Squeeze Play Sunday

 

Good morning and welcome to today's 35th anniversary extravaganza!

This one's from one of the classic bands of my youth, featured here in the prime of their prime. The songwriters of today, were they to remove their fingers from the autotune button for just one song, could take many an object lesson in the craft from today's honorees.

When you hear the name Squeeze you think of one classic, brilliant pop song after another. Just about every single they put out back in their early 1980s heyday exceeds any hit song of today you could name by about 1,000 hooks to zero. They just don't make them like these cats anymore. These days, the famehungry pop ciphers twerk, where once they worked.

These guys didn't even need a smoke machine, much less an army of bikini-clad hoes waving wads of 100 dollar bills around in the pseudopornographic "video". With Squeeze and its main songwriting duo of Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford, the songs were so meticulously made and so cleverly crafted the creators could go onstage in what they woke up in and the crowd would go suitably wild, all the way to the kids making out in the back row to "Is That Love".

They had so much talent in this band, the keyboard players -- never at the forefront of the group for more than a couple of tunes -- became superstars one after another. Most people today have little idea that Jools Holland started in Squeeze, for instance. Or that they elevated Paul Carrack from Ace to outer space, with Tempted -- sung by him -- becoming arguably their biggest all time tune. How long has this been going on, anyway?

It's been going on since the late 1970s, that's how long. Today's performance -- captured in pristine form by the BBC and shared here from a killer transfer of the original pre-FM vinyl -- dates from exactly 35 years ago tonight, when they played Oxford Polytechnic University, on the very day of the release of their East Side Story album in 1981.

Squeeze
Oxford Polytechnic University
Oxford, UK
5.15.1981

01 Penthouse/Omni College Rock Concert 1014 Intro
02 Take Me I'm Yours
03 Another Nail In My Heart
04 Separate Beds
05 Slightly Drunk
06 Out of Touch
07 I Think I'm Go Go
08 Is That Love
09 Heaven
10 Penthouse/Omni College Rock Concert 1014 Break
11 Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)
12 Yap Yap Yap
13 Slap and Tickle
14 Cool for Cats
15 Up the Junction
16 Messed Around
17 Goodbye Girl
18 Penthouse/Omni College Rock Concert 1014 Outro

Total time: 54:10

Paul Carrack - keyboards, vocals
Glenn Tilbrook - lead guitar, keyboards, vocals
Chris Difford - rhythm guitar, vocals
John Bentley - bass, backing vocals
Gilson Lavis - drums

pre-FM LPs from the Penthouse/Omni magazine College Concert

357 MB FLAC/May 2016 archive link

This is quite a tight Squeeze, with what were at the time lots of freshly juiced classics being road tested for the first time. As always, you know where the love button is, and if you Squeeze it this show will refresh your Sunday brunches with some power pop punches. Pull it down, enjoy, and I shall return soon, like a bull in a record shop, with Taurean treats aplenty.--J.