PILOT – “January”
Well, first of all, love the intro and instrumental hook - glam guitars arcing over the track like a Red Arrows flypast – but then? The chorus of “January” seems feeble in contrast, with follow-the-bouncing-ball phrasing not exactly helping. So what we have here is a battle of the hooks – one huge, promising a much more expansive track than the mopey shrug the other settles for. I can buy that – he’s tongue-tied as his girl’s leaving, and the skyscraping bits are how he really feels – but this is still an annoyingly lopsided piece of pop.
5
I can’t remember Pilot featuring on “New Faeces” but they might as well have done as this was very lightweight indeed and certainly passed by without attracting teenyboppers or any other discernible followers to Pilot’s Edinburgh door. Safe, pleasant and not particularly annoying, “January” was simply something out of nothing from a nothing pop group. Probably sold bucket loads in the Home Counties, a few less in Lambeth, I would suggest. Neither fish nor fowl, this one. It just came and went. Rather like January, really.
Um, the Proclaimers were omitted because I hoped someone would do a Best of Fife thread to incorporate the Skids and Big Country and…um…er…
…Barbara Dickson and KT Tunstall and Ian Anderson…(wiki says they’re all from there)…
…and The Fence Collective in general! Thanks missus! ;-)
Barbara D usefully had a hit in 1980 entitled “January February.” JUDGE DALE SEZ: “Good single.”
What are you two? Richard and Judy, now?
Our Book Club is MUCH better than theirs!
Yes, I’m sure that’s right, and I bet you and wifey don’t hoodwink the public with the old phone scam. Ten bob a time. Ker-chink! I thank you!!!
TOTP Watch: Pilot performed January on Top of the Pops on five occasions, only one of which survives in the archives. This is from the edition of the 2nd of January 1975, presented by Jimmy Saville. Also in the studio that week were Wizzard, The Wombles, Philip & Vanessa, Kenny, Mud and Pan’s People (interpreting ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’).
Christ, Philip & Vanessa – a cover of “Two Sleepy People” IIRC?
“Philip & Vanessa featuring the Top of the Pops Orchestra” for complete musical excellence.
John Holt made a fine fist of “Help Me Make It…” I would imagine that Pan’s People’s invitation would have been readily snapped up by any bloke with a pulse.
I’m with Marcello. This is a song for days like today – brilliant blue sky, not a cloud in the sky and a fierce, uncompromising nip in the air. Wondrous, happy bouncy days. It’s one of those songs that always makes me feel happy – like the Alan Price version of Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear or Dexy’s Come on Eileen.
My Scotland was buzzing in 1974-78 – new sense of political self-confidence, Nats doing well, the national football team qualifying for the World Cup while England was at home twiddling its thumbs;-) Pilot are a genial part of the jigsaw of my then happiness, and for that I thank them.
The host album, Second Flight, is one I still play today and enjoy with a sort of comfort-blanket nostalgia, and I’m not quite sure whether this or Magic was my first-ever purchase from Itunes. In the canon of great Scots intros its up there with the famous saxophone riff from three years hence that heralds the intro of a certain record by my (post-amalgamation) school’s most famous alumnus.
Performed by the man Jimmy Young always insisted on calling R.A.F. Ravenscroft (you see).
Yeees, the dancing bear song. A happy, feelgood offering indeed. Of course what wasn’t mentioned in this delightful little ditty is the bit where Simon Smith brays the poor fucked-up creature with a massive stick when it stops dancing.
Hm, I’ve always read Simon Smith as being a bittersweet song about poverty, more than anything else…
You never can tell with that Randy Newman.
Didn’t call him randy for nothin’…
Can I get away with a copy-and-paste reprint from this time three years ago, when “January” popped up on my annual Which Decade Is Tops For Pops Project (which by the most astonishing coincidence has just relaunched on my blog this very evening)?
“…once the “ooh, I remember this one!” thrill has faded, all you’re left with is a rather slight, anaemic confection; nicely turned in several respects, but with some shrill, jarring qualities which tend to jar ever more with repeated listens. It also loses points for disobeying Pop Law, by failing to rhyme fire (FYE-yah!) with desire (diz-EYE-yah!).”
(Sorry I’ve been away, folks. I couldn’t think of anything interesting to say about “Lonely This Christmas”, then the wind changed and I stayed that way…)
Marcello (#34) – Christ, Philip and Vanessa would be some trio!
Sadly, Christ was unavailable for contractual reasons.
According to iMDB Philip & Vanessa were Canadian (!!!!!).
The Newman and Price versions (and Newman is one of my five all-time favourite artists) have always felt very different to me.
Of course perhaps the Geordie Boy was just having a try-out for what later gelled as the jaunty desperation of the Jarrow Song?
(Just finishing the last chapter of Maconie’s Pies and Prejudice, where he’s dealing with Geordies and sundry South Tynesiders, and recognising the Sassenach members of my family in his pen portraits).
Surely now would be the ideal time for Marcello to capitalise on this interest and put his long-promised Alan Price essay online…
Yes, Bill’s right to pull me up on this. I promised/trailed the Price piece a mere three-and-a-half years ago but then I got a bit lost in that Koons ’74 jungle and I really need to do something about putting that to bed. I’ve got about 75% of my entry on the Goodies written but that’s as far as I’ve managed to date.
Still the Price thing would be a good stand alone piece so I might try to work it into Blue in the Air sometime in the near future.
Oh, and Marcello. Don’t forget your other promised project, that thesis on Scottish boy soprano Neil Reid and his Bobby Goldsboro moment with the temptress that was Molly Weir…
*eats lunch twice*
Your mind is one sick place Waldo!
I know, buddy. But what you gonna do?
You’ve done it all! You’ve broken every code!
Good one, Marcello. And bless you. One tries one’s best!
I have no problem at all in elevating January to classic status. Yes, Magic was a better song and possibly so good that this pales alongside it but it shouldn’t be dismissed that easily. A bright and breezy pop gem (did The Feeling base their career on this ?) it seems to have aged well chiming more with me now than it ever did then. The soaring lead guitar, high pitched vocals & exquisite production are probably reminiscent of Beatles et al due to the fact that Alan Parsons is on production duties. By the way the first group to be dubbed the New Beatles was almost definitely the Macca produced Badfinger.
#41 Like the Great Nations of Europe? ;-)
“oh the irony” … it got to No1 on Feb 1st!
smashing record – distilled-essence-of-mid-70s-pop-fun. Spangles, Jamie & The Magic Torch, PlaySchool, Bod, jumpers for goalposts etc…
The lyrics are dire and the lead vocal twee, but this song still has much to recomend it apart from the explosive power-pop intro. The melody is ridicuously catchy (in a good way), the vocal harmonies are delicious, and the neat guitar work is complemented by a McCartneyesque bassline that bounces and bobs along beautifully. A curate’s egg that survives as a minor bubblegum classic.
Brilliant track, very surprised it hasn’t rated higher.
The chorus does take the tempo down a notch, but the track works all the better for it doing so.
And of course it features the firey fretwork of Ian “Wuthering Heights” Bairnson, who reminds me a bit of Bernard Butler circa “Animal Nitrate”