Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

Tomorrow (January 28th) sees the release of a deluxe version of Rumours celebrating the 35th anniversary of the album coming out. As everyone knows the album when originally released was a masterpiece and has sold around 40 million copies, so expect that number to rise from tomorrow.

It is amazing really when you read about how the album was recorded amongst the relationships in the band breaking down, the McVie's had just divorced and only talked to each other about music. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were in an on off relationship too. These troubled times come through in many of the lyrics and John McVie suggested the title of the album as he reckoned that everyone in the group was writing about each other in the band. To learn more about this classic album I suggest you look on Wikipedia, the full detailed story is there and it is quite a read!

Several singles were released off the album but didn't really do a great deal here in the UK as everyone was buying the album, which helped push it to the top of the charts. Over the years each track off the album has become a classic in it's own right and I think all the tracks at one point were often played on the radio.

My story of the album came in mid 1985, I had been staying with friends just outside of London. I had taken my Walkman with me for the journey home and I remember saying to my friend that I would like to buy a cassette for the bus ride home but couldn't think of one I wanted. She suggested Rumours as it was such a good album as she had a copy, so I bought it, I didn't play it till I was on my way home. When I started listening to it, I realised I knew the album, never heard the album before but all the tracks were often on the radio but never knew who it was. I loved it and played it several time that ride home so when I listen to the album it reminds me of that time!

Here is the cover of this classic album

Pulp - Common People

Brit pop was at it's height when this came out. Jarvis Cocker and the band came out with this masterpiece in 1995 and quickly shot to number 2 in the charts. A song basically about an upper class girl wanting to act and live like a working class girl, swapping luxury for poverty. Jarvis wrote the song about a girl that he knew from his art college days and like the line in the song goes, if she did call her Dad he could just stop it all and so therefore she could never be like common people!

Pulp had always up to this track been a band that always nearly made it, with a big loyal fan base and always critics favourites. I remember seeing them perform this track on Top Of The Pops and was so powerful, almost anthem like and the video was a great piece of footage too. Released on yellow vinyl, 2 cd singles, 12'' and a cassingle all these formats helped get it into the top 5. The follow up single had a dance remix on of Common People which is pretty good too! A classic track that always reminds you of a period of life in the mid nineties

Goldfrapp - Rocket

This track was released in March 2010 and up to now, is the last single I have bought as a physical release. The shops stopped selling CD Singles and I don't think the companies release that many singles as a physical release anymore, anyhow I digress!

Goldfrapp have been around for several years and their releases have progressed album by album, from the soundtrack sounding first album to the album this came off straight pop music. Rocket from the first notes sounds so 80's, the keyboards remind me of Jump by Van Halen (not a bad thing I might add) and I also think it reminds me of Olivia Newton John's Physical (in my head it does, humour me please) but is such a great piece of pop music. The single didn't do that well in the UK, it managed a top 50 place but the album it came off, Head First hit the top 10. The CD release featured several remixes of the track, all good too! The band are in the studio recording new material so I can't wait to hear that!

Mott The Hoople - Roll Away The Stone

Mott The Hoople were on a roll after the hit single All The Young Dudes from 1972. Before the single was released, the band were about to break up when David Bowie offered them that track, success finally came fast. After several other singles hitting various places in the charts, the band released this classic single written by Ian Hunter and released in November 1973 at the height of Glam Rock and climbed to number 8 in the charts. Over the next couple of years the band continued to have success here and in America but the band imploded by 1975 after constant line up changes and Ian Hunter finally walking out of the band to go solo. At least they left us with some great tracks. Here's the single!

The Associates - Party Fears Two

This single hit the charts on the back of the New Romantic movement that was hitting the British music scene in the early 80's. The Associates were Billy MacKenzie & Alan Rankine, who had been on the scene since 1979 releasing several independent albums before hitting the top 20 with Party Fears Two and the album it came off Sulk. Billy's operatic vocal soared over this great keyboard based track and pushed it to number 9 in early 1982. The band released another couple of singles that hit the top 20 but by far this was the best track for me!

The band split up just as they were to go on tour promoting Sulk and left Billy to carry on under the bands name, but success wasn't there and in the 1990's he recorded under his own name. In 1997 Billy MacKenzie committed suicide after suffering from clinical depression, he was thinking of making a comeback at the time and the material he recorded before his death has been released.

