Sam Hawkins - Hold On Baby
Saturday mornings... what do you do? Lie in bed? Drive the kids to swimming? Between the hours of 8 and 10 I can generally be found standing stock still in the kitchen, mouth agape, cup of tea going cold. And it's all Brian's fault.
Brian Matthew heads up the Sounds of The Sixties show on Radio 2. Now, just about every station there is has a Sixties show, but this is the one if you want to hear Petula Clark followed by The Velvet Underground. I kid you not. Hendrix? You might get "Hey Joe", but then again it could be "The Stars Up Above That Play With Laughing Sam's Dice". One you'd expect, the other you certainly wouldn't.
And he's the final word in politeness. No one is a one hit wonder. Artists simply "Didn't enjoy chart success after this single", which is usually something that scraped into the Top 40 but probably sold better than anything in the charts now.
There are stilted psych 45's, long forgotten Joe Meek productions which will warrant anecdotes about the great man's working methods, dedications for wedding anniversaries that are celebrated with a Beat number from '64, cheesy ballads with too much spent on the string arrangements, or the likes of Sam Hawkins - all things that you can lose years chasing down. Last week he hit me with four utterly fantastic Northern numbers in a row. All I could do is swear.
Jonathon Ross comes on after him at 10. One week he actually said "I can't follow that." But then he did, by playing Bowie's "Joe The Lion".
Healthy competition.
So... Saturday mornings...
What do you do?
Buy - The Red Bird Story
Visit - Brian Matthew - Sounds of The 60's show on BBC Radio 2
Mike.
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