The group came from North London in the U.K, please check out the Links, Hi-Tension were followed by several UK acts over the coming few years.
Probably my Favorites were Level 42 whom I saw in concert some 25 years ago, they really had 2 sides to their Music, the before the " UK Charts" and the after!
Which was the Best, that's your choice!
My choice, probably the earlier stuff, but they had some great Singles too!
Anybody want to listen to some Great Brit Funk tracks, look to end of this Post, A Selection of Tracks by Siart, called Fuzzy Dice or go to Dazling Soul's Website, where you can listen to 2 Great BritFunk Mixes or Download them to your P.C!
We were now into Spring time in 1978, Dates I must admit are a bit vague around this time, as we had alot of things happening around this time!
As Susan was Pregnant and due Early September, we had alot of things to sort out "where to live" "marriage" and of course our "Baby"
We arranged to get Married in July, nowadays it seems nobody gets Married, but just live together!, but back then, it was completely different, although we had already talked about Marriage, the event of Susan being Pregnant, speeded everything up!
Both Families were not Happy, to say the least! my Mum didnt like Susan, my Dad was alright to her, Susan thought the same of both of them! I didnt like Susan's Dad, but did like her Mum, and basically that's how it was back then, and how it has been for most of our lives!
Susan's Mum was the only one, that was always alright to us!
It was also around this time that we found out, that the Promised Rented Property we had hoped to move into, fell through!
So now we had no where to live, Susan was about 5/6 months Pregnant and we were getting Married in about 2 month's time!
1978 had some Great Vinyl, including Debut Albums from "Raydio, "Atlantic Starr, " Rick James, and it was also the start of "BRIT FUNK" with the release of the Debut Album from "Hi Tension! At last the UK had an answer to all the Soul/ Funk Music from the USA!
Over the coming years the UK had some Great Bands and Albums, I will doing being a Blog entry concerning "Brit Funk" in the future!
Check out the Player below, I have put a few of my Favorite Tracks from the above Albums!
We were now into 1978, and plenty of changes were going to happen this Year for me and Susan. I was still working and going to College on day release, and Susan was about 2 months pregnant!
We started thinking about where we were going to live when the Baby was born, I cleary remember earning £21 per week, and the average Price of a small House was about £5,000, so we needed help from somewhere!
Both sets of Parents said they would help us out if the others were helping, so we started looking at small Houses for sale, we eventually found a nice little house in our Town, it was valued at £4,000 so we needed a Mortgage, we spoke to several different Lenders, and they all said the same....... as I was still a Trainee Chef and not Qualified, nobody would lend us anything! If by this time I had been a Qualified Chef, I wondered what would have happened to us, our lives would have probably been completely different!
Anyway to cut a long story short, neither of the Parents would help us either, mainly because they didnt like each other, so we were left to get on with finding other ways to find somewhere to live with our soon to be born Baby!
As it turned out Susan's younger Brother had a friend who in a few months time had a Private Rented Property to let, so we were sorted! or we thought we were!
Probably over the course of about 35 years, the one Artist/Singer I have brought more Music than any other, is my Favorite and in my opinion the Greatest Soul Singer of all time.........AL GREEN
The first Album I purchased was "Greatest Hits" back in 1975, by this time AG had already been releasing Albums for 8 years, This was his 11th Album release, I believe! see Album covers and links below.
After I purchased that first Album, I had to go and buy all previous releases, but as I said previously I lived in a fairly small Town, so getting hold of older Records was quite hard to do, luckily I had a Friend who worked in Wolsey and Woolsey Record shop in Town , so I used to order from him, I also by now was buying the Soul Music Magazine "Blues and Soul" so Mail Order from there as well!
I had soon brought all of the albums, which most of them, still have in my loft and obviously now I have most of them again on CD's!
See a selection of my Favorite Tracks from the Albums, at the end of this post!
