Top Ten Britgum Classics
1. PICKETTYWITCH – That Same Old Feeling (1970)
Like so much Britgum, the imagery here – oak trees, cottages etc. – couldn’t be further away from everything pop music is now, and will continue to be. That, I guess, is the root of my fascination with this era.
2. WHITE PLAINS – I’ve Got You On My Mind (1970)
A real charmer, this: more like a birthday party on an upper-middle-class lawn than most subsequent pop music, and all the better for it, amazingly.
3. MR BLOE – Groovin’ With Mr Bloe (1970)
Nothing but bass, harmonica and groove – not funk, not rhythm, but groove in excelsis, and sometimes that’s enough.
4. MARMALADE – Rainbow (1970)
Some of the greatest Britgummers let go of their jollity and breathe pure melancholia and, at heart, deep sadness.
5. BLUE MINK – Banner Man (1971)
Ritualism and pop don’t normally go together unless someone can make an arcane ritual sound like the very stuff of pop. This was such a song.
6. THE FORTUNES – Freedom Come, Freedom Go (1971)
Britgum was never more socially significant: this might just signal the moment when social and cultural flexibility became, in defiance of the kind of society the UK had been, something British people accepted as a matter of course.
7. DANIEL BOONE – Beautiful Sunday (1972)
Britgum’s finest moment of all, a neo-folk song structure of almost religious, redemptive simplicity / sublimity. One of the greatest singles of the 70s, if not ever.
8. STEPHANIE DE SYKES – Life Is A Beautiful Book (c. 1973/74)
Watch and listen to this in its true form – i.e. accompanied by the gambolling sheep of the ATV startup film – and marvel at how innocent we once were. For once, you can assert such a thing without being accused of trying to be Steve Wright presenting TOTP2.
9. PAPER LACE – Billy, Don’t Be A Hero (1974)
Formulaic heart-pumping, for sure, but the art of emotionally manipulative chord-changes has rarely reached this level of perfection. “Two Little Boys”? Sorry, never heard of it. I wish I hadn’t, anyway.
10. FIRST CLASS – Beach Baby (1974)
Britgum’s dying fall: put the fade on repeat play and hear pop, for the first time, become pure period pastiche.