IT All Began

Welcome to Golden Days. My name is Nigel and I live in Nottingham UK with my wife Catherine, though I was born and raised in Wrexham, North Wales. I first became interested in popular music at the age of eleven, when on the day of leaving the primary school in July 1973, I untypically watched the TV show 'Top Of The Pops'. I say untypically because even though my parents sometimes watched it, I was never bothered about watching it myself. On this particular Friday, my friend Clive and I were playing Monopoly until he announced that he was going to go home to watch Top Of The Pops. I didn't really want to watch it, but as I was in quite a commanding position in the game of Monopoly, I didn't want Clive to leave without finishing the game. So I said that he could watch Top Of The Pops at our house, and I prepared for 40 minutes of boredom. But, featured as a new release on that weeks show was the new single from 'Gary Glitter'. It was called "I'm the leader of the gang (I am)". It changed my life ! I had to have that record. So I asked my Mum for an advance on my pocket money (allowance) and bought it. Two weeks later it was at number one in the UK chart where it stayed for four weeks. My life would never be the same again. Over the next few months I bought records by Suzi Quatro, Wizzard, Mott The Hoople etc. Then in 1974 (by which time Top Of The Pops had returned to it's more usual Thursday night), Queen came along with "Seven Seas Of Rhye". This was different and I've been a fan of the band since that Thursday evening when they were first featured on Top Of The Pops. I have so much Queen info that I would like to feature, but I just haven't got around to doing it yet. One day it will be here, I just can't say when.

I REMEMBER A CHART FROM THIS WEEK IN HISTORY

I launched my REMEMBER WHEN page in January 1997, and renamed it NIGEL REMEMBERS In July 2000. Each week on this page, I have featured a UK top 40 from this week in one of the years between 1973-1984. I have also included my own commentary on each song. Some of the commentary is fact, some is useless trivia, while some is just about what was going on in my own life at that time. The reason I chose that particular timeframe is that even though I do know approx 80% of the hit singles from the ten years prior to 1973, I don't actually remember them being hits, so I don't see any point in commenting on them. As for 1984 being the cut off point - To me, 1984 was the last truly great year for music. True that 1985's 'Live Aid'concert was one of the greatest moments in musical history, it's a concert that could not be bettered by substituting today's most popular acts for the acts taking part that day. But brilliant though it was, music seemed to go into slow decline from then on. I will not rule out the possibility of featuring the years 1985-1987 at some point in the future as (I repeat), it was a slow decline. But I don't see any possibility at all of my going beyond that. 1987 saw the introduction of House Music to the chart, and Tuesday 20th January 1987 was a very sad day for music. It was the day that Steve 'Silk' Hurley hit number one with "Jack Your Body". I can still barely believe that such an awful noise could get to the summit of the UK Chart. Later in the year something just as bad repeated the trick, "Pump Up The Volume" by M.A.R.R.S. I had always been a fan of dance music, but that changed during those last 3 years of the 80s. As 1988 rolled in, the chart began to get dominated by these awful noises that made me feel irritable (and dare I say Violent ?) every time I heard them, and the chart has remained in this state ever since.

On 30th April 2000 , I relaunched this site after a year's rest (will explain later), and wanted to do something slightly different. So from then, The NIGEL REMEMBERS page each week featured the chart from this week 25 years ago. This way, I can eventually comment on every chart hit from my Golden Days era. You can still of course access the NIGEL REMEMBERS ARCHIVES for charts from other years, and I hope to have completed commentary on all of the hits from 1973 - 1975 by the end of 2000. My ultimate aim is to include every chart from January 1973 - December 1984.

THE NOSTALGIA CHART

Even though the REMEMBER WHEN page is the most popular section of my site, the NOSTALGIA CHART is my favourite secion. As I mentioned above, I have been addicted to music since 1973, and have also been fascinated by the charts. In those early days the charts were a lot different than they are today in the UK. Singles would enter the charts at a low position and gradually move up towards the top. Only extremely popular acts would enter the chart inside the top five, in fact any record that entered inside the top ten would be expected to reach number one. New entries at number one were very rare before 1989. Not including the very first UK number one, only four singles entered the chart at number one between 1952 and 1972. Another four did it in 1973 and then no more until 1980. It happened ten more times between then and 1989 before all hell broke loose. It happens almost every week these days, and the charts are no longer interesting. Personally, I do not think the reason for this is because the quality of music has got better. I feel that the reason is the complete opposite. Record companies now release all of their new singles on a Monday so that it gets the full weeks sales in the first week of release. Add to this the fact that Chart return shops seem to sell the new release at a vastly reduced price (sometimes 70's prices) during the first week of release. Add to that, the fact that new singles (and their promo videos) are released to the media as much as three months prior to release, and you can see why records now debut so high. Think for a minute. Enormously popular acts such as ABBA, ROD STEWART, T.REX, ROLLING STONES, DONNY OSMOND and the BAY CITY ROLLERS never entered the singles chart at the top. The BEATLES only did it once, as did CLIFF RICHARD, THE POLICE and DURAN DURAN. ELVIS did it twice, QUEEN also did it twice, but that was only when it had become commonplace.

Going back to the mid 70's when it was like a religion for me to listen to the new charts each week and write down the positions of all the records. I was at a loose end one day and decided to make my own chart each week. The records positions were decided by certain combinations of playing cards that were dealt out after shuffling. I carried on playing such games for the remainder of my childhood. Towards the end of 1996, the idea struck me that I could do it again and put it right here on the net. So that's what I've been doing since the beginning of 1997.

How It works
I've worked out a system that uses the previous weeks chart position, the previous weeks movement in the chart and the random factor of 3 throws of a dice. New releases get points based on the highest position of their previous three singles. A deduction is made from these points if the track is already available on an album. The Album chart uses a similar system, but albums also get bonus points if the act involved has a title on the singles chart (more if the single is on that particular album). Only records that I have in my collection are elligible for my chart (I have a very broad taste in music), and some titles in the singles chart will not have been released as singles in the "real world". The reason for this being that back in the (good) old days it was very rare for more than two singles to be milked from any one album, so there were so many classic tracks that never saw chart action.
This is the complicated bit - We moved house at the end of April 1999. It was even more stressful than these things usually are anyway. Even after the move, we were told that a mistake had been made, so it was the last day of July before we knew that we could definitely stay here. As a result of those circumstances, I stopped updating this site. By the time the situation became computer friendly, I was left with far too much catching up to do. So, I decided to suspend my updates until exactly a year after the last NOSTALGIA CHART (well, a year and a week actually). That is why in the stats section of the NOSTALGIA CHART you will see the date 99-00 for any songs that charted between Jan - April 1999 or May-Dec 2000.

THE NOSTALGIA CHART INDEX

I REMEMBER A CHART FROM THIS WEEK IN HISTORY WITH COMMENTARY