Chart Music #51 (Part 1): March 20th 1975 – Guys ‘N’ Dolls Get Ready To Bomb Iraq

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: a party held by the Osmonds, or a party held by the Rollers?

The LONGEST EVER EPISODE OF CHART MUSIC finds your host and his chums still on lockdown but DILL DANDING, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, which gives us the opportunity to pick out an episode from the Dark Ages of the mid-Seventies and properly wang on about it. The Saxons are at their flappiest, the collars are condor, Tony Blackburn has been uncrated and set free, and all is as well with the world as it could be in 1975. If you ignore the fact that three of the acts involved would go on to kill later this year.

Musicwise, it’s the usual Seventies lucky bag, tainted with the musk of deceit and treachery: Kenny sport the kind of trousers Our Simon saw Rick Witter trying on at Portobello Market. There are obligatory appearances by Cliff and Lulu. Wigan’s Ovation have a massive wazz on the burning torch of Northern Soul. Guys ‘N’ Dolls do a biscuit advert, and Mike Reid makes a Northern boy cry, which is Bad Skit.

But there’s also Britfunk in the form of the Average White Band and, er, The Goodies, Pans People having a proper flounce to Barry White, and a Whatnautless Moments – whipped on by the Top Of The Pops Orchestra – seize the opportunity to tell us how much they like girls. And the Bay City Rollers rip down the goalposts of the #1 spot, while the Osmonds forlornly look out of their window wondering while no-one has showed up to their do.

David Stubbs and Taylor Parkes – the Humphries of Pop journalism – join Al Needham and dip their elongated critical straws deep into the milk bottle of 1975, pausing to veer off on such tangents as the glory of radiograms, what it would be like to get caned and watch porn with Tony Blackburn, our magazine plans which never came to fruition, a lament for Timbo, the importance of nipples and a big argument over a Kung Fu vest and pants set. Swearing? Loads of it.

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