The first record I'm tackling comes with a sticker on the front of it proclaiming "Beware - It's square! Do not adjust your turntable" which is almost certainly why I bought it. Square vinyl is a gimmick that doesn't turn up all that often but one still being used - a quick ebay search turn up singles by Morning Runner and Panic! At The Disco from recent years. It's probably pretty easy to do as well -it already fits into your standard sleeve, and all you have to do is change the shape of the cutter at the pressing plant. It's fairly low-rent in that respect and has the air of a cock-up passed off as collectable. That's why the lurid green warning on the front of this single is so ridiculous. The injunction "Do not adjust your turntable" suggests that you would, normally change to the square setting if confronted with this disk unprepped. I've got settings on my decks I never use, but I don't think any of them cover that. I can only assume that the "Beware!" is aimed at possessors of stackable multichangers for their vinyl, because this release wouldn't work well with them at all. The more prosaic of you may suggest it's because it rhymes with "square," but there's less comedic potential in such dry logic.
For all my mocking, it did enduce me to buy a copy, but not many others did, it seems. I'm not responsible for the youtube video I linked to above but it seems it's correct in asserting that this made number 17 in 1978, and the pop world was untroubled by Mr Myhill's prescence again. 1978 is remembered as being a year into the exciting punk years when all the worst pop excesses of the mid seventies were swept away but musically this belongs very much to the earlier era. Vaguely funky synths and drums and the ambience of an Italian restaurant c. 1975 collide awkwardly with a tortured metaphor about romance built on dancing, the title the building block of the chorus because Myhill's "mad affair" is "going nowhere" and his ladyfriend won't "dance" with him. Ahem. Thanks to top of the Pops, we find the reason. Have a look at this clip, hosted by Kid Jensen and some twins of indeterminate sex:
That's right, his amour is... um... a sex doll. Well, this obviously didn't endear him to the viewing public because he wasn't asked back. Keep in mind as well, while you watch the clip that at the same time this was recorded, somewhere in the north, The Fall were playing [i]Bingo Masters Break Out![/i] to general indifference. I said above the video that this single belongs in an earlier era, but watching that totp - it doesn't, not really. Listening to it with the other songs featured that week it doesn't sound out of place, it doesn't sounded dated or silly. 7 inch singles are very much alive in 2009, but are the province of hipsters, fundamentally. 98.6% of singles sales this year were digital. In 1978, it was 7 inch or nothing. That's why there's huge amounts of this stuff in charity shops today, because it was bought by the truckload. The image of the 7 inch in 2009 casts a distorting shadow over the past 60 years. The idea that the format is cool would've been bewildering to whoever bought sufficient copies of "Two to Tango" to book Richard his seat next to the inflatable lady.
I don't know to what extent the shape of the record contributed to its success, but I'm prepared to bet it didn't harm it none. This is a salutary lesson we'll return to again and again in this blog - stupit gimmicks sell records, as me owning this damned thing testifies.
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