Not the Next Big Thing
I was in Groningen recently for the David Bowie Is exhibition (fantastic, by the way) and found myself, the next day, wandering around the town's (excellent) second hand record shops.
It's hard at the best of times to drag me away from those places but one shop in particular was hard to leave behind. It didn't start in the most promising fashion. An unwelcoming door with faded record covers sitting sadly in a window on either side. We crept inside to find a long corridor stacked floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes. A few tentative steps later the room opened up to a larger space with, yes, even more cardboard boxes as fas as you could see.
Time wasn't our friend as we ransacked the boxes looking for hidden treasures but there was time for me to notice a stack of 1970s Rolling Stone magazines. I could've bought them all (although I'm not sure they'd have been welcome in the house) but, in the end, I picked 4 pretty much at random and left the rest behind. They're fantastic - from a time when 'serious' journalism and lengthy cover stories about the biggest bands of the day sat side by side.
But what's really great about these old magazine is the ads. All those fabulous 1970 ads for cigarettes, exotic liquor, guitar strings and blank cassettes. Look at this ad for Bang & Olufsen speakers, for example. It's got graphs, charts and so much technical information to leave you exhausted by the end of the first paragraph. Even the headline is a headwreck. "One reason you may be looking for new speakers could be the phase distortion present in those you listen to now" Don't Stop! Tell me more! These guys weren't selling a lifestyle like they are today - they were selling actual state-of-the-art technology. And they weren't afraid to bore the shit out of you while they did it.
And then there's the music ads. It's striking to see a full page ad for, let's say, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours on one page and then turn the page and see another big ad for Pablo Cruise's 'A Place in the Sun'. Yes - that Pablo Cruise! Both ads are falling over themselves to proclaim their respective records' greatness. But, of course, only one went on to sell a billion records and keep its writers in five star hotels and limousines and, all manner of, ahem, stimulants for the next 40 years. I look at these ads and feel bad for the artists that never made it. I know a fair bit about popular music but I have to confess to never hearing of Pablo Cruise, Derringer, John Miles, Sea Level or Heartsfields. All of who released their era-defining records on an unsuspecting public in the Spring of 1977.
What I love most about these ads is the hyperbole. Remember in 1976 when Andy Pratt released his much-loved 'Resolution'. Of course you do because if forever changed the face of rock. Or at least that's what Rolling Stone's Stephen Holden told us in July of that year. I'm sure that 'Resolution' changed the face of rock for someone. That's how music works - there's always someone receptive to an artist's work - even if it doesn't quite hit the heights that their publicity department expected.
Things never change. I could look through copies of the Word Magazine from a decade ago and see lots of ads for bands that never quite made it. Whatever happens to these guys? Are they bitter that, once upon a time, paper and ink collided and left behind a declaration that they were going to be the next big thing? A declaration that was long forgotten until someone discovered it at the bottom of a stack of magazines in a corner of a shop in Groningen. Whoever they are, wherever they are, I'm raising a glass to Derringer, Pablo Cruise, John Miles, Sea Level and Heartsfields. For a minute there they were the next big thing. Long may they run!
