PHIL COLLINS – “A Groovy Kind Of Love”
All cover versions flirt with anachronism but in this case it’s baked in before the record’s even left the sleeve: that word “groovy”. Linguistically switched-on for 1965, the Mindbenders’ brightly confident original now sounds caught in time: pop loosening up a little but still riding a beat group fad. Phil Collins, on the other hand, approaches the word and the song hesitantly, as if reaching for long-unfamiliar slang of his youth to describe an idea – love – which also might be lost somewhere in his past.
As I’ve said before this was pretty much the point of Phil Collins in the 80s, a stolid everyman who could channel blokish emotions without ever risking his rather stodgy masculinity. A quick rewind back to Chris De Burgh tells us how awful this approach could be, and for the second time Collins has hit the top with a cover that lands safely on “bearable”. In fact “A Groovy Kind Of Love” gets a more interesting reading than Phil’s bluff charge at “You Can’t Hurry Love”: he sounds like a man remembering a song and a feeling, rather than thumping away at one.
The video makes this meta-cover approach more explicit, with the extra twist that Collins seems to be in a darkened studio-cum-prison, remembering his own performance in Buster. Phil played the title character, train robber Buster Edwards: maybe the film, which I’ve never seen, moved away from a “loveable rogue” approach but the publicity (and this record) surely didn’t. It’s ultimately let down by its arrangement, swamped by echoed pianos and synthesised strings. The strings are particularly unpleasant, evoking not the brash world of 60s pop but the near future of the blockbuster rom-com. If Phil Collins could turn 60s pop into AOR, why couldn’t anyone else with a soundtrack to promote do the same? The consequences, some years down the line, will be thoroughly un-groovy.
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Re 46: I think you’re right. And, away from the safety of the bedroom, away even from the gangs singing Livin’ On A Prayer in tuneless unison, Numanoids used to put into practise at clubs all over the country. One at a time! None more devoted. Were they even allowed to like other music? (thinks: this was quite possibly covered on Cars/AFE posts).
..put FANDOM into practise, that is.
For my sins I saw Dire Straits at Wembley in the early 90s (I got a free ticket! Honest!) which must be the most boring, personality-free concert I’ve ever been too. I knew rock and roll was dead when I saw that the gig was sponsored by Philips and you couldn’t smoke in the hall.
I really wouldn’t want to choose between ‘Teardrops’ and ‘Love Wars’ but if you held a gun to my head I’d go with the former, I like it’s almost thrown-together warmth and how something so seemingly casual can be so damn…groovy, especially the 12″. Love that whole album really, more than the ‘Love Wars’ long-player.
Teardrops is exquisite. A 10. Love Wars is the warm up.
Dire Straits’ first two albums are terrific – JJ Cale, Steely Dan and something more besides; romantic and soulful
The problem with Dr Who is not rooted in a fan/non-fan issue. The problem with contemporary Dr Who is that 1) it’s made by contemporary BBC, and therefore suffers from feeble licence fee appeasing, bbc worldwide demographic pleasing, and a smug sense of its own self importance; and 2) its a very strong format which frequently means laziness and cliche in exceution (occasionally a great script or idea will transcend all this).
It was rarely consistently good in its old incarnation, although of course I loved it as a kid.
Oh, and this Phil Collins record is very dull
#49 – expressions like “that’s what happens when you let the great unwashed buy records” are unhelpful.
The problem with contemporary Dr Who is that it was good until it thought it was good.
“Teardops” just nudges ahead of “Love Wars” for me as well. I played it a couple of times at the club; it filled the floor on the first week, and all but emptied it on the second week. Tricky record to sequence; well over 130bpm as I recall, and you didn’t get many of those to the pound in 1988.
1991 was a different story. I once managed to segue the track very successfully into “Anasthasia” by T99.
I have a fine collection of Dire Straits albums, but then I haven’t had my shower yet this morning.
As Conrad says, the first two DS albums are pretty terrific, as are parts at least of the third and fourth. I remember being disappointed when the single of Private Investigations didn’t make the distance. I drew the line at Brothers in Arms and in my mind Dire Straits really belong to the 70s but I guess their success in the 80s was a result of the demographic of Dire Straits fans having a large overlap with the demographic who could afford the new CD technology. DS’s style being well-suited to CD.
I ‘ad that Mark Knopfler living round the corner from me for much of the 80s. He, like me, used to patronise Geales’ cheap, cheerful, chaotic and generous sit-down fish-and-chip emporium behind the Gate Cinema. Geales was taken over by a “Leisure Consortium” in the 1990s and became expensive, miserable, regimented and mean, and connoisseurs were better directed to Costa’s in the next street over. My information, however, is long out of date.
The Mindbenders’ version of AGKOL is part of my growing up and that Eric Stewart was a bit tasty. Phil adds nothing to it.
You’ll be pleased to know that “Private Investigations” made number one on the NME chart.
Geales is still in existence and still expensive, miserable, regimented and mean. For our money you can’t beat Johnnie’s Fish Bar in World’s End which apparently Mick ‘n’ Keef used to frequent back in their immediate pre-fame days when they lived in Edith Grove, nicked neighbours’ milk bottles, &c.
Re 59: do I get to pull out the Pop Fact that Brothers in Arms was the first album to sell more on CD than on vinyl? One of the first albums I owned, purely on the strength of knowing it had sold a lot; it’s rather good, actually, even if it gets bogged down in bluesiness a couple of times.
