“Place the needle on the record…”
“We are talking Scotland in the early 1960s when one of the best things in the world was loading up the Dansette record player with a stack of 7-inch 45 rpm singles to see how many it could play…
It could be “Twist and Shout” (The Beatles) on top of “High Hopes” (Frank Sinatra) followed by the “Cindy Doll Record” (God knows who) and “The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond” (The Pipes and Drums of the Highland Regiment). Then slamming down on this 5-thick vinyl sandwich would come “Telstar” (The Tornados) by which time, the records would be scratching each other to oblivion.
I also remember the Mario Lanza Christmas record played all year round and Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf where each instrument impersonates a character from the story, and the Alexander Brothers—probably some hogmanay record because it seemed to be compulsory that every Scots home had one of those.
The original cast soundtrack to West Side Story, with the song Maria sung by Larry Kert, used to totally freak me out for some reason—and still does to this day. I know because I just put it on and with exactly the same effect!
Then my elder sister bought Every Picture Tells a Story, and even today I just have to look at that album cover to get back to lost times!”
—Gareth Sager
The Pop Group’s The Boys Whose Head Exploded, a live archival release compiled from unearthed basement tapes recorded during 1979-1980, arrives in stores on Friday, May 27.
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PHOTO: CHAIRA MEATTELLI AND DOMINIC LEE
