You may remember the 2 photos I put up previously of The Other Record Shop in the Overgate. One was an exterior shot and the other an image of the interior. Well here is a close up of their window display which was taken on 23rd May 1984.So if you were window shopping 25 years ago, you'd spot product by Duran Duran - Womack & Womack - Mel Brooks - Fad Gadget - Kiri Te Kanawa - Matt Fretton - Simple Minds - Wang Chung - Wham - Phil Fearon & Galaxy - Break Machine - The Smiths and probably the one with most street cred, Keith Harris & Orville!!
There are 3 items I can't identify, the female trio above the number 40, the record sleeve under the words "ALL TOP" (it looks like Bruce Springsteen with a beard), and the one with the 2.43 price tag is a mystery.
If anyone fancies doing a bit of homework on these, I'll let you be teachies pet!!
Click on image to enlarge.
Photo by DC Thomson.
"Bruce Springsteen with a beard" is, I think, Kenny Loggins, who did the theme tune for the film "Footloose" which (I think) was released around about the time this photo was taken.
ReplyDeleteThe girls in the photo are Belle & The Devotions, who performed the UK entry at Eurovision in 1984: http://www.chartstats.com/image/s11536_100.jpg . I am very sad for knowing that, I know...
No idea about the £2:43 album - Julian Lennon?
That was quick work, Graeme. Gold star on top of the jotter!
ReplyDeleteThe Kenny Logging sleeve is in fact the theme for Footloose, if you look in the bottom right hand corner you can see the image of Kevin Bacon dancing, from the soundtrack cover.
ReplyDeletehttp://pds7.egloos.com/pds/200712/05/13/e0058513_4756888ba8391.jpg
Great, cheers GG! :-) As a very wild guess, and I'm not at all confident about this, the £2.43 album COULD be Revolver? http://i1.creativecow.net/u/130031/revolver.jpg (just going by what appears to be a face drawn in pencil).
ReplyDeleteDont think it's Revolver. The sleeve in that picture has what looks like a female face in the middle, and some wording in the bottom left-hand corner. On the Revolver sleeve, the title is bottom centre, and has a collage of faces in the middle, with the larger drawings to the outside.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably not an album - more likely a 12" single - because the albums are in the other window and the twelve-inchers are in this window. Also, LP's are priced about £4-5 at this time.
ReplyDeleteGet searching again pop pickers!!
Without trying to be too anoraky about it, the mystery cover is a 12 inch single by Natasha called Homeland.
ReplyDeleteI must admit, I've never heard of "Natasha", although I was only 8 in 1984. In case anyone's interested, I did some digging and found a link to the video on her myspace page: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=6847561 .
ReplyDeleteSounds/looks painfully "1984-ish"! What would George Orwell think...
The price was in fact £2.49 there was no £2.43 price point. The Natasha single was only in the window as it was dumped (FOC stock) by the rep and it was in there as a favour. Towerbell records had a habit of dumping stuff in shops and "influencing" the charts. They were resposible for acts like Joe Fagin, Snowy White and others. The fact that Natasha owned Towerbell with her husband had nothing to do with ability pump out recors without having hits, she was talented enough to have two 'hits' Iko Iko and The Boom Boom Room under the name Natasha England (she is in fact a scot). I'm guessing I was on holiday that week as the its a pretty shocking display. Of course it could have just been a crap week for releases. Regards Keith's remark about 'real' music, get a life.
ReplyDeleteI worked in the shop for a few months in 1983 from it's opening. I travelled up from the Stirling shop and wasn't a native of Dundee. I'm sure there was another wee record shop around this time somewhere to the east of the railway station. I know it wasn't Groucho's as I remember it as being round the other side of the Overgate from the ORS. Did this shop exist or am I imagining it?
ReplyDeleteRegarding Natasha, she souldn't get airplay post 'Boom Boom Room' despite releasing some great records.
ReplyDeleteLet's remember Towerbell were a small indie, competing with the majors, and they were perhaps a little too ambitious, which lead to their collapse in '86.
Back to Natasha, she released 2 great albums - 'Captured'(as 'Natasha') and 'Don't walk away' (as 'Natasha England')
A 42 track anthology 'Back from the mists of time' came out on our label in 2008. Well worth checking out, loads of pop classics on there.
regards,
Ewan
p.s regarding dumping, I believe many labels gave away free records to shops at that time. Not sure it happens now though.