While we were having our extension built, this was a minor hit. But it caught my imagination.
As the plaster dried to a darkish grey colour, I'd slink into the upstairs room that was to be my extended bedroom and imagine I was some sort of rock sex god, throwing myself against the walls in an suggestive, yearning fashion, rolling around to sing this song - to me the very pinnacle of eroticism in music - into the camera in my imaginary head-to-toe leather gear like I was indeed the lead singer of Exile.
I was 13. I was wearing turquoise polo neck knitted by Auntie Maggie and ghaslty too long for me wildly flared denims my dad had got wholesale from a discount warehouse somewhere in Somerset. But you have to fill your pockets with dreams, right?
I'm not sure I really heard it again until 1998, when I was the passenger of an ancient chain-smoking Granada TV on-set photographer zipping across the M62 from Coronation Street, where I'd had a 15-minute window to present the similarly chain-smoking Anne Kirkbride with a magazine award (amazing legs), to Emmerdale, where I was to do a similar thing with some other cast members I cannot now recall. Lisa Riley and Claire King may well have been involved.
It all came flooding back. I died a little inside and took another cigarette. I've since discovered Serge Gainsbourg.
If a classmate collapses drunk in a pub and is promptly expelled from school seemingly overnight and you never, ever see them again, did it really happen?
Not that it was a school for scandal, but you used to hear about all these awful things happening to people sort of second hand. Whether I walked around in a haze or not is open to debate, but I remember hearing all sorts of things which were never confirmed one way or another, though I'm sure were true.
Two girls got up the duff, one a nice, quiet girl who was going out with some geek and who kept themselves to themselves. Now we now what they were doing with their time.
The other girl was a bad girl with a reputation and a horrible boyfriend who I was scared of. Both those babies were girls - the bad girl called hers Donna Siobhan - and would be over 30 now. Gosh.
Then there was the guy who collapsed in the pub. He was a hoot in my history class. (He loved this song too, which always reminds me of history lessons as we were allowed to discuss what it meant, what with it being about the war and everything). At that age (15) I'd never set foot in a pub as a drinker. In fact, I don't think I'd ever even had a drink. I was certainly shocked to the core to hear he had a drink problem and that he was expelled immediately. Makes you wonder just what was going on at home.
Let me be clear - I was no angelf myself, but I was more Tucker Jenkins than Gripper Stebson. I had the cane and the slipper endlessly, but for silly things like flooding toilets or being mean to Ian Pearce (which I regret to this day). But I didn't run with a fast crowd, more's the pity.
Then there was the school heartthrob, a couple of years above me, who one evening was apparently killed in a motorbike crash, witnessed by a girl in a our class who was his girlfriend. I remember hearing how his ear was completely scraped off as the skidded headfirst into a lampost. I don't remember seeing it in the paper or anything, but it definitely happened.
And what about the the girl who was robbing the till at the tea room where she worked? That one was in the local rag, as was the older boy up the road who got into a fight in a pub.
Let's not forget either, the kid from my maths class whose mother was felled by a rogue garage door and was asphyxiated by exhaust fumes (see entries passim), or the father of a boy in my year I didn't care for who was killed by a runaway horsebox on a deserted country lane.
Growing up where I did which, scary big boys at the rec aside, was a rather gentle place to be, I was surprised by these events but remained curiously unaffected by them. Perhaps because if I thought about it too much something awful might happen to me. Or pehaps it was in one ear and out the other. Or perhaps I'm just a psychopath.
There have been some duff years in music, but none so much as 1992.
When I was going through the charts from start to finish - bear with me, it's for a project - I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
I've been trawling through the years recently, seeing if there's any Top 40 stones I've left as yet unturned. And while there are probably about five songs from 1968 I physically either can't my hands on or simply can't bear to hear because I'm sick to death of them, in 1992 the number is about 20 times that but the reasons are very different except for the can't bear bit. The main reason I don't have them is because they're dreadful.
Along with Whitney Houston and some ghastly early Nineties soul, then morphing into the RnB we know and loathe today, are endless faceless producer-fronted rave novelties like Poing, The Bouncer, Sesame's Treet and other utter bollocks. I have never skimmed a chart so quickly without pausing to download a gem as I have 1992.
Also, I don't remember much about the year that stands out except a trip to Israel (another thread entirely), and a trip to Boston/New Hampshire for a wedding. Twenty years on and husband left wife for some toothy Hamptons popsy despite married couple having gone through the heartache of IVF resulting in twins followed by another baby the natural way. And I thought he was so boring. They met whale watching for God's sake. I hear he's got a drink problem now and her back's murder. Shame, as I quite liked him, but that's 1992 for you. As disappointing back then as it is to look at now, musically at least.
