Pop thinking – For the fainthearted . . .

Young people have become boring

Walking through the supermarket the sound of Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody filled the aisles. I read once that Noddy Holder and Dave Hill, the writers of the song, earn about £500,000 in royalties on the song each year. It is 51 years since it was released, it has been an excellent pension fund!

Slade are memorable for their outrageous glam rock presentation and their unconventional spelling of lyrics. Slade used spellings that might have prompted apoplexy among traditional English teachers fifty years ago. Song titles included Cum On Feel the …

Still looking for a tune

Popcorn by Hot Butter. I spent forty years not knowing what that piece of music was. For years I had imagined that it was something from the BBC Radiophonics workshop output in the 1970s because Radio 4 used it as a theme tune for a programme. Then about ten years ago, I was driving along listening to an Internet station on my phone and they played that piece and I stopped the car to see what it was. The title could not be allowed to escape

Perhaps, one day, no-one …

Wondrous stories

I reckon it must be more than forty-five years, the autumn of 1977 if my memory is correct. Perhaps early 1978, but no later than that.

The song was from a genre described as ‘progressive rock,’ although the term seems so broad as to be virtually meaningless. An online search for ‘progressive rock reveals a list of bands it would seem odd to bracket together. Much of the ‘progressive rock’ music has disappeared entirely from the playlists of music radio stations.

Perhaps it was its disappearance from the airwaves for …

Discussing Thom Bell with Steve

Craig Charles played a tribute to Thom Bell, three songs from one of the greatest writers and producers of soul music.

‘Steve,’ I said, ‘Thom Bell has died. A sad day for Northern soul fans.’

Of course, Steve didn’t hear me. I was driving along the M4 motorway through South Wales and Steve has retired and moved to warmer climes.

On a Friday morning, in the school in Gloucestershire where we taught together, Steve would email staff with the Feelgood Friday tunes – three upbeat three minute songs. The sound …

Missing the disco ball

Being ill, I missed the final days of term. It meant missing the disco ball that one of my colleagues, a chemistry teacher, had been setting up on Monday. It was a device with great evocative power.

The days of rooms illuminated by light reflected from the multi-faceted rotating globes belong to another lifetime, not that they were too common even then.

Discos marked friends’ birthdays or the end of term at Sixth Form College, they were not the stuff of ordinary Saturday nights. By the autumn of 1979, they …

Big Brother and the Holding Company aren’t playing

The voice of the singer sounded familiar. ‘Is that Janis? I asked.

‘No, Lucinda Williams. She is playing in Dublin soon.’

‘Not Janis, I assume?’

‘No, and I can’t imagine her getting the hologram treatment.’

Of course, a concert would not be billed as Janis, it would be billed as “Big Brother and the Holding Company.” Remembering their songs from childhood years, it would have been disappointing to me if a concert had been staged with a singer other than Janis Joplin.

Despite the band existing for decades after the …