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Hey Now, Hey Now Now, Burn This Corrosion To Me: “Fire” by The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown

More so than “Born To Be Wild,” “Fire” marks the dividing line, where pop turns into rock, where psychedelia mutates into progressive, between fun for all the family and parents keep the hell out. Number one in Britain when I was four years old, it scared the shit out of me at the time. Even in a year which could already have been classified as pop in extremis – Dave Dee’s whip on “Legend Of Xanadu,” Jagger’s sympathetic Devil make-up on “Jumping Jack Flash” – Arthur Brown’s flaming colander crown and a Top Of The Pops performance of the song which appeared to show the band burning in forests of flame gave me genuine nightmares; not to mention the moment in the long-gone Vale Café in Tollcross when I accidentally pressed the wrong button on the jukebox and “I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE!” roared out. Now I already had cause enough to have nightmares in 1968, for reasons with which I shan’t bore you here. It wasn’t that pleasant a year, even from my juvenile perspective. But the...

A Plug For This Leaking Boat: “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House

The sense of a parallel and slightly hazier world prevails throughout the more intelligent Antipodean rock of 1986; think of the Go-Betweens’ “Twin Layers Of Lightning” or the Triffids’ “Tarrilup Bridge,” each bearing a heat so hazy it could make pizzeria store fronts seem like tablets from heaven. The haze of “Don’t Dream It’s Over” may have a lot to do with Mitchell Froom’s keyboards, but there is a subtle commitment in Neil Finn’s writing and performance which doesn’t have to underline the fact that this is an anti-capitalist protest song. It doesn’t make a fuss but quietly stands in the corner, incrementally making a difference. Date Record Made Number Two: 25 April 1987 Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 1 Record At Number One: “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” by Aretha Franklin and George Michael UK Chart Position: 25

Threads Of Alligator Lizards In The Air: “Purple Rain” by Prince and The Revolution

The original idea was for a country-style collaboration with Stevie Nicks, to whom Prince sent a ten-minute instrumental backing track, asking her to come up with some lyrics. However, Nicks was overwhelmed by what she heard and feared that the task was too much for her to take on, so the song was reworked in rehearsal with The Revolution, utilising Wendy Melvoin’s guitar phrasing as a new guideline. The song appears to have existed before the film; Purple Rain the movie is best described as lucid hokum, but its soundtrack changed the atoms which constituted “pop,” far more so than much ostensibly radical music of the period. For many of that decade’s generation, Purple Rain the soundtrack was “our” Ziggy Stardust – better conceived, performed and produced in every way – and the title song, which closes the album, was “our” “Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide.” It is such a patient epic, the song, and about a lot of things, and people – each of the verses addresses a different su...

Scenario Seen From Outer Space: “Theme From ‘Greatest American Hero’ (Believe It Or Not)” by Joey Scarbury

In Britain we adored “O Superman” but in the United States (and not even Laurie Anderson’s conception of them) people went for the theme from a comedy TV series about somebody thinking they’re Superman. The show never played in the UK and so I’ve never seen it, but this dismal précis of Reaganite can-doism doesn’t exactly inspire me to go check it out on YouTube, and I suspect didn’t suit the show that well. Mike Post wrote the music and Stephen Geyer the lyric. You’ve heard it even if you’ve never heard it. The trend for rather sentimental theme tunes to sitcoms would continue well into the nineties. The nascent Nuremberg pop that this record predicates has still not absented itself from the atrophying stage of contemporary music. It stayed on the chart for two years. Date Record Made Number Two: 15 August 1981 Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 2 Record At Number One: “Endless Love” by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie UK Chart Position: None

I Am Spartacus, Goddammit: “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge

Anthems aren’t just records you remember dancing to at the school disco thirty-five years ago, in the same way that society has to involve everybody, not just those who make the “right” faces. Listening to 1968: The Year The World Burned , Jon Savage’s latest excellent 2CD compilation album, and in particular to “Everyday People” by Sly and the Family Stone (which is included). That’s a politely very angry record and, in the end, probably a Kirk Douglas-style call to arms – “I am ‘everyday people.’” Its message was presumably not lost on the teenage Nile Rodgers. While in hospital earlier this year I read several books to help pass the time and get me back to sanity, and one of those was Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco and Destiny , Rodgers’ autobiographical memoir. At times an exhilarating read, at other times unreadable (as in: this is not the sort of thing you should read while in hospital), Rodgers is nevertheless razor-sharp in his recollections, and re...