3396

We all want to fit in. Especially when we go to a new school, even if it is a brand new school and you all are FNGs and want to fit it too, mixing with old friends and new people.

1978 was the time when Punk morphed into New Wave, Disco was at its height, and there was Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Star Wars. So with so much exciting music and culture around, why did my group of (male) friends, bond over an overblown pomp pop group from Birmingham?

I have no idea. But it was ELO, The Electric Light Orchestra, that did it.

There was Simon, Ian (another one), Trevor, Owen, James and myself. To a greater or lesser extent, we all became fans.

Its not like we all became drug addicts or anything, but we each collected the records. Or in my case, the cassettes.

Yes, cassettes.

Mum knew I was a fan, of sorts, so out of the blue she ordered the tape versions of Out of the Blue and A New World Record.

I had nothing to play them on, and the only player they had was the old Sanyo mono radio cassette player. So, that's what I played it on, until my parents got a new gramophone.

Record deck.

Music centre.

Yes, music centre.

Before that, the entertainment centre was the radiogram.

A radiogram was a piece of furniture, solid, five feet long, with speakers, a dansette-like record player and a multi-band radio. It sat in the corner and only played records when my parents went through the 'let's have a dinner party' phase. The radio was mainly used when Dad and I listened to the European football, as the MW signal wavered in the atmosperic conditions over the North Sea, and we followed the all conquering Liverpool team as they dominated the continent for years.

In May 1979, the Conservatives swept into power, and announced that VAT was going to increase, so Dad went out and bought a music centre to replace the radiogram. The usable space in the living room doubled. It was a brushed chrome box with a smoked perspex cover, had a three band radio, a record player that had just two speeds. And a cassette player, on which I could play my ELO tapes.

Yay.

But, cassettes were always crap, at least the pre-recorded ones were, and I wanted the actual records.

And then a record player of my own.

I managed to get a funky green vinyl version of Face the Music, loved that, just the problem that I only liked two tracks on it.

But i wanted Out of the Blue.

So, when we were on the exchange trip to Germany, Sman and myself got "lost" on a shopping trip in Hannover and burned about 20DM on a US import version. There is a shot us us looking at the inner sleeve as my exchange partner looked on, fuming, as he got blamed for us getting "lost".

But I had my vinyl copy.

Simon and myself kept the ELO flame burning into 1979, when Discovery came out. And let's be honest here, it wasn't very good. Having to pretend you liked The Diary of Horace Wimp. It wasn't going to last.

We we carried the torch.

And then came Xanadu.

Xanadu was a song, album and film with Olivia Newton John, and she sang the title track with ELO, who were now a four piece, or something.

Most of us got rid of our ELO stuff, passed as gifts at birthdays.

I ended up with The Light Shines On Vol. 2.

I gave it to my Dad.

By then I was into heavy metal, Simon was into Angelic Upstarts and Oi, Ian and Owen were Mods, and Jim and James were beginning to like Echo and the Bunnymen and The Cure.

But what I wanted was my own record player.

For my room.

So, I pestered my parents for months. And months. And at Christmas 1979 I got my own music centre, a Pye thing, that could not play at the right speed. I begged my parents to get me one different, one that was £30 more expensive, a Phillip music centre.

They relented.

So, Dad drilled holes so the speakers could be hung on the walls and I could send the crappy base through the walls of the house. How thrilled my parents must have been to have Rainbow and Blondie blasting out. That music centre lasted me three years, at which point my keen trained ear knew it had reached its limitations. But it had allowed me to indulge the hobby of collecting records, if not always playing them. Thing is, we were working on our paper rounds to get enough money to buy a single a week, or save up for an album. How on earth was I going to get the money for some decent kit? How indeed?