RECORD MIRROR singles reviews, 9th October 1971

https://i.imgur.com/6CMjXJZ.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/TuJGTJm.jpeg

IMGUR links:
Gallery: https://imgur.com/gallery/ATp7y2W
Page 1 full size: https://i.imgur.com/6CMjXJZ.jpeg
Page 2 full size: https://i.imgur.com/TuJGTJm.jpeg

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6sCAha2qU2LYk4auKeyDyy?si=b2e747bf5f6544c7

YTs for those not on Spotify:
Fabulous Counts - Get Down People
Melanie - Alexander Beetle
The Flower Travelling Band - Satori (Enlightenment) Pt. II
Seatrain - Marblehead Messenger
Peaches And Herb - The Sound Of Silence
Olivia Newton-John - Banks Of The Ohio
Vehicle - Mr. Organ Grinder
The Showstoppers - Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Miki Antony - Simon's Doorstep
Glenn Shorrock - Let's Get The Band Together
Jo Meek - It's Another Beautiful Day
Essjay - Twins Of Evil
Morning Mist - California On My Mind
Howard Keel - All Of My Life

The full edition of Record Mirror is at https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Record-Mirror/70s/71/Record-Mirror-1971-10-09-S-OCR.pdf

James Hamilton's reviews are on my blog in full, with embedded YTs for everything:
https://jameshamiltonsdiscopage.com/1971/10/09/october-9-1971-eddie-floyd-b-b-king-the-newcomers-the-8th-day-the-5th-dimension/

11 of these have passed through my hands (The Move, Tim Thomas, Vehicle, Glenn Shorrock, The Pipkins, Jo Meek, Lonnie Donegan, The Doggs, Neil Lancaster, Essjay, Howard Keel), as James Hamilton was getting all promos for reviewing purposes, whether or not they were US in origin. Most of his collection was auctioned off after his death, but about 4500 singles didn't get sold, so they were passed to me by his stepdaughter (who is also my stepsister). I've been selling them on Discogs for the past five years, and about 550 currently remain unsold.

As I've uploaded audio clips to Discogs for all items, I can give you partial MP3 links to Lonnie Donegan and Neil Lancaster (but not Tim Thomas, which was sold privately). You get 30 seconds from near the start, 30 seconds from near the end, and 30 seconds from the middle of the B-side.

Lonnie Donegan - Don't Blame The Child
Neil Lancaster - I'll Cry My Heart Out For You

Satori!!!!!

Have only heard a sprinkling of these (a few of the American ones and none of the others), from which the Rare Earth is the clear winner. Muscular, rocked up Motown was a subgenre that didn’t seem to go very far beyond Rare Earth.

Yes, that is a good track, has to be the Move though.

Wait, “Chinatown” I’ve heard but my preliminary choice still stands

Flower Travelling Band and it's not even close.

THE GREAT:

Tami Lynn - That's Understanding
(An admittedly unlikely choice of follow-up to her classic Northern hit “I’m Gonna Run Away From You”, revived from 1965 and a #4 UK hit in May 1971, but JH gives it unfairly short shrift – the lengthy, repetitively building, almost “Hey Jude”-like instrumental coda is fantastic.)

The Flower Travelling Band - Satori (Enlightenment) Pt. II
(Edited on 7” to about half the length of the album version, this UK release sells for around £32. Hadn’t heard of these Japanese psych-rockers before; impressive, and like nothing else on this list.)

Freddie Scott - Just Like A Flower
(Impeccably gorgeous deep soul from 1968. What a voice.)

Johnny Cash - Singing In Vietnam Talking Blues
(Fucking hell, the way it ends just slaughters you.)

Steeleye Span - Rave On
(Folksters successfully render Buddy Holly as acappella, leading me to wonder whether this inspired Mud’s acappella-started chart-topping 1975 cover of “Oh Boy”. I was a big Span fan in 1974. Multiple LPs.)

B.B. King - Ghetto Woman
(Never been much into B.B. King, but yeah, this is terrific. The Jimmie Haskell strings are outstanding.)

The 5th Dimension - Never My Love
(They were so great on the recently released Summer Of Soul, shot at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, and this is a gorgeous example of their craft.)

THE GOOD:

Rare Earth - I Just Want To Celebrate
(Titanic’s “Sultana” aside, I’ve never been much into the whole early Seventies rock/funk thing – I’ve never understood why Barrabas are so revered, for instance – but I’ve given this a fair hearing, and it works: nice life-affirming stuff, with an effective false ending to boot.)

