Sing It Again, Vince!

This fabulous little find comes courtesy of regular blog (and radio show) follower/contributor Stephen ‘Beany’ Green, who discovered this, on cassette, on one of his regular charity shop forays and was kind enough to send me a copy.

 

I can’t tell you much about Vincent Sings By Request, as I’m told that no information about Vince or his fellow musicians accompanied the tape. I’m on the fence as to whether Vince has employed a local pub band or he’s singing to backing tracks, but maybe it’s a mixture of both. The band seems pretty accomplished, although most of the material is of karaoke quality, complete with obligatory washy synths. Some of the arrangements, although simple, are markedly different to those you would hear on a karaoke CD, although the horn section employed on a couple of the cuts sound like they have come straight off an ‘instrumental hits’ collection. If cornered, I would guess that most of the album was recorded in a single session with a keyboard and drum duo, with at least two of the tracks, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me and Too Young using pre-recorded backing tracks or sampled brass.

 

I would also assume, from the choice of tracks, that there is a Blackpool or Bolton connection: one of the songs, The Blackpool Belle, was composed in 1975 by Bolton songwriters Howard Broadbent and Jimmy Smith and recorded shortly after by local folk group the Houghton Weavers. Howard Broadbent recorded his own version of the song in 1986, issuing it as a single backed with another of his compositions, The Tram. Both songs appear on Vincent’s cassette, which to me suggests that our Vince recorded his magnum opus sometime after.

 

I have nothing else: I’ve spent literally minutes scouring local online newspaper archives but cannot find a single mention of Vincent or his album. Can anyone out there help? UPDATE, June 2021: I can now tell you, after being contacted by his grandson, that Vince's full name was Vincent Lorraine, and that he made other recordings. More information to follow!

 

Here are a couple of tracks to whet your whistle while we wait for more information: I Just Called to Say I Love You and You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me

 

Once again, thanks Beany! I love it!

 

Enjoy!

 

Download Called HERE

Download Love HERE

Tone Deaf, Treacle

Peter Dean, an actor best known here in Britain for playing Pete Beale in the long-running BBC soap opera EastEnders once recorded a single… and it’s every bit as horrible as you would hope!

 

Can't Get A Ticket (For The World Cup) was issued in May 1986, the year of Maradona’s infamous ‘hand of god’, which saw England eliminated at the quarter-final stage of the competition. Possibly knowing that England were likely to fall over their own feet, the sleeve of the single also featured the badges of the Scottish and Irish teams alongside England, Dean and his squad hedging their bets or attempting to appeal to footie fans outside of England itself. Scotland and Ireland both made it to Mexico, but both went out in the first round. As did any hope of Mr. Dean scoring a chart hit.

 

The song was co-written by Ray Fenwick and saxophonist Wesley Magoogan. Fenwick’s more than a half-century in music has seen him collaborate with a number of big-name British rock musicians, including members of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Rainbow, Yes and the Spencer Davis Group, as well as with blues legend Bo Diddly and many others. While with the Spencer Davis Group he wrote the theme tune to the fondly remembered children’s TV show Magpie – recorded by the Spencer Davis Group under the pseudonym Murgatroyd. The flipside, Right, Fine, Don't Panic! is a piece of substandard Chas & Dave-esque tosh written by Magoogan on his own, which would explain the wailing, atonal saxophone slathered all over it.

 

Commenting on his song at the time, Dean said: ‘I’m a great believer in music. It unites people, and I hope this song can do it for all those supporters who couldn’t get a ticket for Mexico.’. I’m not quite sure what Mr. Dean meant by ‘it’ exactly, but the single was a spectacular flop, failing to chart despite Dean performing the song on Tyne Tees Television’s live current affairs programme Nightline.

 

Enjoy!

 

Download Cup HERE

 

Download Panic HERE