Stanley Frank - S’Cool Days/ On A Line –Power Exchange Records PX 247 (UK 1977)
This single is a HIT and boy does it ROCK! This release was sadly overlooked and didn’t get the airplay to make the charts or even achieve cult status…Perhaps it would have stood a better chance if it got released 3 years earlier as the guy’s hair wasn’t spiky enough for the times. The single is as close to perfection as you can get. The lyrics spell out TEENAGE RAMPAGE albeit delivered by a Canadian in his 20’s…The chorus is sprouted out à la Get Out Of Denver, so many words, so little time….There’s no air to breathe. The compressed handclaps and drums make this sound like a Mike Leander/ Vic Maile collaboration, … nothing is superfluous and everything counts: From the dut dut dut backing vocal mantra, the one note piano pounding, the driving guitars. The tune itself is killer- a hook-filled powerhouse of a single. Stanley Frank later released a cover of Cold Turkey and an album in 1980, but by then the urgency had gone. A one-off wonder to be cherished, shared and danced to! (you can find copies of this cheap on ebay -go for it!)
You can hear the song here: http://www.stanleyfrank.com/
9 comments:
My favourite edition of this is the one split with The Saints "I"m Stranded"... I suppose Power Exchange thought they'd stick 'all' (read: both) of their punky records together so they could ignore them both at once. Great single - used to see this in the cheapo box of Boots for months on end - I must've bought 10 copies to spread around my mates.
That's what I usually did when I found singles like this...It's harder to do these days!
Remember this single coming out. It got a sneery review in NME moaning that it wasn't 'punk' enough. I bought a copy from the bargain bin at my local record shop. Played it no end of times but couldn't get any mates interested. Just pulled it from my collection. Still sounds great.
I got this with the bizarre Saints coupling, primarily because I couldn't get hold of the Saints' single on its own.
I used to make compilations for my work mates and this got included in most of them and always went down well.
Haven't heard it in years and it certainly predates the sound the Cars used on My Best Friend's Girl
I love playing this track to those who don't know it, that's why I always try to keep spare copies
It's a great track that also has echoes of Wreckless Eric's Whole Wide World.
It's great being able to introduce little overlooked gems like this. I do the same with Michel Pagliaro's Lovin you Ain't Easy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHi3nwKTEzM
Just came across this. I produced and engineered that single. Glad you like it. BTW, those aren't hand-claps .... I had 3-4 of the back-up musicians stomp on a piece of plywood. Wanted to get some angry energy and stomping on the floor seemed more to the point than claps. Stanley is alive and well living in Ottawa, Canada singing and playing a lot but his angry days are in the distant past. Apparently S'cool days was a fav of Julian Lennon, so he said in a radio interview. People liked it in the UK, it went nowhere here in Canada.
We did a demo called Coming Down which may be on his web-site or somewhere. It was the 1st time I worked with him (did only the mix). That one is my fav, pure magic.
I first heard this in 1981 on our local free form radio station WZIR. Loved it! Bought the split version with the Saints soon after at the local used record store. I was surprised it wasn't more popular. I always wondered what happened. Finding info about these things was a lot tougher before the internet. Good to hear Stanley is still making music. Thanks for posting this!
The single didn't do well in Canada but it was released on another label in England and was one of the early punk hits. Someone told me that Julian Lennon mentioned the song as one of his favorites in a radio interview years back.
Post a Comment