Fabulous Counts - Get Down People

Seatrain - Marblehead Messenger
(The first rock band George Martin produced after The Beatles, apparently. I was surprised to find that Seatrain were American, as the folky bits sound more British/Irish. Deftly done, with plenty of interesting flourishes, but where are these “wah-wah rabbits” of which JH speaks?)

Anne Murray - Talk It Over In The Morning
(Elegantly classy Carpenters-esque MOR country, attractively orchestrated, and co-composed by Paul Williams/Roger Nichols, which explains the Carpenters-ishness: they also co-wrote “We’ve Only Just Begun”, “Rainy Days And Mondays” and “I Won’t Last A Day Without You”.)

Andy Williams - A Song For You
(A cover of the opening track from Leon Russell’s debut LP. For all its schmaltz, Williams connects with the song and delivers a strong and believable performance, the more restrained steadiness of his approach comparing well against Russell’s showy histrionics.)

The Move – Chinatown
(Their penultimate single before the split into ELO and Wizzard (whose debut single “Ball Park Incident” largely lifts its opening lines from Lloyd Price’s “Stagger Lee”, I have just discovered). Marginally more culturally sensitive than “Hong Kong Garden” (which isn’t saying much), but lyrics aside, it’s up there with The Move’s best work. NB Their final single, “California Man”, was the first pop song that I actively loathed, taking its ramshackleness for incompetence.)

Essjay - Twins Of Evil
(A Mike Batt-arranged and sought-after thirty quid job, the theme from the horror film of the same name, which starred Peter Cushing and Playboy’s first ever identical twin Playmates Of The Month. Effectively menacing.)

Eddie Floyd - Blood Is Thicker Than Water
(I love JH’s verbose enthusiasm, but I don’t altogether share it.)

THE OK:

Jeannie C. Riley - Good Enough To Be Your Wife

Tommy Roe - Stagger Lee
(Wouldn’t have called it “bubblegum” myself, it’s got some decent musical chops, but Roe is no Lloyd Price.)

Vehicle - Mr. Organ Grinder
(Apparently a one-off alias for Howard “Lem” Lubin, formerly of Unit 4+2 and shortly to join Christie, who also released one-off singles in 1971 on Decca as Marriage and Lemon – yeah, go figure. I got some Lindisfarne “hey mister dream seller” vibes off this, and then discovered that the Lemon single is a version of their “Lady Eleanor”, so It All Connects. The arrangement (by the then ubiquitous Colin Frechter), which I like a lot, deserves a stronger song.)

Morning Mist - California On My Mind

The 8th Day - You've Got To Crawl (Before You Walk)
(Bog standard Invictus, heard it all before, but not without merit. Good breakdown.)

THE IFFY:

Melanie - Alexander Beetle
(I think this was played on Ed Stewart’s Junior Choice at the time. I saw Melanie perform it live in 2009, which was charming enough in context with the rest of her show, but I could only stand to listen to it once through this around. MAN it’s annoying.)

Peaches And Herb - The Sound Of Silence
(I wanted to like this, but for all its boldness, it’s just a bit of a mess.)

Jose Feliciano - Que Sera (Che Sara')
(It has a very early Seventies Eurovision feel, which in this case is not a good thing: its relentless overblown pushing of the title line scuppers it.)

Olivia Newton-John - Banks Of The Ohio
(This and “Alexander Beetle” are the only songs that 9 year-old me would have known at the time. I was too busy singing along with the jolly male counterpoint lines to have twigged that it was a murder ballad, and still less that ONJ – that nice, smiley, Cliff-bestie stalwart of early evening light entertainment telly – was the assassin. As far as I can tell, ONJ’s version of the 19th century bluegrass standard may have been the first to fully flip the genders – even the infinitely superior Joan Baez version still tells the tale from the man’s standpoint – but she flubs the opportunity, smothering it in saccharine.)

The Showstoppers - Action Speak Louder Than Words
(Like The Drifters and The Four Tops, The Show Stoppers had been lured over to the UK – presumably due to revived Northern Soul interest, centred around their 1967 classic “Ain’t Nothin’ But A House Party” – where they also fell into the clutches of jack-of-all-trades hacks who could only offer pale imitations of what had made them great. In this case, it fell to Biddu and Gerry Shury to serve the unrealness.)

