Can’t get it out of my head
March 23rd, 2010
I woke up this morning with this song in my head for some reason and I can’t get rid of it, I have “I want ya, yes I want ya, yes I really do” on a perpetual loop in my brain. Did I have a dream about Alvin Stardust or something?
This was very nearly the first single I ever bought. I still remember being in the Harlequin Records on Fulham Road clutching the 50p record token I got for Christmas and staring at the Top 40 chart pinned to the wall for ages unable to decide between “My Coo Ca Choo” or “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday” by Wizzard. In the end I went with the latter which I think was a wise decision.
Can you explain Alvin Stardust to me? Please? Judging by the indifferent, unimpressed faces in the audience for that clip, I'm thinking a lot of people at the time probably wondered the same thing. He didn't make a dent on this side of Atlantic, so there must be some ineluctably British aspect to what he did, I'm guessing – like driving on the wrong side of the road.
He never left much of an impression on us over here either. He was a Sixties flash-in-the-pan called Shane Fenton desperately trying to have one last go. It failed
Did you know there was actually a very good reason why we drive on the left here?
Ah Harlequin Records! there is some memories I used the Harrow one and many a single was bought in my teen years. The place was never the same when it became Our Price. It was never as freindly
I never trust people called Anonymous.
Yes it must be difficult to look at Alvin Stardust in America and wonder why, I mean after all you never have flash in the pan pure pop music that's here one minute and gone the next do you?
For boys aged 12 – 16 at this time in history Alvin Stardust and Indeed Suzy Quattro seemed a l lot more daring than they do many years later. Here's the fact, the music is pop, pure and simple and whether it be My Co caa Choo, or Devilgate Drive they entertained us and at a time when we were also listening to Mud and Wizard it's no stretch to see why we enjoyed it. Now our elder brothers (if we had any) well they would be listening to Purple, Zeppelin, Hendrix, Tull, but we were still kids and it was our music!
Good point, Mayor. Perhaps I'm guilty of looking at A. Stardust from my older (Canadian) eyes, but if it weren't for the video, I'd just shrug and say "Not a bad bit of mass-market glam rock. I wonder if I can find this on bittorrent…"
It's the video, though. I can't imagine my own younger self watching it and not being weirded out by the whole package – the leather bell bottom boiler suit, the quiff wig and sideburns, the hemhorroidal stance and the constant pointing. I was just assuming that there was something in English culture – Christmas pantos, maybe, or the love of ugly drag queens – that would explain it all.
My sister, who would have been about three years old at the time, always responded very badly when Alvin came on the screen. "It's rude to point!" she squeaked when he did his sub-Gene Vincent black-glove thing.
It got worse when Shakin' Stevens came along. He made her run from the room screaming.
Course, he coulda just been taking the piss.
You wrote "This was very nearly the first single I ever bought." It WAS the first single I ever bought. And I still have it.
GForsyth
We actually had Shakin' Stevens do a concert at our school (with his band the Sunsets) before he 'made' it and at that time he was actually quite rock n' roll. We also had Sassafras (on a few occasions even when they were doing bigger concerts they would still do the school) just for expenses and beer), Kursall Flyers, we were lucky we had a music loving art teacher that organized these gigs.
Oh and the one thing nobody mentioned was just how bad he was at miming the words!
“I can’t imagine my own younger self watching it and not being weirded out by the whole package – the leather bell bottom boiler suit, the quiff wig and sideburns, the hemhorroidal stance and the constant pointing.”
He was my first lustobject … at 5, it seems
He rules all of your asses, into eternity !!!!!
Fuckin’ blasphemy