Merry Christmas Everyone

I was back in Hexham for Christmas, and was doing some last minute shopping when I discovered the Relate shop, hidden away off the main drag where I had never noticed it before. I postponed my search for presents in order to investigate.

This was a good choice, as in a dusty corner I found two dusty boxes full of dusty 7” singles, at a mere 20p apiece. They were, in the main, in poor shape, many with visible scratches and few with any kind of sleeve, never mind one with a picture. Given the price it would have been churlish to complain, so I dug in gladly and unearthed a good-sized stash of Number Ones.

Among the singles that did have their original picture sleeves were Enya’s Orinoco Flow, one of the more surprising records ever to make it to the top, and the brilliant Stand By Me by Ben E. King, which was given a double boost in 1987 by featuring in both the film of the same name and a Levi’s ad. I was delighted too by the 507th Number One, Survivor’s Eye Of The Tiger, until I later discovered it was yet another example of the wrong record creeping into a sleeve. In this case at least the impostor was a chart-topping disc, but I already had Duran Duran’s Is There Something I Should Know. On the plus side I now had a photograph of Mr T to go with it.

For Elvis Presley’s Way Down I seemingly had to thank the unfortunately named Linda Beavers, who had declared her ownership in biro on the sleeve. Her name appeared again on Crying by Don McLean. Linda must have been a big fan of Elvis and Don, and in both cases had taped a black and white picture of her respective idol, clipped from a newspaper, to the generic record company cover. No doubt the memories will come flooding back for Ms Beavers the next time she Googles her own name.

I wondered if Linda was in any way connected to Carole Cowen, who had similarly marked her territory on Dawn’s Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree, or the mysteriously surname-free Melanie, whose signature appeared on Brotherhood Of Man’s Figaro. Sadly neither of these records featured any additional decoration, Carole and Melanie apparently lacking in either dedication or creativity.

None of the records were in worse condition than Imagine, the second of three John Lennon records to reach the top following his murder (interrupted only by our old friends the St Winifred’s School Choir). It was virtually unplayable, as were When A Child Is Born by Johnny Mathis and I’m Still Waiting by Diana Ross, though it was still possible in the latter to hear the astonishing lyric “He could see I had no eyes”.

I Don’t Like Mondays* by the Boomtown Rats was less scratched but annoyingly skipped near the beginning. Fortunately their other chart-topper Rat Trap was intact. Rat Trap is sometimes claimed as the first punk Number One, despite the fact that it is no more a punk record than Bye Bye Baby by the Bay City Rollers, or the spoken word If by Telly Salavas, both of which I found in Relate’s box of delights.

The sixties were represented by Frank Ifield’s Lovesick Blues, The Carnival Is Over by the Seekers and Roger Miller’s fantastic King Of The Road. There was also a dreadful cover of a 60s song in It’s My Party by Dave Stewart with Barbara Gaskin, a 1981 record which I don’t remember hearing before. It’s possible that I have simply erased it from my memory, as it is teeth-gratingly bad, sounding like the efforts of a man who has just discovered a studio full of fancy new electronic equipment which he doesn’t know how to use and a woman who could use singing lessons.

Even the Wurzels Number One Combine Harvester (Brand New Key) is preferable to that, and was the last chart-topper I discovered here. I waited to pay at the cash desk for several minutes without success, but I abandoned my position when I noticed a small selection of CD singles, cleverly located as far as physically possible from the vinyl. Here I found Eiffel 65’s Blue (Da Ba Dee), which turned out to be nowhere near as good as I remembered it being, and Bob The Builder’s Can We Fix It? (in case you’re wondering, yes we can).

Eventually I succeeded in attracting attention to myself and paid up. Back outside in the cold December afternoon I wondered what my sister might like for Christmas.

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* There are three other records with days of the week in their title, plus one which mentions every day in the lyrics and another which fits in all but Saturday.