Record #13 : "Eri Un'Abitudine" by John Foster

An odd one, this.
It's an Italian cover of "Can't Get Used to Losing You," which was a big hit for Andy Williams in 1963. As far as I can tell, this is from the same year, cashing in on the Italian language market, and seems to have been a big hit. However, it was never a hit in Britain, indeed, as far as I can tell it was never even released here, so how it came to be in Glasgow is a mystery.
If you look at the picture above though, you'll see that a different song seems to be claiming to be the A-side, namely "La Marcia Dell' Amore." I've found a copy of it on Youtube (which cuts out before the end), but, confusingly, the video features a version of the sleeve which seems to relegate it to the flip


I fear I'm getting sidetracked.
John Foster these days probably answers more readily to Paolo Occhipinti, the name his mother gave him and under which he carved a successful career as a journalist when he wasn't pretending to be British to satisfy a cultural yearning probably started by those four Liverpool denizens, covered in some detail in a blog linked to the right of this post. That's him in the first video, with the NHS specs. I think he does look a bit like an English Woody Allen, but for the cover they went with a picture of this rosemary Leach-a-like, perhaps thinking it would add a touch of glamour to the proceedings.
This brings me quite nicely around to why I bought the thing. It came from one of the 2nd-hand record shops around the west end of Glasgow off Byres Road, although I forget which one and - I'll be honest with you - I bought it purely for the inscription on the front. As far as I can see, it says
To Johnny / a modern song for a / modern boy - / Regards / Frenca
(the name is a guess.) This is also half of the reason I chose Eri as the a-side. It is the side of the physical record with an 'A' on it, but also, it is (IMHO, YMMV) the much more romantic song of the two. I love stuff like this because there's a whole story there, of which we know nothing. I assume, perhaps wrongly, that Frenca brought the record from Italy and gave it to Glasgow boy Johnny, who is the 'modern boy,' which is an odd compliment. I'm almost prepared to accept the song as modern, but it doesn't really sit right either. What happened to their relationship? How did the record end up in the shop? It's impossible to know.

Later footnote)
Coming back to this later (apologies!) I wonder if it was a romance at all - perhaps she just liked the song. Still, it's a nice present to have, although a proper killer for after an affair has soured (see also - mixtapes)