Just a quick and shameless plug for The Shelf-Preservation Society, a blog about our kitchen activities written by myself and my long-suffering better half. It's in the links on the right, please check out the others there etc etc etc kisskiss
The Pipettes eh? Remember them? Of course you do. I thought this was great at the time, about 2005. Bizarrely, it sounds quite dated already to my jaded ears, more of which later. First though, in case you don't know, or have forgotten (and who, indeed, can blame you), The Pipettes were a retro-with-a-knowing-wink, polka-dot clad girl group. They had a few hits and a line-up to rival The Fall in its fluidity. They owe their existence, in a way, to the KLF. Their book The Manual was, well, a manual for how to get a number one hit without musical talent, following their experience with "Doctorin' The Tardis." (Normally I'd link to the video here, but you wouldn't thank me if I did.) Julia Clark-Lowes decided to construct a girl band (Pipettes = laboratory equipment = manufactured y'see) and the result was The Pipettes, except that by the time they had hits (Dirty Mind being the first) she'd left to form another band. (They're called The Indelicates. I( saw them live last year and thought they were pretty awful, although nothing like The Pip's) Her replacement and the others (Gwenno! Rosay! RiotBecki! as album-opener-cum-signature-tune We Are The Pipettes put it) had a run of singles, an album and then, mostly went their separate ways. (Gwenno is still in the band, with two others brought in at various times as replacements. Whether or not they still sing the song I mentioned in my previous parenthetical aside (I seem to have even more than usual, today), and what they do with the lyrics if they do, I don't know sadly) Anyway, this was their first hit. It seems to have peaked at #63 in the hit parade, but it felt like a hit - it was certainly played in indie discos and the like, and I should know, I was playing it. Memphis Industries, which was riding high at the time because of The Go! Team's success, was the record ;label, and in the packaging they've put in a lot of effort in mimicking the 1960s Columbia sleeve, an example of which illustrates Record #6 below, complete with exhortations to read the Record Mail and buy Record Tokens. The reverse of the sleeve also has a rather good advert for a "Memphis Industries Hairdryer" (reproduced below) with prices in LSD. The two follow-up singles used a variant on this, but in different colours with matching colour-coded vinyl inside, which was great, but less authentic - 60s singles were usually black. The vinyl's not the best quality, but I've had ropier, certainly sounds fine to me. It's retro, but knowing, affectionately tongue-in-cheek retro. That's the sort of thing that doesn't date very well at all, of course and listening to this alongside the Phil Spector stuff it owes most too it's paper-thin. I think we all knew that at the time secretly though, but allowed ourself to be carried along with it because they did the whole thing with aplomb. They looked great, you could pick a favourite (RiotBecki, if anyone's interested) and you could dance (The 7-inch of Pull Shapes had the dance moves on the back!) and they were always upfront about their manufactured origins. There was a time when their early, non-album singles were worth a bit of money (I've seen them go for £30-50) and this one was worth a wee bit more than the other ones from off the album. I imagined this had calmed down a bit but looking on ebay just now I found that Pull Shapes made £20 while a copy of the first recording of Judy (pre-album) numbered 28/1000 failed to sell at just under £19. I can only assume that a couple of people got carried away but it only serves to confirm my point from a few posts back that rare does not = valuable. There's a buy it now of this single at £8 which is the high side of about right.
(a scan of the record will appear here, but the scanner has been Put Away in the guest bedroom, and there's a guest in it, sleeping. I wanted to gt this up tonight though because I'm offline for the weekend. Apologies.)
