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Roy Wood was No.1 with The Move ('Blackberry Way') and with Wizzard ('See My Baby Jive' and 'Angel Fingers'), Doctor And the Medics were No.1 with 'Spirit In The Sky'. 'Waterloo' was originally No.1 and a Eurovision winner for Abba... So this new version should get to No...To nowhere in the Top 40, as it turned out, making this the third and last non-hit on Now 8. Again, though, the Doctor and his Medics weren't really a one-hit wonder because they'd had a Top 30 hit with 'Burn' as the immediate follow-up to their chart-topping cover version. Still, somebody obviously thought there was demand for more novelty covers from the Seventies and so this version of Abba's Eurovision winner arrives, sung by the group's (female) backing singers The Anadin Brothers. You could argue this was a little ahead of its time, six years before Erasure's Abba-Esque EP, but you could also argue that Erasure put more of their own spin on the track whereas this a fairly straight re-run of the original without the thorough finesse of genuine Abba.
Roy Wood makes his only appearance in the main Now series (though he has of course appeared on several Now Christmas albums) on saxophone here, though he probably attracted more attention in the video. He also provides a tenuous link back to It Bites, since Francis Dunnery's late brother played in Violinski, a spin-off from Electric Light Orchestra and of course Roy Wood was also a member of ELO. The video also features cameo appearances by Lemmy, Captain Sensible and some other people I don't really recognise but they're filmed as if they're famous.
The Medics don't really impress too much with their Now tracks, which feel more like cabaret than something for sound-only. However Andy Partridge produced their earlier single 'The Miracle of the Age' which hints that there was something slightly more interesting going on once upon a time.
Doctor And The Medics also appear on: Now 7
Available on: Keep Thinking It's Tuesday
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