Ella Fitzgerald: "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" / The Flowers: "Ballad of Miss Demeanour"

29 May 1980 (with more on the next page which may be found here)

"Puts you in the mood for slushy romantic '50s films on a Sunday afternoon complete with Clark Gable/Betty Grable (according to gender) and a box of chocolates."

"Clever, quirky, and compelling."

— Deanne Pearson

There's some confusion with this fortnight's singles. Deanne Pearson has two picks earmarked for 'Record of the Week' but has them categorized differently. Ella Fitzgerald's rendition of the Cole Porter classic "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" is her 'Personal record of the week' while "Ball of Miss Demeanour" by new wave act The Flowers is her 'Record of the week'. I initially had the latter penciled in as the subject of this post because of the more definitive title but I reconsidered the matter when I thought about which one would have been her favourite. If anything, it's probably more likely that her personal choice is the one she prefers. It's impossible to say either way so I've made them co-SOTF.

Ella Fitzgerald's recording of "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" was already twenty-three years old by the time Pearson had recommended it in Smash Hits. She was signed to the Verve label at the time and was riding a wave of success following several top notch albums. In 1956, she recorded Ella Fitzegerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook with a young arranger and conductor by the name of Buddy Bregman. While he would only work with the Great Lady of Song on one additional Songbook (that of the great duo of Rodgers and Hart), she would cut six additional LPs — many of them two record sets — of material of composers from the golden age of American songwriting. These collections are excellent but the quality of them is so high that it can be tricky for individual tracks to stick out. Is "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" any better than, say, "Love for Sale" or "Begin the Beguine"? Nope. All thirty-two songs from the Porter Songbook are great but too much of a good thing etc., etc.

On its own in single form, however, "Ev'ry Time..." is stunning. Fitzgerald sings it as only she could: her voice sounds like no one in the history of recorded music yet she wasn't the least bit flashy with it and takes command of a song without overwhelming it. No one has ever been able to make her voice wobble like she could: a technical deficiency that was one of her strengths. Cole Porter had been at his peak as a songwriter in the thirties and his material would have been familiar to Fitzgerald but it's for the best that she didn't tackle his stuff until twenty years later. Her voice was never better than when she was in her forties and the quality of the Norman Granz-produced recordings for Verve in Hollywood are immaculate. The LP era coincided with the rise of the modern American recording studio. (Oddly, older jazz artists such as Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington adapted to the medium of the long playing album better than younger acts like Miles Davis and Charlie Parker)

Pearson's 'Record of the week' (doesn't she know that ver Hits is a fortnightly mag?) couldn't be more different from her 'Personal' pick, the former not even being in the same league as the latter and how could it be? Porter's composition is a classic and was good enough that even Simply Red's version from 1987 isn't bad. The Flowers had something fresh (Pearson states that the "new wave of pop is headed by bands such as these and The Teardrop Explodes"; one wonders if the Scottish punk-funk-popsters had hit singles in them like their Merseyside contemporaries — they also toured with the likes of The Human League and OMD so they were certainly adjacent to success) but it now sounds far too much like a post-punk period piece, in some ways older than Ella taking on the Great American Songbook. No one would have heard a jazz vocalist in 1956 and thought "damn, this is the future!" but there almost certainly were people listening to "Ballad of Miss Demeanour" thinking those very thoughts. Pearson is one of them.

I've been doing this blog for long enough that the romance of the post-punk/new wave era has completely warn off. The Flowers (not to be confused with the Australian band of the saand would later become Icehouse) possess many of those traits that ought to have made them seem dated more than forty years later: HI-Ray (aka Hilary Morrison) has those manically robotic vocals that bring to mind Lene Lovich, The Slits and Gary Numan, the bass is ultra sparse, the guitars spidery and they all come together wrapped in a cheap, echoey production. Yet, it's a better composition than many of the tackier tunes I've sifted through over the last three years. It doesn't necessarily suggest a promising future (in spite of what I wrote above) only that this Edinburgh foursome must put on an awfully good gig so go out and see 'em dammit!

Two vastly different records from May of 1980. One was already nearing its quarter century, the other freshly pressed in some dingy Edinburgh shop. One was a standard, the other would stand alone. Today, one of them is a relic from a distant past while the other has since been brought back to life by Lady Gaga. One is timeless, the other very much of its time. The rock era carbon dates many of the genres and artists who have come up through it; the Great American Songbook just keeps carrying on.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Fleetwood Mac: "Think About Me"

Considered by Pearson to be the nadir of ver Mac, even if she acknowledges that the musicianship and vocals are both "quality". She's put off by the song being a filler and I guess that's fair enough though I'd argue that it's just one of many examples of Christine McVie being their strongest songwriter. It is sturdier than your average Lindsey Buckingham composition (though like "Don't Stop" it demonstrates that she was very good at crafting tunes that could easily have been written by his nibs) and has more musical meat on its bones than those flowery Stevie Nicks numbers. That said, "Think About Me" is one of twenty absolutely superb tracks that make up their true masterpiece Tusk and I can understand it slipping through the cracks or getting ignored. Granted, the remixed single version smooths things out a little too much but this isn't pop-rock you should be thumbing your nose at.

