I completely agree. People seem to forget that while songs like this went down well with most middle-class parents because they were catchy and unthreatening, it was always young people who determined the number one song from week to week. And like you, I could always see that the people buying records like this were primarily young girls, who liked good-looking boys and catchy tunes (preferably together, but if not, then one or the other would do).

In truth 1972-6 was their golden era; although not at the centre of the Philly Sound, Thom Bell did bequest them some of his finest songs and productions – “I’ll Be Around,” “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love?,” “Ghetto Child” – and the group performed them with elegant passion. There was something of a shudder that they had been “reduced” to going Eurodisco. Yet this became their biggest British hit and also reached #2 in the States, presumably courtesy of a young crowd who knew or cared little about their previous work.

The Four Seasons cover – and yes, this was the fourth Four Seasons cover version to get to number one in Britain while never having been a hit for the group themselves – is despatched with Teutonic efficiency; lead singer John Edwards gamely gives it his best effort over a hugely unsubtle drum machine thud, and the song is strong enough to withstand the assault. However, the segue into Zager’s own song, the notably less impressive “Forgive Me Girl,” is contrived and brief, and the original song soon comes back into focus. It was clearly danceable enough to satisfy its buyers, but it is disco as studium writ large, and after another similar effort, coupling Sam Cooke’s “Cupid” with the anonymous “I’ve Loved You For A Long Time,” which promptly went top five, the Detroit Spinners did indeed make their delayed descent into nightclub revivalism. To cite their first Motown hit from a decade earlier, it’s a shame.

When he left Radio 2 in November that year 1986, he claimed that their music policy had become “geriatric” and that “there’s only so much Max Bygraves and Vera Lynn you can play.

So I would go along with andypandy’s original thoughts that Radio 2, as a separate entity at least, was pretty much out of touch at that time (notwithstanding the occasional “Floral Dance” or similar aberration)

(!)

and (!) again…

..some mention was made afterwards about him being ‘a landlord now’…

Oh yes my mother and her Boney M affair. It started when she went to Kelly’s radio (our old chain of electrical and record shops at that time) and asked for “The record by those nice black people” which started her Boney M collection. She had previously asked for “I lost my heart to a deep sea diver” and “sister sludge” so she was always on to a winner. (see one, feel one, touch one)

On to the very knowledgeable Wichita lineman’s point above, Ben Findon wrote Billy Ocean’s hits with a Mr Leslie Charles who now has long grey dreadlocks and calls himself Billy Ocean. “Shop girl” you may be, and just think you could have been called “Rhinestone Cowboy” .

Brown Sauce flip, on an embarrassingly arcane note, is the very good early 80s Swap Shop theme.

But you’ve (no31) just summed up what I was saying myself in my previous post by saying “BUYING records” (and I presume we’re talking about singles here).I doubt anyone was buying Tom Jones etc singles by that time (that’s obvious from those kind of singers absence from the chart).Just because they had the odd Boney M album for parties etc are you saying they were really on it big style on the Boney M tip?

Or put simply to say that “parents” rather than their teenage offspring (who were after all all obviously only into “happening” music-press sanctioned music)were wholly responsible for putting stuff like this at No1 is extremely dubious.

I remember some of the stuff played at youth club discos back then especially if the girls brought their own records in it sometimes got as dodgy as the Dooleys, the Nolans and Brown Sauce(don’t ask).

This was never a cool club record, either, it was immediate wedding party fodder with an eye cocked towards folks who might remember the song from the first time around. So, maybe “mum and dad” is an imprecise way of putting it – “young mums and shopgirls” sound any better? Thought not. But I’m sure you get the gist.

As I’ve probably mentioned before, I’ve never liked the Four Seasons sound, so somebody else singing their songs is usually preferable for me.

Bland, handclapping disco for mum and dad to enjoy.

Like “Together We Are Beautiful” before it, this has its roots in the Wally Disco end of the spectrum, suggesting something of a schism in the genre’s dying days. Your Auntie Maureen would have shuffled politely to it in Cinderella Rockafellas, while digesting her chicken-in-a-basket (and good for her). There will be several more examples of this to come before the year is through.

Yes, I’d have preferred “It’s A Shame” to have reached the top (always one of my favourite Motown hits), or any of the sublime tunes that the Spinners cut with Thom Bell for Atlantic – “Mighty Love”, “I’ll Be Around”, “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love”, “Ghetto Child”, “Rubberband Man” – but them’s the breaks. In a sense, I’d compare their Michael Zager medley period to the run of 1970s hits from The Drifters: a bit past their peak, somewhat lacking in finesse, rather too heavy on the boom-thwack, but not without a certain velvet dickie-bowed charm.

OK, I had more to say than I thought.

(I had that Michael Zager in my toy shop, you know! He bought a moulded plastic castle, and I filled in the chitties to get it shipped. An honour.)

I was going to say The Detroit Emeralds, but they were called that in the States too!

And they were a multicultural ensemble long before Two-Tone!

I saw the (Liverpool) Spinners once – leading the community singing before the all-Merseyside 1989 Cup Final. It was the one that came a month after Hillsborough, and the “Merseyside United” feeling was tangible. So they did “The Leaving of Liverpool”, “Liverpool Lou”, “In My Liverpool Home” and so on… and speaking as a Manc, I sang along and loved every minute.