SHAKEDOWN, 1979 (July)

My summer of ’79 saw me enter the big bad world of paid employment.  I actually told a few lies to land the job, the vacancy for which had been advertised in the local job centre.

I was legally able to leave school, but I was always planning to return after the summer holidays to go into 5th year to sit the exams that would count towards university admission.  But I wanted to earn a bit of money, and so I applied for, and landed, a job in the city centre branch of Halford’s, the UK’s biggest retailer of cycling and motor products.  I told the store bosses that I had no intention of returning to school, no matter how good the results of my O-Grades, and, yes, I did see myself as being very interested if the chance arose to train as a store manager once I turned 18 in a couple of years time.

I started the job a couple of days after my 16th birthday, and so the month of July was when I really settled into it.  It was a shop where the radio played in the background all day long, and with most of the staff being lads aged in their late teens/early 20s, the station of choice was BBC Radio 1, which means my ears were exposed to a lot of what was in the charts.

As you’d expect, there was a fair bit of rubbish regularly aired, but then again Tubeway Army, Squeeze, Blondie, The Ruts and The Skids were all still in the Top 40, while some cracking disco/soul classics from Earth Wind & Fire/The Emotions, McFadden & Whitehead, and Chic were also capable of putting a smile on my face.  The highest new entry in the chart in the first week of July is not one I can recall hearing on Radio 1:-

mp3: Public Image Limited – Death Disco (#34)

Jaysus, this was really weird sounding.  The 16-year-old me had a difficulty with it.  I bought it, but I can’t say I particularly liked listening to it.  So much so, that I gave it away to someone who handed me two of the early Jam singles in exchange (Eddie didn’t like that they were a pop band nowadays). It took me a few years to really appreciate Death Disco… till 1990 in fact, when I bought a CD copy of a Public Image Limited singles compilation.  As I wrote on this blog previously, by this point in my life I knew that great songs didn’t need hooks or memorable, hummable tunes, and that a cauldron of noise in which a screaming vocal fights for your attention alongside screeching guitars over a bass/drum delivery that on its own would have you dancing like a madman under the flashing lights could be a work of genius.  This spent seven weeks in the Top 75, peaking at #20.

While researching this piece, I discovered, to my shock/delight, that Death Disco had appeared on a Top of The Pops budget compilation – these albums featured uncredited session musicians/singers replicating the sound of current chart hits. I think there were about 100 or so of them released between 1968 and 1982, and they were stupidly cheap in comparison to a proper studio album, and from memory weren’t all that more expensive than a couple of singles.  This is really strange:-

mp3: Top Of The Pops – Death Disco

I’m thinking that John Lydon pissed himself laughing at the very idea of this, and as such was more than happy to give his blessing to it.

The next one of interest in the chart of 1-7 July is another I can’t recall hearing in Halford’s

mp3: Siouxsie & The Banshees – Playground Twist (#47)

The third of the S&TB singles wasn’t a commercial offering by any stretch of the imagination, but it did sell enough copies to reach #28 in a six-week stay.

Coming in a bit further down the chart was one that I recall hearing loads of times in the shop:-

mp3: The Police – Can’t Stand Losing You (#60)

This had been a near smash-hit in late 1978, spending five weeks in the charts and reaching #42.  The Police had gone massive in the first half of ’79, and it was easy enough for A&M Records to press up more copies of the old singles to meet the new demand.  Where Roxanne had taken the band into the Top 20, this was the one that sealed the deal, getting all the way to #2 in mid-August.

The second singles chart of July ’79 was a strange one.  No ‘big’ entries, with the highest coming in at at #48, courtesy of Abba.  Many of other newbies are names I am struggling to recall – Chantal Curtis, Stonebridge McGuiness, Judie Tzuke, Vladimir Cosma, and Light of The World.  There was, however, one truly outstanding song which came in at #62:-

mp3: The Pretenders – Kid

It remains my favourite 45 of all that Chrissie & co ever put down on vinyl. Indeed, it is one of THE great records in what was, as this series is demonstrating, a great year for music; it spent seven weeks on the chart in July and August 1979, peaking at #33. Should have got to #1….but that feat for The Pretenders was just around the corner.

