Sometimes I get an idea for a post and I commit to it, even when there are signs that it's not going in quite the direction I expected. Today is one of those posts.
An idle thought that it's now half a century since 1976 - and the creeping realisation that my formative years are ancient history! - got me wondering what was #26 in the UK Top 40 on 2nd January 1976.
The fact that it was (Are You Ready) Do The Bus Stop by The Fatback Band, an absolute classic, sold me on the idea of a 12-track Dubhed selection, plucking the #26 hits from the 2nd of each month throughout 1976.
I'll be upfront with you, it's a mixed bag. After a supremely strong start, next up is The Who, a band that I guess I'm supposed to like but whose music often does nothing for me. Squeeze Box is okay, as long as I tell myself that it really is all about an accordion-playing spouse...
I have no recollection of Let's Do The Latin Hustle by M. & O. Band aka Muff Murfin and Colin Owen, though I'm sure that Van McCoy's lawyers were listening with interest.
Watching with even greater interest was Eddie Drennon who had actually written Let's Do The Latin Hustle and released it with his B.B.S. Unlimited band, only to see M. & O. Band's version peak four places higher than his own. Allegations that Murfin and Owen had literally lifted recorded sections of the original for their own version were enough to put paid to any further UK chart hits for M. & O. Band, though sadly for Eddie Drennon too.
I Love To Boogie by T. Rex also courted controversy, due to its resemblance to Teenage Boogie, a 1956 single by Webb Pierce, "prompting rockabillies to attempt to burn copies of the single at an event held in a pub on the Old Kent Road, South East London". Well, according to Iffypedia anyway.
It's a striking image, though the fact that it was an "event" held in a pub which at best was "an attempt to burn copies of the single" makes me think it was an ad-hoc effort by a bunch of pissheads on a Saturday afternoon, who possibly couldn't even light a fart, let alone a 7" slab of vinyl...
It's not Marc Bolan's finest moment (I Love To Boogie, that is, not the Saturday afternoon in a South East London pub) but I have a soft spot for the song, and it's frankly one of the highlights of this selection.
I loved Blinded By The Light by Manfred Mann's Earth Band...as did Radio 1, as I remember hearing it all the time when I was a kid. I had no idea that it was a cover of a 1973 song by Bruce Springsteen until a few years ago, when I belated began delving into The Boss' back catalogue. I haven't listened to the song in years and it was nice to pick up on the lyrical reference to Go-Kart Mozart, which proved to be an inspiration to a certain Lawrence Hayward decades later.
If I'd waited a week, this selection would have closed with So Sad The Song, a soulful classic by Gladys Knight & The Pips, resting at #26 on 9th December 1976, having peaked at #20 a couple of weeks previously.
Instead, the #26 hit on 2nd December 1976 was Portsmouth by Mike Oldfield, clearly hoping to replicate the success of #4 hit (and subsequent Christmas staple) In Dulci Jubilo. Well, it worked; a month later, Portsmouth did one better and got to #3. Fifty years on, it's still bloody irritating but at least Mike was canny enough to keep it under two minutes...
A final nod to today's cover photo, my personal copy of (deep breath) Super Spider-Man With The Super-Heroes #158, which hit the newsagent's shelves on Valentine's Day in 1976. It was a landmark issue in as much as it followed the path of The Titans weekly, launched in October 1975, by presenting the comic in a landscape format.
It was a great concept as far as value-for-money was concerned: five comic strips every week for your hard-earned 9p; the flip-side was that two US comic pages were squeezed onto one UK page, straining the eyes of the nation's young with life-changing consequences in some cases.
It also pissed off the newsagents, who couldn't decide which way up to present the comic on the shelves. Marvel UK had obviously considered this with the two-way titles, but it often made for a very cramped, word-heavy cover.
Still, Marvel persisted with the format for over a year, even as The Titans failed and merged with the Spider-Man comic and collectively, the titles were getting through comic material at an exhausting and unsustainable rate.
Do I detect an analogy...?
1) (Are You Ready) Do The Bus Stop (Album Version): The Fatback Band (#18, 18th Jan)
2) Squeeze Box: The Who (#10, 22nd Feb)
3) Let's Do The Latin Hustle (Cover of Eddie Drennon & B.B.S. Unlimited): M. & O. Band (#16, 21st Mar)
4) Ships In The Night (Single Edit): Be Bop Deluxe (#23, 21st Mar)
5) No Charge: J.J. Barrie (#1, 30th May)
6) The Flasher: Mistura ft. Lloyd Michaels (#23, 6th Jun)
7) It Only Takes A Minute: 100 Ton And A Feather (#9, 18th Jul)
8) I Love To Boogie: T. Rex (#13, 11th Jul)
9) Blinded By The Light (Single Edit) (Cover of Bruce Springsteen): Manfred Mann's Earth Band (#6, 19th Sep)
10) Afternoon Delight: Starland Vocal Band (#18, 29th Aug)
11) Queen Of My Soul: Average White Band (#23, 24th Oct)
12) Portsmouth (Cover of traditional song): Mike Oldfield (#3, 2nd Jan 1977)
26 In '76 (40:37) (GD) (M)