Age of Chance: "Take It"

24 February 1988

"Why don't ya "take it" right to your hearts?"

— Boy George

By my count, this is the twenty-ninth time a pop star (or pop stars) have reviewed the singles in Smash Hits. (There are many, many more on the way as the eighties draw to a close, with staff deciding they had better things to do and a new generation of sing and dance types who were more than happy to take on such tasks so long as it kept them in the spotlight). For the most part, they've been relevant chart wise at the time of their guest critic spots. Early examples — Andy Partridge, Chris Difford, Martin Fry, Gary Kemp, Martyn Ware — seemed to take the role seriously almost as if they had an eye on being pop journalists themselves but they were all part of groups that were either emerging or attempting to sustain their success. Limahl (who appears just four weeks after Ware) seemed to be the first one there in order to prop himself up, his solo career having just launched to some promise in spite of being without the accomplished musicians who had backed him in Kajagoogoo. He may not have been a student of pop the way Difford and Fry and the like were but the former Christopher Hamill still meant something to the scene in 1984.

This fortnight, however, we get an artist who has passed his prime and is trying to once again to get back into the chart "game". Boy George had been one of British pop's most recognizable figures and had become so well known that he had basically become 'famous for being famous' once his band began going downhill. The cross-dressing garnered headlines but he wouldn't have been half the notable figure if not for Culture Club's brief period as a top group. The pleasant lover's rock song "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" is probably their most played number today but "Church of the Poison Mind", "Karma Chameleon" and "Time (Clock of the Heart)" are the best examples of what made them such a fine group. Yeah, they were re-doing Motown and there was little about them beyond the Boy's image that seemed cutting edge but they understood great pop, there were hooks aplenty and that lad who looked like a lass sure could sing.

Boy George had last been relevant a year earlier when his solo career commenced. His soft-reggae cover of "Everything I Own" seemed to mirror "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" and was a UK number one (and SOTF) but things didn't go much further. George was still a beloved figure with the public, possibly even a national treasure, and people showed their loyalty to him by buying up his comeback record but the novelty would quickly subside. Fame, wealth and drug abuse dulled his songwriting and there was very little left in the tank past that one big hit.

George's choice of Age of Chance reflects his struggle to tap into the zeitgeist of late-eighties popular culture. He argues that "Take It" is "probably the only attempt at originality on this page". There's some truth to this — it isn't an especially stellar fortnight for singles — but I'm not so sure that even in 1988 mixing rap and rock was still a fresh proposition. It was back in 1984 that hip hop had its first Smash Hits SOTF and that was with the still awesome "Hip-Hop-Bommi-Bop" by The Incredible T*H* Scratchers and Freddy Love, a barely disguised Die Totenhosen and Fab Five Freddy collaboration. Now, it sadly didn't catch on in spite of Ian Cranna's recommendation but Run-DMC's reworking of "Walk This Way" with Aerosmith in '86 was when everyone would have cottoned on to the great crossover.

To be fair, "Hip-Hop-Bommi-Bop" and "Walk This Way" came along because of cross-genre team-ups and there is more than a little of the novelty about both of them. The idea of a group that organically produced their own in-house brand of rap-rock was in its infancy. Groups like Happy Mondays and the Soup Dragons were slowly taking off with vocalists that rapped at least as much as they sang but who nevertheless remained tied to indie rock, even if they were open to what was going on in hip hop. North American groups like Living Color and Bootsauce would soon emerge, though funk was much more a part of their sound than rap itself. It was only with the so-called 'Daisy Age' movement of De La Soul, Monie Love and The Jungle Brothers that rappers seemed to show much interest in the sound of guitars — at least until The Beastie Boys began learning how to play their own instruments.

So, choosing Age of Chance may have seemed like something new and exciting but they had already been around for a while and "Take It" feels too much like they're going through the motions. They gained some notoriety a year earlier with their unique take on Prince's "Kiss" and whatever appeal they must have had rests from around this time. John Peel supported them and they were briefly indie favourites. Signing with major label Virgin should have put them into the charts but for the unfortunate fact that their output had little commercial potential — and it wasn't even all that good anymore. Comparing some of their early singles to the material that would end up on album One Thousand Years of Trouble, there isn't the same zip and pop. It was not unlike the way future rock-rap combo EMF would devolve from the rush of breakthrough single "Unbelievable" to just another indie band little over a year later. But at least they had a nice little run of hits along the way.

"Take It" doesn't really work but at least they were doing something worthwhile that others would build upon. Pop Will Eat Itself did a lot more with sample-heavy industrial dance rock and they never really lost their edge. Jesus Jones cut an outrageously good debut single "Info Freako" that buries anything Age of Chance ever did (even if they suddenly morphed into bland stadium rockers soon after). U2 would eventually follow suit as they ditched Americana in favour of glamourous European goth-dance. Age of Chance were just a minor footnote in a new movement.

