Clearly, the best photo of Les Chappell + Lene Lovich, non?
I had something previously planned out for today’s post but that all went by the wayside when my wife emailed me a photo this morning with the subject line: “Lene Lovich with an eye patch.” I opened up the email only to find I’d been Rickrolled by my wife. The photo was actually a recent pic of Madonna! I hope it’s the only time you will ever see her grim visage on PPM as shown below.
That is so… obvious… it staggers my mind
My sweetheart wrote: “Ha, ha, ha!!!! Tricked you! It’s really Madonna trying to stay relevant…….” At which point I had to send this to chasinvictoria, and before you knew it, we went down the Lene Lovich rabbit hole… and the weather’s just fine! I posited to chasinvictoria, that I one day needed to collect all of the weird, wild Lene Lovich material that scampered out of the Balkans before her proper solo career began with a bang at Stiff Records in 1978. That leaves us the following records of interest.
The Diversions were the first band to have LL [and Les Chappell] involvement
ntercord | GER | 7″ | 1975 | 76.11 704
The Diversions: Fatty Bum-Bum GER 7″ [1975]
- Fatty Bum-Bum
- Jamaica
Gull | GER | 7″ | 1976 | 22 399-0 N
The Diversions: But Is It Funky GER 7″ [1976]
- But Is It Funky
- To Make Us Happy
Once again, the B-side was written by Judge with Lovich + Chappell. She’s probably not singing lead on it.
Polydor | UK | 7″ | 1976 | 2058 794
The Diversions: Raincheck UK 7″ [1976]
- Raincheck
- Disco Limbo
This last single had no Lovich writing credits. Who knows if she’s even on this one, but notice that the band had made the leap from Gull/Intercord to Polydor UK. Major time.
Polydor | UK | 7″ | 1976 | 2058 781
The Commandos: The Bump UK 7″ [1976]
- The Bump
- Drop In Some Time
Finally, the fourth Diversions single was not a Diversions single at all. But the band recording under the nom-du-disque of Commandos. This may have gotten released before the single above as I can smell the band operating incognito until they could extricate themselves from their Gull contract for a chance with Polydor. But that’s just my theory.
Polydor | UK | 7″ | 1976| 2058 812
Lene Lovich: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus UK 7″ [1976]
- I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
- The Christmas song [Merry Christmas To You]
- Happy Christmas
Finally, now signed to Polydor UK, Lene got a chance at her first solo single. This Christmas themed EP will set you back a pretty penny, but in addition to Lene covering two standards, she and Les wrote the original B-side, “Happy Christmas.” Even then they knew it pays to have an original B-side for a cover single for maximizing royalties. For years, that’s all I knew of for primordial Lene Lovich, but today I discovered the next single was released in Switzerland in 1978, probably recorded just before she got her solo deal with Stiff.
EMI | SWITZERLAND | 7″ | 1978 | 13c 006-76017
Roy Taylor’s Bad Taste: S.E.X. As Advertised SWITZERLAND 7″ [1978]
- S.E.X. As Advertised
- 4 O’Clock In The Morning
Once again the roles of Lene + Les are sax + vox – guitar
More than this about this record, I can’t say. Has anyone heard this? It had a 1978 release date, but I can’t help thinking that it could have been recorded earlier. This doesn’t take into account all of LL’s lyric writing for mostly French and even American disco bands of the late 70s. Everyone should know Cerrone’s “Supernature,” but there are other [weird] nooks and crannies for that “Lene Lovich Disco” post one day.
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Post-Punk Monk 
I love me some Lene (OK, I love me a LOT of Lene!), but that Xmas single is really weird, and not my favorite. I think it’s mostly cuz of the helium vocals, and it’s all sort of meandering and snoozy. Never heard of any of the other songs, but I’m intrigued (based on name of artist and song titles) by Roy Taylor’s Bad Taste! That’s gotta be some good shit.
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Taffy – Interesting to hear your guarded take on the Lene xmas single. I’ve not bothered to hear it and the likelihood of snagging a copy [unless I get stupid lucky] is fairly low, so many thanks for the word of caution. I also am crazy for Lene, but not “crazy.” The best thing abpout Roy Taylor’s Bad Taste? No Roy Taylor in the band at all! That loooks like Charles Bronson [sort of] on the so mid-70s it hurts cover.
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How is it possible, O Monk, that our mutual friend “Artie Mondello” does not have a copy of this based on the title and photo alone?
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The “Smith” credit on the Diversions singles is not Lene’s musician friend Chris Judge Smith, but Jeff Smith from the Diversions, who later also played on the Roy Taylor’s Bad Taste single, and on Stateless and New Toy/No Man’s Land. He was also used as musician for the “Mata Hari” play (written by Chris Judge Smith, Lene Lovich and Les Chappell).
The Commandos single was actually released shortly before “Raincheck”.
Prior to the Diversions, Lene and Les had played in some other bands that haven’t released anything.
The Roy Taylor’s Bad Taste single was a one-off record they had done in order to raise some money for something (I’m going to complete the information once I’ll come across the source again). The title track “S.e.x. as Advertised” has a very modern electronic sound that wasn’t yet necessarily very common by 1978. Lene does some singing and talking on the title track, and saxophone playing on “4 o’clock in the Morning”. Why it was released in Switzerland is beyond my knowledge. Strangely, it also came out in Brazil in 1985 (this release didn’t have a generic sleeve).
