This cover date was the day I turned 4 years old. The paper has had another makeover, dropping the Popswop association and merging with Disc. The last issue of Disc was August 30th, 1975. (The last Record Mirror & Popswop branded issue was May 17th, 1975). (Scans courtesy of World Radio History again.)
I have very little knowledge of Disc, it seems to have well thought of reading these testimonials. Cilla Black’s message giving off a very “Will This Do?” energy whereas Paul & Linda’s message is personalised and thoughtful. There are more issues of Disc at the Archive above, and I should call out special mention of the ongoing comic strips by J. Edgar Oliver which are completely impenetrable to me through the looking glass of time.
The UK Top 50 for this cover date can be found here and the US Top 100 for this week can be found here. I’m not going to playlist these charts just now but rather take a closer look at the Soul / Disco charts instead.
The Greg Wilson edit of the Crystal World track is a bit of a cheat, but it’s a good one. Some others I can’t seem to find on Spotify, so here they are on youtube:
“What’s TV’s Good Times?” You might ask. Well.
At the age of 4 I’m not going to have a reliable memory other than cutting my finger with a razor blade so when I don’t remember this sitcom showing in the UK that shouldn’t be a surprise. It might have been something on the ITV network somewhere, or maybe the song was just popular enough to cross over without having to have been seen on TV. And when I see the term “Good Times” I’m immediately put in mind of the hoax virus from 10 years later.
Can’t seem to find much information about Leroy Brown.
Well, I do know about Jasper Carrott though. This seems a really odd choice for the disco as it’s partly spoken word and a sure fire dancefloor killer. Different times I guess though.
A difficult group to find much information on tbh, due to the noise in this namespace. Did find something here at allmusic that mentions that they never really found the fame that they deserved.
Elsewhere in the paper…
I imagine the life of a DJ in the UK involved trolling the dancefloor, just can’t imagine Paul Oakenfold dropping Arthur Mullard partway through a Perfecto set.