February 1973

A free gift was sure to entice me to purchase a comic and as I got older a free gift was sure to entice me to purchase a pop newspaper especially if it included some Alice Cooper band music.The LP Billion Dollar Babies hadn’t yet been released at this point. I’d loved the School’s Out single the previous summer and had purchased and been amazed at the quality of the earlier LPs Love it to death and Killer.
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The flexidisc

The free flexidisc contained extracts of 5 tracks from the forthcoming LP and an unreleased track made especially for Britain ?!? entitled Slick Black Limousine. Not the greatest song they ever recorded, but the front cover proclaimed that it would never ever be available anywhere else, so a collector’s item no? This remained true until the release, circa 2001 of the deluxe CD version of B$B. Copies of the flexi currently change hands on eBay and Amazon for a mere £2 – £5.

Page two lists the Top 30 singles and LPs as at 30th January 1973 both here and in the States. It’s amazing that most of those UK Top 30 singles are still so well known today and (apart from Gary Glitter and the late great Judge Dread… for two different reasons….) feature regularly on the Oldies radio stations. Most of the USA singles were familiar to me too. The only one I had to look up was the one hit wonders “Brighter side of darkness”.
I still own 20 of those Top 30 UK singles and 15 of those Top 30 UK LPs that I purchased at the time.
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This article amused me especially when he said:
“I do not believe I have heard a group sound so untogether and so unprofessional on a record before.”
Punk was just around the corner and if his shop was still in business in 1977 then he’d really hear unprofessional!!!
I purchased that Saturnalia LP in 1973 based on the hype of 1st ever picture disc etc. The music wasn’t THAT bad but it certainly was odd. The lyrics and the female singer were old-school folk and the music was “rock” which was a strange mix that sounded nothing at all like the then-popular folk-rock of Steeleye Span etc but sometimes worked.