12" Single

Why is it some songs seem to have been in every film or television programme you've ever seen? Take Axel F (before the Crazy Frog got his sticky hands on it), was Axel F only in the Beverly Hills Cop movies? Or was it, as my memory tells me, in about forty per cent of all films in the 1980s/early 1990s?

The remaining sixty per cent was made up by two songs: the one that goes "doo bow bow, chuckachuckah" and the one that goes "der der der der der, der der, der der der der der, der der, der der der der der, der der, der der derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..." ;

Both songs by Yello - a crazy Swiss synth-combo who couldn't spell, but could make weird noises and sell records.

A quick squint at the weird and wonderful web shows that Oh Yeah was in a fair few films which were of the appropriate film certificate for me to have been allowed to watch them.

There are two things I remember about the film Nuns On The Run  - the shower scene in the middle and that The Race features in the soundtrack. Now I not talking about this song because it reminds me of  Sisterly showers full of fabulous tits, although now I come to think of it...

Stop it.

Back in the day when I used to be young enough, cool enough or stupid enough to be unable to tune a radio (thank goodness for digital nowadays), I used to listen to BBC Radio 1. I can't imagine Yello being played on Radio 1 in 2008, but one evening back in 1989, a late-night DJ played the 12" version of this track.

It took thirteen minutes to hear The Race from start to finish and it took me almost thirteen years to get around to buying it. I always had in mind to buy the 12" single, but it wasn't available in my local shop in 1989. And then I forgot about it. Until one day, I was browsing in a second-hand record shop in Oxford, flicking through the Barbra Streisand and Roger Daltrey albums, when I stumbled across it. Finding something you had always wanted, albeit intermittently, is a great feeling. And when it only costs £2, then even better.

When I got home, the song sounded different to how I remembered - because I had made the schoolboy error of putting the record on at the wrong speed.

On the rare occasions I can be arsed to put this on the turntable, I am reminded of my naivete in thinking an thirteen-minute track was something remarkable. Little did I know I was soon to discover something called Prog Rock.