Entertainment For Lively Minds
The Ghost of Christmas Past
[asset|aid=59|format=mp3player|formatter=asset_bonus|title=Happy Christmas From the Stars 1.mp3|width=290|height=24|align=none]Here, from the very depth of the archives, is a genuine piece of pop history - the Smash Hits flexi that was attached to the cover of the Christmas 1982 issue. Made on a shoe string, recorded on a Chad Valley nursery cassette player and edited in one clandestine all-night session on the premises of a broadcaster who didn't know anything about it, it attempts to coax the festive spirit out of a cast of thousands including Paul Weller, ABC, Abba, the Police, Toyah and Bananarama. Life and soul of the party is an impossibly juvenile Mark Ellen.
[via Worrapolava. Thanks to Brian Cleary for the link]
- More from David Hepworth.
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It'll sound better if
you put some pennies on the tone arm. Ads between the tracks four years before Sigue Sigue Sputnik - truly Smash Hits was ahead of the times.
Ho Ho Ho...
you need to put a penny on the disc as well to stop in slipping! Hurrah for Flexi discs
Only...
...three members of ABBA turned up. What happened to Anni-Frid?
anna-frid update
didn't she disappear up a Fjord and move in with one of her obsessive fans!
Does that mean
they call her Anna Fjord?
Bad puns agogo
I was going to go on and make a joke connecting a make of a popular auto-mobile and her lack of concentration, but I don't think I'll bother now...
It's amazing what you can
It's amazing what you can find on the internet when you're supposed to be busy at work!
As you so rightly point out,
As you so rightly point out, Anni-Frid didn't turn up for the recording. The Abba camp was getting a little tense at the time - December 1982 - not least because AF had just told them she'd got a solo recording contract and was using her time in London to have meeting with her producer, the high-flying Phil Collins.
But I can't tell you how extraordinary it is to hear that recording again. The idea was Dave Hepworth's, the editor of Smash Hits at the time, after an ad for jeans was secured to pay for the flexi (some of the voices, I always suspected, by Kenny Everett), and I spent about right or nine days flying round town with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and getting Musical Youth, Duran Duran, Boy George, Madness, Bananarama, Adam Ant, Abba - pretty much every major pop star of the time actually - to knock out an Xmas message.
Then Dave, myself and Trevor Dann (WORD podcast regular) found an empty studio at the BBC in Portland Place in the middle of the night, ducked in there, locked the door, and edited it together with a load of Beeb sound effects records. I remember how ludicrous it was to to be trying to synthesise a pop party atmosphere at five in the morning!
Thanks to Brian again for sending the original link in, much appreciated!
'twas a pleasure to post the mp3
Cheers for the link to my blog! I found the flexi just after Christmas last year, funnily enough when I'd bought a USB turntable and dug out all my old vinyl. It's a slice of pop heaven so I've waited since then to post it at Christamas.
I remembered every phrase and played it to death when I was a wee lad. It's great that you two , David and Mark, got the link, (cheers Brian) and a chance to hear it again.
Sozz about the scratches, I think my brother stood on it, clumsy bugger.
Is it just me or does the
Is it just me or does the start of the Musical Youth bit sound like the crazy frog?