Now listen

Yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of the release of the first Now That's What I Call Music compilation. I own a copy, look, there's my copy over to the left. Funny out of all the records I've owned in the past, that one has stuck with me. I didn't even particularly want it. I was just getting interested in music at the time - I was twelve going on thirteen - and what I actually wanted was a compilation issued as a tie-in with the BBC's Mike Read-fronted Saturday Superstore programme. The reason I wanted that LP was because it contained a track called Love is a Wonderful Colour by a band called The Icicle Works. My sister was an assistant in a record shop at the time and was tasked by my parents to purchase this Saturday Superstore release. As it turns out, they'd sold out of Saturday Superstore so she took it on herself to buy Now... instead. When I unwrapped the parcel on Christmas Day she explained what had happened and passed it off with a "That's miles better, anyway". As it happens, it was miles better. It was through this album that my love for Simple Minds first manifested itself, a love that's held firm, through thick, thin and Street Fighting Years, to this day. Their track Waterfront is included, which I'm guessing was Virgin's way of getting the band some publicity for their new album as the blurb on the sleeve just says "Released from their forthcoming LP and cassette", which was issued in February 1984.
But what else is on there? Well, two tracks each buy Kajagoogoo (no. 1 hit Too Shy and the single Big Apple which made the Top 10 after they booted out Limahl. Limahl's first solo effort, Only For Love, is also on here) and UB40 (Red Red Wine, one of my most hated songs of all time and something called Please Don't Make Me Cry). There's Will Powers' Kissing With Confidence (rotten), Men at Work's Down Under (Oh dear), and Hey You the Rock Steady Crew by, er The Rock Steady Crew, to name but a few.
Leaving out Culture Club's Karma Chameleon - a massive no.1 in 1983 - is perhaps a bit of an oversight (although not in my book, I've always thought it's a terrible record), it was ditched in favour of, in my view, a far superior single, Victims. Whoever wrote the blurb on the sleeve was perhaps a bit optimistic though as it claims that Victims is "Almost certain to be no. 1 by the time you have this". It never reached no. 1, stalling at no.3.
What I'll never understand is why one of my favourite hits of 1983 was missed off: David Bowie's Let's Dance. It should have been a shoo-in, what with The Dame being signed to EMI at the time. Perhaps he refused its inclusion, but I don't know why he'd resist, what with him going for an all-out pop sound at the time.
I find it kind of comforting that they're still being released and still selling in healthy numbers on what we'd these days call 'physical format'. I've just bought my sister's eleven year-old Now 86 for Christmas. That's the same sister who took it upon herself to buy Now... instead of Saturday Superstore back in 1983.
I guess it's a good job I didn't get Mike Read's Saturday Superstore album, or Simple Minds might just be 'another Eighties group' to me today. I did have Mike Read's Pop Quiz board game though. It was crap.



The tracklist in full:

1 You Can't Hurry Love	Phil Collins
2 Is There Something I Should Know	Duran Duran
3 Red Red Wine	UB40
4 Only For Love	Limahl
5 Temptation	Heaven 17
6 Give It Up	KC And The Sunshine Band
7 Double Dutch	Malcolm McLaren
8 Total Eclipse Of The Heart	Bonnie Tyler
9 Karma Chameleon	Culture Club
10 The Safety Dance	Men Without Hats
11 Too Shy	Kajagoogoo
12 Moonlight Shadow	Mike Oldfield
13 Down Under	Men At Work
14 (Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew (1983 Recording)	Rock Steady Crew
15 Baby Jane	Rod Stewart
16 Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)	Paul Young
17 Candy Girl	New Edition
18 Big Apple	Kajagoogoo
19 Let's Stay Together	Tina Turner
20 (Keep Feeling) Fascination	The Human League
21 New Song	Howard Jones
22 Please Don't Make Me Cry	UB40
23 Tonight, I Celebrate My Love	Peabo Bryson & Roberta Flack
24 They Don't Know	Tracey Ullman
25 Kissing With Confidence	Will Powers
26 That's All	Genesis
27 The Lovecats	The Cure
28 Waterfront	Simple Minds
29 The Sun And The Rain	Madness
30 Victims	Culture Club