Not too long ago on this 'ere blog, I flagged up Marshall Hain's "Dancing In The City" as being a one hit wonder from my childhood which brought me endless pleasure... now it's time for another one...



For verily (as Sir Jimmy Saville might say) it is The Look on Top of the Pops with their sole hit single "I Am The Beat". It would seem that there are two bands called "The Look" - one is a Detroit based supergroup, who this lot most definitely aren't. Who these blokes are I'm really none too sure. They're a band who appeared to have been more or less erased from musical history, without even a brief Wikipedia mention to their name. However, I can reveal the following facts:

a/ MCA issued "I Am The Beat" as being the world's first infinite single. The run out grooves played the end refrain repetitively in a loop until you chose to either lift the arm of the needle, eject the record, your needle wore down, or there was some sort of power cut, possibly caused by a nuclear war years in the future. A completely pointless and actually downright irritating gimmick, of course, as I highly doubt anybody actually kept the record revolving for 24 hours chanting "beat" to themselves and clapping their hands in a crazed manner, not unless they were attempting some sort of early eighties New Wave hypnosis.

b/ The Look had one follow up single, "Feeding Time", which bothered the top 75 briefly. I heard it once as a child, and now can't remember it. Sorry. The album both tracks are from received an extremely positive review from Smash Hits, announcing to the world that fans of Squeeze and XTC in particular would love the contents of the disc, but I've never seen a copy anywhere, and therefore cannot verify this.

c/ The Look seemed to be part of a whole slurry of slightly retro bands riding The Jam's coat-tails during this period - along with The Lambrettas, Secret Affair, The Dots, etc. etc. most of whom are barely ever heard these days, but did indeed trouble the top ten quite seriously (well, The Lambrettas and Secret Affair managed, anyway).

The video clip above has dreadful sound, so if you really want to hear the magic for yourself, click on the video-less YouTube clip below. For my money, it's further evidence that the present set of XFM approved bands rolling through really could have existed in 1981 or 1982 without anyone batting an eyelid - but I can see why I loved this track so much when I was barely out of short trousers. It's a tremendously insistent, pounding tune, and it's actually extremely surprising it's so seldom heard now.