Reupload - The Look - Real Live Heaven

Label: MCA

Year of Release: 1981

I was only eight years old when I turned on Top of The Pops one day, and suddenly became transfixed by dubious looking Kevin Keegan-esque men with mullets stomping out an organ driven groove.

"Girls are dancing all around/ and just for me..."

As one hit wonders go, "I Am The Beat" is probably one of the finest. It's so simplistic it sounds as if it should have been written during the earliest days of the beat boom, but it arrived out of nowhere and soared up the charts in 1981 as if it owned them, and managed to sound simultaneously new and knowingly referential. Besides coming from men who clearly had a love of classic rock, there was something angular and "noo wave" about the band, which caused Smash Hits to comment "one Squeeze of The Look and I'm in XTC". The simplicity of their music belied a huge stock of influences.  

Unfortunately, the band's rise to fame seemed at odds with the record company's attitude towards them.  They were signed for a one-single deal initially to see how "I am the Beat" fared, and even when Radio One playlisted it MCA could barely be bothered to promote the disc, leading Radio One DJ Simon Bates to plead on air for the label to "pull their fingers out". One has to wonder how valuable these one-off single deals were by the eighties, and if many acts were genuinely broken by them - they seemed to be a mark of indifference rather than faith.

After it climbed to number six the label offered them more recording time, and an album was apparently rushed out as a result, with "rushed" being the operative word. The band were apparently deeply unhappy with its over-polished sound which they felt was hopelessly at odds with their live show - in a recent interview they claimed to have "burned all their copies".

It's from this LP that "Real Live Heaven" stems, and I'll be frank, if it's representative of the long player at all, I'd argue they're being overly modest. The ingredients which made "I am the Beat" so compelling are still intact, and it's riddled with more hooks than a Peter Hook family reunion. The glammish stomp is still present and correct, as is an insistent chorus, and whilst nobody is likely to give the song any points for subtlety - Slade would have killed to have something so terrace-pleasing in their set list - sometimes that really doesn't matter. They deserved to have a minor hit with this at least, although I can't help but wonder whether it would have been more at home amidst the early nineties indie scene.

After the album didn't perform to their expectations, MCA dropped them, and The Look jumped from the frying pan into the fire with Towerbell Records, an independent label whose owner allegedly fled the country owing many of his acts vast sums of money.  The band apparently turned up for a meeting one afternoon and found the windows to Towerbell boarded up. One could hardly have blamed them for giving up at this point, but it was with some surprise that I found out that they'd very recently reformed and released a follow-up album two decades later entitled "Pop Yowlin". It's available on iTunes, and from the brief samples I've heard so far proves they're still in love with producing skronking great barnstormers. Lovely.

(This blog entry was originally uploaded in March 2009 - I've little to add, except to say that The Look still remain - for want of a better word - rather too overlooked.  "Pop Yowlin'" is worth your time).

Can't Buy Me Love

Yes, it's true!  Why ever would I lie?  I'll be back DJ'ing* at North London's premier vintage jumble sale event on Saturday 26th May, cheering you on your way around the establishment with top tunes (and it runs from 12:30pm - 5:30, meaning you'll have plenty of time to get back home in time for Eurovision).


It's taking place at a pub which was ranked among the top ten in the country by "The Guardian":

The Boogaloo
312 Archway Rd, N6 5AT
London


And all the Facebook details are here.


(* Illness, major equipment failure, burglaries in which my vinyl collection is stolen and other random acts of God not included in this guarantee) 

Butch Moore - The Incredible Miss Brown/ Till Then My Love

Label: Pye

Year of Release: 1967

Hey kids, it's Eurovision Song Contest week!  Back in 2008 and 2009 I tried to celebrate this wondrous occasion here on this very blog by showcasing some of the most interesting entries the contest had given us over the years, but the extreme dip in the stats on both occasions told me all I needed to know - namely, that you good readers just weren't interested.  

This entry by no means marks a return to my old habits, you'll possibly be relieved to hear, but it does tie in neatly with that fine fest of song.  Butch Moore was a popular Irish singer and Showband star back in the sixties, and has the distinction of being Ireland's first entry in the contest in 1965 with "Walking The Streets In The Rain".  That track was the kind of rich, intricate ballad one would have expected to find in the contest at this time, and despite Moore's confident performance and accomplished vocals, it wasn't really distinguished enough to cut through to the top five, having to content itself with sixth place.

Moore's career from that point on went much as you'd expect - he remained a huge live draw in Ireland until the turn of the decade, not really deviating much from ballads and showband tunes.  This is what makes the 1967 B-side "The Incredible Miss Brown" such an absurd blip on the radar.  Here he attempted the Carnaby swing, doing a piece of almost Chris Andrews styled mod-pop, a move so unexpected that numerous collectors and ebay auctioneers have since argued that this single is a lost bit of underground sixties exotica.  For once, they're not too far off the money.  "Miss Brown" is a little stilted and stiff in places, and sounds exactly like what it is - namely, a rather straight mainstream family figure trying to take on some modern styles.  For all that, it's still a perfectly pleasant piece of pop.  It's indicative of the era and seems charming rather than try-hard these days, hardly being up there with The Small Faces or The Kinks, but at least taking a very competent stab at a bit of music hall inspired pop.