Perhaps I'm being unkind. I suppose there's the odd thing that sticks out. Bell Bottomed Tear by the Beautiful South is one of the loveliest songs ever made (more from them later), The Wedding Present did that single a month thing, Right Said Fred did Deeply Dippy which always reminds me of a visit to Barcelona that year to see a friend who taught English and whom I'm convinced was leading a double life, Def Leppard asked us if a rock was out of the question and Curtis Stigers and Richard Marx were the Vince Hill and Des O'Connor of the moment.
Our downstairs neighbour was dumped by this silly girl from New Zealand and played One by U2 and Walking On Broken Glass by Annie Lennox at top volume for about six weeks, XTC brought out the marvellous Nonsuch album, the Sisters of Mercy had the soaring Temple Of Love, a tune made for driving really fast down the A2, Erasure did that rubbish Abba tribute, the Manics were just getting started, the Lightning Seeds were bringing out records that were just this side of catchy classic pop - don't know what it is but it's missing a vital ingredient, Wet Wet Wet followed up a number one single I couldn't hum if you held a gun at my head with the brilliant Lip Service, the only song of theirs I actually care for, and there were some corkers from Thomas Dolby, Cyndi Lauper, the Shamen, Inspiral Carpets, Tasmin Archer, Crowded House, Suede, Bizarre Inc and Mike Oldfield. I already own these of course.
Let's not forget the lovely Drive by REM, Go West's brilliant Faithful, and poor Betty Boo tried a comeback which didn't work, but if you listen to Let Me Take You There it's not all bad.
Worse song of the year that wasn't a rave novelty: Would I Lie To You by Charles & Eddie. Hate it with a passion.
Second worse song of the year that wasn't a rave novelty: Stay by Shakespear's Sister
But I did do some downloading. Sixteen songs, including Buffy Sainte Marie, Nirvana, Altern8, Mr Big, The Cure, Clivilles & Cole, Morrissey, Bruce Springsteen, Arrested Development and k d lang. Still not a vintage year though.
Here's the Beautiful South with the best song of the year:
Remember the days when the singing stars of the day would get their own weekend variety shows?
Many's the time I remember sitting down to see Cilla Black, Shirley Bassey and countless other easy listening greats of the moment hosting their own TV shows. I especially recall The Cliff Richard Show fondly. He used to intersperse the singing with comedy skits, more often than not involving Olivia Newton-John.
One that still makes me chuckle quite a lot when I think about it is when Cliff came on with Olivia who was dressed as a wardrobe. Said Cliff, 'We've just been shopping and bought Olivia a whole new wardrobe'. I'm laughing now. Of course, if you think about it, it's not really that funny, but to a seven or eight year old me it was the height of hilarity. Say what you like about Cliff, he had a gift for comedy.
So what happened to the singer-turned-TV-host? Some people will have grown up oblivious to the fact that Cilla Black has one of the greatest voices of all time, has had a string of truly excellent Top 40 hits and has worked with some of the biggest legends in the business. To them, she's just the host of Blind Date, Surprise Surprise or Moment Of Truth, who just happens to have been around for a long time.
The last person I can think of who had a Saturday night show was Lulu with that ill-fated lottery-encompassing bollocks Red Alert. But it's not like she hadn't hosted her own shows before. Then there was Charlotte Church's chat show, but it was on the wrong channel. She'd have been better just doing an all-singing, all-dancing comedy chat programme on ITV that would have pleased everyone from tots to teens to OAPs, rather than try to be an edgy Jonathan Ross type aimed at the post-pub crowd.
So who of today's crop of singers could happily be at home hosting an hour of variety on BBC1 on a Saturday night? And moreover, would they want to do it? Is it a move that seen as a kiss of death to a singing career? After all, none of the above are seen as exactly cool, are they and, Cliff aside, none of them were troubled by too many Top Of The Pops appearances once they'd moved over to TV.
We've had the odd special from Michael Ball and Michael Buble, but they're not in the same mould as those old Seventies shows. Whither Barbara Mandrell, Julie Felix and others of those ilk? Adele could be just what we're looking for, but let's give it a few years. In them meantime, Buffy Sainte Marie can't be busy. I bet she's a hoot.
We won't have Something Tells Me..., we'll have this instead. A big favourite of mine. Ladies and gentelmen, Miss Cilla Black *rapturous applause*
I don't know why, but there is no song more comforting to me than All Tomorrow's Parties by Japan.
It's like pulling a blanket over you when you're cold, or getting into a warm bath. That feeling of security and peace. In times of trouble - no matter what it is, from turbulence on a plane to the London riots - this song always pops into my head and I must seek it out and hear it at once. And then I feel better.