Boy George had been a regular at the clubs and was keen on where music was going and it's decent of him to give his nod of approval to this "attempt at originality" but it's too little, too late. They needed champions a year or two earlier when there was still something exciting about them. But by 1988, they were already making lesser records and their promise was fading away. Not unlike Boy George himself.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Voice of the Beehive: "I Walk the Earth"

A group that George likes even if the record doesn't do anything for him. Maybe I'm really longing to go travelling but "I Walk the Earth" sounds great to these ears. There's some bad eighties' production in there but the Bees' harmonies soar, there's some crunchy guitar parts and it'll make you want to hit the road as soon as we can all get vaccinated and start removing these damn masks. Australian travel writer Peter Moore reckons it's the greatest song about travel ever cut and he's not wrong. I guess Boy George never went backpacking around Southeast Asia, huh?

Sting: "Englishman in New York"

10 February 1988

"I knew this would be single of the fortnight the moment I saw this."

— Patsy Kensit

A bit of a "swizz" this fortnight as Patsy Kensit chose to abuse her position as guest critic by sneaking a record that isn't eligible in to be her Single of the Fortnight. This is pointed out by Smash Hits editors but the actress/singer/giant diva batted her eyes and got her way — or this is how I imagine it occurring. Granted, I was just eleven back in 1988 but if Patsy Kensit was going to sneak a usurper into the batch of new releases, I wouldn't have been the one to stop her.

Oddly, though, if you didn't know any better, you might not necessarily assume "Englishman in New York" to be her favourite. Sure, she likes Sting a lot more than anyone else here (I get the feeling she likes Sting a lot more than anyone else in the entire history of mankind) but the record itself? I'm not so sure. The fact that she decided it was going to be her favourite before she even listened to it says it all and her praise for the single is positive but not overwhelmingly so. The bulk of her relatively lengthy review is saved for her admiration for Sting and to fill the readers in on the song's subject matter, the transplanted gadabout with a craving for the spotlight Quentin Crisp. Otherwise, Kensit loves it because it's by Sting and she even asks the good people at Smash Hits if they would be able to arrange a meeting. (I wonder if they ever did meet; how would Sting have taken it when she told him that she loves his songs because he made them?)

Of course, the record had already been reviewed so we also have the observations of Tom Hibbert from four weeks' earlier to go by. Sadly, he doesn't offer much either, find it a boring single and giving off vibes that it's been a good while since he had much regard for the Stinger. But this is Hibs and he still has a surprise for the reader: mentioning that its first verse is about "how awful it is for English folk to partake of an American breakfast", he goes on to admit that the Yanks "do bacon much more crispily and tastily than anything we can expect in a cafe over here". And there I was thinking that a cornerstone of being British is pretending to love that sad item that the Americans call "Canadian bacon" (which no one in Canada actually consumes). 

The British have been transplanting themselves to the United States for centuries. It isn't the most radical cultural divide people have crossed although you'd never know it by the way they describe being a fish out of water in the New World. That's what we have at the beginning of "Englishman in New York" ("I don't take coffee, I take tea my dear...": one line in and there's so much to unpack; do the English 'take' their hot drinks rather than 'drink' them? It's better to address a waitress as 'dear' rather than 'sweetheart', right?); as it moves forward, it's about feeling accepted in a place we may not belong. Crisp had made his name as a raconteur but it always bothered him that his homosexuality had never been accepted in his homeland (strange it irked him so much considering he would one day speak out against gay rights); his fondness for makeup and his flamboyance were peculiarities that New Yorkers made note of but he was content that people seemed to like him for who he was. While Sting celebrates this side of Gotham, it is worth noting that John Lennon was extolling that virtues of the city that left him alone just two days before a psychopath shot him dead. The Korean-born writer and artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was raped and murdered in New York just a week after her extraordinary memoir Dictee had been published. Pie-eyed outsiders who ❤ NY seldom consider the city's dark side.

Kensit expresses displeasure that Sting's previous single ("We'll Be Together") failed to be a hit single but at least she was prepared for this one to do even worse. The bulk of Sting's post-Police 45's were flops even as his albums still did well. Current release ...Nothing Like the Sun had been a chart topper in the autumn of 1987 despite failing to produce a single top 40 hit. Fans of his who may have bought "Message in a Bottle" or "Walking on the Moon" back in the day were now getting older and, assuming they were still sticking around, were probably more inclined towards a Sting long player than one of his singles, while the kids probably weren't interested in such stuff. This trend would largely continue with even the surefire megahit "Fields of Gold" from 1993's Ten Summoner's Tales only seeing modest top 20 action. It was only when he descended into film soundtrack hell with the abominable "All for Love" with Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart that his British chart fortunes were revived.

