My strongest memory of the song is having it stuck in my head for 90 mins (would… not… go… away!) while watching Honduras v Yugoslavia. A draw would’ve sent Honduras through but they lost to a last minute penalty.

Not a very appropriate memory, really. But I’m glad I’ve never related toooo strongly to the lyric.

http://drunkennessofthingsbeingvarious.blogspot.com/2011/02/odyssey-inside-out-1982-no-3-11-weeks.html

The people who did Native New Yorker*. And to think it could have been St Winifred’s in an alternate timeline.

*also the name of a rather good club in 90s Leeds

The MU strike of the time probably contributed to my having no contemporaneous memories of this. Its hard to add much to what’s already been written, just to say that the crisscrossiness of the rhythms make it an endlessly pleasurable thing to listen too.

but anyway, another vote for good, but it’s no ‘native new yorker’.

I have a single of the German version of “Heroes” with the same type and layout.

Arguably, this is the weakest of the five, although thoroughly enjoyable all the same. It’s neither as subtle or insidious as the magnificent “Inside Out”, nor does it contain a line as memorable as “zippin up my roots, goin’ back to my roots…” but it’s infectious and uplifting. Great to see them at Number One. As a kid, I associated this track with Lipps Inc’s “Funkytown”, although I can’t see any particular connection now.

One of my colleagues at the toy shop was a fully-fledged, white-socks-and-loafers, Essex soul boy. Most Monday mornings, he’d be raving about the latest import, weeks before it hit the charts. One week it would be Rodney Franklin’s stop-start jazz-funk instrumental “The Groove” (which was received less than reverently, the whole club shouting WANKER! in each of the gaps). Another week, it would be Stacy Lattisaw’s “Jump To The Beat”, or “Keep In Touch” by a new Brit-Funk act called Freeez, or The Gap Band’s “I Don’t Believe That You Want To Get Up And Dance”, later re-titled “Oops Upside Your Head”.

He was a bit sniffy about “Use It Up And Wear It Out”, but another older colleague, who had spent some time working in Trinidad, went all misty-eyed over it. “It reminds me of the spirit and the freedom of the people!” she sighed, somewhat theatrically.

I saw Odyssey perform at Nottingham Rock City (of all places) in the spring of 1981. A great show, and a landmark evening on a personal level, for reasons which I shan’t go into here. (Consider yourselves spared!)

If there’s one musical subculture which I regret never having experienced for myself, then it’s the early 1980s soul/funk subculture.

(i.e. the other ones noted would stand, despite not making the top. This one’s all the better for making it!)

What I am basically saying is that one has to use it up, wear it out, and that there’s nothing left in this whole world I care about.

Was this the last punk number one?

Number 2 Watch – Leo Sayer’s fairly wimpy version of “More Than I Can Say” (wo-wo yay-yayyy…)

Oh, and thanks to Wichita for making “Breaking Down The Walls of Heartache” my earworm du jour. Cracking song.

There is a lot going on in this but it’s a measure of how brilliant and assured dance music had gotten that they could get it all together so well. I still listen to some of the Solar records output from then and just marvel at how great they sound.

Strange to think now that back them I was spending my week night evenings in my bedroom listening to John Peel play Joy Division but come Friday and Saturday night I was out shaking my body down to the ground to stuff like this. I always had a theory though that the reason so many English boys were into soul and dance music because that was where you met girls. Not that I had any luck.

Inside Out is impossible to hum, it’s all atmosphere; “frozen desperation” is spot on.

If You’re Looking For A Way Out rivals Make It Easy On Yourself for stoic despair. It was written by Sandy Linzer, a Brill Building veteran (A Lover’s Concerto, Let’s Hang On) who had a fine 1980 as he also wrote Working My Way Back To You (I’d like to know his opinion on Forgive Me Girl) and Breakin’ Down The Walls Of Heartache, originally by the Bandwagon and covered by Dexys.