About the Christmas single and its second b-side track “Happy Christmas” (by Lovich-Chappell), Lene says: “Yes, there’s no problem about that. Various people have tried to make me embarrassed about that but I’m not because there’s a story behind it. When we were with Diversions we were with a company called Polydor. They signed us up, gave us some money and then washed their hands of us. The person who signed us was the head of the A & R department and he left six months later. Nobody was concerned about us or wanted to know we had a hard time making ends meet and we found ourselves running out of money. So we devised a plan whereby we could get some more money. What we did was… both myself and the lead singer of the Diversions managed to get ourselves a solo singles deal with Polydor. So I thought, “What will Polydor fall for? What is the sort of thing they’d really dig?” We came up with the idea of doing this corny Christmas song. It’s kind of a cute song and I quite like it. In fact, what we did, in order to have some kind of creative credit to the record, we – without Polydor knowing of course – when the session finished, Les and I, just the two of us, quickly whipped off what we considered to be our own Christmas effort. It’s called “Happy Christmas” and we felt it was more us. I played the violin, Les played mandolin and we had synthesisers.” (from Hot Wacks magazine, 1979)
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Josh Black – Welcome to the comments! Wow! That’s some heaping load of insight. I assumed that the “Smith” credit was the stalwart Chris Judge-Smith and therein lay my trap. And yes, if a band is starving for a cash injection, an xmas single is not the worst step one may take. I still hear XTC’s/The Three Wise Men’s “Thanks For Christmas” all over in American grocery stores during the season and it can’t hurt the band’s bottom line on royalties. Pop bands with an xmas single may get the best airplay of their entire existence. And three cheers for having a blog devoted solely to Lene Lovich, who deserves at least a half dozen. I need to read carefully on the “Stateless” versions. I thought there were two mixes but now I’m not so sure. I ordered the duo disc version allegedly released by Flex Music, [along with the Flex2 box] but of course they never arrived.
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I’m sorry, I meant the Brazilian release of the Roy Taylor’s Bad Taste single didn’t have a picture sleeve (not “generic sleeve”), unlike the original Swiss release.
Thank you. The blog will be transferred to a proper website soon.
Yes, that was a smart move from XTC, but Lene wouldn’t have done it in her own career. It was just because the Diversions weren’t her own band anyway. She also speaks about the Christmas single on that 2019 Q&A bit (BBC 6music) of which I’ve written down the transcript for the blog.
The Diversions also recorded an album called Soul Survivors around late 1976, for 1977 release, The cover photo was already taken (all of them in a dinghy at a reservoir) but Polydor decided not to release the album.
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I saw Lene Lovich sing Lucky Number in a club in Glasgow around 1975(76) … if anyone can tell me the date … I only recognised it years later when it was released.
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Hello John, In answer to your question, The Diversions never played in Glasgow in 1975. However, in 1976, they played at the Savoy Centre on April 30th and at the Apollo Centre on June 12th. Let me know if you attended one or both. It’s very interesting that the funk / soul band played ‘Lucky Number’.
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STEVEN WRIGHT – Welcome to the comments! So “Lucky Number” was in the bag that early, eh? Fascinating, Captain.
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Thank you. According to John Lee it was. If so, I would have thought it was a bit different to the versions we know to fit in with the band’s sound.
If would be nice to know if David Bycroft has listened to The Diversions’ white label LP.
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No not had a chance to play it yet. I’ve around 8,000 records and I’ve lost it among them. Will give it a play when I find it.
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David Bycroft – A familiar sounding tale!
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I hope you find it. I have a good number of titles from when they gigged. So I’m sure the 9 will be among them. Keep me posted please, as I’m very interested in what tracks are on it.
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Will do. Could you list the songs you know they sang to make it easier for me to identify the ones on the LP? Dave.
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It would really be better if you had the album at hand to begin with. I’m writing a book on The Diversions and it would be nice to speak to you privately if you didn’t mind please?
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Pingback: Collecting Lene Lovich Marginalia [part 1] | Post-Punk Monk
I had no idea Ms. Lovich wrote the lyrics for “Supernature,” which is one of my favorite singles from that wacked-out parellel dimension that is Eurodisco.
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Michael Toland – There are a lot of fascinating nooks and crannies to Ms. Lovich’s career.
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The Diversions actually recorded a LP for Polydor in 1976. It had 9 tracks. It reached the test pressing stage but was not released. The cat. number was Polydor 2383-442 I have a copy but don’t have a track listing.
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David Bycroft – Welcome to the comments! So I’ll assume you are a Lene Lovich superfan if you have The Diversions test pressing! Or are you a Van Der Graaf Generator superfan?
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Hi no I wouldn’t call myself a Lene super fan although I’ve seen perform a few times. The first being at Leeds in 78. I’m just a record collector that came across this album recently, so recently I’ve still yet to play it. I do have all her other releases including the hard to find Christmas single which I picked up for 4.99
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David Bycroft – Kudos on paying the correct amount for that Lene Christmas single!
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