Nevertheless, "Englishman in New York" would eventually find its way into the UK charts after Dutch DJ Ben Liebrand remixed it in 1990. Songs revamped by boffins usually lose some of their original spark but the Dutch producer actually made this record better, adding next to no sampled cliches and pushing Branford Marsalis' soprano sax to the background where it belongs. The track lends itself to remixing, especially at 2:34 when the jazz instrumental jazz ("the kind of thing stuck over the slapstick passages of some Woody Allen "movie"", reckons Hibs) gives way to a percussion breakdown, which Liebrand chose to open his version. It isn't hugely different but the little things are improved upon and that's what makes it the preferred record.

This spruced up "Englishman" came out a few months' ahead of Sting's follow up album The Soul Cages and it might be a song that fits in better with his more expressive works in the nineties. Finally free from trying to solve the world's problems in song (not always a bad thing, mind you), Gordon Sumner became a much more soulful songwriter as his forties approached. His work was still hit-and-miss but "All This Time" and "Shape of My Heart" and, yes, "Fields of Gold" are some of the finest songs he's ever written. Sting would claim that "Englishman" had been half about Crisp and half about himself and this was a step in the right direction: it wouldn't be long and he'd be writing all about himself — at least some of the time.

~~~~~

Also of some cop

Morrissey: "Suedehead"

Possibly the rightful SOTF — or it certainly would be if I had had anything to say about it. Morrissey hasn't been particularly relevant this century and his solo career has been extremely spotty but his debut post-Smiths effort is still a blinder, a (misplaced) sign that he didn't need his old band. In fact, his first three singles rival anything The Smiths did and his first solo album was pretty good too. Obviously, they could have recorded a song like "Suedehead" but it's all the more important that he did it himself (along with some not untalented people he chose to work with). Sting went solo in the mid-eighties and did pretty well for himself but he could never quite shake The Police; Moz looked to be swiftly ridding himself of the Johnny Marr shackles as his old band was being left behind. It could never last.

Roxy Music: "Over You"

15 May 1980

"Stand aside. Here comes a perfectly executed pop record, reeking of class and presenting Roxy Music at their dazzling roxiest."

— Mrs Esmé Sprigg of Hounslow

What I previously said:

The Rox handed in their weakest album at this point but their creative nadir didn't have any effect on the public and, indeed, on critics. As one (possibly pseudonymous) Mrs Esmé Sprigg of Hounslow raved, "Stand aside. Here comes a perfectly executed pop record, reeking of class and presenting Roxy Music at their dazzling roxiest." If by that she means "by numbers and nowhere near "Virginia Plain" or any of their old stuff but probably the best they could do at the time though worryingly evident of a dullness they would never be able to shake" then, yes, I wholeheartedly agree.

This is the two hundredth entry on this blog! Yes, a milestone I am proud to have reached since I had the nagging suspicion that I had no hope of ever getting this far. I feared that I would abandon the project within a year or so; it's now three years and I'm still at it! It's nice to see that the subject of such a significant act and one that was once of importance to me. My Bowie years began to wane at the end of the nineties and Roxy Music seemed like the next logical step. My only regret was that I couldn't first have experienced them as a teenager just so I could have my mind blown by Brian Eno's audacious, ear-piercing VCS3 synth solo, the kind of moment that makes the young and impressionable.

Yet, I decided to try to approach this entry as fresh as possible. I have refrained from listening to any of Roxy Music's classic stuff of late so as to avoid any undue comparisons. This wasn't as tricky a task as it would have been a few years ago. While I still profess a great deal of admiration for the Rox, I've largely moved on from them and can judge their work in a much more critical light. Where I used to view their first four albums as an unbeatable quartet, I now consider all but third release Stranded to be a bit flawed. Each of their self-titled debut, Four Your Pleasure and Country Life start out brilliantly but they falter when flipped over. Siren is the one that fans of both early and latter Roxy tend to agree on but it's only with simpler items like "She Sells" and "Could It Happen to Me?" where it feels like they're up to something worthwhile; "Both Ends Burning" is a favourite of many but to these ears it's unlistenable. The more progessive they tried to be, the less it worked out for them. A curate's egg of an album, Siren would be the last time they even attempted to be challenging.

Roxy Music closed up shop in 1975 and they returned to a music scene that was very different from where they left it. Punk had come and gone, disco had peaked and there was a new generation of artists pushing the creative boundaries. Pop may not necessarily have needed them but fans were more willing than ever to embrace them. They had more hit singles after their hiatus than prior to it and two of their three number one albums came after their comeback.

Their return, however, was slow to get going with the public. "Trash" was the first single released from the Manifesto album and it peaked all the way down at the bottom of the top 40. Subsequent singles "Dance Away" and "Angel Eyes" turned the tide, giving them a pair of top 5 hits on the bounce. They swiftly returned a year later and the novelty of having them back still hadn't warn off. Yet, new album Flesh and Blood contained two cover versions, an early indication that Bryan Ferry was starting to blur the lines between the group he had as a day job and his sideline solo career. (The band had previously been all about originals while Ferry on his own relied heavily on the efforts of others) "In the Midnight Hour" and "Eight Miles High" are outstanding singles by Wilson Pickett and The Byrds respectively but Roxy Music's interpretations of them are both vile, in spite of doing their best to do something new with them. The rest of the album is all right but there's a sense that they came back too quickly with Ferry's well of new material rapidly drying up.

That said, he singles from Flesh and Blood are all very good, if not hitting the heights of "Virginia Plain" and "Mother of Pearl" then at least they moved gracefully into middle age with their dignity. I've previously written about how Ferry had become formulaic following Roxy's demise and it's around this point that he begins coming up with this formula. "Dance Away" had already set a precedent as a composition but he'd yet to get his bandmates on board. A year on and everything has been refined. There's a build up throughout the song as everything comes together; only Andy Mackay's oboe solo, which hints at some of Brian Eno's "treatments" from the group's early days, is daring enough to step outside of Ferry's vision. As 'Mrs. Esme Sprigg of Houslow' says, it then melds into one of Phil Manzanera's patented guitar licks which shifts them more towards the mid-seventies. Ferry's vocal resumes and we're right back in 1980: every Roxy Music period is accounted for without suggesting that they'd rather be in an earlier time. It then concludes over an extended instrumental passage which anticipates the very lengthy fade out on "More Than This" from two years later.

I have long been down on Roxy's final stage and it still isn't my favourite period but they could've done a lot worse than "Over You" (and, to be sure, they did). Sure, their best days were behind them but they still had a contribution to make. If only more bands finished up as strong as a depleted Roxy Music on fumes.

