Althea & Donna – Uptown Top Ranking (1977)

I always start the day with a “damn fine cup of coffee” (see here for the reference).

And every morning, I revel in the enjoyment of having a sense of taste and smell.

After my daily shower, I always have a glass of grapefruit juice. Cold. Exquisite.

Later on, a small glass of pineapple juice with some cereal.

What a world! Drinking pineapple juice while it’s freezing cold outside. What an amazing luxury.

After that, I read a few articles from this week’s Spectator – later on, it was New Statesman and then The Economist.

I was somewhat perplexed by a book review in the first of those that observed:

Looking through the ranks of those who might represent the best values of America, we arrive quite quickly at Dolly Parton.

Really? “Quite quickly”? What a funny old world.

Moving on to a review about a book celebrating how nature can reclaim spaces abandoned by humans, I learnt that the author was a psycho-geographer. A what?

Wikipedia came to the rescue:

In 1955, Guy Debord defined psychogeography as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals”

I immediately resolved to post “Guy Debord”, a song recorded by the incredibly obscure Rudolf Rocker. So obscure, sadly, that YouTube doesn’t host the song and even Wikipedia has no mention of it.

Which is a shame because I was going to give an unequivocal shout out to the ubiquitous online encyclopedia that celebrates its 20th anniversary today. I use it several times a day and I’m not sure I could live without it. However, it clearly still has its limitations – come on you slackers, sort yourselves out!

As such, what song to choose today? I’ve been listening to a lot of reggae this week and I decided to dip into my alphabetically organised 7″ singles for inspiration. It only took a few seconds to pull out this absolute pop gem. Wikipedia tells the story:

The record was initially recorded as a joke, but it was played by accident by BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, resulting in numerous requests for additional plays. With early championing by Peel and a performance on Top of the Pops, it soon became a surprise hit, reaching number one on the UK Singles Chart in February 1978.

A happy accident indeed. Play loud, etc!