After The Goldrush

In an ordinary Olympic games, Britain racks up 5 or 6 gold medals: this time, we have 16 and counting - marvellous news, incredible work on the part of Team GB, etc etc. But also, in a sense a slightly raw deal for some of the athletes involved, as while the pot of fame and endorsements available to successful Olympians will be bigger than usual, it probably won’t be three times as big. Please don’t take this the wrong way: I’m not suggesting that fame and fortune is the main reason any of our athletes compete, but it’s got to be a nice bonus, and the fact is that following these Games some of our winners are going to end up a lot more famous than others.

It was not ever thus - take Britain’s performance at the Barcelona Olympics. Five golds, and four of the athletes involved became more or less household names. But the Beijing mob surely won’t fare quite so well: in fact looking at the media you can already see who’s being groomed for future stardom (in the British sense of the word, i.e. a comfy berth on a daytime TV sofa whenever needed).

What is the FAME FORMULA for Olympic success? In the grand tradition of bogus equations I give you this:

F = (A * C)/R … read on …

IAN DURY AND THE BLOCKHEADS - “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick”

What is the relationship between the charts and everything else? The charts are a show home for pop music, filled with its shiniest mod cons, but one stuffed with hidden doors and tunnels, records that can tumble you out of pop and into other worlds which have their own codes and rules and no cosy countdown to set things in order. And in those other worlds - some of them, anyway - the charts are a sunlit palace of temptation, but to step (or be plucked) into it is to risk having your life and art and the world it came from turned higgledy-piggledy. … read on …

VILLAGE PEOPLE - “Y.M.C.A.”

The baton passes from one manufactured disco band to another, but “Y.M.C.A.” is superior to “Mary’s Boy Child” in absolutely every respect - well, the dancing in the video is just as awful, but in “Y.M.C.A.”’s case the wisdom of crowds soon provided a better alternative. A big part of this song’s success is Victor Willis, who gives his broad-chested lead vocal absolutely everything, starting stentorian and then going steadily more berserk (”PUT YOUR PRIDE ON THE SHELF!”) - gutbucket shouting put to the service of disco goodwill. … read on …

Popular ‘78

I give each record reviewed on Popular a mark out of 10. This is a poll where you can indicate which ones you would have given 6 or more to - pick as many as you like, and discuss the year in general in the comments box if you want.

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My highest mark for 78 went to Kate Bush (10) - my lowest to the Brotherhood of Man (2).

BONEY M - “Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord”

Christmas is a time for the kiddies, but I can’t say Boney M made much impression on this five-year-old: “Mary’s Boy Child” was never quite a first-division carol for me, and as for Frank Farian’s unique contribution to the mythology of Christmas, “Oh My Lord” just didn’t register.

Much though I’d love to be writing a hearty defence of Boney M here, this second No.1 shows them at their worst: self-editing doesn’t seem to be a Farian skill and at almost six minutes this is cripplingly long. It’s a frothy bubblebath at first - the girls’ creamy vocals and the rippling steel drums ushering you into a grotto festooned with Christmas tack - but by the end the water’s getting cold and your toes are looking horribly crinkly. The problem is that the group do the entire of “Mary’s Boy Child” - not in itself a short song - and then go into the “oh my lord” routine. Everyone seems to be on autopilot, and the vim which makes their good songs good is mostly absent (Poor old Bobby Farrell looks unimaginably bored in the video). Go back and listen to “Rasputin” instead.

ROD STEWART - “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”

HAHAHA “Do ya think I’m sexy?” heh heh well the answer to that Rod is…..

NO!

AHAHAHAHAHA!

It’s the gag no pop show talking head can resist, but the title line doesn’t actually show up in this admittedly odd record, and Rod isn’t singing about himself. … read on …

THE BOOMTOWN RATS - “Rat Trap”

“Rat Trap” is billed - in the Guinness Book Of British Hit Singles, no less - as the first punk No.1. I couldn’t recall it - my memories of the Rats themselves were vague; Geldof I knew for later good works. So I approached “Rat Trap” cold but with a frisson of definite expectation. Geldof tore up a picture of John’n'Liv on Top Of The Pops, didn’t he? So “Rat Trap” - great title, Sir B - was surely something tight and angry, a sliver of nimble menace in the shadows of 1978’s poptopian monsterhits.

Five minutes later my expectation had turned to shock and laughter. Whatever I’d anticipated it wasn’t this: five woeful minutes of scraggy street-rock pastiche, Born To Run with the melted-down Crystals records replaced by stolen chip fat. Far from the first punk No.1, this risible track sounded like an early warning of one of indie’s less palatable side-effects: a deadly combination of overreach and the feeling of virtuous entitlement that being (relatively) outside the mainstream would lend to mediocre bands.

… read on …

JOHN TRAVOLTA AND OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN - “Summer Nights”

“Summer Nights” brings into focus the differences between pop on stage and pop on single: its structure, building and building and getting more cacophonous and then peaking into a languid fade, is a really unusual one for a pop single, but immediately recognisable as a musical ensemble number. That’s what it was bought as, anyhow - another massive Grease hit, from the other end of the story, and this one a survivor of the original stage version. As such it’s trying to channel the 50s more directly than “You’re The One That I Want”, nodding especially to the call-and-response minidramas of classic Shangri-La’s. … read on …

His snatch was his downfall

Thanks to the miracle of the BBC streaming video I have now seen some live weightlifting - the mens’ 62kg finals. I can report that I was - as someone in the comments mentioned - quite wrong about the lack of tactics: but the tactics are as brutal and all-or-nothing as the sport in general. Do you try and lift at the limit of your ability to post a total that might get you in the medals, and risk crashing out entirely? Or do you lift what you can, get a total on the board and seek to build on it (but risk exhausting yourself?). … read on …

10cc - “Dreadlock Holiday”

On one level the ‘plot’ of “Dreadlock Holiday” is hugely important to any judgement of it. On another, not at all, but let’s recap anyway. The narrator is a tourist in Jamaica - he gets mugged for his silver chain and returns to the comfort of his hotel where a woman tries to sell him weed.

Nobody comes out of the story well: the song’s parent album was called Bloody Tourists, and the narrator is a simp, trying and failing to fit in (“concentrating on truckin’ right”) and then fleeing to the hotel at the first sign of trouble. But the island isn’t exactly a welcoming place either, and the message seems to be that if you’re a white tourist, any approach is misguided and nowhere is entirely safe from the scary dark other looking to hustle you at every turn. … read on …