~~~~~

Also of some cop

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: "Messages"

Mrs. Sprigg calls Wirral's finest 'OMITD' which isn't as catchy as 'OMD' but at least she's acknowledging prepositions and articles. Their earlier singles "Electricity" and "Red Flame/White Light" suggested there was promise and "Messages" is where they begin to show it. The Kraftwerk influence is in evidence, as is their debt to post-punk but their individual sound is emerging just as Roxy Music's was fading away. An excellent first hit single though it has since been overshadowed by more introspective numbers like "Enola Gay", "Souvenir" and all those bloody songs of their's about Joan of Arc. It does have something of the early Vince Clark-era Depeche Mode to it but the pop sound of 'OMITD' has its virtues just as "Just Can't Get Enough" has. The first of many classics to make up one of the stronger greatest hits collections of the decade.

The Bangles: "Hazy Shade of Winter"

27 January 1988

"To some they are just a quaintly old-fashioned rock group who demonstrate the virtues of quaintly old-fashioned rock music but in this day and age when records are brim full of plinky synthesizers and drum machines blipping away everywhere it sometimes comes as a bit of a relief to hear four mad Californians wigging out in the quaint old rock fashion."

— William Shaw

I don't know if it was The Beatles becoming fashionable again, baby boomers flexing their financial muscle or a general ennui with modern production and synths but the sixties were back (BACK!) by the end of the eighties. (It was probably a combination of all three as well as a few other factors) There had previously been a considerable amount of disdain held towards the decade of hippies, flowers and surprisingly dull Who records but this was gradually swept away in the aftermath of Live Aid and the compact disc revolution. The "plinky synthesizers and drum machines blipping away" were only finding a more welcoming home in the works of Stock Aitken Waterman but those singles were for the kids; the grown-ups had all this "old rock", some of which was in effect new old rock.

Of course, there were always rock acts keeping the flame of the sixties going. Power pop inherited it for a while but it was largely kept to the periphery throughout the eighties. US college rock groups may have arisen during the heyday of new wave but many of them owed a much greater debt to earlier times. Indie groups may have looked like punks but their music was often much closer to the hippies they may have otherwise looked down upon. R.E.M. gradually began attracting attention as a kind of southern gothic equivalent of an English folk rock act. Paisley underground emerged applying punk energy to Beatles, Byrds and country rock numbers. Yet, in the midst of this came The Bangles, who are not typically acknowledged as being part of an old school rock revival.

I'm sure that sexism plays a part in this even if they're also overlooked as authentic rock chicks the way The Go-Go's, Pat Benetar and Joan Jett all were and still are. The Bangles were a self-sufficient unit but they relied heavily on cover versions (even though you'd have to look long and hard to find another group that does reinterpretations just as well) and were not above daft pop like "Walk Like an Egyptian" which ensured that critics wouldn't take them seriously. Their glamourous image and pop hooks also made them favourites of youngsters which also didn't do them any favours in attempting to be credible. Yet among all that, they were a great band, "geniuses of immense proportions", as William Shaw puts it. No one else in their day managed to make the sixties sound so current.

