69 – Blondie don’t fit this bill, surely? More’s the pity.

That Jon Savage piece was fascinating, btw. Will I be tempted to visit some of his music choices for that year? I think so!

*Oh shit! The “I” word! Sorry!

@69,70. Gaga might be a good candidate for being simultaneously backward- and forward-looking. She absolutely feels like the culmination of, say, bowie/glam + madonna studies, but it’s also obvious she hasn’t got close to fulfilling her potential yet. She’s become huge though sheer will/drive and personality, i.e., without doing anything that musically imaginative yet. What in god’s name will she be throwing at us in 5 years time?

Jon Savage makes a case for 1974 as ‘the year the 60’s ended and the 80’s began’ at his blog: http://tinyurl.com/ycr62kh

More generally, apart from the dude’s phenomenal looks (Hunky Dory was late in 1971 so I guess this probably is some sort of peak year for male beauty in the charts!), I guess I’ve never quite understood what great unmet demand Bolan supplied. Nolan and T.Rex never ‘travelled’ that well (not just not-to-America, they didn’t do that much down under either), and everyone else survived just fine. So no ‘new direction’ that Bolan and T.Rex especially represented was needed most places. Specific features of the the UK pop psyche and its frenzied media culture presumably explain the difference.

The glam aesthetics notwithstanding, what Bolan injected into pop was a much needed dose of whimsy–and what’s wrong with whimsy, I say. I think many underestimate the degree to which whimsy added to the appeal of the early Beatles, even though it had either disappeared or become cloying before the Fab Four called it a day. I think it hardly surprising then that Bolan, who was a sort of funked-up Donovan–I mean, listen to the lyrics–came to the fore at the particular moment he did. Some worthy party had to fill the gap the Beatles left behind–surely the four of them working separately didn’t accomplish the task.

I, for one, wouldn’t be offended by the “fey” tag–I think Bolan played with it as much as Bowie, at least performativity, but so had the Beatles in the mid-60s. And, yes, as much of a stretch as it might seem, Bolan also exists in a continuum with Kate Bush, Adam Ant, and Morrissey. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s a good thing.

(And I confess my TRex fave is “Ride a White Swan”–how whimsical can you get?)

even the “sounds like chuck berry” argument — which at least makes some of grand historical sense — makes me think “er ok if you say so (*whispers to self*: no it doesn’t really)”

If glam had hit big in America at the time, I might regard it with much more fondness. Since it didn’t, I like a handful of songs without being swept up emotionally in any of the ones I know. And maybe that’s because, compared to a musical movement that was huge in America at exactly the same time, but doesn’t seem to have been as big in England – that being the remarkable wave of socially conscious black music from Motown and Philly International, among others – glam just doesn’t seem like such a big deal to me. That’s somewhat puzzling to me, since I tend to love short, catchy songs with humor and a sense of style. Perhaps glam was the first pop moment when ironic distance outweighed emotional connection. Of course, if that’s not the way the music hit you, that response will seem like total bunk. I’m just trying to figure out why a genre of music that checks all the right bozes never made my personal list of “10s”.