Entertainment For Lively Minds
It was a fine year..
Here's the chart rundown for mid-July 1978, the time when I discovered Radio 1 and the year when singles were being shifted in volumes not seen before or since.
http://www.chartstats.com/chart.php?date=20%2F07%2F1978
Whack to the end at #75 and scroll up. It's astonishing. A stream of absolute nailed-on brilliance. Rock, punk, new wave, disco, reggae, funk and pop all represented at their finest, plus The Smurfs and Showaddywaddy for the kids.
Singles sales figures were, of course, skewed by the Boney M / JT+ONJ dominance over the summer but it was still a fine time.
Can anyone find a similar stream of such disparate brilliance in any other years?
Edit: I've just updated the ontroller software for my Sonos system. They now have an archive of retrospective singles charts going back to 1955. Stack up your nostalgia-fests simply and swiftly.
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Memories of Radio 1
and driving to Blackpool for the annual trip to my Grandparents. Clout and Manfred Mann are the real stand outs for me as instantly evocative. The chart of my 13th birthday week, thanks Len I enjoyed that. 1982 was still the best year though!
Edit: Maybe not but this was the week I broke my leg badly and had two weeks in hospital with nothing but Radio 1 and a bed pan to keep me company http://www.chartstats.com/chart.php?date=04/04/1982
That Father Abraham...
was definitely rockin' a very Word-friendly look. A future cover star, methinks...
Single sales
Funnily enough, the best year for singles sales ever was... 2010.
161.8 million singles were sold last year - this is getting on for twice as many as 1979. 99% were digital copies, mind.
Not sure of the comparison, Fraser.
To quote the BPI for 2010 "Sales of digital single tracks represented 98.0% of overall singles sales"
That's digital single tracks. Not digital singles.
I read that quote before posting
It's in a paragraph about "the singles market", and the 98% figure refers to downloads versus CD singles, so I assumed it was about singles rather than single tracks. But you could well be right - it's by no means clear.
UPDATE: I checked, and you're absolutely right. I therefore humbly withdraw my earlier point.
but..
if each individual download is recognised as a "single" purchase then surely every band effectively releases everything as singles...
not quite venturing out on a pissy saturday afternoon in shitesville morayshire to pick up the new smiths single...
Ooh yes, the sublime joy of the hunter/gatherer of pop
S**t waiting times for s**t buses in s**t weather. Scary looking s**thead punks at the bottom of the stairs. And when you finally got to the s**t coloured counter, the condescending s**t posing there (after looking at you like you were a piece of s**t who didn't know s**t about music) was roughly 70% likely to tell you "it's not in yet" leaving you to mutter "s**t" to yourself as you trudged back to the bus stop under a s**t coloured sky. Actually returning home with the same record you had set out to buy was like Christmas cubed.
Great days!
in which case, in 1984
i'd just by another mix of #1 or #2, cry because i couldn't get the shaped pic disc of #8, or pick up the penguin cover 12" of #26..all the while moaning that the boss of said small recca shop couldn't get enough customer orders together to satisfy the minimum order from pinnacle or spartan so i could get #88...
so me and other friends would order more back catalogue from spartan/pinnacle etc..which would lead to us being banned from ordering until we had bought up all the shit we'd ordered...
this ridiculous situation lasted for several years but taught me the fine details of record distrubution, and regional variations thereof, in the nineteen hate-ties...
i.e more useless outdated information..
Yep
I should have added that many of the best things I own were 2nd, 3rd or 4th choices on the day and many of the records I failed to buy at first I never went back for having seen sense. Turns out the condescending s**t who thought I didn't know s**t was right...
LUXURY....
I first remember
actually being interested in the charts from about 1983/84. Summer 84 looks unbelievably good.
http://www.chartstats.com/chart.php?date=09%2F07%2F1984
Double Frankie, Grand Master Melle Mel and Prince in the top 10. Below that, some great stuff.
notice
the almost total lack of "real" rock music...some absolute screamers too, but no backward looking dad rock or revisionist long haired macho wank...
great stuff...including the sleevenotes!!
I think you've picked
the very week the first copy of Smash Hits came out funnily enough. A really great year singleswise. I'd forgotten how much I loved 7 inch singles and their sleeves. I'm getting an unholy mix of nostalgia, joy and sadness looking down that list. Say what you like about technology but you can't convince me that anyone's ever come up with something better than that little piece of vinyl for capturing an acts essence and making life that bit more wonderful. *sighs*
Not my first year of Pop Radio
But the first year I started to tape off the radio. I was 12, and 32 of the 75 take me back to 1978 in an instant. Amazing. My favourite was Renaissance - Northern Lights! Just copped it is week to week. Even better!
Anyway cheers for that. It brought back good memories.