The A-side, meanwhile, is as you'd expect - it's another incredibly well performed ballad which will excite you if that's the kind of thing you're excited by, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to pass on commenting on it (apart from to apologise for the pops and crackles near the start).

Butch Moore unfortunately passed away in 2001, but will always be remembered and treasured as the first Irish person to enter Eurovision.  He may not have been the first Irish entrant to actually win, but he certainly set the stage for others to follow in his footsteps.  Now then, let's see what Jedward can do for them this year... (and would Butch be spinning in his grave, I wonder?)

Troy Tate - Thomas/ What'Cha Gonna Do Next/ E209

Label: Sire
Year of Release: 1984

Troy Tate is one of those musicians and performers with a history so long you could discuss it in-depth all week if you had a mind to do so.  Sometime solo artist, sometime member of eighties pop misses Fashion, member of post-Rezillos act Shake, rejected producer for The Smiths first album, and (perhaps most famously) member of The Teardrop Explodes during the turbulent period of the "Wilder" album, he's had a career fit to keep him in bar-room anecdotes for the rest of his life, though he may not necessarily have enough cash to get a round in.  If you're not going to outright succeed in a way that ensures platinum discs line the walls of your mansion, his career is at least an example of how to make your life sound more interesting than most of your associates.

Troy was a solo artist before he joined the Teardrops and again after the band imploded.  When he departed the group, the nucleus of Julian Cope, Gary Dwyer and David Balfe attempted to record the eventually aborted "Everyone Wants To Shag The Teardrop Explodes" album, an LP Cope complained suffered from a synthetic, eighties production.  If this troubled Julian, you don't get the impression from Tate's output that such a direction would have bothered him all that much - for it swings in that very measured, pouting eighties way, with slapping bass noises and saxophones making themselves apparent at various points.  Troy's Bryan Ferry-esque posing on the sleeve really does give the game away mightily here.

Don't let that put you off, however, because the songs he created were good enough to still spike through the eighties sheen, and there's enough imagination behind the arrangements to make for a pleasing listen.  In particular, both "Thomas" and the B-side "E209" here are examples of how to create pop music which still has diversions, sliproads and turnoffs into unexpected territories - an art which, for however much the eighties gets maligned as an era, was typical of the period and has become increasingly hard to find since.  Whilst this isn't quite up there with ABC, it is thoughtful pop music from the same kind of laboratory, and it deserves a chance.

If this leaves you hungry for more, Troy Tate's road manager Bob Edwards has a site here where both his albums are available for download.

Dream Police - I'll Be Home (In A Day Or So)/ Living Is Easy/ Our Song

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1970

Someone far wiser than me and certainly far wiser than most musicians once came out with the valid observation: "The music industry sees a band they like, signs them on the basis of their greatness, then - often for no good reason at all - sets about trying to change them into something utterly different".  This is as true today as it was in the sixties, with a colleague of mine complaining only a year ago that a relative of his had been signed and changed from a mandolin playing singer-songwriter into an electro-pop artist. 

Dream Police probably also know exactly what I'm talking about here. The Glasgow-based act were known for blistering, rocking live shows in their home city, to the extent that Scottish pop historians have a tendency to wax lyrical about them to this day.  By the time they caught the overnight sleeper train down to London (or perhaps took the long drive down - I'm possibly painting false and rather cliched pictures here) and were signed, songwriter and producer Junior Campbell ignored their hard edged sound and gave them the gentle track "I'll Be Home (In A Day Or So)".  For reasons which aren't altogether clear this A-side has found itself on psychedelic compilations since, despite being about as psychedelic as Edison Lighthouse.  It's a nice enough song and possibly could have become a hit, but it truly is production line pop - the big orchestrally backed chorus is very much of its time and so hooky you'll struggle to shift it from your brain after only the first listen.

The B-side "Living Is Easy", however, is widely regarded to be as close to the Dream Police live experience as vinyl buyers ever got, all hard rock riffs and screeching vocals.  So different are the two sides that they could easily have been recorded by two entirely different acts.

(Scroll down for another Dream Police single after the mp3s)

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1970

Dream Police's follow-up single "Our Song" was, at the very least, a self-penned effort on this occasion.  Less of a sledgehammer piece of pop, it's actually typical of the kind of catchy, gentle, closely produced, American influenced FM rock which littered the British charts during 1970-1972 - careful, adult yet also radio-friendly.  It failed to pay off, however, and nor did the band's country-styled follow-up "I've Got No Choice".

It wasn't all bad news for the band, as after their split two of the members went on to earn a crust in other more successful groups.  Keyboard player Ted McKenna went on to join the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, and vocalist Hamish Stuart joined the Average White Band.  Perhaps this is proof that just sometimes, it's worth going along with the industry's insane demands purely to gain important contacts and get a foothold in their world.