Panadola Diction

It’s been a while since I bought any vinyl, but I couldn’t resist a twelve 7’s for a tenner deal from Borderline Records’ stall in Temple Bar today. It’s mostly stale cheese, but there are a couple of nice finds.

Click the links for youtube videos (you really should, some are hilarious).

• Transvision Vamp - Baby I Don’t Care, mmmmmm Wendy James
  
• Supertramp - The Logical Song, if Jesus had big nose and a ginger beard…
  
• Foreigner - I Want To Know What Love Is, boosting lighter sales since 1984
  
• Chris De Burgh - High On Emotion, De Burgh’s twist on emo, awesome
  
• Baccara - Yes Sir, I Can Boogie, Euro Disco from 1977
  
• Whitesnake - Here I Go Again, more powerful balladry
• KC & The Sunshine Band - Give It Up, the first song I can ever remember remembering, 1983
  
• Jasper Carrot - Funky Moped, strange, very strange
  
• XTC - Making Plans For Nigel, one of my favourite songs
  
• XTC - Generals And Majors, another XTC classic, with video starring Dick Branson
  
• Big Trouble - Crazy World, I bought this because of its weird pop-up gatefold
  
• The 1977 Suzuki Grand Prix, interviews with Barry Sheene and other motorcyclists (video unrelated)

ah, Chris de Burgh… how i loved him.
Bristling Badger loves him too. or fears him. one of those.

I just need a copy of ‘Don’t Pay The Ferryman’ now. What a song, and sound advice too.

BB’s theories are…. elaborate, to say the least, cheers for the link Rosie.

i made my grandma buy me a whitesnake cassette once. i didn’t really like it; i was just in rebellious phase. haha.

“yes sir, i can boogie” is probably the best album title ever.

I have an affectionate disdain for cheese-rock. I never listen to it, except when there are some people around at my house or something, when it tends to amuse.

And I completely agree on the title.

Funky Moped is baffling on first (and indeed all subsequent) listens, until you find out that it’s not why people bought the record. It sold because the B-side was Magic Roundabout, but radio stations wouldn’t play that.

Those XTC singles are corking aren’t they? I mean, they’re full of hooks and everything but still, they’re so frickin weird. This was a time of the Nolans and Shakin Stevens. How were XTC managing to clock up radio hits?

But out of that list I think that despite their fizzing with ideas, XTC would be pipped at the post by KC and the Sunshine Band. Those big 70s hits of theirs (Queen of Clubs, That’s The Way I Like It) are stonking steaming balls of explosive disco, and their George McCrae singles are a brilliant counterpoint (they’d write and play everything and McCrae would just do the vocals; I Can’t Leave You Alone and I Ain’t Lyin are good starters, and It’s Been So Long is so good that Johnny Marr named it as one his all time top ten). I always wrote off Give It Up as an after the fact thing, a bit thin and, well, 80s. Then I heard it on the radio the other day and it bounces along with such a bright innocent shine yet still some of that funk-lite of their earlier work.

But none of this means anything, not if the records i mention share a collection with the Grand Wizard of Lizards, de Burgh.

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