22
Jun 11
SHAKESPEARS SISTER – “Stay”
What people remember about “Stay” are its extremes – the teetering, cracking soprano of Marcella Detroit’s lead vocal, and Siobhan Fahey’s growled and throaty intervention on the bridge. The deliberate contrast laid the song open to plenty of parodies, and a faint air of gimmickry hung over it – so ambitious, so unlike the rest of the charts, but still somehow a little absurd, an awkward collision between “Nothing Compares 2 U” and “Total Eclipse Of The Heart”, switching clumsily between intensity and bluster.
And it is that, but it’s aged very well indeed. In a world where “Dark Romance” – Twilight knock-offs, basically – has its own bookstore section, the florid, crushed-velvet obsessiveness of “Stay” makes complete aesthetic sense. It’s gothy, needy, with a dangerous undertow, hard to take entirely seriously and intoxicating if you do – if the word “emo” had meant anything in 1992 it would have been slapped on this.
Obviously, the switched-dynamics form of the song matches its content: a tale of two worlds, the singer’s and the subject’s, and the relationship between them. One is claustrophobic, intense, something to escape: the other reached by risky passage, but where safety is hardly guaranteed and worse terrors may lurk. The specifics of what’s going on in “Stay” are obscured – but the emotional truth of it is keenly, melodramatically, felt. Some worlds, the singer is saying, change those who visit them: return is not an option. That applies whether the other world is a relationship, a lifestyle, a subculture, or even something more literal or fantastic. But if this was the song’s only message it would be a little trite, and the power of “Stay” is that it digs deeper. The idea of no returns is a self-serving one – it’s what the dwellers in those worlds tell themselves, and their secret terror (the terror at the heart of this song) is that this is a lie, you can go back.
8
I missed these too
1972
Archie Bell and the Drells – Here I Go Again 11
1974
The Peppers – Pepper Box 6
1976
LJ Johnson – Your Magic Put A Spell On Me 27
I didn’t include any of the late 60s re-issued Motown stuff as it was probably just as much a hit because Tony Blackburn etc played as “revived 45s” and it wasn’t much more retro than what was still being played in mainstream clubs and very hard to say it was in the charts because of purely “rare soul” play.
Didn’t include the original issue of the Showstoppers or Flamingos “The Boogaloo Party” as these were both big in London soul clubs/mainstream clubs/on the radio too in the late 1960s.
Which show did Tony Blackburn have in 69/70? Breakfast Show? In that case, you’re probably right. The only question I’d have about the extent of his influence on, say, The Tams is why the heck it was re-issued in the first place. Some club play, I’d guess?
Showstoppers and Flamingos were contemporary hits AFAIK, just slightly dated sounding.
One more:
Archie Bell & the Drells – There’s Gonna Be A Showdown 1973, no.36
There may be a borderline case for Felice Taylor’s “I Feel Love Coming On,” #11 in 1967.
“Pepper Box” wasn’t really Northern Soul. Chicken-egg situation re. Rockford Files theme and “Autobahn.”
LJ Johnson – wasn’t that one of Ian Levine’s “re-creations” (see also Evelyn Thomas’ “Weak Spot”)?
103 Yes I missed ‘Weakspot and ‘Doomsday’ – Ian Levine was also behind the Exciters’s track (his first I think). And the Sharonettes, Wigans Chosen Few, Maxine Nightingale, Javells, Wigan’s Ovation, Roy Grainer, Allnight Band and even Tommy Hunt were also of course mostly/all(?) British produced cash-ins of various degrees of authenticity.
Re: Yes ‘Pepper Box’ is a strange one but often pops up on NS compilations/singles sales and was a hit 2 or 3 years after it was originally released at least partly because of NS play IIRC.
The Sharonettes. 3 singles, no pics or info at all otherwise!
Another one missed Tommy Hunt ‘Loving On The Losing Side’ (1976)
Wigan’s Chosen Few “Footsee” was basically a USA Baseball ‘theme’ played twice with added crowd noises. Still, it had “7 days too long” on the b-side so hey.
Doesn’t “Love On A Mountain Top” count? There’s a Pan’s People routine to that so it must have done quite well.Edit: Damn, I’m going blind.
83, 94
I know this is know going very far off topic, but I remember going to a Delirious? gig in the mid 90s, and being exhorted to buy their new single, but not from a Christian book/record shop, as this would not count toward chart position. Of course, with Itunes and digital charts, this should no longer be an issue, but I’m not sure what underground scene is now being helped by this shift away from national, non-genre specific record shops?
107:
Wasn’t it made by Canadians though and remixed in this country with crowd noise from the 1966 FA Cup Final – you can hear the crowd chant “Wedneday” (as in Sheffield Wednesday) at one point if you listen hard enough!
That’ll be the bit between the two playings.
Chuck Wood’s Seven Days Too Long on the flip of Footsee. Shame it wasn’t a double A. I wonder if Kevin Rowland bought Footsee…?
More than likely.
The sleeve of the single (a rare thing in those days) sort of presented it as a double A, but I guess it never got taken as such.
