Lord Sutch And Heavy Friends (Cotillion, 1970)

Images: Discogs

Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends was named in a 1998 BBC poll as the worst album of all time, a status it also held in Colin Larkin's book The Top 1000 Albums of All Time.

Is it really that bad?

You decide...

"You Are Everything" Judas Priest (Unreleased 1988 Demo Snippets)

If there was one set of producers, one band and one song you would have absolutely never made any connection with whatsoever in 1988, it's Stock, Aitken & Waterman, Judas Priest and The Stylistics 1971 hit "You Are Everything".

For those not aware of Stock, Aitken & Waterman, they were the legendary '80s producers of similar sounding UK pop hits-by-numbers. Including Bananarama, Kim Wilde, Rick Astley, Kylie Minogue and Sonia

You couldn't get any more polar opposite musically if you tried. To say nothing of a heavy metal cover version of a '70s soul masterpiece.

But although these are fragments of an unreleased demo, this is actually pretty damn good. Judas Priest did it right. Faithful to the Stylistics original (you don't want to screw with a classic.) But carefully arranged for a metal power ballad. 

SA&W kept the drum machines and synthesizers in check. They knew what song this was and what band they were dealing with. The band also recorded some also as yet unreleased original songs from this session. But the band says it's unlikely the whole songs will surface 

Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton also recorded guitar solos for a Stock, Aitken & Waterman produced artist, Samantha Fox, and was credited on her 1991 track "Spirit of America".

Read more about it in the Blabbermouth article here.

"A Joyous Time Of Year/The B-Side" Marty Feldman (1968)

British comedian Marty Feldman is best remembered by American audiences as Igor in Young Frankenstein. (and his eyes, a product of a bad operation for his Grave's disease as a child.)

Feldman released some UK comedy albums and novelty singles in the late 1960s. This single failed to crack the UK charts and didn't get much (if any) airplay (not many comedy singles do.)

"The B-Side" is a poke at the flipside of a 45 RPM single...

"Stop The Cavalry" The Cory Band w/ The Gwalia Singers (1981)

Most of you have probably never heard this UK single before and technically, it's not even a Christmas song, but an anti-war song.

Yet if you live in the Seattle area, you definitely know it. It gets regular airplay on Seattle's Warm 106.9 radio during their annual holiday music format. For decades, it was a holiday season radio hit in the Puget Sound. An earworm that never seems to leave your brain once you hear it. It reached #3 on the British pop charts in December 1981. But there was never an American release of the song at that time. Either it wasn't considered or no American record label was interested in licensing the track for the U.S., thinking it wouldn't sell to American record buyers.

So how did this song get to be such a huge hit in Seattle and pretty much nowhere else outside of the UK?

Well first, we're weird here in Seattle. That said, there's a fascinating back story (here) to how this record was nearly lost forever and how it was finally saved.

The original label the record was on, Stiff Records, was a British independent specializing in "pub rock", new wave and punk (Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Madness, Lene Lovich, Tracey Ullmann and Ian Dury & The Blockheads were among Stiff's best known artists.) It became one of the most influential independent labels in the world in the early 1980s, ushering in the punk and new wave genres to the UK and the world.


This song however was clearly none of the above genres.

It was originally recorded by Jona Lewie (another Stiff artist), but it was The Cory Band's cover of the song that became the Seattle hit.

The Cory Band is a Welsh brass band and one of the longest continuous running bands in the world. They were founded in 1884 (The Rolling Stones have nothing on these guys) and are recognized as one of the world's most innovative and popular brass ensembles. 

However somewhere along the way from the song's initial release, Stiff had erased and reused the original studio master tape of The Cory Band's version of this song (being a low-budget independent record label, that is not uncommon.) So when a Seattle record producer heard the track and contacted Stiff in 1997 to license an American re-release of this extremely rare single because of overwhelming demand from Seattle area radio listeners, Stiff looked in their vaults. Then told the producer the awful news.

A makeshift workaround had to be arranged with a vinyl copy of the song. Luckily, there were a few mint copies remaining from the original pressing. The producer made a decent transfer suitable for the re-release and sold 13,000 copies of the reissue locally.

It still remains one of the perennial holiday favourites in Seattle. Enjoy.  

Ipso

Ipso was an Irish made breath mint that was popular in the UK in the 1970s and '80s and was briefly sold in the US. They came in Peppermint, Orange, Lime and Raspberry flavours. Spearmint and Cinnamon replaced Lime and Raspberry in the US.

They were most famous for their Lego-like boxes, which you could collect and stack. However, they had a very special use for drug users, who used them as stash boxes, leading to many American schools banning them. But overall, they never sold well in America and disappeared from US shelves by 1981. They lasted until the late 1980s in the UK.