The Bangles' cover of "Hazy Shade of Winter" came during the gap between their breakthrough second album Different Light and its follow up Everything and was recorded for the soundtrack to the film Less Than Zero. I haven't yet watched it but I imagined the song playing out along its the closing credits, possibly with Andrew McCarthy and Jami Gertz preparing to leave their decadent LA lives behind for the more mature pastures of the east coast of the United States — the synthetic eighties giving way to a future that looks back to simpler times. Tipping me off is the fact that it's the last track on its soundtrack so it must be there at film's end, right? Imagine my surprise, then, that it actually comes in right at the start of the movie: McCarthy's character of Clay Easton is coming back to California for the Christmas holidays and the sunshine pop rock of The Bangles is there to welcome him back on his ride from the airport. I guess it's an acknowledgement of how the Golden State was once a mecca of free thinking and love which had descended into free market madness and mountains of cocaine twenty years later but I really should try to track down the movie before I pontificate further.

By Simon & Garfunkel's standards, "A Hazy Shade of Winter" is a rocker. Though always a talented songwriter and arranger, Paul Simon wouldn't really become musically ambitious until his solo career in the seventies, at a time when many of his fellow coffee house singer-songwriters were also spreading their wings. It ended up on their finest album Bookends but it had been written and recorded at the time of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme and its flowery, impressionistic themes seem much more suited to the latter. Being so committed to folk music, Simon was not about to do a Dylan by plugging in and this was a rare number of his that you can say has something of a beat to it. I've never been much of a S&G person and I have to say that their version is unremarkable. The dullness of the recording really does an amazing job hiding the great composition underneath.

This version by The Bangles tops the original in every possible way. Susanna Hoffs, Debbi and Vicki Peterson and Michael Steele share lead vocal duties and the foursome are much stronger than Paul and Art, who even I'll admit had much better days in the studio. Rick Rubin's production gives it a shine that is nevertheless grounded in the sixties. Indeed, if anything it sounds much more of its time in the original summer of love than Simon's source material. A brief trumpet flourish that brings to mind "Penny Lane", sleigh bells not unlike "God Only Knows" and one of those insistent acid rock organs provide not-so-subtle reminders that this is a throwback.

Yet, we're still a ways away from the likes of Oasis instantly recalling The Beatles. This is very much The Bangles who were simply utilizing the sixties to make their records better. "Hazy Shade of Winter" comes from approximately the same time as the songs that would turn up on Everything, an album replete sitars, tablas, six-string guitars and baroque pop string arrangements but these only added depth to their sound; by being more like their influences, they ended up sounding more like themselves. 

