Monday, June 3, 2013

Laying in the park, jamming in the dark (Attitudes) #1 and 2 of 300 singles

My old buddy Gregarious sent me a link to a blogger who is writing about the 3000 albums he owns in 3000 different posts. A great idea huh (a link is under Expert Texpert down the left hand column if you want to check it out).

I like the freedom to write about whatever strikes my musical imagination at the time, rather than being tied down to a format like that, although from time to time in the blog I've used an arc, such as posts on record covers or lists of various sorts.

The basic concept of writing about your collection is interesting though.

I thought I'd write about the largely forgotten format of 45s for a while. I have nowhere near 3,000 of them so I'll concentrate on 300 instead. To keep it interesting I'll be judicious in my selection of Beatle and solo Beatle singles.

I loved singles - they were cheap when I started out listening to music and they were usually the cream of the crop. Funny how itunes has reinvented the single but with a 45 you got two songs and the B side was often a quirky and interesting avenue for bands.

As singles fell out of favour over 20 years ago this will mainly be a trip into the sixties and seventies.

Being me I have them in alphabetical order on my shelves. Some I've posted on already, like America's Sandman, so I'll leave them out when they crop up.

First up then is a pair of singles by Attitudes - Ain't Love Enough/ The Whole World's Crazy from 1975 and Sweet Summer Music/ Being Here With You from 1977.

You what?

Attitudes?

They were a band made up of session musician friends of George Harrison (Jim Keltner, Danny Kortchmar, Paul Stallworth and David Foster) who played on his dire solo album Extra Texture, and so he plonked out some of their singles and albums on his Dark Horse Records label. Hey he was rich!



As you know I love George and I love Apple Records.
I thought he might have the same magic touch he had at Apple (Jackie Lomax, Doris Troy, Billy Preston, Radha Krsna Temple, Badfinger etc) with Dark Horse. Sadly lightning didn't strike twice. Jiva are exhibit one m'lord.

Like Jiva, Attitudes were terrible. Slick soulless sessioners sounding sensationally sad. Boring boring boring in other words.

Sweet Summer Music was the more successful of the two singles, charting at number 94, but it's still a weirdly unappealing song. See if you can stick it out for the duration.



Didn't think so.

Hidden gem? Ha ha - you're having a giraffe aincha?

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