55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of
my life...so far.
Excuse me while I bend my own rules. I've written previously (here) about the adventures Dad and I shared around the speedways of London and the South East in the 1960's and 1970's. We went to many tracks, but my favourite (and local) team was the Hackney Hawks, whose stadium stood in Waterden Road, on a site that is now occupied by the soulless edifice of the Olympic Stadium Media Centre.
The Hackney Hawks 1969. Biggs, Silver (Promoter), Gooch, McGillivray, Erskine (Manager), Middleton, Leonard, Etheridge, Pratt (Captain, on the bike), Smith (insert).
The public address system on match days at Hackney, was little more than a series of tannoy speakers mounted high on wooden poles around the track, connected by low swinging wires. Hi-fi it wasn't. The sound dipped in and out with every breath of wind. Yet it was here, in 1969, between race announcements, where I heard the song that would become the first single I ever bought for myself.
A back garden speedway star in 1969
And this is where the rule bending comes in. 'Sweet Talking Guy' by The Chiffons was originally released back in 1966, but the reason that it was being played so frequently at Hackney in 1969, was that it had been re-issued - so it counts, doesn't it? Anyway, the song got its hooks in me to such an extent that I ventured into a record shop (on the corner of Church Road and Lea Bridge Road in Leyton, a few yards from my Nan's house) on my own for the first time and bought a copy of the single. And it had 'One Fine Day' on the flip - result!
Still got it!
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