Miki Antony - Simon's Doorstep
(A winsome chap who eventually had a minor hit in 1973 with “If It Wasn't For The Reason That I Love You”, Miki Antony cranked out the flops for a full ten years, with titles such as “Dear Auntie Mary”, “Sally Sunshine” and “Funny Sorta Day”. This is the work of the highly prolific Cook/Greenaway team, and clearly not plucked from their top drawer.)

Glenn Shorrock - Let's Get The Band Together
(Four years before founding the Little River Band, this was Shorrock’s debut release. I went to a Little River Band show at The Rainbow in 1980, solely because Kevin Ayers was supporting. Ayers was disillusioningly terrible, and I left before Shorrock’s band took to the stage.)

Jo Meek - It's Another Beautiful Day
(Her name was spelled as “Joe Meek” on the label, which got me quite excited before I realised the typesetting blunder. This never made it past the promo stage in the UK, which you’d think might have made it valuable, but no.)

Jack Bruce - The Consul At Sunset
(“Though the fireflies laugh in the dusklight, it's the Festival of Death. Crowd is all laughter, it's hollow, sadly. They may kill death tonight, but they still live beneath the volcano.” I literally have no idea what’s going on here.)

Eugene Paul - Somebody's Changing My Sweet Baby's Mind

The Newcomers - Pin The Tail On The Donkey
(“Casting covetous eyes towards the Jackson Five and Osmonds” – yeah, precisely that.)

THE GARBAGE:

The Scaffold - Do The Albert
(Roger Bloody McGough! Mike Macca-Bro McGroovy! The Other One! The Scaffold had been regulars on kids’ telly in the late Sixties, meaning that “Thank U Very Much”, “Lily The Pink” and “Gin Gan Goolie” had already been seared into my formative consciousness as indelible earworms. This, at least, has the virtue of being a good deal less poisonously memorable.)

The Pipkins - Gonna Give Up Smokin' And Take Up Lovin' With You
(Another Cook/Greenway effort, from the “Gimme Dat Ding” duo of Roger Greenway and Tony Burrows, blending unfunny comedy with Gibb-esque vocal blackface.)

Greyhound - Follow The Leader
(Flop follow-up to their “Black And White” hit, and a grisly reminder that Trojan could often be terrible.)

The Doggs - Billy's Gotta Run
(Co-written by Alan Hawkshaw, but don’t let that give you hope. Their only single.)

Howard Keel - All Of My Life
(From a musical called Ambassador that starred Keel, and flopped in both the West End and Broadway. Lyrics by Hal Hackaday. Well, quite.)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Wait, you uploaded audio clips for 4500 singles on discogs? (three clips per record??)
How long does that even take?

It was actually just one 90 second clip per record, spliced together from the start and end of the A-side and the middle of the B-side.

It took almost exactly a year, working full time, but justified by the sales figures; it was a valuable collection, mainly of super-obscure UK promos from 1971-73, all genres. Loads of psych-pop, junkshop glam, and the sort of stuff that ends up on Cherry Red or Bob Stanley comps.

It wasn't just the clips, though. About 25% of the records weren't even on Discogs, so I had to create entries for them, with label scans and composer/production credits etc. This also made valuations harder; I had to do a lot of cross-referencing via Popsike and MusicStack. Plus cleaning them was no trivial task.

As loads of them weren't available to listen online, the clips helped sell them to collectors - I was getting a lot of large bulk orders towards the start, and sold quite a few privately in advance of having to list them. One collector came to my house seven or eight times in the space of a few months, to go through the crates and test-play anything that looked interesting - he'd stay for hours and pay cash, and we'd have fantastically detailed conversations about obscure music. Happy days.

that is incredible.

also, i missed this previously - they were passed to me by his stepdaughter (who is also my stepsister) - so what connection to you was James Hamilton?

ie - did you know him personally? i'm sure you have gone into detail about this previously but my memory sucks.

Yeah, after my dad died, my stepmother re-married, to James Hamilton. They married in 1994, he died in 1996, so I knew him for the last two years of his life.

Wow.

Anyway, I ended up voting for Freddie Scott. There were other more inventive records on my shortlist, but his pressed the most buttons.

Thanks for the lowdown. He was a total hero. I still have tons of 12" singles from the early 90s with the bpm written on them that I copied from his columns (often worked out down to the 1/4 of a bpm which is quite a feat to figure out).

i voted for Satori.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Mmmmmm, that Freddie Scott is so good. New to me, as was that 5th Dimension song. I just rewatched Summer Of Soul for the 3rd time and still adore so much the bit where McCoo & Davis are filmed now watching themselves perform then.

RECORD MIRROR singles reviews, 15th October 1976