Way back in my pre-teens, in the days before “now that’s what I call Music” compilation albums, there used to be a series called “Top of the poppers”, generally found in the cheap bins in Woolys. Today, we’d call them cover versions, but they were more like full blown impersonations, intended to sound as close as possible to the original record. They achieved this with varying degrees of success, & sometimes abject failure. The albums never mentioned the name of the artist, or indeed any artist.

Our local Odeon had one of these for interval music with Booker T’s “Time is Tight”, which whilst a passable imitation didn’t have the flair or gut wrenching Leslie work of the original.

Anyway, I thought that these cheesy copies had gone the way of spangles and Ski yoghurt pots, but I was surprised to find ASDA selling triple themed CDs for £4.72 (or some equally odd amount). I bought one, not actually realising it was session musicians, as the artists were actually listed. However on playing it, I realised it was a clone fairly quickly and on examining the sleev, noticed it said “as made famous by” abouve the artist. Trouble is, you get compilation albums free with papers, so the actual worth of the real tracks must be pence. As P.T. Barnum said, “there’s a sucker born every minute” and I fell for it. This way to the egress…