Re 61: Does “one of the first albums I owned, purely on the strength of knowing it had sold a lot” qualify as buying records without liking the music? Of course I’m in a greenhouse with a boulder in my hand as I try to collect every no.1 on 7″ vinyl, scouring ebay for the London issue of Broken Wings by the Stargazers.
Re 59/60: I’m gutted that Gigs fish and chip place on Tottenham Street, back of Goodge Street station, has been gutted and gone ‘upmarket’.
#62: It’s probably a bigger cause for buying records than is generally acknowledged, and of course the very existence of charts encourages this, i.e. this is what everyone else is buying, ergo so should you. Not so sure about “without liking the music”; more likely the would-be consumer was simply curious about why everyone else was buying it and wanted to see for themselves what was so good about it, as you had to do in those far off pre-MySpace/iTunes etc. days (although really anyone who listened to UK music radio for more than ten minutes in 1985 would have known exactly what Brothers In Arms was all about).
About chippies changing owners and going to pot, I should also mention the Rock and Sole Plaice in Covent Garden; took Lena there in 2006 and it was magnificent, lovely atmosphere and some of the best fish and chips we’ve ever had. Went back there for her birthday last year; the place had changed hands and although the food was as good as ever, the staff were surly, regimental and abusive, thus ruining the entire experience (you want a tip? Try being NICE to us and treating us with some RESPECT rather than shoving past us every three seconds as though we were a couple of inconveniently-placed winos rather than the people who pay your wages).
You can make the best food on the planet but if you can’t deal with the people who’ll be eating it you might as well be turning out pig swill.
Yes, of course. How soon we forget. I’ve bought hundreds of records “without liking the music”, as I’d never heard the record but was convinced to spend my money by Dave McCullough/Sunie/Red Starr.
Does anyone still say they like ‘chart music’? I remember Chris Needham using it as a stick to humiliate schoolgirls in Teenage Diaries.
Last visit to the (aesthetically perfect) Fryer’s Delight on Theobalds Road was a major disappointment – the fish had obviously been kept warm for ages. Had my best fish and chips EVER last year – Masters Superfish on Waterloo Road. AND they stay open late.
My last Fryer’s Delight visit was great – it all depends on your timing I suppose (I got a fresh batch of chips with a haddock that hadn’t already come out of the fryer). I defend them against all critics for as long as my good/bad experience with them remains in favour of the former.
Current and recent experience in my workplace suggests that folk don’t actually know there’s still such a thing as The Charts except around Christmas time when, thanks to Simon Cowell, they suddenly remember.
Best fish and chips in Britain IMHO: P&N’s in St Andrews, closely followed by my old local, the Carfax Chippy in Oxford. Keep meaning to check out Masters Superfish. Once went with Tim H of this parish to the highly-rated Golden Fish Bar in Farringdon Road en route to Club Poptimism and he insisted that it was an off night but I’m afraid I wasn’t too impressed.
I bought both ‘Dark Side of The Moon’ and ‘Rumours’ because they had sold by the shedload and, being the age I was then, thought I should own them if I was to be a serious music fan. Still love the Mac album (more than I did back then) but the Floyd bored me to tears then and still does, I remember listening to it at the time thinking “what’s the big deal?”
I used to go to Fryer’s Delight a lot when I worked around that manor, handsome grub that was. My own personal favourite was The Galleon on Dawes Road in Fulham which I think is under a new name and management now.
The Galleon is now also called the Golden Fish Bar but I don’t think it’s related to the one in Farringdon. Went there a few times back in the day when it was the Galleon but no idea if the new place is any good or not.
Fryer’s Delight I’ve tried a couple of times – OK but nothing special.
Another one I’ve always loved is Sam’s in Golders Green but unfortunately that’s currently undergoing long-term refurbishment.
“The charts” are both less and more important than ever: less important, because very few care about what the official number one is. And more, because Amazon, iTunes, etc. organise themselves around sales charts and so the multiplier/power law effect talked about at #63 is even more crucial. The old split in the record store between new releases / the charts / back catalogue doesn’t really have an equivalent in online navigation.
i.e. the principle of “charts” matters very much indeed, “The Charts” don’t.
(One of the under-appreciated things about the internet is how ubiquitous the ranked list is – every Google search generates what amounts to “a chart”. Popularity or recency have become the default ways of presenting content – editorially-decided quality/importance is losing out as an organising method, one of the things being squeezed as newspapers are)
(sticks head in sand)
Following Doctorin’ The Tardis, Superfly Guy and The Only Way Is Up at the top of the Independent Chart, Birthday by the Sugarcubes provided an alternative to Phil’s schmoov moves.
I love The Charts.
Now if “Birthday” was on popular it would need to be the first 11!
re #54 There is nothing particularly smug about Doctor Who and the BBC are entitled to place much importance on their longest-living and phenomenally successful show.
Complaining about the show’s populism seems ridiculous. Obv it can’t please all of the people all of the time but it’s judged this probably better than any other show aimed at a universal audience (tho few shows are).
Great to be discussing fish and chips, Doctor Who and the Womacks (a classic monster name there) on a Lil Phil thread tho.
Has “Birthday” really worn that well, though?
My problem with the record is that I hear it now, nod and shrug: “well, it’s Björk being Björk,” whereas in 1987 when “we” knew nothing about her it was total WTF-ville.