Month: February 2015

In The Navy


One of the many reasons why it was so great being a boy in the 1970s: 20-foot high billboards of Caroline Munro in a wet suit plastered everywhere.

Mott the Hoople are rightly famous for being one of the best rocking bands of their era, but they also did some lovely ballads like this one. I actually think Ian Hunter’s voice is more suited to slow, melancholy songs.

Download: Sea Diver – Mott The Hoople (mp3)

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Beside The Seaside


You may have heard that this has been an especially brutal winter here in New England. As a result I don’t think I have ever looked forward to a summer more. If you hear me complaining about the heat in August, feel free to hit me over the head.

Download: Seaside Shuffle – Terry Dactyl and The Dinosaurs (mp3)

In case you didn’t know, this was a 1972 novelty hit by a band that featured Jona Lewie.

Something for The Weekend



Prog Rock isn’t quite the uncool evil it once was but I’m still of the conventional post-Punk opinion that it’s mostly too noodly, complicated, and plain silly at times. But when they reign in their indulgences and keep it pop-song length it can be quite magical like this.

Edited out of this clip is the bit at the end when the men in white coats come to take Peter Gabriel away.

Strange Days


I first heard of the late Steve Strange in 1979 when he was the notoriously-strict doorman at the Blitz club in Covent Garden and his refusal to let Mick Jagger into the club became a minor tabloid story. An act that served as both bravely sticking to your style guns and two fingers up to the crusty old rock establishment — though when Bowie showed up he was treated like a God, they were his children after all.

Back then, the Blitz Kids (as New Romantics were called initially) were still just a small underground clique and I can remember seeing these dazzling peacocks in flamboyant clothes and make-up hanging around the King’s Road or going out at night on the Tube, and would be startled by how they looked which was a million colourful miles away from the Punk and Mod styles everyone else was wearing. I had no idea who they were but admired the balls it took to go out looking like that, in those days just looking “weird” could easily get you beaten up.



Steve Strange grew up in Wales as plain old Steve Harrington and, like many kids of his generation, had his life changed by seeing the Sex Pistols and moved to London with dreams of reinventing himself, changing his name, creating his own scene. This was when it was possible to survive in London without much money and get by on the dole and living in squats which most of them did. It was also that exciting time post-Punk when outsiders and oddballs like Strange, Boy George, Gary Numan, Adam Ant, and Marc Almond could be given the keys to the pop kingdom and become bona fide stars. God knows we could do with some colorful mavericks like them in mainstream pop music today.

The New Romantic cult can look very silly today (never boring though), but Strange and his Blitz friends had an influence way beyond that one movement. They changed the look and sound of British pop, defining 80s music in the process. It was also the first British style/musical movement to come out of the club scene which would prove to be the incubator for nearly every other one to come after.

Once you look past the frills and eyeliner it did produce some great records too. Because Strange was thought of as just a club promoter and fashion plate it wasn’t exactly cool to like Visage (despite the rest of the band all being members of Ultravox and Magazine) but I did love this one, particularly the extended 12″ dance version.

Download: Night Train (Dance Mix) – Visage (mp3)

Conversations With a Working Man



This is almost 45 years old but sadly could have been filmed yesterday, and I don’t just mean that Yorkshiremen are still always complaining. If anything, working people seem to be going backwards economically these days.

The saddest part though is that his ambition for his daughter doesn’t go beyond hoping she grows up to be a “glamour girl” and some “fellow with a Jaguar” will come along and marry her into the middle class. I hope that would have changed a bit at least, even in Yorkshire.

Not had any Reggae here in a while, this is from Johnson’s 1984 album Making History.

Download: Wat About Di Workin’ Claas – Linton Kwesi Johnson (mp3)

Something for the Weekend



This was the first House record to make the charts in the UK but little did I know when I bought the 12″ back in 1986 that it would turn out to be as influential and game-changing as ‘Anarchy In The UK’. I knew it was a bloody great record though, with a beat and a vocal that leapt out of the speakers at you.

This performance by Darryl Pandy on Top of The Pops must have helped it make a splash too.