They never had a large advertising presence in the US, but in the UK, they were noted for this classic TV ad.

The Legend Of KLEE-TV

Like some broadcasting ghost story, it gets told again and again.

But like many urban legends, there is a grain of truth underneath the embellishment.

Image: The Pecan Park Eagle

This is the story.

In 1958, Reader's Digest magazine published an article on how one mysterious afternoon in 1953, a signal showing the station ID card of KLEE-TV, Houston, TX appeared on TV sets throughout the UK - three years after KLEE-TV was sold and their call letters had changed to KPRC-TV.

Now here's the grain of truth: It's not uncommon for local over the air radio/TV signals to reach crazy distances under the right atmospheric conditions. It's a phenomena that happens every night on the AM radio band. But more rarely on FM and TV. But they still happen there.

Overseas reception of FM and TV signals is the rarest of all of what is known as "DXing", an actual hobby amongst radio/TV fans who surf over our ever increasingly noisy airwaves, trying to find those far off stations from hundreds, or even thousands of miles away on locally empty frequencies that can make brief appearances from a few seconds to even an hour or more on FM radio and TV. There are several online web sites and chat boards for DXers.

When you did find a far off station, the receiver of the signal would track down the address of the station and send them a confirmation of what they heard and at what time. To which the station engineer would send back something called a QSL card, which was like a postcard (which it was) with the station logo on them. Engineers used to look forward to getting these letters, as it was a testament to his/her engineering skills.

They don't send out QSL cards anymore (the last one I got was in 1982.) and there are far fewer broadcast engineers today than there were in those days.

In fact, the last convention of broadcast engineers I saw could have been mistaken for an AARP gathering with the number of grey, white and bald heads I saw there. And when they're gone, I'm not sure who is going to take their place. Not many young people seem to be taking up the profession.



But here's the letdown.

First, all broadcast signals fade away into the ether eventually. They cannot reflect back from a different time. If they could, the airwaves would be a far bigger mess today than they already are, considering all that has been transmitted over the last 100 years on every frequency around the world.

Second, the transmitting system of the UK is PAL. The US uses NTSC. Both are digital today, but were then - and still are - hopelessly incompatible with each other. You could not see NTSC video on a PAL TV set and vice versa without a very expensive, very large (which NO housewife would tolerate in the living room) and in the end, useless conversion system

Third, the transmission carrier frequencies of US and UK TV were also different.

And finally, it was all a hoax to sell TV sets in England:

"As it turned out, in a particularly clever marketing effort, a would-be British entrepreneur had sent a form letter to all U.S. TV stations making the claim that their station’s signal had recently been viewed in the UK. For proof, the sender included what appeared to be a photo of that station’s test pattern on a TV screen. Hoping to peddle a TV set he claimed could receive broadcasts from extreme distances, the sender had been working from an old list that did not reflect the Houston station’s change of hands.

All the other TV stations getting the letter tossed it. But when the letter from England got forwarded to KPRC, someone thought it looked like news and the station did a story on it. The Houston station soon figured out what the sender of the letter had been up to, but by then it was too late and yet another urban myth had been born. Like a radio wave moving ever deeper into space, it continues to live on...." - Mike Cox, The Great Texas/British TV Hoax of 1953

BBC's I Love A 1970s Christmas

1970s Christmas nostalgia in the UK. With some crazy and cool stuff we missed on this side of the pond....

Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWTDMXV7RWg

Part 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJQdvq6_-0A

Part 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ncrm-84BtJk

Part 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAUjudGcjpc

Part 6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqBpWezndyI

Part 7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88SbsOWZgRI

"Merry Christmas You Suckers" Paddy Roberts (1962)

Yes, it's the same Paddy Roberts who gave us this..

The Long Wave Radio Band

Atlantic 252 was one of the first attempts to make a commercial pop station on LW radio and they actually became very successful in the 1990s with five million listeners. Listenership declined as local copycat stations on AM/FM and fewer radios capable of receiving long wave radio were available. After several format changes and a failed attempt at sports talk, 252 kHz now relays RTÉ Radio 1 for Irish communities in the UK and Europe.

The longwave (or LW) radio band is one you've probably never heard of if you live in the Western Hemisphere.

LW radio is mostly used in Europe and some countries in Asia. Long wave radio signals work similarly to AM. The signals cover a vastly wider area during daylight hours than standard AM because LW transmission relies mostly on ground waves, rather than skywaves (like standard AM and shortwave.) And because of their extremely long range, there are only a handful of countries in Europe with LW stations

The LW radio broadcast band is from 153 to 279 kHz, MUCH lower than the frequencies of a standard AM radio, which runs from 530 to 1710 kHz.

