Image “borrowed” from britishrecordshoparchive.org
I spent a few days that summer at the head office of Laurie Krieger’s empire in Kenton – I’m pretty sure that was the first of what turned out to be many accounting “gigs” there in the 1980s. I have written more about it in a 1983 posting, as I spent more time there in 1983, by which time various Krieger ventures were hotting-up.
In 1982 I think I was mostly looking at accounts for Price Buster Records, which was Laurie’s sole surviving record store from the recently sold Harlequin Records empire. At that time, Laurie’s son Paul ran Price Buster.
My 1982 memories are two-fold. One was the kind gesture from Laurie with guest passes for the Sandown Park races, covered in the piece linked here and below:
The other is a memory recovered when I looked at a unusual batch of seven singles in my collection from 1982. I didn’t tend to buy singles and I wouldn’t have bought this batch.
Then I remembered that I won that batch while at Laurie’s Kenton HQ.
Marge, who ran that office, was addicted to Radio London almost as much as she was addicted to cigarettes. In particular, she loved Robbie Vincent‘s afternoon show, which was mostly a phone-in show back then. I found myself able to close my ears to most of the phone-in stuff back then – now 40 years later I’d probably be distracted (or driven to distraction) by it.
The one distraction that became compulsory, though, was a pop quiz thing, where people were encouraged to be ready with their phones and phone in if they knew the answer. Once Marge and Jean worked out that I regularly tended to know the answer to such questions, they got busy dialling all-but the last number and trying to get me through to Radio London to grab the prize on air. One day, they got through, I answered the question, promoted Price Buster by stating that I was working there and I scored a batch of singles.
Marge was so thrilled by the win (and the publicity), it rather cemented my role there as a holiday-job-ista and latterly as a trainee accountant working on that account. Laurie liked my connection with Uncle Michael and his team liked me. Result in more ways than one.
“So precisely which singles did you score in the summer of 1982?” I hear you cry.
- That’s A Lady, Shock USA
- Rock Baby Rock, Gene Latter
- Theme From Paradise, Phoebe Cates
- Planet Rock, Africa Bambaata and the Soul Sonic Force
- Love Come Down, Evelyn “Champagne” King
- No Love, Joan Armatrading
- European Female, The Stranglers
Not a bad mini-collection. One or two misses, one or two absolute bangers. Here they are as an embedded playlist:
One thought on “Winner, Winner, Radio London Pop Quiz Winner, Seven Singles – Summer 1982”