1981

It was my wife's birthday last week. I looked up what was Number 1 on the day she was born and found it was 'Stand And Deliver' by possibly the greatest pop group of all time. Adam & The Ants. A lot of people now who talk about Adam Ant will talk about how good the punk stuff was. But give me the pop music: Stand & Deliver, Kings Of The Wild Frontier, Prince Charming. Fantastic music!!! Just listen to how exciting Wild Frontier is, how powerful and how weird they sound for a chart topping group!!

PS: I bought Stand And Deliver that week when it was Number 1 back in...1981. I was 12.


Adam & The Ants - Stand And Deliver
Adam & The Ants - Kings Of The Wild Frontier

Sounds For Sunday

I'm not going to be around on Sunday, so we're early this week.

I'm suffering a stress of the digital age this week. I got hold of a large number of old soul tunes on Wednesday. If they had come in vinyl format they'd be worth a small fortune. I can't see people paying good money for the digital format though.

Anyway, after adding them to my iTunes I find I've a folder marked 'soul' that would take me nearly 8 days of constant listening to get through. How am I ever going to listen to it all properly? Even if I concentrated on the 'new' stuff that I've just gotten hold of I'm looking at 3 days worth of listening. Still I could do a serious weekender out of that!

Here's a sample of what I'm dealing with here. Check out the great intro and breakdown of the Bobby Wells tune. A lovely little groove. While we're on the subject of intros, is it me or does the intro to the First Choice tune sound a little like The Smiths?

My favourite of the lot is the Ruby Winters track though. What a song and lordy lordy lordy what a voice!

Enjoy the sunshine if you get it!

Bobby Wells - Lets Cop A Groove
Big Jim's Border Crossing - Love Built On A Strong Foundation
Eddie Giles & The Numbers - Sexy Lady
The Carstairs - It Really Hurts Me Girl
First Choice - This Is The House Where Love Died
S.O.U.L. - This Time Around
Ruby Winters - Better
Robert Thomas - Salvation
The Montclaires - Hung Up On Your Love

Weller Again.

22 Dreams. I've only been listening to it today, but it's already one of my favourite Weller records for years. There are some top tracks on it. (Okay here comes the daylight edit:) I've only just been able to play it at volume. What's apparent this morning is that I like it even more. But what's more apparent is that Weller would appear to have been listening to late 70s Bowie. There's more than one track that sounds like it's come from Heroes or Low. Including a strange synth instrumental.

There's some very Bowie-esque vocals. Mind, I've always thought they were very similar vocally. Even if Weller claimed not to be a fan.

I'll maybe get around to posting some tunes at some point, but my Mediafire appears to be on a go-slow this morning. So in the meantime here's one of the more immediate tunes, Have You Made Up Your Mind from Jools Holland's Later.

1983...

I was 14 in 1983. Alongside such delights as The Style Council and Aztec Camera I was heavily into another band at that point. A band who played, as was the way of the times, a sixties soul influenced pop music. It seems like every band around then had dug out their Stax and Motown compilations for inspiration. Even the Human League had just had a hit at the end of 1982 with Mirror Man which was pure Motown.

Anyway, alongside Weller's classic trio of opening Style Council singles, JoBoxers appeared with another trio of superb singles, that were pure stomping soul.

JoBoxers were made up of former Subway Sect members - guitarist Rob Marche, keyboardist Dave Collard, bassist Chris Bostock and drummer Sean McLusky and American singer Dig Wayne. Their look was part On The Waterfront and part skinhead, all boots and braces. And their songs were some of the most uplifting and energetic in the charts that year.
They were the first band I'd heard talk about Northern Soul, apart from Dexys and The Jam, and one week they guest hosted Gary Crowley's radio show and played a whole bunch of classic Northern. It was a major moment for me, hugely influential.

I was going to post the tracks themselves, and I said I would should anybody request them. And somebody has so:

Boxerbeat
Just Got Lucky
Johnny Friendly

But they were a band who looked as good as they sounded. So here's that trilogy of singles in video form:

Jimmy McGriff RIP

Well, I missed this completely. Jimmy McGriff, one of the great Hammond players, died on May 24th.

Bo Diddley - RIP

Sounds For Sunday

If I handed you a dictionary and asked you to look up 'classic' this track is what you would find.

Happy Sunday.

Lorraine Ellison - Stay With Me