The sixties was becoming the new thing in 1988. Just four days after this issue of Smash Hits came out, a new American TV series made its debut. The Wonder Years was sentimental but it wasn't as hokey as Happy Days or That 70's Show. It reflected the period in which it came out just as much as the era it was set in. Looking back to a time of idealism seemed like a good way to get us through the cynical late-eighties. Though as Bono would sing later on in the year (with a line that is irreconcilable with the remainder of U2's Rattle and Hum album) "if you glorify the past, the future dries up". Rock star were going to have to decide if they wanted to be part of the present or stuck in its past. Too bad they didn't follow the lead of The Bangles who deftly toed rock's spacetime continuum.

~~~~~

Also of some cop

Eighth Wonder: "I'm Not Scared"

A big part of an imperial phase is that a band can get away with anything and still be successful and even tapping into the zeitgeist. As if to prove it, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe gifted their first song to an outside act. Eighth Wonder had been releasing an endless parade of flops (though they did have hits in Italy and Japan) before the Pet Shop Boys entered the picture and ended their losing streak. As Shaw says, there's no sign of the male Wonders on this recording though you can hardly blame anyone for thinking that Patsy Kensit could do all the promotional heavy lifting while the others stayed in the background. She looked great but Kensit wasn't a brilliant pop star, her voice was distinctive but weak and her mannerisms smacked of too many years in stage school. It was decent of Tennant and Lowe to give her such an excellent song but they should have saved it for themselves; the far more throwaway "Heart" would have sufficed but that's a story for another time. Please stay tuned.

Wendy & Lisa: "Sideshow"

13 January 1988

"It churns and stonks along and has some shiveringly pretty singing and the best thing about it is the way they pronounce "sideshow" as "satchel" on account of their "funny" American accents."

— Tom Hibbert

1988. A key year for Smash Hits and for your humble blogger. Pop itself may not have been in peak form but the magazine tasked with glorifying it was at the top of its game. An ace "crew" of music journos with a very liberal use of "inverted" commas made the British youth keep coming even when the pop stars themselves weren't much cop. Traces of the mag's roots in punk, new wave and New Pop remained even as the era of Stock Aitken Waterman and the return of the boy bands was upon us. You might say that late-eighties Smash Hits encompassed the entire decade.

For myself, 1988 was the year in which everything changed. I began to slowly get into music over the first several months of the year which would only serve as a teaser for our move to England that August. My sister began buying Smash Hits, we never missed Top of the Pops and I quickly took to sitting through the entirety of Bruno Brooks' Top 40 rundown on Sundays. (Saturday morning pop-centred fare such as Going Live and The Chart Show was a rarity, however, since we went away a lot on weekends) Many of my childish passions had been left behind in Canada, never to return. I also discovered my love for travel and took my first steps towards becoming the person that I am today. (Read into that whatever you will...)

In the world of ver Hits, '88 began right where they'd left off. Tom Hibbert takes the reigns once again as singles reviewer. Nothing new here, this was his tenth "go" at it. Turns out, it would also be his last. Hibs had been with the top pop mag for a while, a throwback to the days when critics were about his age, not several decades younger. He would act as inspiration and mentor to a generation of excellent writers but this chapter was beginning to close. He wasn't yet done — it wasn't as if there was anyone else capable of replacing him as Black Type — but as this was his last kick at the singles "can" then this entry can be his farewell. And what a run it was: from getting me to shift ever so slightly on Big Country to making me suspect that he used his position in order to give the covert impression that modern pop was nothing but crap

His final SOTF was awarded to Wendy & Lisa for their single "Sideshow" and, for once, I don't think he's trolling anyone either. He reckons it's "really groovy" and "frightfully "sexy", if you will pardon the term". A much more convincing case than his justifications for the likes of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Limahl and even Heart. Hibs actually liked at least one pop song from this time? Yes, I believe he did.

The Revolution had been modern pop's answer to Duke Ellington's orchestra. Both organizations had immensely talented figures at the forefront and both were backed by musicians with considerable abilities of their own. People like Johnny Hodges, Barney Bigard and Cootie Williams all seemed like stars but their lofty status only remained while under Ellington's employ; on their own, they could never escape his shadow. Not unlike Prince's backing band. The Purple Perv had a formidable lineup that had helped him through his prime years and it seemed like these people were all stars in waiting as opposed to, say, The E-Street Band, a group that looked like they'd end up right back in Asbury Park, NJ as plumbers (or accountants in the case of Max Weinberg) if The Boss had ever had them disbanded.

On the other hand, Ellington knew that he needed the key members of his group. The departure of Hodges in 1951 resulted in a lukewarm four year solo career for the alto saxophonist and a bit of a creative downturn for Duke. He composed with particular soloists in mind and struggled a bit with one of his top players missing. Prince had been underpaying his musicians for some time and his decision to augment The Revolution was unpopular. He would eventually blow the group up and the success of the resulting solo trilogy — Sign o' the Times, The Black Album and Lovesexy — must have led him to believe that he was better off doing everything himself. Being a generational talent — as multi-faceted musically as Paul McCartney, as chameleonic as David Bowie, as prolific as Miles Davis — this was something he was always capable of but the price he paid was the end of his great period.

Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman decided to venture out of the ashes of The Revolution as a duo, though one that also utilised former Revolution drummer Bobby Z. as well as Wendy's twin sister Susannah, who had been a member of Prince associate act The Family. Carrying on where they left off, their sound's source is unmistakable. Fair enough too since Prince's influence was all over the world of pop in the late eighties so why shouldn't his former bandmates indulge? It did, however, keep them tied too much to Prince who they would never fully get away from.

Much of Wendy & Lisa's self-titled debut album is about them finding their feet and establishing a sound of their own. A lot of the time it works and it mostly does on "Sideshow" except for the fact that it revels a little too much in its obscurity. In sending up their also-ran status as a mere 'sideshow', the pair display a degree of humour that Prince often lacked but there's the worrying sense that they were predicting their fate. Of course, this is easy for me to say in 2021 but listeners in 1988 may not have taken them seriously if they weren't in on the gag.

