It’s not that EW&F were bad. It’s just that they were playing for an audience who wanted to hear Santana, and they weren’t going to be terribly impressed by pyrotechnics, revolving drummers, and other pyrotechnics.

When Carlos Santana eventually came on, he was stupendous. No need for histrionics. He more-or-less just stood there playing, with scarcely a nod to introduce a change of tempo, or a solo from another band member. TRhe audience were on their feet at the end; he could have played all weekend for them.

The really strange thing is, I looked up the review of the gig in the Melody Maker afterwards. The reviewer began by asserting that, if this were America, Santana would be supporting Earth Wind and Fire, and then proceeded to review EWF, all but ignoring Santana.

“Queen were famously booed off the stage after their performance (although Mick Fettes once told us that that the crowd were not really against Queen, they just wanted to see Madder Lake, who were the next band on). According to one source, the announcer came on just after Queen had performed and asked: “D’you want anymore from these pommie bastards or do ya want an Aussie rock band?” Queen quit the stage to boos and calls of `go back to Pommyland, ya pooftahs!’ but Freddie Mercury bravely responded by saying “When we come back to Australia, Queen will be the biggest band in the world!”

He was right!

peril isn’t something to be avoided — all great quests require large amounts of it — but it isn’t peril if it didn’t mean that things CAN go horribly wrong (smaug eats all the dwarves AND the hobbit the end)

In daily conversation, “just a bit of fun” as a shorthand has ended up meaning “not actually fun at all for some” - it’s a phrase bullies use when people point out that they’re boring or cruel: fun as an excuse, a way of driving out minority voices.

This is a bit harsh on Showaddywaddy possibly!

Peril for whom? For the critic? For the integrity of the art? Not, surely, for the listener?

Certainly not for me; that kind of energising, all-enveloping rush of uncompromised joy is one of the elements of pop music (and dance music) that I require, respond to and value the most of all. Maybe it defies fresh creative analysis. Hell, maybe it transcends it…!

I was slightly too old (and serious) to really buy into the Chinnichap thing but, despite being a girl, I always had a sort of sneaking affection for Suzi. I suppose I liked the way she was out in front of the guys, tiny girl with the big bass. I also rather liked the fact that she was an American (so with that extra pzazz) who was choosing to major on the UK market; think back over the UK/Irish women who’ve had #1 records so far in the 70s - Dana, old Hilda in Lieutenant Pigeon, Diane Lee, Eve and Lynn from the New Seekers (both of whom looked to me as if they could have happily inhabited an episode of 1975’s Surbiton-set The Good Life, or any other suburbia-fest) - and Suzi seemed to come from another, deliciously riskier, planet.

Anytime I’ve seen her interviewed she always seemed like a good ‘un, no pretensions, a twinkle in the eye and just committed to having fun, whether it was in this sort of leather-clad candyfloss, or in the later Annie Get Your Gun era.

And the “one more time, for Suzi”, was pretty cool, too.

also important: the nexus linking commodity fetishism, sexual fetishism, revolt-as-puritanism and revolt-as-libertinism

haha the original version of my 3500-wd essay on control (the joy division film) for f!lm qu4rterly — have to wait till jan foax, it’s a quarterly! — began with a (c.7000-wd) disquisition on the runaways, escapism, pop’s commodification of teen sex, flight-as-lure vs flight-as-fight, and how JJ negotiated all this and pushed on out the other side in time to encounter punk rock and actual real escape

(based round a comparison of JD’s “transmission” and lou reed’s “rock n roll”, which the runaways covered on their first LP)

this is tricky territory, cz “it’s all just fun” can quickly become a way to step away from and bury in its turn all the stuff in pop that ISN’T just fun — but (even if i’m not sure the SQ songs themselves get reliably at it) there’s a kind of possibility of casual-joy-as-energy hinted at here (or gestured towards) as something to look for, and something to mind abt when it’s not there

(porbably important: you could say the same abt bolan, but there’s lots of other things going on in bolan, and he totally bought into a weird tolkienesque version of the 60s utopia-programme, whereas w.suzy, no one is going to spend a lot of time thinking there’s other things going on, and these other things are the hook: with bolan you might, and some punksters did)

(havin sed that: while joan jett bangs on abt the urgency of fun a lot, HER version of SQ is gauntly flight-driven — they were called the runaways bcz of what they were escaping, not what they were runnin towards)

Little did they know.

Nestling a couple of places below is Bowie’s 4th track in the space of a year to peak at number 3 this time as covered by Lulu. His own parting shot to glam ‘Rebel Rebel’ would only manage 5.