Music and 1976!
This is a rather big one! I’m currently working on developing my Music practice and applying for an Arts Council England Develop Your Own Practice grant. Through my work with Babigloo Music for Babies I have developed some wonderful collaborations with professional musicians and I want to develop my own passion for many genres of music and composition.
Following my Stroke in 2021 I was gifted an eight movement #strokesuite and I feel a Creative Health project could benefit the Stroke community, carers and medical practitioners. You can read my Blog on 5 years as a Stroke Survivor here
1976!
Along with ‘Sport’ like most kids I guess Music has and always will be the major influence in my life.
MUSIC! MUSIC! MUSIC! MUSIC! MUSIC! MUSIC! MUSIC! MUSIC! MUSIC! MUSIC!
I had a fine background in post war cheese - Dad survived second wave D Day, Mum survived bombing raids in her home town of Derby. They were just happy to be alive, reunited and eventually have the chance to ‘raise a little family’. But we sang and listened and there was always music in our house and in our hearts.:
BIMBO
PETER AND THE WOLF
THE PLANETS
MARY POPPINS
THE SOUND OF MUSIC
JUNIOR CHOICE with Ed (Stewpot) Stewart followed by TWO FAMILY FAVOURITES
JIMMY YOUNG on Radio 2 while Mum ‘kept house’-”Well Hello Do-lly!”
And then as I developed my own taste SLADE/TREX - especially 'GOODBYE TO JANE' (sang with gusto to my lovely Big Sis of the same name-well it's gotta be done!).
At Tolworth Junior School, Mrs Corbett (ably accompanied by pianist Mrs Watson) led us in four part choral pieces, we learnt the beauty of timbre and light and shade of volume and harmony. We tackled classics such as:
Lift Mine Eyes Unto the Mountain - Mendelssohn
Under the Old Linden Tree (Trad. Folk Song)
Then on Christmas Eve, my best friend since being babies Tim Snowley and me watched the QUEEN TV CONCERT XMAS EVE 1975 on the BBC with his big brother Andy actually there!!!!!! The whole concert was on terrestrial TV and is available on Youtube now of course, I still have the programme that Andy bought home for me (and the 33 rpm vinyl naturally!)
One of my poems written in 2022 reflected on the state of mind me and Tim were in - 12, no responsibilities and at our new secondary modern school, no aspirations!
On watching Queen Live at the Hammersmith Odeon 1975, Christmas Eve
Just falling back through time
Focused on the charts
The League Table
Copying our heroes
And trying to fly,
But always flying in our dreams.
No plan,
No questioning,
Just dreading school tomorrow -
Unless it’s PE or Music!!
Everyday’s a laugh
But there’s a deep sadness
From somewhere
A knowing?
But not knowing what.
And it’s Christmas-
So who cares anyway!!
28.10.22
1976!
Now I’m no Stuart Marconie here but the list of Top 10 singles for 1976 is interesting as it kinda plots the growth of Disco as a genre (discuss). Thanks to everyone at 70disco.comfor making this task a lot easier, more fun and one heady trip.
January saw Diana Ross at number 2 (“In the Hit Parade!”) with the theme from the film Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To?) and the O’Jays joining her at number 9. I prioritised buying That’s the Way I Like It by KC and the Sunshine Band.
February saw Hot Chocolate and You Sexy Thing and Earth Wind and Fire’s Sing a Song in the Top 10, but I was still going to sleep with my Big Sister playing 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover by Paul Simon when she came in late. I Write the Songs by Barry Manilow, Convoy by CW McCall and Breaking Up Is Hard To Do by Neil Sedaka, were in there vying for position (just for context - Punk is coming!!!!!!!)
March Number 1! Love Machine (Part 1)
For balance, I loved the Four Seasons ’December 1963, the lyric “Losing my priesthood” seemed very risque for a 13 year old. The Eagles Take it To the Limit and the Captain and Tenille were up there with Lonely Night (Angel Face).
April Number 1! Out and proud Disco Lady Johnnie Taylor, Maxine Nightingale Right Back Where We Started From,Sweet Love by The Commodores and Sweet Thing by Rufus (with Chaka Khan) were up there with Let Your Love Flow by The Bellamy Brothers, Dream On Aerosmith and (drumroll please!) Money Honey by the Bay City Rollers!
