SLIK – "Forever And Ever"

Yippee, I was definitely looking forward to this one coming up!

Strange with some number ones how in retrospect you can clearly see the future coming up, if not quite taking shape, such that they end up seeming out of place in their own time. Slik were already popular in Scotland; they’d had a couple of local hits with “The Boogiest Band In Town” and, ahem, “The Kid’s A Punk” but essentially they acted as a substitute vehicle for Bill Martin and Phil Coulter after the Rollers had dispensed with their services – not that the band themselves were particularly happy with this state of affairs, but it did help get them about.

“Forever And Ever,” however, though a Martin/Coulter composition from start to finish, is a strange beast indeed, standing somewhere between the Yardbirds’ “Still I’m Sad” with its sombre Gregorian chants and tolling bells and…well, listening to Ure’s delivery of the “ashes to ashes” lyric, it’s already pretty clear where he’s heading (or wants to head), such that you can audibly hear the band getting frustrated as they mechanically rev up into the scarf-waving post-Rollers chorus.

Even stranger was their follow-up, “Requiem,” which trod much the same stylistic path but was arguably darker (“Oh what a WRECK!/This is our REQ-uiem!”), so much so that it stopped at #24 and for Slik that, essentially, was that before they morphed into would-be punk band PVC2 (great single: “Put You In The Picture”). But, as I say, it’s bizarre looking back at “Forever And Ever” and Midge with full knowledge of his subsequent work and being aware that, even here, something different was stirring (and a word too for drummer Kenny Hyslop, later of Simple Minds and of unremembered except by me – and actually quite brilliant – early indie-dance fusioneers Set The Tone).

Here’s another one I don’t remember from the time. Now I’ve got a copy there’s something familar about it but I couldn’t have told you who it was or pinned a year on it unless I knew from Popular.

It gets off to a cracking start though. From the creaky Gothic opening, no doubt with a white-gloved old retainer seated at the organ console in some dusty, cobwebby, crypt, and the bells, morphing into something like a Sweet revival (am I alone in being reminded of the opening of Block Buster?) and from there modulating to, well, a well-crafted but unexceptional pop chorus.

Ah well, it was nice while it lasted, before it fell apart. But it’s nice to know that better things were ahead for that nice Mr Ure.

Not sure about the baseball shirt look, though.

I do tend to confuse this with another 1976 number one that i wouldn’t want to mention just yet, although i can’t really imagine Midge in a giant kaftan…

They’re both exactly the same length too (according to my playlist here) Midge and the bunny, I mean.

By the way, I hadn’t realised intil a few weeks ago that Midge had beaten his future collaboratot to number one.

Hmm, I think you’re right about “The Kid’s A Punk” coming after “Requiem” – as memory serves, this may have been the tipping block for Midge in particular, having to sing about this non-existent bloke who looks like James Dean and rhymes with scene.

Incidentally, I’ll have to say it somewhere so might as well say it here: I ABHOR the notion of “g**lty pl**s*r*s”…

(is “Electric Avenue” the only hit single which uses the verb “abhor” in its lyric?)

man alive i love this song! i’ve never really known this was slik though. thank’s youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_mkV0gKISo

So did “The Kid’s A Punk” come out before or after “Anarchy In The UK”? – the internets have been unable to clear this question up for me.

If they were bandwagon jumping (at least lyrically) they got on board pretty bloody fast.

I prefer to call them “innocent pleasures”

man alive is sibelius’s “karelia suite” isn’t it? (maybe that was world in action)

Not unless Sibelius wrote an extra movement scored for harmonica, it’s not, but yes, the Man Alive music is pretty memorable.

I’m pretty damned sure that the Karelia Suite, or at least the third movement, was the signature to something but then I get very confuzzled by Karelia (and lots of other Sibelius) because Mr Crozier my Junior School headteacher was evidently very fond of him and included him regularly in the improving music that was played before morning assembly. (This was the same Mr Crozier I have alluded to before, but a long time ago, who stood before us in about 1964 and said of that morning’s piece (not Sibelius, I think) that “this music will live forever. Who will remember the Beatles in thirty years?”

Keith Emerson did a fair Karelia with The Nice.

I happened to be listening to the Man Alive theme this weekend-Spooky!

Speaking of Spooky this has to be one of the oddest tracks discussed for ages(granted, I’m Not In Love and Bo Rhap are probably stranger but their weirdness has been dimmed somewhat by familiarity). With its heartbeat rhythm, gregorian doo-wop backing and dead-eyed lead vocal(complete w/ Scottish accent!)it sounds less like a deliberate attempt at improving and building on the Rollers style and more like a sarcasatic and disrespectful pastiche of it, with Martin and Coulter gleefully warping and distorting the “Bye Bye Baby” template as far as possible, almost cynically seeing how far they can stretch it without robbing the track of commercial appeal and disillusioning their target teenybopper audience. The queezy, almost gratingly catchy chorus is like a zombie ancestor of earlier Martin/Coulter tracks like the infuriatingly infectious “Puppet on A String” and “Congratulations” while the gothic, almost psych feel of the verses links back to Presley’s brilliant, none-more-eerie “My Boy, another of their compositions.

Before today I don’t think I’ve heard “Forever and Ever” more than half a dozen times, probably explained by it’s experimental feel causing an absence from the playlists of golden oldie radio stations(even Scottish ones!)who’ll happilly pump out Rollers hits which don’t even come close to being as enjoyable or interesting.