“But since the advent of the computerised till, this is surely no longer the case? (I mean the return from 95% of shops, not the gaming: that will always be with us…)”
I don’t know the figures but I’d bet that the contribution of sales from physical media in the singles chart is now negligible. Unless you live in a city or large town, new release singles are as much a relic of the past as a communal water pump or tobaconnists. Unless downloads are weighted by IP address, I’d say that the charts are more likely to reflect nationwide taste now than any time in it’s history.
83, 109, 114.
Amid all of this what is often overlooked is that the industry had a LEGITIMATE interest in measuring, and intention to measure, what sold in “conventional” shops. Why would the British Association of Record Dealers (BARD) or the Entertainment Retailers’ Association (ERA) want to measure what sold in different types of outlet who did not pay subscription fees to the membership organisation and were not committed to the completion of chart returns?
They would want to know this, so they would have an idea as to what was selling, and what to supply more of, to retailers.
116. No, no. Read 115 again. Why would the retailers / dealers want to know what was selling in different types of outlet? Not why would manufacturers want to know, not why would the distributors want to know. Why would the shops want to know?
The chart is and was a joint venture between retailers and the BPI. The shops are no more interested in having ‘other’ shops contribute to the chart than the record label is in having ‘other’ product in it.
I suppose you might argue the retailers should be / could be / are interested in how CDs sell in bookshops and other outlets, but that’s irrelevant; if they are, they achieve this through other analyses and methods of monitoring the market. Retailers have continued to feel that the chart is a valuable way of reporting the demand for records sold in their outlets. (For a good long time they felt it was a good way of stimulating the demand too, but these days have passed.)
Oh, ok, how about..
If a record sells well in a tobacconist (we’re back in time right?), record shops might decide that they should stock it as well. Total Market Knowledge. In fact, the record co might say “this is selling well in ‘specialist’ shops”, and the retailler might decide to actually stock more of this sort of thing.
I’d imagine there would have been much more Reggae sales, for instance. You might well argue that Reggae sales should only benefit Reggae outlets as opposed to the cost/price cutting “Harlequin” stores, but you can see why retailers might consider that information ‘interesting’…
It was only a year after this that the chart started including Asian music shops – as far as I remember the biggest benefactor of this was Apache Indian’s ‘Boom Shack-A-Lak’ which got to number 5. Not a surprise it didn’t have more of an impact as my experience of those shops is that they mainly sold albums on tape.
#118, yes, that’s a cogent point. However, the retailers have repeatedly taken on board the “Total Market Knowledge”, developed models to accommodate it and they have concluded that however much they stock of some specialist music, they can’t make revenue or profit from it. If they could, they would. However, time after time they have found that the core audience for certain types of music will buy it elsewhere. Occasionally, crossover hits happen (see above, see below).
#119, The chart did not start including Asian music shops, and nor has it since. The chart has included cassettes since 1983, and any chart-eligible cassettes sold in chart return shops count towards the chart. Apache Indian made the charts by getting signed to a mainstream label, and getting good marketing. This resulted in two key things: getting his records into the mainstream record shops, and making people want to go there to buy them.
Ok, accept what you say there, but I clearly remember Bruno Brookes saying exactly that on the top 40 countdown on Radio 1 when it entered the chart, maybe he was misinformed, maybe it was a potential thing that didn’t happen, not sure, but he absolutely said it. The point I was making about albums on tape was that they were albums, not that they were tapes.
121. A-ha! That explains a lot; I’m glad you brought the issue up, as I think it’s important it’s widely understood, thanks. It’s interesting, too, to know where some of the misunderstandings began and how they have been developed.
Further to why the Tams’ ‘Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me’ became a hit it transpires that it was first played at the Catacombs* (Wolverhampton) by ‘Farmer’ Carl Dene (known for ‘discovering many big rare soul tracks’ – it was also him who got Tami Lynn into the Top 5 in 1971).
Tony Blackburn then picked up on it and started to play it on his Radio 1 show and the rest is history. This was obviously sometime before Northern Soul became synonymous with stompers – even so how did you dance (without looking an absolute twat) to HGDBM?!
*The Catacombs along with The Torch (Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent) and Twisted Wheel (Manchester) were the big 3 Rare Soul (ie what was eventually renamed Northern Soul) clubs in the period 1968-72.
Andy, is there a decent book-written history of all this anywhere, or is it all still just in the heads and memories of those who were present or paying attention? It is so much the secret second spine of the tale of British pop…
Probably the most well known book on the NS scene is David Nowell’s “Too Darn Soulful” although I believe Neil Rushton famous NS and later AcidHouse figure also brought out quite a famous one.i don’t think they were definitive or necssarily amazingly well-written though and I think that one’s still to be written.
As I recall there’s a good section of “Manchester, England” by Dave Haslam which covers Northern Soul in Manchester if not the vicinity.
I loved Shakespear’s Sister and still do. Went to see them live at the Town & Country Club soon after Stay’s reign at #1 – they put on an amazing show. For Stay, the whole place went pitch dark apart from Marcella highlighted and a backdrop of stars, then Siobhan was lit up too for her part. Spellbinding.
Critic watch:
1,001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die, and 10,001 You Must Download (2010) 1002
Bruce Pollock (USA) – The 7,500 Most Important Songs of 1944-2000 (2005)
OUT (USA) – The 50 Gayest Songs of the 1990s (2011)
Giannis Petridis (Greece) – 2004 of the Best Songs of the Century (2003)