Innocent Pleasures

I'm long past caring about what records I'm "supposed" to like and think the whole concept of the guilty pleasure is a bit silly, you like what you like and damn what anyone else thinks. But it wasn't always that way, back in 1981 I was only 19 with all the serious pretensions of that age, I listened to John Peel every night, I bought records on Factory and Rough Trade, I wore a big overcoat with Siouxsie and The Banshees badges on it, I read Camus novels – I had an image to maintain. So I was faintly embarrassed to admit (even to myself) that I thought the single "Hand Held In Black and White" by fluffy pop duo Dollar was actually pretty damn good. So much so that, no matter how much I liked it, I couldn't bring myself to buy a copy lest the bloke in the record shop laughed at me. I could have sneaked into somewhere completely un-trendy like Woolworth's and secretly bought it but you never knew if the gum-chewing saturday girl behind the record counter would give you a sneering, disdainful look too, and I couldn't live with the thought that there were strangers out there thinking I had bad taste in music. Even worse, what if one of my mates discovered I'd bought it — oh, the shame.

And I still don't have a copy of it, so here they are doing it on Top of The Pops, with the added bonus of a Peter Powell intro. It still sounds great too, and I can now say that without a smidgen of embarrassment.



This was the first production job Trevor Horn did after leaving Buggles and Yes, and it was because of it's big, bright sound that ABC asked him to produce their "Lexicon of Love" album which of course is regarded as a classic and Horn went on to work with Malcolm McLaren, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Art of Noise and be hailed as a production genius. So in many ways this little record changed the face of 80s pop music and now every hipster on the planet is wise to the greatness of manufactured pop. I just like to think I was ahead of the curve.