A couple of weeks ago, my friend Steve dropped me a line on Twitter "have got all my vinyl in Catford now. I'm getting shot, so if you want to come and have a rummage, feel free :)" He was clearing space for his about-to-be-born little boy. My original visit was cancelled as Steve took Lobelia to the hospital with contractions. However, still no baby as I write 16 days later. I found the waiting almost (almost!) the hardest part: that utterly extraordinary realisation that what's in there will soon, and for ever after, be out here. Inevitable, but simultaneously almost impossible to believe. Steve and Lo have been handling the wait better than I did, managing both a little rest and a little productivity. I was a useless bundle of nerves. Here's hoping their wait is soon over with the minimum of drama.
The reason for mentioning all this is that 12 Smash Hits is one of Steve's records. I say it's still one of Steve's as I don't think anyone should "get shot" of their vinyl, so as far as I'm concerned I'm just providing a home for five of his LPs. (The only album I've got shot of since I was 16 is Jennifer Warnes'.) However, as this is for an indefinite period, I said I'd include each one here as though it were part of my collection — that was a ruse to ensure I didn't hire a white van and take a few hundred.
The other four are what you might call 'proper' albums, but Steve had two or three of theses early seventies ersatz compilations (he said he'd inherited them from his uncle). I chose this one because it had the most songs that I knew/liked. There's no inner sleeve, and perhaps you wish there were no outer sleeve, either. But with time these images become more like a quaint folly than a sinister attempt to use women to sell product. Then again, that may betray an insidious normalisation of oppression, and… I'm tying myself in knots here, so I'll stop.
I'll give you the tracklisting because I'm not even going to attempt to find the details online.
- Rose Garden
- My Sweet Lord
- Love Story (Where do I Begin)
- Dream Baby
- It's Impossible
- Jack in the Box
- Hot Love
- Another Day
- Baby Jump
- Sweet Caroline
- My Little One
- If Not For You
None of these are by the original artists, but have been knocked out by anonymous session musicians. What's the rights and licensing history to this (relatively short?) period of re-recording the hits of the day? Who first spotted the opportunity, when, and how much did they save by paying the publishers but not the labels? When did it become more cost effective just to license the original recordings from the labels for compilations like the Now That's What I Call Music series?… Dammit, Wikipedia does it again — "the LPs continue to have a public following, helped by their perceived retro appeal," heh, heh.
Listening to the record is a bit like a geeky pop quiz. Can you remember who had a hit with Rose Garden? I can't. Unfortunately Another Day is not the Roy Harper classic, but a ditty by some McCartney bloke. I wouldn't have known who did Hot Love from the title alone, but the song itself is obviously T Rex. I was looking forward to hearing a session singer impersonate Bob on If Not For You, but it's sung by a woman! Who had a hit with that, then? Whoever it was, it seems they bowdlerised it, removing all the formal quirks of the song (the variation in verse length and placement of the "if not for you" within the verse), which Christopher Ricks told us about, and which give it its surprising charm or charming surprise.
OK, I relented, and searched online. Here's a 'near mint' copy of this record for sale for £12. Here's a cheaper one in Australia.
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