Shang-A-Lang

The downsides of The Project. It’s taken me over, turned me into a social recluse, emptied my bank account via the i-Tunes store, made me smoke too much and wake up each day at dawn, sometimes even before dawn. BANG! - just like that – and I’m bolt upright and in a state of terror, almost, mind racing along the lines of, ”Oh my God I forgot to put Amanda Lear’s ‘Follow Me’ on 1978” or “Where is our Dalek I Love You record? I HAVE NOT SEEN THE DALEK I LOVE YOU RECORD FOR YEARS AND YEARS THE PROJECT IS RUINED”. The poor kitters, winding in and out of my legs, have to jolly well wait for their filthy fishy meat until I’ve reassured myself that I did put Amanada Lear on 1978 after all, until I’ve found the Dalek I Love You record, which is where it always was, i.e. under ‘D’. 4516 songs so far and I’m at 1990. 18 years to go! The loony bin beckons.

The upside of The Project. I’m rediscovering lots of songs I haven’t really played for years. Some real humdingers. Dalek I Love You would be one actually. Not Amanda though - I play Follow Me roughly every ten minutes of my life and in this respect I feel I’m like Therese Bazar who, at the height of Dollar fame, divulged in some interview I read somewhere that she carried in her handbag a cassette tape containing only 10CC’s I’m Not In Love repeated over and over again. These days, who knows, she might well have an iPod Mini (a pink one, I expect) filled with the very same song. Actually we played Follow Me last night at the club and Joanie came running over to say it’s his favourite single of all time. He said they all used to call it the aeroplane song because it sounds like a vehicle taking off and he did this sort of action with his hand in time to the rhythm to demonstrate something leaving a runaway. I’d say he certainly has a point. I don’t know where it came from but one night many years ago we were playing the record and Jelly and I fell into changing the lyrics to, ”I’m wearing a dress - and MOVING ON” over and over.” That's really the gist of it anyway and, you might say, of Lady Lear's faaabulous life too. Anyway, that’s how we sing it always now, with just the one line. Doubt we ever knew the real words in the first place.

See - loony, I’ve allowed myself to be sidetracked by Amanda when I really came to say how fresh and lovely Orange Juice’s I Can’t Help Myself sounded the other morning. Those remarkable opening lines just came right back - ”I always thought I could fall from a height, land on my feet/ Now I’m considering throwing in the towel, admitting defeat”. Extraordinary, attention-grabbing start and with the added bonus later in the song of that old, dreamy George McCrae organ sound. Or how life-affirmingly wonderful Raw Silk’s Do It To The Music is after all these years. Or Magazine’s The Light Pours Out Of Me, or The Skids’ Animation or See Those Eyes by Altered Images (much better I think than I Could Be Happy Birthday). My favourite though would have to be The Rezillos’ mental Destination Venus. That one has a great little set of lyrics too. See!

”Further modulation of the frequency rotation
Triggered waveband activation - near elation
Somewhere in the distance I could hear a voice, one instance
Then it faded from existence - no persistence”

Earl Grey was the act last night. Me and Jelly think he’s a genius. He did a very funny what if? Gone With The Wind thing with Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn etc., as the lead instead of Vivien Leigh. Top notch drag and uncanny vocal impersonations. He’s best known for doing his Corrie voices of course, specifically Deirdre in the slammer which is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on stage at The Tavern. But we did not know until last night before opening that he actually worked on the Street as a prompt during its ‘70s heyday. For several years he prompted ‘em all: Elsie Tanner / Pat Phoenix - ”A star, a true star, she came from another world, she was just this… presence”; Rita Fairclough / Barbara Knox - ”Very good but a bit tricky”; Hilda Ogden / Jean Alexander - ”Distant, a little cold, tricky also”; Annie Walker Doris Speed - ”Hilarious, gorgeous, a marvellous lady”. He said Margot Bryant, who played timid little Minnie Caldwell, had a gob on her like a navvy and he once witnessed her pick up the phone and say to the person on the other end of the line, ”Hello CUNT”. Haha.

They all loved him being a poof of course and his best friends in the cast, the ones he actually saw socially, were Bet Lynch / Julie Goodyear and Vera Duckworth / Liz Dawn. Who else! The latter told him one night, ”Well, chuck, I only got married because all the girls down our street were doing it.” So many stories and we sat there like children – Jelly, Nadine, me - with wide eyes and slightly open mouths. I’ll confess to feeling more than a little envious that this man once held what was certainly the best job in the history of jobs. Tony Robinson should do a TV series on them. Surely working on the Street back then was even better than the position of receptionist at the original Factory in New York, even better than being the pilot of Led Zeppelin’s personal jumbo jet. He’s immensely funny, too, this Earl. He’s having, he said, trouble finding a boyfriend. The conversation went something like this.

Earl: ” I think I’m just too camp when I meet people.”
Us: ”Oh no! There’s somebody for everyone” etc.,
Earl: ”No I definitely am. I mean what do you say? "I like dressing up as Julie Garland?" It’d put anyone off."

No word of a lie I am still laughing about that. Perhaps I'll never stop.

Beautiful weather. I’d almost forgotten what summer was like after last year’s wash-out. Fresh and warm with just the right amount of breeze and everything’s right with the world. Summer in the city is Saint Etienne weather and it always makes me want to hear Kiss & Make Up or People Get Real. Or Avenue (giant sigh). Speaking of which Bob Stanley himself rang me at work a couple of weeks ago for a favour. A friend of his was convalescing from an illness and simply desperate to hear Sherbet’s Howzat but all they could find online was some horrible Hi Energy remix from the ‘80s. Funnily enough I was working on 1976 at the time and had already ferreted it out for myself so I met him at Waterloo Station, under the big station clock at 9am precisely, to hand over my copy on this shonky compilation CD I bought many years ago at a scabby boot fair. It was nice to help out a hero but I was also a little ashamed because this particular CD had all these dubious brown stains all over the cover. Typical. I had to say, ”Bob, it plays fine but it looks manky because it came from the car boot.” I wouldn’t want him, or anyone else for that matter, thinking I had lots of disgusting-looking CDs like that at home.