May saw Boogie Fever by The Sylvers and Love Hangover by Diana Ross included to some of the April Disco hits. I was distracted (with t he rest of the country) by the genre busting Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
June saw Diana Ross at Number 1, more Boogie with Silver Connections’ Get Up and Boogie.
DISCO - 1976 after the hottest summer. I was in Derby visiting my cousins and John, older than me, invited me to a house party that he was playing some music at. I distinctly remember my Mum laying down the gauntlet “Well if you get drunk on Cider, you can be sick in the garden!” - no hiding place!
Anyway, I didn’t drink, I was 13 darn it! But the music!
And it was the opening bars of, yes, Boney M’s first single, released May 1976: Daddy Cool (charted in Uk December 1976/January 1977). As fame and fortune usually has it they lost my attention by Ra, Ra, Rasputine, but it sounded dirty, new, and I felt completely out of my depths, raunchy-not in keeping with my shy boy personality. But that was it, I was bitten.
“He’s crazy like a fool, what about Daddy Cool”
I was already engrossed in my youth club music world, the older boys were into Rock: Led Zep,Deep Purple, Budgie, Black Sabbath and a few had a band of their own Coup d'Etat, my first concert at St.George’s Church Hall, Hamilton Avenue, but I had been instantly drawn to my Youth Worker, Barry Neal aka Simon King’s Disco.
Barry (and wife Soo) ran the youth club on a Sunday night. It was my teenage home, their house was regularly second home to several of us, so I was at home with a fertile mix of Disco and party music. That hot summer I went away to Cornwall with Barry and Soo, with my mate Gary and another couple Roger and Caroline. Two weeks in St.Austell. Long hot summer days in a brand new amber Ford Capri 3.0 litre S
We had three cassettes all the way to Cornwall:
ELO- Out of the Blue
The Hollies-Greatest Hits
Beach Boys Greatest Hits
and did we know all the words by the end of two weeks!
One of the most anticipated days was when the Radio 1 Roadshow came to Carlon Bay, Cornwall’s largest ‘manmade’ beach. It was 23 August and the DJ that week was (“Quack, Quack Oops……………”) DLT, Dave Lee Travis.
By September I took my first real ‘punt’ at buying an album at the old Our Price Records in Kingston-upon-Thames - a risk I have never regretted, it was a double album of orchestrated funk, soul and beautiful ballads!
Meanwhile:
October I was hooked up like a kipper by Wild Cherry’s Play That Funky Music and that was me gone! I continued listening and loving an eclectic mix of Pop but the opening bars of Wild Cherry cut through everything even though the novelty tracks kicked in with Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots’ Disco Duck! (“Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack!).
Again, for balance, in December I was still buying Captain and Tennille’s Muskrat Love!
I just loved it all really!
By the summer of 1977 Saturday Night Fever hit the cinemas, the radio, white suits were the rage.
Let’s just list some of them:
Float On - The Floaters
I Wish - Stevie Wonder
Best of My Love - The Emotions
Don’t Leave Me This Way - Thelma Houston
Keep It Comin’ Love - KC and the Sunshine Band
Easy - The Comodores
Free - Denise Williams
Boogie Nights - Heatwave
Ain’t Gonna Bump No More (with no big fat woman) - Joe Tex
Native New Yorker - Odyssey
I Wanna Get Next To You - Rose Royce
I Feel Love - Donna Summer
Show You the Way To Go - THe Jacksons
Disco Inferno - The Tramps
Nights on Broadway - Candi Staton
Do What You Wanna Do - T-Connection
By 1977 I had started taking on double bookings for Barry’s mobile Disco. He was resident all summer at the Burford Bridge hotel and I would go along and do the odd 15 minutes. I still have the ‘script’ he wrote for me for my first full gig at Beresford School’s Disco!!!!!!! My best mate Ian at 17 was under pressure to pass his driving test so he could drive me to do someone’s 16th Birthday party at the Surbiton Pet Club!!!!!! Looking back you couldn’t make it up. I remember being at the Queen’s Hotel Crystal Palace on a school night thinking - well I do’t know what I was thinking really!
And so it continued……………..I continued to take in Punk and New Romanticism whilst still firmly being a soul boy!