Otherwise, it's a perfectly nice pop-funk-soul number and one that holds up well alongside Prince's work from the same time. They're both excellent musicians and good vocalists, even if I wouldn't exactly describe their singing as "shiveringly pretty". It's far from being a mind-blowing performance but it suggests that they were on to something. They were sure to be the Next Big Thing — all they had to do was move themselves away from the Last Big Thing.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Fall: "Victoria"

Mark E. Smith and whoever else happened to be in The Fall (was Brix still a member?) displayed a bit of thing for the sixties back in '88. Faithful and fun covers of both The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" and The Kinks' "Victoria" resulted. They're both good but the latter is preferred despite its predictability. One can almost imagine Ray Davies believing all his royalist irony but you won't make the same mistake with Smith. Musically it lacks the charm of the original but there's a strong group performance and Smith "sings" it with far more swagger than Davies. A good effort that deserved to give The Fall a second top 40 hit and one that you might want to listen to a few times. Unlike "A Day in the Life", in which once will suffice.

The Beat: "Mirror in the Bathroom"

1 May 1980

"Hear it twice and you feel like you've known it for years."

— A Small Creature (in Shorts)

Ska music first came into my life about thirty years ago. We were visiting my grandparents in the small southern Alberta city of Lethbridge. My mum and grandma were out shopping; my dad and grandpa were happily drinking rum and Pepsi and playing crib. Being in a the middle of a desolate trailer park on the outskirts of town, my sister and I turned on the TV and we quickly settled on MuchMusic, Canada's equivalent of MTV. They were showing a feature on the history of ska, with emphasis near the end on how Jamaican and British acts had influenced Canadian groups. It was riveting and as soon as I discovered it was being rerun, I taped it off the VCR and I would go on to watch it many times over the next few years. (Sorry, I can't seem to find it on YouTube — maybe someday)

With all due respect to Bedouin Soundclash and King Apparatus, I wasn't bothered about the effect ska had on Canadian bands. The Jamaican groups were pretty good and I still love Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop" though I really ought to investigate that scene further. No, what made me so fascinated — indeed, what got me to watch it several times on a well-worn video tape — was the British acts of the post-punk era. The Specials, The Selecter, Madness, The Beat. What a crew. I was exposed to "Gangsters", "A Message to You, Rudi", "Bed and Breakfast Man" — I even managed to learn to appreciate "On My Radio" once it had ceased getting on my nerves.

"Mirror in the Bathroom" was also featured in the ska documentary and it quickly became a big favourite of mine. I'd never heard it before and really the only thing I knew about The Beat was that two of them had also been members of Fine Young Cannibals (guitarist Andy Cox and bassist David Steele, one of whom can be seen in an archived group interview doing something peculiar; Beat singer Dave Wakeling does the talking and his bandmate sits glumly while occasionally picking up a drink just to smell it. To this day, I sometimes wonder if I'll ever encounter that beverage that you're only supposed to sniff). I knew a bit at the time about Madness because "Our House" had been a number one in Canada but the British ska acts were otherwise unknown to me. I would soon become a big fan of The Specials but The Beat were all about this one song. Turns out, I wouldn't be alone.

It was a little later that I began hearing "Mirror in the Bathroom" on the radio. A lot. It also began appearing in movie soundtracks. DJ's would spin it at the clubs. Eighties retro was at its height and it was becoming one of its key songs. For the love of god, Derassi: The Next Generation even named an episode after it. And, yet, it was never a hit single in North America back in the day and there's little evidence that it impacted people beyond a cult fanbase. So, how did it become a song that everyone suddenly seemed to know?

The above observation from David Hepworth "a small creature (in shorts)" gives us a clue. Of course, it was always a great song and was the biggest of their five top 10 hits in the UK. The Beat had been beset with having to call themselves The English Beat on the other side of the Atlantic and it was an add-on that they could never shake (as opposed to, say, 'The Charlatans UK' and 'The London Suede'); the group's lead singer has resided in the US for years and he eventually decided to stir into the skid by forming his own 'English Beat starring Dave Wakling'. Yet, they had a considerable following. When American ska acts like The Might Mighty Bosstones and No Doubt began to emerge, they talked up Coventry ska; Gwen Stefani loved her some Selecter but the so-called English Beat ended up being who everyone flocked towards — and it wasn't for their cover of the Smokey Robinson classic "Tears of a Clown".

Thus, "Mirror in the Bathroom" began to be played, people heard it, heard it again and came away convinced that they'd always known it. Well done to the small creature (in shorts) for seeing this coming. But why this song? Well, there's a familiar new wave sound to comfort listeners while every addition manages not to be off putting. Veteran Jamaican saxophonist Saxa busts out a muscular solo that is miles away from the sort of thing you might hear on "Baker Street" or "Careless Whisper". Their marriage of post-punk and ska put them in a distinct sphere from both Wire and The Specials. Wakeling's voice is authoritative, much stronger than Sting's or Weller's if not quite as unique as either Terry Hall or Suggs (then again, that may well be a point in his favour, at least on this record). The tune stays with listeners long after it has finished and even the title is something you don't forget.

Music fans, particularly those with a fondness for the eighties, often obsess over One Hit Wonders. Some (Thomas Dolby, Soft Cell) are legit examples, even if they may have had more than one hit single elsewhere. Others may have had a hand full of hits but are now only remembered for the one, as I discussed a while back in a post about Eurythmics. But The Beat pulled off the most stunning feat of all: they never had a hit single in North America yet they're remembered for having had one — and it's all because so many of us went through a ska phase back in the nineties.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Gang of Four: "Outside the Trains Don't Run on Time"

Gang of Four, Martha & The Muffins, The Monochrome Set, The Revillos and Jah Wobble are all reviewed by the small creature (in shorts) this issue. A wealth of new wave/post-punk riches this fortnight, eh readers? Yes but perhaps there's a little too much of a good thing going on. Smash Hits reviewers of this period were beginning to express frustration at the number of groups still clinging to 1977 punk but I have to wonder when they began tiring of all the clipped guitars, shouty yet robotic vocals and insistent rhythms. It can't be long, can it? Gang of Four are more beloved now than they ever were at the time but this goodwill is almost entirely reserved for their debut album Entertainment! Second LP Solid Gold is more of the same only not quite as good. What they did, they did well but it was old hat and they weren't alone. New Pop (aka the so-called 'Second British Invasion') couldn't have come fast enough.