The A – Z of my singles collection Part 2

This post covers the ‘Bs’ in my collection and there are some classics, some forgotten tracks and some eyebrow raisers!

Well, we start off with one of those classics, the fantastic Easy Lover by Philip Bailey, the lead singer of Earth, Wind and Fire and Phil Collins, the lead singer of Genesis. As soon as I heard the track, which just sounded fantastic, I was straight off to the record shop to buy it, and it’s one of those that still sounds fantastic today. The blend of the voices is perfect and the tune is an absolute belter. There is also a video for this that has Collins playing up his cheeky chappy persona to the occasional bemusement of the cool and stylish Bailey. From the sublime to the apparently ridiculous with Baltimora’s Tarzan Boy. It was a hit in October 1985 at about the time I was preparing for life outside the RAF following a fairly catastrophic ankle injury during basic training – a ripped achilles tendon suffered at the start of 1985 that took years to heal properly – and I needed silly songs like this to lift my mood. A bit like the amazing film Inside Out, any happy memories of this period are inevitably tinged with sadness, but my friends at the time rallied round me and I have vague memories of the crowd of us letting loose on the chorus when drunk and I suppose I bought it to hold on to those feelings when I needed them. Who would have thought that Tarzan Boy would be so deep and meaningful?!

Bananarama have always been a favourite group of mine and from their first album, the brilliant Deep Sea Skiving, I have the rather gorgeous and very catchy Shy Boy. I bought this after seeing them on Top of the Pops, as I did with a number of singles. I loved the way that their dancing wasn’t choreographed to within an inch of its life and their voices blended together perfectly. Robert De Niro’s Waiting was arguably their best received single, and it showed off their more polished style very well indeed. From one all-female group to another with one of the best ballads of the 80s and the song that was the second dance at our wedding, being my wife’s favourite slow song at the time. It was very close to being our first dance, but a record that I will cover in the ‘Cs’ beat it by a whisker!

Finally, in this first section we have The Barron Knights, a parody group who had three successful singles in the space of four years. They specialised in songs that had linking lyrics before moving onto the parodies themselves. Live in Trouble parodied I Can’t Stop Dancing by Leo Sayer, Angelo by Brotherhood of Man (arguably itself a parody of Figaro by ABBA!) and Float On by The Floaters. A Taste of Aggro was even more successful, reaching Number 3 in the charts with the help of Boney M’s Rivers of Babylon, The Smurf Song and Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs. They were very good musicians in their own right which definitely helped the quality of the songs and the lyrics always left me laughing however many times I heard them.

As an aside, the second of the Barron Knights singles has the stamp of Strood Record Centre on it. That was my first port of call every weekend for years especially after I had finished the Panini Football 78 and Football 79 sticker albums. I pretty much built up my record collection at that one shop, because at that point I usually had £5 a week to spend on singles. Why that amount? Well, I used to have to go by bus to school and I didn’t get a free bus pass which most students from my neighbourhood received. Every week, my parents gave me £5 for my fares that week. In seven years at secondary school I was asked for a fare maybe half a dozen times! The assumption was that we were all on free bus passes and I saw no reason to offer my money to the driver, hence my extremely large singles collection! I feel safe admitting to that now as I think 40 years is past the statute of limitations, and in any case it was the only good thing about being at that school in the 7 years I was there.

This next set starts with two singles from 1991, the year before I switched over to CD for best part of 30 years. By that time my single buying had slowed to a trickle, mainly because of the increasing price and declining manufacturing standards. They are an interesting pair. The only Beautiful South single I bought on vinyl spluttered to a halt at Number 51 in the charts despite being absolutely gorgeous. It’s well worth a listen, but it pretty much sank without trace at the time. The other one is Secret Love by the Bee Gees. Again, it was a very unusual choice for the only vinyl single from that multi-talented trio. To be honest, I had completely forgotten it until I embarked on this cataloguing. However, when I did put it on the turntable – for the first time in over three decades – I recognised it as soon as it got to the chorus. What a song it is! Take a listen when you put my Spotify playlist to use – you know you should!

Next up is Belle and the Devotions with Love Games. It was the UK entry for the last Eurovision song contest I watched and the only UK entry I ever bought as a single. It’s a Motown inflected blast that is virtually forgotten these days, as it’s scandalously low position of 35 in the countdown of 50 UK Eurovision songs attests to. 1984 was the year I joined the RAF and after that lots of things like Eurovision slipped off my radar, but it went out on a high with one of my favourite ever entries. A couple of US artists, Pat Benatar and Berlin follow, the latter instantly recognisable, the former largely forgotten but well overdue for a re-visit. From the sublime to the arguably ridiculous with Wicksy from Eastenders, in the days I used to watch it, otherwise known as Nick Berry. I don’t care what anyone says, it’s a lovely little ballad and he had a pretty decent voice. The final duo are both throwbacks to earlier eras. Matt Bianco with their infectious remake of Georgie Fame’s Yeh Yeh, and Big Daddy who were probably the first ‘mash-up’ band singing covers of modern tracks in an oldies style.