I first became aware of it at the beginning of 1982 (though it scraped the Top 40 as as single in early '83), when I was mad about Japan and snapped up their entire back catalogue. On their Assemblage album - one I can't recommend highly enough, by the way - is this gem of a Velvet Underground cover. If ever a cover was better than the original, it's this.
I'd just gone to live with my aunt and uncle for six months, who lived in the neigbouring town to the sixth form I was at. All my friends were changing, everyone was drifting apart and finding new groups, I felt adrift and for a while, quite alone.
This song touches on that feeling, thinking of what might be - all those parties I wanted to go to but never did and thought I never would. This song's got such a sad vibe. It sends shivers down my spine just to think of it.
Things didn't turn out that way in the end of course, so perhaps that's why I find it such a comfort. Everything will be alright eventually. It usually is.
Was there anything quite as mortifying as being spotted out shopping with mother when you're a teenager?
I remember dying of shame when we pulled up at a traffic light and I was spotted by the person I sat next to in maths, him on his bike in one of those shiny green bomber jackets, me with mum's shopping basket on my lap. This song was all the rage at the time. Cool for cats, but not cool for me. It took years to live that one down.
Or the time when we went into Jill's Wools. While mum was loudly asking me to choose a wool for a jumper to be baggily knitted by the dreaded Auntie Maggie, and using my hideous mouthful of a name at every opportunity, the Saturday girl, a smirking great heap with a weaved lurex scarf and big jumper, arms folded, trying to contain herself, was drinking in my acute embarrassment. Of course we laughed about it on Monday morning. Or rather, she and her friends did.
I can't remember when I called a halt on such extra-curricular duties, but they got beyond the call of the duty eventually. In town I'd be at least five steps ahead, and shame of having to buy clothes and being treated like a living doll in front of mean-spirited shop assistants who knew your pain but relished it nonetheless was too much to bear.
We compromised eventually that I'd choose and she'd come and pay, which made me feel much more grown up and make me worry less that I'd end up as some anoraked milquetoast who'd live with mother, accompanying her on coach trips to ruined churches and visits to garden centres until the day she died like something out of an Alan Bennett monologue.
Even now I'm not mad about it, though it's incredibly rare. I can't help thinking I'm going to bump into a bunch of schoolfriends who'll spend the rest of the term mocking me. That said, we all had to go through it, didn't we?
When I left Tracey Baxter's copy of Hounds Of Love at a Southampton bus stop in 1985, Kate Bush was not the rare beast she is today. A new album? Not to worry, there'll be another along in a minute, a bit like the bus we got on not realising the bag we'd put down for a just a moment was never to be seen again. Kind of like Kate today really.
So yesterday I nearly died when I actually got to see this most enigmatic, magical, wonderful of creatures IN THE FLESH.
I've always been a fan, but I've become much more so in recent years. I thought Aerial was amazing, and I'm still getting used to 50 Words For Snow. That said, there was a time when Lionheart or The Kick Inside were never off my turntable, and I comfortably own everything she's ever released in this country and beyond, some of it I've paid a small fortune for too. But of course, that's what you do when it's Kate. You have to get what you can when you can. She's inventive, creative, never boring, always surprising. The fact she doesn't court publicity makes her all the more fascinating.
Anyhoo, I knew she was nominated for a South Bank Sky Arts Award for best album, along with Adele and PJ Harvey, but I never dreamed for a moment that even if she'd won she'd actually turn up. But turn up she did. I didn't see her arrive, but when Tom Jones announced she'd won she had to come all the way up through the room from the very back, and seeing as my table was just at the foot of the stage by the only steps up, she had to brush right past me. I was but feet away. I resisted the urge to touch her or shout out how much I love her - I'm a fortysomething year-old man, after all - and I'm very rarely starstruck, but that was one of those moments.
The room was packed with the likes of Michael Frayn, Felicity Kendal, Lynn Ramsay, Lenny Henry, Tom Stoppard, Jane Asher, Claire Tomalin, Brenda Blethyn, Rob Brydon, Jason Isaacs, Dominic West, Felicity Jones, and everyone else from the highbrow arts world - only on Saturday night was I at the British Soap Awards, and frankly there's no crossover - but I only had eyes for Kate. I savoured the moment. I drank her in. I'm almost 100 % sure I'll never see her again. In fact, the 300 people in that room are among only a handful of the public at large who have seen her in the last 20 years.
Of course, she could have brushed her hair and her leotard days are far behind her, but hey, I've seen Kate Bush. Another ambition realised.