Right, well, a little preamble. The thing about 7 inch singles is that they have 2 sides, A and B. I've made the decision in writing this blog to focus on side A and ignore B. There are some great songs on the b-sides of these singles, but I'm not currently concerned with them. Today's offering is an ep, of 6 tracks, 3 per side. I've put a video of the first 3 up, but my comments concern all of them. If you like the 3 in the video, you'll like the other 3. plus, it's still available and not terribly expensive - consider yourselves encouraged to purchase. Anyway this another one from my folky-nothing pile of records, and it's on Bird Records which seems to be another offshoot of the mighty Twisted Nerve-Finders Keepers collective. What I do know is that they specialise in whispy fey sounding folk, usually sung by pretty girls who like books and are usually shown in a pastoral idyll, or at least a back garden, in their publicity shots. This is very lovely wheezy lo-fi stuff, and therein lies the problem - I'm not sure how audible this is on the video, but there are a couple of cricks and pops on the record, and some distortion of her high notes. My equipment (record playing equipment, stop sniggering at the back there, you) is a bit cobbled together but I've played it on a few different systems and it's definitely on the record itsself. I've also not had it very long, and it was like that when I bought it new. In other words, it weren't me guv. I've no idea though if it's a problem with the pressing or if it's just that it was recorded onto a tape recorder made of whimsy through a microphone made of beard - it's very much a bedroom job and very charming it is too. What I should've done, clearly, is emailed the record label setting out my concerns in a slightly more professional manner and taken it from there. I didn't though, and now it's too late. I'm not unduly exercised about it though, because it's minor and has become part of the record for me. I'm not going to claim that distortion and pops make the record sound better, merely that they don't irritate the way a skipping cd, or indeed a skipping record do. The idea that noise in the quiet bits of vinyl is inevitable is nonsense within a realistic time-frame, so long as you look after them, just like a cd, or an ipod. After years you will start to get a bit of crackle in the run in and out grooves, but they'll withstand a hell of a lot and still play. It's not that they sound better, they just become part of your life, picking up noise along the way. This is what people are talking about when they talk about liking the crackle of vinyl, not losing all the subtleties in a blizzard of sonic snow. Noone likes that. Well, someone probably does, but he's an idiot.
No topicality this time, but a link to the last record I posted, as I bought them both in the same place at the same time, as it happens. This is one I've wanted to do for a while, but been unsure what to say about it. It's another example of the 7 inch single being the perfect form for greatness. Some of their other songs are quite good, but they're crucially not as good as this one. Good Girls Don't, their follow up single which was a hit in the US but not here in the uk, sadly falls into the latter category. That needn't concern us, however, for the brief span of time I am giving the band today. I love this song, and have loved it for a long time, but have never considered that it might be about someone before, I just thought it was about finding a pretty girl and being, well, generally excited.
Not only is it about a real girl, she's really called Sharona and you've already seen a picture of her where she's not wearing a bra. Sharona does seem the sort of name you'd make up because it's fun to sing (and, based on how long I've been singing along to this, I should know) but she seems to be reconciled to it, having the address www.mysharona.com for her personal website, from which we learn that "Sharona was only 17 when she was immortalized in the Knack's 1979 hit single "My Sharona". Sharona believes that "'My Sharona' has had an impact on my ability to understand the entertainer's mind, there's something simpatico. You've got to care to the n'th degree. You can't drop the ball for one minute." I sell "the most emotional product on the market, because a star's home is their only safe haven."
She now works, you see, as a high-end estate agent and does seem to be quite respected with it. Interestingly, the guitarist claims that he wrote the song for her when she was only sixteen, so either it was written some time before it became a hit, or he lied on her website to make herself sound a bit better. She was certainly a lot younger than Doug Fieger, the aforementioned guitarist who would have been 26 or 27 that year. This being 2010, some if you might be drawing unsavoury conclusions about him and her involving the words "jail" and "bait." I don't want to encourage or condone those thoughts, but it had occurred to me when reading up on this, that it might have been politic for him to at least disguise her name a little, or at least suggest that if she insisted on being on the cover, she should at least put some underwear on. Thing is, though, they didn't, it was a massive hit at it doesn't seem to have done her any harm, so let's say no more about it. I've been thinking for a while whether it's better to have a few smaller hits and fade away or have one huge hit that defines you. I went to the band's official website to see if I could glean any idea of their relationship with the song, whether it was an albatross around their necks or not. If you haven't clicked on that link yet, see if you can guess which song plays as their intro. No, it's not Baby Talks Dirty. That they even have a website as a going concern is due almost entirely to My Sharona, and hopefully they're accustomed to and comfortable with that. If you're in The Knack and can't bear to even think about this blasted song, then well done for reading this far, and please god get in touch and I'll rewrite the damn blog post.
