'Lola' - The Kinks (1970)

"I met her in a club down in old Soho,

Where you drink champagne,

And it tastes just like cherry cola.

C-O-L-A 
Cola."

Every band should do this. "What, spell out the name of popular carbonated beverages in their opening verse?" No, that would just be stupid. Every band should use their songs to pitch new product ideas and test the audience's reaction. "Oh, and that’s not stupid at all?" Nope.

The much-repeated story is that the BBC asked The Kinks to change the line from ‘Coca-Cola’ to something more generic – with Ray Davies flying from New York to London to make the change mid-tour (these days he could probably just Skype it in). And so we got a wonderful promo for cherry cola a good decade and a half before the big drinks companies finally put it on the shelves of our local newsagents.

‘Lola’ is a wonderful song in many, many ways. (Yes, it has greater over-arching themes beyond fizzy drinks. It’s a ‘mixed up, muddled up, shook up world’ indeed). But every time I heard Annie Nightingale play it on her Sunday evening show, my imagination would be smitten by the thought of cherry cola. What would it taste like? (Cherry.) What would it look like? (Er, Cola.) Granted, my imagination was hardly running wild, but it stopped me thinking of ‘Star Wars’ for  a few moments.

And then it finally arrived. For the special introductory price of ten pence a can. And every school lunch-time I’d become bloated on its sickly sweet acidic charms. Today, I get stomach ache just looking at a can. But this song never loses its appeal.

'Echo Beach' - Martha & The Muffins (1980)

"It’s a habit of mine,

To watch the sun go down."

INT. POP BOUTIQUE, COVENT GARDEN.

YESTERDAY AFTERNOON.

YOUNG LADY APPROACHES COUNTER.

POINTS TO AN IRON MAIDEN 7-INCH.

PUZZLED EXPRESSION ON HER FACE.

"What’s this?"

MAN BEHIND COUNTER.

"A 7-inch single.

Have you ever seen an album?

It’s like that. But with just one song on each side."

LADY.

"Is it a one-off?"

MAN.

"No, they made lots of them."

PUZZLED EXPRESSION TURNS TO ONE OF DISBELIEF.

LADY TURNS AND EXITS.

Cue Rod Serling. Surely we’ve entered the Twilight Zone. But no. The woman isn’t suffering from amnesia. And she’s not an alien being or some form of Artificial Intelligence learning our Earth ways. And we haven’t traveled to a post-apocalyptic future where our subterranean grandchildren have only heard legends of a giant ball of fire in the sky, mighty oceans, and mid-80s Heavy Metal chart toppers.         

On overhearing this conversation, I realised this blog has greater historical significance than I first imagined. It began as a way to simply share the many trivial recollections triggered by my record collection. But now it seems the average young person on the street can’t even identify what I’m writing about. The true value of these scribblings is now clear. I’m curating a national archive. Something the great institutions of the world will one day display as a public record of our natural evolution. I should probably look in to getting a grant or something.      

Back in the store, I couldn‘t resist flicking through the second-hand single boxes that had so bemused the young lady. I rarely buy second-hand vinyl. Or second-hand anything. (I can’t even read a magazine if someone has already looked through it. Just another of my quirky charms.) But here was an original pressing of ‘Echo Beach’. For a pound. I’ve loved this single since I first heard it on Annie Nightingale’s Sunday evening show back in the mid-80s. I’ve bought it since on many New Wave CD compilations. But I just had to own the original vinyl. Which is what really defines my generation. And this blog. And obsessive compulsives.