I find it almost impossible to imagine a manufactured boyband today releasing such a wonderfully out-there track as their debut single and, even more sadly, I can’t help thinking that if they did it wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of the charts…

I loved ‘Requiem’, even bought it, didn’t mind this either though I think we are all agreed that the ‘rollers’ chorus is somewhat at odds with the gloomy verses. I remember seeing Slik playing live in concert on (I think) Saturday morning TV. I was mightily impressed with the young Mr Ure’s on stage guitar heroics. With the exception of the hit singles the set didn’t seem to be a million miles away from the power pop later purveyed by said Ure’s Rich Kids. Sometime later I’d re-aquaint myself with Ure via the mighty U-vox but that’s for the future.

The Weekend World theme tune was, of course, “Nantucket Sleighride” by Mountain. Always conjures up the smell of roast beef in the kitchen, even now.

This Week was an intermittently long-running Thames current affairs series, half an hour on Thursdays, and the most infamous episode was the “Death On The Rock” one in ’87.

I can’t imagine the Westlifes or their various clones of today being allowed anywhere near something like “Forever And Ever” – these days, if you want mainstream pop success, you have to walk the walk, fit in, obey, sit up straight at the back of the bus.

Good call on “My Boy” – a big UK hit for Elvis in ’74, but I prefer the unadulterated yet touching cheese of Richard Harris’ version.

On thorough checking (i.e. I rang my mum) “The Kid’s A Punk” was indeed a later and probably the last Slik single in late ’76, so apologies for that uncharacteristic John Arne Riise slip.

Er, no, I was right about “Boogiest Band In Town”; Tiger Tim Stevens’ Record Of The Week in Nov ’74!!!!

To be truthful I can’t listen to “My Boy” in any version. At the time the Elvis one was in the chart it was too close to the bone and that’s all you’re getting here.

@13 ‘Summertime’ by The Sundays (1997) also uses it – I think the context is something like “Some people wind up with the one that they abhor/In a distant hotel room in the third world war”.

As for ‘F&E’ or whatever we call it, I think I heard it once but have no recollection of it. So off to YouTube.

vinylscot – if you look up the Popular thread on Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Get Down” from ’73, you’ll find it’s a lot more about Guilty Pleasures than it is about Gilbert!

As for this one, I’m another punter who kind of lost interest once it got to the chorus. A stranger combination of image and opening gambit would be hard to find. These days you’d think it was a mash-up of two tracks that didn’t go particularly well together.

“Abhor” – until Cliff has a Christmas hit with a cover of “O Come All Ye Faithful”, that’s as many as you’re getting.

The only one I know out of that lot is the Skinny Puppy one. Not too bad (“it was a bit unusual”) but Eddy is better.

vinylscot – well, I wrote a major post on one of my old blogs re. “Guilty Pleasures” (before I became aware of Sean Rowley’s interest in the same area – this was in 2003) and I’ve regretted it ever since!

No real reason to talk about it here until Popular reaches 2003 or thereabouts so I’ll shut up about it for now.

The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy’s hit “Television, The Drug Of The Nation” also uses the word “abhor”.

Having read the Gilbert “Get Down” thread I have to say that most of the posters who object to the term and the concept of “Guilty Pleasures” are taking themselves a little too seriously. Enough people understand and accept the GP concept for it to be valid, whatever the narrow-minded views of these few. (I can accept that the word “Guilty” should possibly be replaced, but really, it doesn’t matter that much)

Tom, in the “Get Down” piece, you condemn GPs because of the concept’s “chummy appeal to assumed experience – the creation of a shared narrative”. Your piece unfortunately falls into the same trap – “Guilty Pleasures” to me does not mean Sean Rowley and his CDs and/or radio shows – it’s just a term which conveys the very meaning intended. A quick straw poll around the office confirms that – nobody had heard of Sean Rowley, but everyone understood the term.

I don’t mean to be rude about it, but I think those of you getting sniffy about the use of the term “GP” are being a little snobbish and elitist, attaching rather more to the term, in its general usage, than is necessary.

I suspect those who disagree with GPs as a concept are rather looking back at the past through rose-tinted spectacles.

Depending on your age, any pop/chart fan will always have encountered some favourite songs they don’t want everyone to know about, whether that is because of parental disapproval (or approval), fear of ridicule, fear of violence, or some other reason.

We weren’t born as fully-rounded individuals with the strength of our convictions, and the ability to objectively consider things on their merits alone. Peer pressure has an enormous effect in our consumption of popular culture.

Rant over – keep up the good work; I am very much enjoying these articles, and chipping in my tuppence worth!

Speaking for myself, you’re right that just about everyone has gone through that, and we do know what it means, but personally I oppose the use of it because I think it enshrines the idea that it is appropriate to feel guilt about taking pleasure in something that your peer group or the critical establishment or general public or whatever thinks is rubbish. I agree with Tom that using it in regard to (to take myself as an example) loving a lot of hip hop expressing attitudes I despise would seem more useful.

I like Supertramp and ELO a lot more than “that tuneless noisy rubbish” and I don’t feel in the least guilty. There will be opportunies to discuss this further, but looking ahead at the number ones to come I don’t see very many, even if one questionable one is squeezed in. I think that says a good deal, actually. And yes, from the autumn of 1976 to the end of the decade I had my finger on the pulse of teenagers in not-exactly-booming Hull. There were a couple of them who bought bondage gear from Zanzibar in Spring Bank, but even they would have been quick to admit they were striking a pose rather than making a profound political statement.

The covers of Rowley’s compilations connect music, food and guilt by being illustrations of models eating cream cakes, by the way.

I must confess that I bought the first two volumes – because I thought that they’d probably have some good songs on with which I was unfamiliar, rather than especially because of the concept. Ought I to feel guilty about this?