It’s summertime and the beaches of Europe not only all look the same but they sound the same, too (Abba and Van McCoy). It’s only on holiday, moving round the Rivieras of France and Italy and Spain, that you feel the true power of disco, as in club after club and bar after bar, the hi-hats go hi-hat and the violins chunk and the youth of the old world stare at their bare tanned feet. Mindless music for mindless days and the only exhilarating thing is that this year we British are the brownest people in the sea and I never felt so cool before. t

Back 'home, of course, they’re sweating. The reservoirs are dry, nothing grows and there’s no ease except in five inches of bath water (all that’s allowed) waiting for this summer’s single. It’s the only time of year when a record really does blast out of every car and garden and penny arcade and records which have nothing else in common (“Something In The Air,” “In The Summertime,” “Rock Your Baby”) have the same memory power (playing fruit machines, pulling weeds, meeting in the eighth beach hut from the pier). This year we’ve had to wait a while: “Kiss And Say Goodbye”? Too soppy. “Young Hearts Run Free”? Too meaningful. But California (well, that’s what it sounds like), c.ame through at last. “Afternoon Delight;!’ the smuttiest innocuous record ever, and number one for summer fun.

An interesting record too. At first we thought it wouldn’t make it, even with airplay. It was so hot that no one even wanted to think about fucking in the afternoon. But then it became a duty. In successive issues the Sun (Britain’s sp/ciest-and-best-selling newspaper) reported that a distinct lack of action in maternity wards in 8-10 month’s time was expected, noted that Britain’s population is rapidly shrinking, and issued a middle page spread of 100 ways to fuck in 90° heat without exhausting yourself and/or turning him/ her off forever with all that funky sweat. “Afternoon Delight” is patriotic, not just an incitement to get it up (“skyrockets in flight,” yeah!) but also an incitement to get down and get with it slap bang in the middle of the day, thus skiving off work, and easing the unemployment situation. The BBC, at any rate, had no doubts. Having just banned, in varying degrees, Billy Paul’s “Let’s Make A Baby,” Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s The Night,” and Dr. Hook’s “A Little Bit More,” they at last had a fuck song they could get behind. So are summer singles born.

The BBC’s line, of course, is that if you’re going to do it, do it nicely. None of that rock star’s leer, if you don’t mind. We Chrissie Evert fans agree (At Wimbledon, more British summer fun.; so many men get carried away by all that public leg and ass display that a special court sits to put down the fondlers and the flashers). I’ve never seen the Starland Vocal Band but I can imagine them: sparkling teeth and eyes, the men with crisp shirt collars spilling over their blazers and moustaches to offset the tan, the women with cotton-candy dresses and clean jeans to lounge in and that hair that never stains or wrinkles. If these girls do anything uh, naughty, it’s for the vitamin content, and on the road the fellows take their afternoon delight under their manager’s beaming supervision.

So the record’s played like it was the New Seekers or someone, and I guess in these hard times an ad for sex isn’t that much different than one for Coke. If you’re white it’s all right and these boys and girls sound so damn nice that for their winter record, when we’re bedding down in the rain, I suggest a cover of Max Romeo’s “-Wet Dream.” Meanwhile, I’m wondering again about Karen and Richard Carpenter and what all that means; on TV Donny and Marie look into each other’s eyes, fondle each other’s bums and wonder “Why can’t we be friends?” It’s obvious that it’s the clean cut folk who are our real corruptors and poor old Cliff Richard, three weeks after issuing “Honky Tonk Angel” as his latest Christian single (an angel, natch) just found out what a honky tonk was and had to withdraw it again fast. But I bet even he’s humming “Afternoon Delight” and it’s moving south now, down the beaches, into the juke box with the latest busload and out onto Euro airwaves where, far from fucking in the afternoon, the whole world is stretched out on the sand, a line of burning sun oil right round the Mediterranean. I can’t wait to be home again. I even miss Led Zeppelin.