In 1978 English band The Motors reached Number 4 on the UK charts with their single “Airport”.
This was another song I got to know through it being played by the resident band at the Majestic Hotel in Palmerston North, New Zealand, when I was a student.
The Motors reached Number 13 in the UK with “Forget About You”.
This is the album version of “Airport”:
I also found this live version of “Airport” from 1978:
Here’s “Forget About You” live:
Both of these tracks are from the album “Approved By The Motors”, as I have just confirmed by looking at my record collection.
And for something a little different, from the previous year, here’s “Dancing The Night Away” (later also covered by Cheap Trick):
In 1974 while visiting my older brother in Invercargill at the very bottom of New Zealand’s South Island, I bought the Ringo Starr album “Ringo”, featuring the single “Photograph”, which went to No. 1 in America.
Another song from the album, also a Number 1 hit in the USA, was “You’re Sixteen”.
I also rather like “Six O’Clock”, penned by Paul McCartney.
Here is the album version of “Photograph”, which was co-written by another former member of The Beatles, George Harrison, and produced by Richard Perry:
I’m not sure when this live version of “Photograph” was performed, it is Ringo Starr & His All-Star Band, featuring John Entwistle of The Who on bass, Billy Preston on keyboards and Ringo’s son Zak Starkey on drums (at least I think it is, I had to change the video, this one is 1995 apparently):
As both John Entwistle and Billy Preston are no longer alive, it must have been a while ago.
And here is “Six O’Clock”, not a hit, but I like it:
I have found an interesting connection with Ringo Starr: a fellow (earlier) graduate of Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand, the late Dave Jordan, wrote one of the songs on his 1976 album “Rotogravure”.
At the very end of the Seventies, late 1979, I remember Englishman Gary Numan singing “Cars”, from his album “The Pleasure Principle”.
In fact, whenever I hear it or think of Gary Numan or “Cars”, it reminds me of being in not a car but a Transit van, at 4 o’clock in the morning.
We had just finished clearing up after a dance during the student orientation I was running at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Together with the people helping, we had stopped off at a service station, the only place still open, to get something to eat, and I vividly remember “Cars” playing on the radio as we got out of the van.
That was actually at the start of 1980, so obviously the song still got airplay in New Zealand for a while (it was apparently released in August 1979).
Here’s Gary Numan in the promotional video of “Cars”:
I don’t really remember anything else by Gary Numan, but this one has stuck in my mind.
Magazine is another of those UK New Wave bands whose music I first heard played by the house band (Snatch) at the Majestic Hotel in Palmerston North, New Zealand, prompting me to buy their album “Second Daylight” with songs like “Rhythm Of Cruelty”, “Believe That I Understand”, “I Wanted Your Heart”, “Talk To The Body”, “Permafrost”, “The Thin Air”, “Feed The Enemy” and “Back To Nature”.
Listening to some of the tracks now I’m not so sure why I bought it, but I think it might have been “Rhythm Of Cruelty” I heard at the Majestic (though I don’t recall the women at the pub being dressed like this…):
“Believe That I Understand” might have been another one I heard in Palmerston North:
Not sure about “I Wanted Your Heart”:
Here are some more tracks from “Secondhand Daylight”, some of them seem a bit obscure for a “post punk” band, but you might like them, so I’ll let you make up your own mind…
“Talk To The Body”:
“Permafrost”:
“The Thin Air”:
“Feed The Enemy”:
“Back To Nature”:
That last one wasn’t quite what I was expecting, think I confused it with “Slow Motion” by Ultravox…
Squeeze are a UK band (I always thought they were called UK Squeeze) who began charting in the late Seventies with songs like “Goodbye Girl”, “Cool For Cats” and “Up The Junction” and continued to record in the Eighties and Nineties.
Actually I’ve just seen that they were called UK Squeeze initially outside the UK to avoid legal conflicts with other bands in North America and Australia, this must have been the time when I first became aware of them.
I don’t know any of the songs from their first album, “Squeeze”, but I do recognise numbers from the second, “Cool For Cats”.
Two tracks from this one reached Number 2 on the UK charts, “Cool For Cats” and “Up The Junction”.
I remember the live band at the Majestic Hotel in Palmerston North, New Zealand, playing “Cool For Cats” in 1979.
Most of their other songs I know I actually taped off a live show in Germany a few years later.
Here’s the 1978 track “Goodbye Girl”:
“Cool For Cats”, from the album of the same name, went to No. 2 in the UK and 5 in Australia:
Many Squeeze songs tell a story, and the 1979 track “Up The Junction”, another No. 2 hit, is no exception (if you’ve heard of the big railway junction just south of London, you’ll get the play on words in this one) :
The following year Squeeze again had a number of singles, one of them was “Pulling Mussels (From The Shell)”, sung here live on TV a few years later in 1985:
Another Squeeze favourite from around this time is “Tempted”:
And “Black Coffee In Bed”:
“Annie Get Your Gun” is a typical Squeeze track:
And this is “Annie Get Your Gun” live in 1982:
I hear Squeeze are together and touring again, must keep an eye out for them…
