Fantastic Day (7/5/13)

I gained a new Twitter follower this morning; that's 131 now.

This morning I was followed by Nick Heyward and this makes me very, very happy. I have no idea why Nick Heyward has chosen to follow me, I would like to think that it's due to my sparkling repartee but it's more likely that he's just a nice bloke who is being polite and refollowing. I've followed him for months. He is a genuinely nice bloke who posts positive, upbeat comments and cheerful photos. Whatever the reason for him following me I am, as I may have mentioned, very very happy about the fact.

It may not be a fashionable standpoint but I thought Nick Heyward was bloody great. I loved Haircut One Hundred. Their debut album (their only real album) Pelican West was an utterly blinding piece of sunshine dappled pop, parent to the sublime singles 'Love Plus One', 'Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl) and the quite brilliantly summery 'Fantastic Day'. The follow up, stand alone single 'Nobody's Fool' is as Beatles-y as you would want. They may not have been seen as alternative at the time, they may have been viewed as Smash Hits fodder but anybody with ears either side of their head knew that Haircut One Hundred made pretty damn great pop songs.

It's early 80s and, again, it's linked in with so much that happened at the time. I can tell you exactly who I was kissing in our local pub 'The Chaser' while Favourite Shirts played. But I'm not going to.

(As an aside, nobody realised at the time but Favourite Shirts was taken from a jam on Talking Heads' 'I Zimbra' - Talking Heads and Beatles, Nick knew what he was doing)

Love Plus One is that month spent in hospital in 1982 again. Tell you what, Radio 1 was bloody fantastic that month, that year, Pop was bloody great. Not like it is now. Not that I'm old or anything. I'm not saying it was better because I was younger, I'm saying it was better because. It. Was. Better. This is an empirical truth. I can prove it mathematically.

Fantastic Day was summer, just summer, all of it.

Then there was Nobody's Fool and then, suddenly there was no more, Nick Heyward went solo and put his first solo single out at the same time as Weller put out the first Style Council single. And he followed it up with a blinding little album 'North Of A Miracle'. Great pop songs, full on production, big sound care of Geoff Emerick who'd worked with The Beatles and Floyd (see? Nick knew exactly what he was doing).

That'd be summer 83. We saw him play in Sefton Park, a free gig, mix of new stuff and old stuff. The Scallies had gone there for a laugh, take the proverbial out of the pop star. The bottles started to rain down. The gig was curtailed. Which was a damn shame 'cause it was great. I saw him again years later, height of Britpop, bit of a comeback, two good albums, a good live set, new stuff and old, playing the Lomax, the old, small Lomax. A good night out.

I've no idea what he does nowadays but I do know that this morning, for whatever reason, he followed me on Twitter.

And that this made me very, very happy.

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