The third week of July saw an unusual song as its highest new entry at #15:-

mp3: The Boomtown Rats – I Don’t Like Mondays

Here’s the thing.  I more than liked the Boomtown Rats and owned copies of their first two albums.  I wasn’t at prepared for the new single…..it was all over the radio before it was actually released, and looking back at things now, it must be one of the first examples of a viral marketing campaign based on artificially creating a reaction to something that some folk declared to be ‘shocking’.  I can’t say that I cared much for the song, and it was conspicuous by its absence when I pulled together a Rats ICA back in October 2022.  The week after entering at #15, I Don’t Like Mondays went to #1, where it stayed for four weeks, and then another two weeks at #2. All told, it sold over 500,000 copies and was the 4th biggest selling single of 1979.

mp3: David Bowie – D.J.

Bowie followed up the success of Boys Keep Swinging with a second single from the album Lodger. This would have been heard in Halford’s but not all that often given that it came in at #29 in the third week of July but immediately dropped down the following week, and Radio 1 daytime DJs usually only gave spins to records that were on the up.

mp3: Sparks – Beat The Clock

This was very much all over the workplace radio….the sort of song that sounded great over the airwaves and made the individual DJs feel as if they were being a bit edgy.  A fantastic piece of disco-pop, thanks to the efforts of the brothers Mael and Giorgio Moroder.  A nine-week stay in the charts was the reward, with a best placing of #10.

mp3: The Undertones – Here Comes The Summer

Yup….July ’79 was the release date for this one.  Really doesn’t seem like 45 years ago, but there you have the facts presented before you, so there’s no denying it.  The other thing I’d have said about this was that it must have been a Top 20 hit, given how often I recall hearing it and that it lodged so easily into my brain.  But nope, in at #63 and peaking a couple of weeks later at #34, which was kind of a similar trajectory to this one:-

mp3: Buzzcocks – Harmony In My Head

The first 45 not to feature a lead vocal from Pete Shelley, the delivery from Steve Diggle made this just a little bit rougher round the edges than previous Buzzcocks singles.  But it was, and still is, a great listen.  In at #67 and peaking at #32…..and I’d have lost any bet offered on whether this or Here Comes The Summer had peaked highest.

And so, to the final singles chart of July 1979.

As with a couple of weeks previous, nothing came in fresh at any high position. #50 was the best on offer, and it was from Showaddyfuckingwaddy.  So no chance of it featuring here.

I was scrolling all the way through the Top 75 of 22-27 July, and just as I was concluding there wouldn’t be anything worth featuring, i noticed this was a new entry at #74:-

mp3: The Specials – Gangsters

One that I don’t so much associate with July 1979 and more about a period after I had finished at Halford’s and returned to school where I would take my first ever foray into DJ’ing.  It’s a tale I told when I wrote about Gangsters in the Great Debut Singles series:-

“1979/80 marked my first forays into DJing, if playing records on a single deck at a youth night in the school could be regarded as DJing. The senior pupils were encouraged to help the teachers at these nights, which were basically an effort to provide bored 12-15 year olds with something to do instead of hanging around street corners and picking up bad habits. There were three of us who brought along our own 45s to play while everyone ran around making lots of noise burning up all that excess energy. Very gradually over a matter of weeks, our little corner of the hall began to get a dedicated audience, and it was all driven by the fact they loved to do the Madness dance(s). In two hours of music, you could bet that more than half came through records on the 2-Tone label or its offshoots. And these kids were of an age when playing the same song two or three times in a night didn’t matter.”

Happy days indeed. Gangsters went on to spend 12 weeks in the charts, peaking at #6.

JC