Patt Brett looks back over 37 years of SMILER Magazine and picks out his personal 8 best moments…What’s yours
1-A Spanner in the works, pre-release review
These days we hear lead singles months before an album arrives and 30 second samples of every song well ahead of release date…that’s not always been the case. I am sure we all remember listening to the radio waiting to hear a new song and maybe not even seeing a tracklist until you picked up the album in the store. Back in 1995 the main source of information about Rod’s work was Smiler and during 1994 we got some snippets about who was producing his next album and how recording was going. Then in April 1995 we received the Smiler newsletter– and it had a great review of the then as yet untitled new album. It was probably the best three pages of reading I had in years. John Gray’s descriptions were excellent, I could almost hear some of the songs from his brief outline. I was excited to see Windy Town feature, it being a Chris Rea classic, and the review really whetted the appetite for what was to come.
2-The Polls, Top 100
I love playing with numbers so the Top 100 songs poll in Issue 20 gave me hours of enjoyment, analysing which albums were best represented etc. Some of you around long enough might even recall when I ran my own Top 100 polls a few years later using the message boards and the Storyteller mailing list to seek votes. Those polls provided an interesting insight to what fans really liked.
3-The interviews with Rod himself. Always interesting, occasionally revealing, mostly tantalising about what may be coming.
To read the full list go to SMILER Retro