Returning with Pilot

Sometimes and only sometimes I may just touch on something to do with music although to an extent my brain catalogues events and happenings to music and in that scheme of things I can remember the music we talked about in what was my last year in Juniors well.

As with any number of years there are new artists whose initial impression leads to predictions of greater things which for various reasons do not pan out regardless of how talented they may of been.

In that year while Bachman Turner-Overdrive had a big hit in the UK with You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet and I sat in the corner of front room knees showing through grey shorts playing it and several other hits back on a reel of tape with things like the Rubettes Juke Box Jive and Oh Yes! You're Beautiful, although the BTO were big in Canada and the States they never took of here.

Also while many predictions were made for the teen group Arrows signed to the successful Mickey Most label Rak Records home of Mud, they never got a hit bigger than that Summers A Touch Too Much.

There was another group who got a bit further and that was Scotland's Pilot formed in 1973 in Edinburgh not far from the Bay City Rollers  by Billy Lyall and David Paton and indeed at one point were substitute members of the BCR and in Arrows supplemented by Stuart Tosh on drums and John Cavanagh who were joined on a permanent basis  by Ian Bairnson after recording their first album.

Their first hit single was Magic which was issued around late October 1974 and reached number 11 in the UK charts although Just A Smile had been issued first but sunk like a stone except in Australia where it had got to number 49.

By this point that first album "From The Album Of The Same Name" was issued by Britain's EMI Records which I still have on record but in time for the New Year a new single aptly called January was issued that month in 1975 that was a number 1 for a few weeks, something that was talked about over semolina pudding and strawberry jam school dinners.

We all though they'd hit the big time and were going to be up there with the Rollers replacing midlanders Slade and that track was included on the second album entitled "Second Fight", bit of an obvious pun if you think about it.

The lead off single for that album was Call Me Round which we though was going to another big hit with the advantage of been chosen by a BBC Radio 1 presenter for his pick of the week.

Strangely enough that track which was a strong song with a hypnotic handclap only got as far as number 34 backed with the deep album track Do Me Good.

A new recording shortly afterwards of Just A Smile didn't trouble the chart much more and so the last album for EMI Morin Heights named after the Quebec recording studios location released in 1976 was just about it as as most pop fans were concerned even though that was a good mature album.

The final album for a new label Two's A Crowd issued in 1977 in the middle of the New Wave explosion just did nothing and soon went out of print.

Recently Cherry Red Records issued a box set of all four albums including believe it or not for the first time ever on cd of Two's A Crowd with extra notes and some singles only versions and having only the first two albums on record and a EMI compilation from 2004 is much appreciated.