The single top left is an Old Gold find at the much missed Woolworths, according to the price sticker! When I had finished at Strood Record Centre, that was often my next port of call. Acker Bilk’s Stranger on the Shore was a piece of music I heard on the radio, and I grew to love it over the years. Did you know that it spent 55 weeks on the chart? It entered the Top 50 on December 6 1961 and left it on December 19 1961! Three records from synth legends Blancmange next, with each one a classic of its type. Living on the Ceiling had a Cairo set video, but its distinctive instrumental flavour came from the use of the unmistakably Indian tabla drums and a sitar. Either way, it was a sound that was utterly unique and extremely catchy. Don’t Tell Me was similarly catchy, but musically very different. That was something that fascinated me, Blancmange’s chameleon like qualities which ensured that you never knew quite what was coming next. What came next, for me, was the best ever cover of an ABBA song. The Day Before You Came has a quiet power in both versions, and the Blancmange video cleverly, and rather cheekily, uses some of the appearances of Agnetha from the original video alongside Neil Arthur. If I was forced to choose a favourite, I would very slightly favour this version.

Timmy Mallet in the guise of Bombalurina might, I admit, be something of a marmite single, but it was Number One on the day that Janet and I got married so I had to get it. It was played at our wedding and two of the guests danced quite brilliantly to it, so I always think of that and smile when I hear it. Only one Bon Jovi single, but what a single! It is of course, the brilliant Livin’ on a Prayer from Slippery When Wet, an album that I bought mainly on the strength of this track. Both single and album are just great. Two David Bowie singles, Space Oddity and Absolute Beginners complete the picture above and both, in their own way, are quintessential Bowie with that individuality that he was famous for. I don’t have Life on Mars, my favourite ever David Bowie track, having fallen under its spell quite late on. Perhaps I will find it in a record shop somewhere, but I will have to be careful or I might start collecting ‘missing’ singles which could become very expensive and time consuming!

The final set of ‘Bs’ starts with one of the most recognisable tracks of the 80s. Self Control by Laura Branigan was one of those songs that you could play in your bedroom on the record player or dance to in the disco at full volume with the bass pounding through you. Either way it was totally fantastic, and it was one of those singles that I played almost non-stop when I bought it. Her voice and the staccato delivery made this utterly distinctive, then and now. Break Machine was one of those tracks that sounded great in a disco, so I bought it on the strength of that. It was quite a clever idea, catching hold of the Break Dancing wave via a single that sounded more like an off cut from Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down album. It may not have held up as well as some other records but it’s still fun. Back to the 70s now with Brian and Michael and the rather lovely, rather brilliant Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs. It may have been parodied by the Barron Knights, but that just served to demonstrate the quality of the original. I loved it then, I love it now, but I urge you take a listen to the B Side The Old Rocking Chair, one of the most beautiful evocations of love ever committed to record. If it doesn’t make you emotional I will be very surprised. It’s not on Spotify so I have found it on YouTube instead

Two very different Brooks follow in this section. First, we have Elkie whose outstanding voice is heard to its best effect in No More The Fool, which has power to spare and a fantastic chorus. It is one of the classiest ballads you can imagine. Mel, by contrast led a full scale assault on good taste with the theme and lyrics for To Be or Not To Be. It comes from a remake of an anti-Nazi comedy that was one which I thoroughly enjoyed as a teenager. Yes, it will offend many, but I think it’s one of the greatest comedy records of the decade. I loved Sam Brown’s Stop, but I didn’t buy it. Instead I bought the follow-up Kissing Gate without hearing it. It’s good, but perhaps not as good as her more famous single, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. The last pair of ‘Bs’ are very familiar to most people, but as with many others in my singles collection, the ones I bought – only one for each artist – were not the obvious ones. Bucks Fizz had a very good run of hits in the early 80s, the starting point being Making Your Mind Up. Much though I liked it, it is not my favourite of theirs, my favourite is the one I bought, Land of Make Believe. It’s got an unsettling undertone in both the lyrics and the tune, with the nursery rhyme quality hiding something that is darker and more complex. Kate Bush wrote some amazing tracks, but I bought the single that showcased her ability to interpret someone else’s songs. Her versions of Rocket Man and Candle in the Wind are both excellent and her voice is in fine fettle.

Well, there you have it for the ‘Bs’. Next up, the first half of the ‘Cs’ – yes there’s quite a lot of those!