If you need a further breakdown, 1000 kHz AM is 1 MHz. The FM radio band begins at 88.1 MHz.

Yes, LW is really as far down as you should wisely go on the radio dial.

But the advantage of LW is it has an incredibly long range covering hundreds, even thousands of miles during daylight hours with a steadier, non-fading signal.

But LW in Europe today is regarded like AM in the Americas, a radio band for older people who remember it and it's use and listenership has severely declined in favour of higher fidelity FM and digital signals. But it is still fairly popular, especially for older British and European people living or commuting around the continent. It's also less affected by terrain than AM and especially FM and high frequency digital signals. It's also possible to drive from Spain to Austria and never lose the signal.

And I know what you're going to ask; Why didn't we have LW radio in this hemisphere?

Well, there's no easy explanation for that. Many factors come into play, but mostly it was the fact that LW was simply never allocated internationally as a specific broadcast band in the Western Hemisphere. Another is there are only 15 channels in the LW band and 107 channels on AM, later to 117 in the late 1980s with the expansion of the AM radio dial from 1600 to 1700 kHz.

Yet another is the LW signals are so vast, they would interfere with each other. And finally, they're more susceptible to electronic interference than even AM.  

However, that doesn't mean we weren't trying to use it.

In the 1970s and '80s, there was a planned civil defense radio network in the US called Public Emergency Radio. The network would broadcast on 167, 179 and 191 kHz.

The flagship station of this network was WGU-20 on 179 kHz out of Chase, Maryland.

WGU-20 was a service of a branch of the forerunner to today's FEMA called Defense Civil Preparedness Agency called DIDS. DIDS stood for Decision Information Distribution System, which was a network of Low Frequency broadcast and feeder stations, DIDS was supposed to deliver audio messages directly to the public within 30 seconds after activation. In case of attack, DIDS was supposed to save 10- 17 million additional lives in its initial deployment (by 1979), and as many as 27 million more if developed further.

Signing on in 1973, the purpose of WGU-20 and it's planned sister stations was to broadcast news and information to Americans in the event of a nuclear war. The station was always in test mode, 24/7.

However, listening to WGU-20 wasn't much fun. There was no music, no sports or casual talk on WGU-20 throughout it's life. No wacky morning zoos or outrageous contests either. WGU-20 only aired it's station ID, time checks and weather reports for the mid-Atlantic coast  

And here's what it sounded like:



The advantage of using an LW signal rather than standard AM or FM signal was because as I mentioned earlier, LW signals travel through the ground rather than the sky. And that's where most of us (hypothetically) would be in a nuclear war - underground. In bomb shelters.

Second, radio direction guided missiles would have more difficulty homing in LW signals because they don't rely on sky waves. Besides, since radio towers are above ground, they would likely be destroyed or unusable due to radioactive contamination.

Thus WGU-20's ominous unofficial nickname, "The Last Radio Station".

And LW stations have the same purpose in other countries. In The Letters of Last Resort, which are the considered the final acts of Her Majesty's Government in the event the UK is destroyed in a nuclear war and the Prime Minister and second in command are killed. One of the protocols given to UK nuclear submarine commanders is to listen for BBC Radio 4 on it's 198 kHz LW frequency. Because LW signals not only travel well underground, but underwater as well.

If there is no signal and all other protocols for verifying the worst have been followed and the UK is no more, the commander may retaliate with his/her submarine's nuclear weapons, not retaliate, join a commonwealth country like Canada or Australia or an allied nuclear power like the US or France. The exact orders can vary and change with each new Prime Minister.

And while LW is disappearing from modern European radios, it's worth noting how important it still is; UK submarines on patrol were reported to have briefly gone on nuclear alert in 2004 when BBC Radio 4's LW signal mysteriously went off the air for 15 minutes.

But while WGU-20 made it to the air, the other planned LW stations in the network did not.

First, we were pretty satisfied with the Emergency Broadcast System. Which is now called the Emergency Alert System, of which those ear splitting digital data bursts have replaced the once annoying, but comparatively easier on the ears 1 kHz audio tone.

Second, manufacturers balked at the idea of including LW tuning components in newer radios, which would add to the expense of manufacturing and ultimately serve no real purpose.

And third, with political pressure in the government cutback happy 1980s and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and 1990, there was really no need for such a network  

WGU-20's final broadcast was in 1990.

However, if you're curious to hear what LW radio sounds like, there's a tunable WebSDR in Peterborough, UK you can use to sample the European LW dial.

