Various Artists: Jackie - The Annual 2010
Various Artists: Jackie - The Annual 2010
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By Adam Leveridge
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Friday, 13, Nov 2009 09:28
EMI TV, out now.
What's it all about?
Jackie magazine was a 70s publishing phenomenon. Selling more than one million copies a week, this teen bible covered all aspects of a teenage girl's life from make-up and clothes to boys and music.
And it's the music of that happy yet bleak decade which comprises the bulk of this just-in-time-for-Christmas three-disc nostalgia fest that follows hot on the heels of the three previous best-selling Jackie compilation albums.
Who's it by
Jackie The Annual 2010's impressive and varied musical selection boasts just about every 70s teenager's treasured vinyl, cassette tape or cartridge (ask your parents, kids!) collection on three platters that matter.
There's the original boy band, the Bay City Rollers; Motown goodness from Billy Ocean and the Drifters; glam from T-Rex; stomping rock with Slade and new wave attitude from Blondie by way of louche sexiness from Roxy Music; classic David Bowie and offerings from 70s pin-up gods David Essex, Donnie Osmond and David Cassidy.
As an example.
"She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl." - David Bowie's legendary Rebel Rebel
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
Not in this lifetime, but who cares as this is destined to be one of those brilliant party CDs that will get the staid bods from your company's accounts departments up and grooving at this year's Xmas bash with the shiny-suited lads from sales, including the annoying one who thought it'd be hilarious to don a blonde mullet wig, unaware it was from the 80s and not anything at all like 70s hairstyles as the ladies in human resources quite rightly stated when he bought the stupid thing off the internet.
All the while the managing director affects his best thumbs in belt-loops dance hoping that the next track will transport him back to his own Life On Mars youth, that weird world inhabited by mind-alteringly garish Saturday morning cartoons, space hoppers and lashings of Angel Delight.
What the others say
"Jackie The Annual 2010 is THE collection for all your festive parties - guaranteed to get you up on the dance floor for a much needed boogie! Whether or not you were a devoted fan of the magazine, if you were a teen (or wannabe teen!) in the 70s it's sure to get you in the mood for dancing and celebrating!!" - Southern Daily Echo
So is it any good?
If you side-step awful dross such as the Bay City Rollers and Showaddydaddy and dive into the richness of the Drifters and the O'Jays, whose Come On Over To My Place and Love Train respectively, reside on the first CD of this collection, then you can get the party started.
You see, that's the fun with compilations. There's old tat as personified by Sweet with Blockbuster and the ever-present and eternally irritating ABBA; cheesy brilliance from Dawn with Saturday night variety show thigh-slapping staple Tie A Yellow Ribbon Around The Ol' Oak Tree to floor-filling quality such as Billy Ocean's Love Really Hurts Without You, taking you back to naff discos in the local youth club where love bites and Londis cola were de rigeur.
Once you've danced the night away to the O'Jays' anthemic Love Train from 1972 and swooned over the honey in the dungarees to Harold Melvin And The Bluenotes' awesome If You Don't Know Me By Now, the Jackie Annual gets all smoochy with big Bazza White's velvety You See The Trouble With Me and enables you to indulge in some last-dance smudged mascara weepiness courtesy of Diana Ross' timeless tearjerker Touch Me In The Morning, a song that oozes Motown quality from every pore and shows up some of the other tracks on the Annual as the old garbage you always knew they were.
I'm talking about Gilbert O'Sullivan's Clair, Smokie's Oh Carol and Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da from Marmalade as three prime examples of putrid filler material.
Luckily, up steps Mr Marvin Gaye with Let's Get It On and we're in a smoky north London night club somewhere around the back of the old Regal cinema in Edmonton on a sultry June evening with mini cab drivers having a punch-up in the taxi rank outside.
But when you're up close and personal with the love of your life, swaying along to Marvin Gaye, everything is right with the world.
Including numbers such as this makes you appreciate all that was good with the 70s - excellent tunes, long hot summers and snowy Christmases whereupon the print version of the Jackie annual was eagerly devoured by teenage girls, their mums, and curious brothers after they had blazed their way through the Battle annual, the length and breadth of the nation.
And if you think I'm heavily biased toward Motown and soul, well, you're right. However, the Annual also features beautiful yearning from 10cc's The Things We Do For Love and Rod Stewart with I Don't Want To Talk About It, two shining slices of quintessential 1970s pop-rock, slip-sliding through light and shade with fragility and hope. A lot like the decade itself.
With the third CD of the Annual, it's time to rock out with Slade's Cuz I Love You and Alice Cooper's epic School's Out before ladies of a certain age can get all misty-eyed over memories of Marc Bolan's sexy proto-punk/funk of 20th Century Boy.
That sets things up nicely for the electrifying Nutbush City Limits from Ike and Tina Turner. Letting you catch your breath before tempting you into a rather strange basement club sometime in 1972 are Roxy Music with the soaring and adenoidal Virginia Plain and the Dame himself, Bromley boy David Bowie with the sizzling Rebel Rebel, one of my all-time favourite songs.
See, the 70s as presented on the Jackie Annual, are not just about sumptous soul from the other side of the pond but the down and dirty growl of British rock that makes you wanna dance with the dangerously exotic people propping up the far end of the bar.
Luckily, Macca and Wings are on hand to warn us off this idea with 1973's Live And Let Die, title track from one of the best 007 flicks.
The third CD fizzles out after these classics, but not before Blondie blows the cobwebs away with Denis, and foists quite dreadful K-Tel (again, ask your parents) level pap on your ears with Leo Sayer, a man in desperate need of a sense of humour, and pointless Suzi Quatro, finally tapering off into a double pretty boy whammy at album's end with Stardust from David Essex and David Cassidy's nausea-inducing I Write The Songs.
9/10
Lee Davis