It's funny what sparks a memory of a tune, it can be something that someone says in conversation or a sound in the distance. Just such a thing happened the other day. A bird somewhere near by was singing what sounded like The Spice Girl's "Wannabe", totally bizarre. This got me to thinking about the crazy amount of this single that we sold in the shop on Outram Street and the real buzz of excitement they created with a whole new generation of music buyers. We had youngsters a young as 5 or 6 coming in with mums and dads and grandparents, many who had never been in the store before. So this re-lit the music buying bug for these older generations as well. Over several years we watched these youngsters grow up, changing their taste in music, many growing into a genre completely different to The Spice Girls. 

This was just as I remember myself developing my own musical tastes, trying this or that style. From the pop of The Beatles, Freddie & The Dreamers, Adam Faith and others, listening to blues orientated tracks from the likes of Them and The Animals to folk inspired tracks from Donovan & Bob Dylan.

Then I started to by more disco and soul tracks that I could not only listen to, but play at the discos in Bilsthorpe and other local villages. Then came the weddings and party scene that meant an even wider range of musical styles that needed to be played. Everything from ballroom dance to rock n roll was requested. At the start of a wedding if people were a little reluctant to get up and dance, two certain floor fillers were Motown or Status Quo, never failed.

All this time I continued buying mainly singles, not only chart releases but many non chart tracks that I liked that would very rarely get played at a disco. This is why my collection is so varied.

As I've said already in previous posts cataloguing my singles collection is proving to be such a memory jerker. Remembering where I purchased certain discs, such as Blackfoot Sue's "Standing in the road" at Bakewell whilst staying at my Uncle's for the weekend, or Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" in Buxton on a camping trip.

So time for a few tunes, enjoy.

  First Class "Life is whatever you want it to be" This was one of the follow ups to their huge summer hit "Beach Baby". Not quite such a hit though, failing to make the charts, despite once again featuring Tony Burrows on lead vocals, and a T.Rex Riff at the start!!

I was a huge Roxy Music fan from the start and also liked much of the solo stuff from the various band members, such as the debut solo from Bryan Ferry a great cover version of Bob Dylan's "A hard rains a-gonna fall"

 

Though I still prefer the original  

Keeping in the folk style one of Dylan's contemporaries was Julie Felix who had several hits in the mid to late sixties and indeed the early seventies. Both with her own songs and with cover versions like this one.

Alongside this folk style I was a also a big Ska and Reggae fan, and the late sixties early seventies produced some of the best sounds ever.

      

     

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