"No More 'I Love You's'" The Lover Speaks (1986)

 

Betcha thought it was an Annie Lennox song all this time, didn't ya? ;)

Don't worry, you're in good company. A lot of people don't know about this lost gem. Or who The Lover Speaks were.

It was released in 1986 and didn't fare too well on the UK charts and didn't appear at all on the US charts and quietly disappeared.

They did get some American alternative rock radio airplay, including on Seattle's KJET. Playlist courtesy of Mike Fuller.

The Lover Speaks were a New Wave duo from England, made up of two former members of the punk band The Flys, David Freeman and Joseph Hughes. Their self-titled first album The Lover Speaks was produced by Dave Stewart of Eurythmics and the duo were the opening act on the Eurythmics world tour of 1986 for their new album Revenge.

Sadly, the poor sales and chart performance of their first LP led to A&M Records dropping the duo after completing their second album The Big Lie in 1987 (again with Dave Stewart producing.) The Big Lie as far as I know remains unreleased to this day. And The Lover Speaks disbanded.

The Lover Speaks (A&M, 1986)

However, their partnership with Eurythmics paid off handsomely nine years later in 1995 when Annie Lennox covered "No More 'I Love You's'", and made it the lead single on her Medusa album. It became a monster worldwide smash hit and the biggest solo hit of her career.


David Freeman went on to a solo career in the 1990s and is currently retired. Joseph Hughes became a producer and songwriter and is currently active today.

50 Facts About The United Kingdom

All About The United Kingdom - 50 Facts by Direct Holiday Cottages

Rula Lenska

Back in 1979, Alberto VO5 hair products made several American TV commercials with "superstar" Rula Lenska.


There was just one problem. While Rula Lenska was famous as a TV, film and stage actress in the UK, in America she was known as "that woman on the hair spray commercials nobody's ever heard of."

"Reap The Wild Wind" Ultravox (1983)

Start to finish, this is pure classic New Wave AWESOMENESS!!

 

 

"Mrs. Schwartz You've Got An Ugly Daughter" Marty & The Monks (1965)

"I'm Going To Spain" Steve Bent (1976)

"Internet Radio"

And a little white "earbud" too!

 Don't expect to connect this to your wi-fi and hear your favourite podcast.

This radio was made in the late 1960s. And it's a standard AM transistor radio. That's all. Radios like this were the iPods of their day and your 20 song playlist came courtesy of your favourite local Top 40 radio station (almost all of them on AM radio in those days.)

And at the time, what we would later call the internet was then called "ARPANET" And strictly for military and government use only. Computers in the 1960s were extremely huge (often taking up an entire large room and hopelessly limited and underpowered - by 1981 standards!) and were rarely seen outside a laboratory. The very few civilian computers never connected to anything.

The Honeywell 316 was the world's first consumer marketed computer (1969). It was essentially a $10,600 recipe box and pencil. Exactly the thing you want to give someone who allegedly can't cook very well. It had no online connectivity.

 That's not to say people weren't dreaming. Note the "flat screen monitors".

While it's almost spooky to consider someone could use a word that would be so ubiquitous 30 years before it's general use, I think "Internet" just sounded like a fancy hi-tech name for a cheap UK electronics brand at the time this radio was made. (I'd have a hard time with the "time traveler" theory.)

More on the discovery of this radio with a very futuristic name here:

http://www.markhillpublishing.com/the-internet-transistor-radio/

"Christmas Countdown" Frank Kelly (1983)

Hysterical twist on "The Twelve Days of Christmas"

Christmas Tinner

 If you just can't put down the game controller of the PS4 or X-Box One Santa (may) bring you for Christmas, I have GREAT news.

Layer one – Scrambled egg and bacon
Layer two – Two mince pies
Layer three – Turkey and potatoes
Layer four – Gravy
Layer five – Bread sauce
Layer six – Cranberry sauce
Layer seven – Brussel sprouts with stuffing – or broccoli with stuffing
Layer eight – Roast carrots and parsnips
Layer nine – Christmas pudding

No need to break out the "good" dishes, just eat it right out of the can! (But then again, when your idea of interior decorating include fake bookshelf wallpaper, who needs formality?)

 Sadly for the rest of us, it's only available in the UK.... And completely SOLD OUT this year.....

http://www.game.co.uk/en/game-christmas-tinner-181968?pageSize=20&categoryIdentifier=10210

"After The Gold Rush" Prelude (1974)

Somehow, I've always liked this version better than Neil Young's original.

Halloween Hits: "Horror Movies" Bollock Brothers (1983)