Friday's 40th five (no.51/80)

Week by week we're listing 5 tracks which were big music news in the charts, on your radio or even in your record collection 40 years ago, this week in 1980:

1. The Beat - Too Nice To Talk To In a fairly stagnant chart (with John Lennon outselling everything by several miles) this is the highest new entry this week down at no.31, and opening this week's Top of the Pops.

2. Specials - Do Nothing. Another new entry at no.34 and also on Top of the Pops this week.

3. The Clash - The Magnificent Seven. Their triple album Sandinista is a new entry this week at no.19 (Super Trouper manages to hold back John Lennon, dec.) 

4. In Camera - Co-Ordinates. Quirky indie track of the week, recorded for Peel session broadcast 16/12. Signed to 4AD.

5. Gary Numan - Photograph. Numan was back in the charts, and on TOTP, this week with the single This Wreckage, lifted from the Telekon album. This is the previously unreleased B side.

May 1980

Look, I know I've been through all this a thousand times before, but about this time of year in 1980 was when music started to get interesting for me. There were new records out by Gary Numan, The Human League and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, among others. Here's the evidence from Smash Hits (two editions in May 1980):

It's also the the time that Ian Curtis of Joy Division killed himself, which is a pity as I'm sure he would have appreciated some of this new music.