A copy of Smash Hits from 1986…

Yes, exactly 26 years after it was first published, this beautiful specimen of the World’s Greatest Ever Pop Magazine flopped onto my doormat from a temporal wormhole. (OK, I bought it off eBay, but it might as well have come through a wormhole…)

Look at it… A perfectly crafted piece of publishing history, from the time when Ver Hits was at its peak, featuring the first part of the Madonna Story (whatever happened to her, I wonder?), songwords from We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Gonna Use It, Chas ‘n’ Dave And The Matchroom Boys and Spitting Image.

There were posters of the Bangles, a-ha, and um, Ian McCulloch… as well as a 3-quarter spread on the band Win, featuring the lyrics for their song “Shampoo Tears”… Now, you may be saying “Who?”, but Win made one of the Best Albums You’ve Never Heard, …Uh! Tears Baby.. (A Trash Icon). Seek it out. You won’t regret it.

I’ve forgotten how much they used to cram into those 70-odd pages - Bitz, Happenings, Get Smart, and not forgetting the Letters page, presided over by “Dame” Black “Black Type” Type, ackcheloi…

But what really amazes me is the sheer breadth of music covered by the magazine, everything from Echo and the Bunnymen and Sade to Doctor and the Medics and the B-52s. There was no snootiness, no elitism, just coverage of everyone who was or might be someone, and often loving disrespect and bubble-bursting. I often think we need Smash Hits more now than we ever did. Imagine the fun they could have had with Sir Lady “Ga”Ga,  or Dame Simon of Cowell?

Come back, Smash Hits… You’re our only hope… 

This is the artwork for Jean Michel Jarre’s 1981 album, Magnetic Fields…

And this is the artwork for Chicane’s new album, Thousand Mile Stare…

Weird, huh?

Put them together and what have you got?

On October 1st this year, I joined a few thousand other people on a nighttime walk around London to raise money for Cancer Research UK, known as Shine. We eventually started off at about 9pm and wandered for 26 and a bit miles (and then a bit more) around the capital. For most of the time I had my wonderful friends in the TwitterShineTeam with me, but we all thinned out, and I didn’t want to hold anyone back.

So, at around 6am, I was wandering back alone through Greenwich. I could see the spires of the O2 just in the distance and the sky was lightening up quickly. The road seemed to be stretching off into the distance and no matter how much I walked, that dome didn’t seem to be getting closer.

And then I turned a corner and onto Mudlarks Boulevard, running alongside the Thames up to the O2. At that point the sun finally rose over the Thames Barrier…

And then, and then, a song came onto my iPod…

To mark the Millennium, Jean Michel Jarre put on a concert in Egypt called The 12 Dreams of the Sun and as the sun rose in Egypt, he played a track called “The Sun”.

And by some weird coincidence that is the track my iPod decided to play as the sun rose and I hobbled back to the O2 in the early morning sunshine…