He had such an awesome voice, the notes he reached were amazing and when you listen to this track those hairs on the back of your neck stand up. A classic slice of synthpop circa 1982!

Death Of The Record Shop

It was sad but not unexpected that HMV had gone into administration this week. For the last few years the company had been having a really tough time with changing technology and the power of the internet. Also I really think they were too expensive, some things on the web site were so much cheaper than the shop, not just by a pound but sometimes up to £6 cheaper. I went into the shop once and the staff were talking to each other about the fact they had bought something from Amazon the night before!

I can still remember the first time I went into the shop here in Hull. It will have been 1978, my first time going into town by myself and going into the shop. Previously when I'd been into town with my parents they would never go into there and I'd only ever seen it from the front. They always put the latest released singles in the window and I remember the lines of coloured vinyl singles forming the shop window display.

The first time I went into the shop was like a kid going into a sweet shop, wall to wall racks of records, posters on the wall and at that time a full wall of the latest picture disc albums coming over from the states, with the likes of Elton John, Blondie, Rod Stewart amongst others hung on the wall. It was the first time I'd seen these and they were amazing and knew I wanted to collect them. There was no way I could afford those albums. That started my love affair of collecting records.

Over the years, the record collection grew, I'd always go into the shops every Saturday to see what new releases were out, I never thought that vinyl would die out and one day I saw these strange silver discs back in 1984 and never thought they would catch on. Compact discs slowly took over from vinyl and slowly record companies stopped releasing vinyl, it was still being pressed up but more smaller quantities to a point in the mid 1990's that shops stopped selling vinyl although mid 2000's it did make a bit of a comeback! Here is a photo of me looking at what was left of the vinyl back in 2007 in our HMV shop

The invention of MP3's, Apple and streaming has killed the record business, along with internet prices meant the humble record shop has vanished from our high streets. If HMV closes here in Hull there will be no shop where I can go to look around at new releases, old albums I might want to buy or take in the atmosphere of listening to new sounds played over a stereo system. Supermarkets like Tesco's only have a small selection of chart and current releases, WH Smiths don't really do CD's anymore and the small independent shops here are more selective in what they can sell. So the internet has won, I will order my stuff off the net, but I so much wanted to browse and look at what I want to buy, it is a real hassle to send something back you are not really happy with, the write up might sound like it's just what you want but when you get it home it just doesn't match up to your expectations.

Record Shops, may you rest in peace, your stores may be gone from our high streets but you live on in my memories!

The Move - Flowers In The Rain

Here's a single with a bit of history behind it. Flowers In The Rain became the first single to be played on the new BBC radio station Radio 1 on 30th September 1967. The single was written by Roy Wood, produced by Tony Visconti and got to number 2 in that year.

To help the single chart, the band's manager thought a stunt might help give the single an edge and came up with the idea of a cartoon postcard. He featured on the card a cartoon of a naked Harold Wilson who was Prime Minister then with his secretary, but the stunt seriously backfired and the band were sued. As a result of the court decision, all royalties from the song were to be donated to a charity of Harold Wilson's choice and that still stands today and is thought to have cost the band millions of pounds in lost royalties.

I remember the single from my childhood, I will have been 2 when it came out and can always remember it being played. I always remembered what it looked like and found a similar copy on Ebay! Here's is the single

Sparks - The Number One Song In Heaven

Here's the comeback single from the Mael brothers which got them back into the UK charts after several years out of the charts and back home in America. They were influenced by the electronic sounds that Giorgio Moroder was coming up with producing Donna Summer and they wanted to try other areas of music and so they teamed up with Moroder to produce the album Number One In Heaven for Virgin Records.

The single was released in the UK in April 1979 and reached number 14, which was their biggest hit since 1974. To help the single along, it was released in limited edition green vinyl 7'' and red vinyl 12'' which are highly collectable. The band found a new audience but the bands original fans accused them of selling out to the more commercial disco sound that was in the charts, they just wanted to try a different sound.

Here's the single sleeve and the green vinyl single. The first time I heard the single on Top Of The Pops I just had to buy it and if I remember rightly, it cost me the sum of 90p, a bargin in those days!