which came in a terrifyingly bulky and ugly white can, making it look like a WD40 dispenser or a paint spray by modern standards.  The accompanying advert for the product consisted of a band (some of whom look like future "Top Gear" presenters, though they're not) playing in a sweaty nightclub with confidence.  Presumably the average viewer could witness these cool kids smiling on stage and would equate the wearing of the bathroom product with super-fun times.

"You're OK With Us" was the tune the band "played", but the special promotional single the manufacturers Johnson Wax released sounds somewhat different - and that's because this version has star-in-waiting David Essex contributing vocals.  Arranging the instruments and on songwriting duties is Jeff Wayne, future "War of the Worlds" man who at this point in his career was dashing off ditties for hundreds of adverts and apparently making a fine living from doing so.  Despite its dubious origins, the track is actually likable enough to pass, and whilst numerous ebay sellers have been trying to pass it off as a "garage rock" or "psychedelic" single ever since, it's really much more of its time than that.  Despite the rather distorted guitars, it's typical of the kind of tune that emerged at the cusp of the seventies as the more commercial end of radio pop gradually slid into the messiness of glam.  I wouldn't bother playing it myself at either a glam or sixties night - unless somebody persistently requested the track, that is, which seems unlikely - but it's definitely a fascinating curio, and an insight into the workings of two people who would later go on to have a huge influence on music in the seventies.

The flip "Tomorrow" stems from a bath salts advert, of all things, and sees Essex and Wayne managing to pre-empt John Lennon's "Imagine" by a few years.  It's another of those mournful songs which expresses nostalgia for a late sixties ideology which by that point had barely passed - "But what about the songs we used to sing/ of Brotherhood and love?" demands Essex forcefully. "Remember when we sang that we shall overcome?" Steady on, sir, there's no room for politics whilst one is enjoying a relaxing bath.  Did you not read your briefing papers on the way into this session?  Whatever the appropriateness of the tune, it joins Elton John and Roger Hodgson's early non-hit "Imagine" and Denis Couldry's "Tea and Toast Mr Watson" as being a nostalgic, hippy-sympathising track somewhat peculiarly recorded either during the summer of love or shortly after it.

You won't need me to tell you that David Essex became a massive star with a string of hits in the UK a mere few years after this work, and would be reunited with Jeff Wayne on "The War of the Worlds" project in both an acting and singing capacity (during which he seemed to suggest that he would be a President in some underground sewer community - which is inappropriate talk for a man who had previously promoted deodorant).  To think that it may have been due to this advert work that the pair met - platinum history created by underarm scent receptacles.

Sorry for the pops and clicks on the B-side.  This promotional single was pressed very quietly (apart from the announcer's thunderous but unenthusiastic declaration at the start) and it was very difficult to wipe out the surface noise without also removing some of the more subtle parts of the record.

Second Hand Record Dip Part 59 - Tetley Take You Stargazing With Maurice Woodruff

Who: Maurice Woodruff and His Orchestra
What: Virgo Predictions for 1969 and Virgo Characteristics
Label: Tetley
When: 1969
Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street, London
Cost: 50p

Sometimes when you pick up one of these records - which some second hand stores have started filing under a special "Oddities" section purely for the benefit of saps like me - you doubt it will be as promising as it looks.  Most commercially sponsored singles are just junk, too slick to be laughable, and performed by people watching the clock in the studio, meaning they'll never be good pieces of work in their own right.  Somewhere in my box of seven inches I've got Noel Edmonds introducing a promotional record for Royal Mail greetings cards, which I've long thought about uploading - it's just that there's nothing particularly interesting about it.

This attempt at a commercially sponsored record, however, which I assume came free with x amount of packs of Tetley's tea, is so flawed it's brilliant.  For the uninitiated, Maurice Woodruff was a well-known "psychic" in the sixties, having famous clients who included Peter Sellers, who made many of his career decisions through the man.  On this record, Woodruff sounds less like a trustworthy mystic than an invented Sellers character - his voice is weedy and hesitant, and the net result sounds untrustworthy and ridiculous even if you believe in astrology.  Woodruff has the voice of a gentleman who sold housewives black market materials during World War II, and not at all like the sort of person whose palms I'd choose to cross with any silver.  The over-dramatic orchestral music which greets Maurice is so blaring and pompous it also makes his eventual entrance seem even more ridiculous - like a malnourished, rapidly blinking man emerging from behind the Wizard of Oz's curtains.

As for whether his predictions are accurate, we'd need a Virgo who was around in 1969 to come forward and verify that.  Any volunteers?

Second Hand Record Dip Part 31 - Double Diamond Continental Promotion

Who: Various session musos
What: Double Diamond European promotional single
Label: Double Diamond
When: unknown
Where: Music and Video Exchange, Camden High Street
Cost: 50p

There are numerous moments in my life where I've wondered if I've been in the wrong career. As things stand at present, if I have a half-arsed idea on a Wednesday morning like, for example, deciding to hold a flash mob to salute the shrine of Tony Hancock which sits all forlorn in a pub in Soho, it generally doesn't get executed for the pure and simple reason that it's a half-arsed idea. If I worked in advertising or marketing, however, not only would my whim be allowed free reign, I'd also be given a budget to see it through, and paid too. Imagine that.

Equally, I'm sure there have been rather damp midweek days when all of us have dreamed about creating jukebox singles in tribute to crap mass-produced English ales to give as gifts to continental bar landlords, but have never been given the means to see this through. Luckily for us, other people are out there living the dream for us, as you can observe from this perplexing item I picked up in a second hand store recently. The "Double Diamond" jukebox single appears to be going to great pains to describe the River Trent as glamorous to the Belgian market, and comes covered in quaint English rustic pub images, including a heart-bleedingly wonderful photo of a stained glass window of a cat enjoying a foaming pint of beer.

The music contained on the single is some Lieutenant Pigeon styled honky tonky piano instrumentals interspersed with pub "banter", which largely consists of chirpy exclamations of "A pint-a Double Diamond, please!" - a phrase I must confess I seldom heard in any pub I frequented in Britain, never mind anywhere else, which is probably why they stopped making the stuff in 2003. To borrow a phrase from Stewart Lee, I believe the pubs which exist on this recording could exist only on the continent known as "the imagination".

I don't have any record of the Belgian populace's response to this campaign, or the German's (whose language is catered for on another fold-out part of the sleeve) but I suspect it was probably weak. I can't imagine many landlords or bar-owners tearing to the jukeboxes in their tavernas to place "authentic" honky tonk English noises on their musical playlists, and nor can I imagine many punters actually paying money to listen to the advertising campaign*. I also have no idea how much of the budget went up in smoke before anyone saw the flaw in this particular plan, but still... why worry when it gave somebody in marketing a job to do, eh?

Download it here, if you must

The first person to say "Slender pickings in the budget section at the Music and Video Exchange this week, was it?" wins a lifetime's subscription to the most rubbish and intrusive junk mail marketing campaign I can find.

*And yes, I know some jukeboxes have random play when no money has been put into them, but you still can't fool me into thinking that this particular piece of work is anything other than ridiculously flawed.