JJ BARRIE - “No Charge”
I was aware of this song long before I heard it - as a young boy it was quoted at me by my Dad should I ever object to tidying my room. Since my room was rarely tidy, I became very familiar with the central notion of “No Charge”. Like my Dad, I can find immense amusement and pleasure in this style of song - talking country with a sentimental edge - but this is far from a great example.
You might think, at first, that the style stands or falls on the strength of its concepts: not so. “No Charge” has a fine concept - mawkishness and moralising are assets here! - but where JJ Barrie falls down is on development and details. Once our young entrepreneur has presented his list, and been slapped down by Mom, the track has nowhere to go, and explores that nowhere thoroughly for two minutes. Contrast it with something like “Teddy Bear” by Red Sovine, where tears are ruthlessly jerked right up to the final words. Barrie, on the other hand, adds no new details and just repeats himself. This is partly because “No Charge” is a cover version, and you can hear what I assume is the original melody being hollered in the background: it sounds rather as if it’s trying to escape. 2
rosie on May 2nd, 2008
Blimey - 1976 really is a pretty grim years so far (Abba notwithstanding, of course). This is not just bad, it’s the most utterly pointless bad in a very long time. I’m sorry, but give me Brotherhood of Man over this any time. I don’t know what JJ Barrie was playing at - a barely reconstituted, already mawkish, ditty rushed through as if he’s reluctantly reading it from a piece of paper in front of a school assembly.
I note the lack of a mark on this and wonder if this is what is meant by no zero - blank instead!
FT's Tom on May 2nd, 2008
Hmmm that’s odd - none of the fields posted, even though they uploaded OK. I will edit!
FT's Tom on May 2nd, 2008
Done!
FT's DJ Punctum on May 2nd, 2008
According to Guinness, JJ Barrie is Canadian (real name: Barrie Authors) although I always assumed him to a Brit pretending to be an American given his subsequent involvement in a football-related record which I think had something to do with Brian Clough. Other than that he is a mysterious fellow indeed, the enigma aided by the fact that “No Charge” is another number one hard to track down on CD (it is available for those that should want it, but only via the auspices of our Dutch friends over at Disky and BR Music). Also, I believe, the only number one single for the equally baffling Power Exchange label.
In America this is a long-standing C&W standard which has been recorded by pretty well all country singers you’ve ever heard of (and a good deal more that you haven’t) but this was the hit version here and its scrawny premise* really is stretched to the point of agony, despite the brave attempts by the late Vicki Brown (wife of Joe, mother of Sam, backing vocalist extraordinaire) to inject some life into the proceedings. I’m afraid its number one status may have been partially our (i.e. Scotland’s) fault.
As an act of repentance, Billy Connolly was quick off the mark with his parody (”No Chance”), and another mysterious narrator, one CC Sandford, recorded a Northern version entitled “No Charge (Chuck).”
This really is a dismal year, and the worst is yet to come…
*the actual sentiment “the cost of real love is no charge” is very true indeed but the mom/kid set-up is static as well as soapy.
rosie on May 2nd, 2008
One wonders if Vicki Brown ever told her son to belt up…
Erithian on May 2nd, 2008
Yes Rosie, and there are a couple more cringes coming up. Mawkish, corny and exploitative, this is in my top five worst Number 1s of all time. Even Billy Connolly’s parody version of it was nowhere near as much fun as “D.I.V.O.R.C.E.”
And yet on the only time I’ve heard it since becoming a dad, there was a pesky little lump in my throat. Bloody kids!
In fact, this record was just - WET. We should have made the most of it, because not much else was going to be wet for the next month or two…
FT's Matthew H on May 2nd, 2008
I had never heard this before in my life, just knew it as a bare statistic in the GRRR books. I’ve now “enjoyed” a youtube clip of someone playing their 45 - watching the disc spin was the best part.
I like the pace, but the backing vocal is a tantalising glimpse of what could have been.
Tom on May 2nd, 2008
Oh man, this is very bad but nowhere NEAR my five worst. I think it depends on your age though: I didn’t have to live through “No Charge” (except as a moral lesson). But also this gets 2 rather than 1 because I love the ruthless C&W sentimentality it reminds me of. (srsly listen to “Teddy Bear”!!)
intothefireuk on May 2nd, 2008
Around about this time I was buying singles like Be Bop Deluxe’s ‘Ships In The Night’ & 10cc’s ‘Mandy’. JJ Barrie was somewhat off my listening map and listening to this now it still is. I’m pretty sure there was a send up of this made but really there was no need. You just know that if your Mum had indeed said that to you, you would have answered it with something like ‘well you had me, it’s your job - now where’s my money ?’ or possibly now ‘yeah, yeah, whatever’.How about this JJ - no mark.
FT's DJ Punctum on May 2nd, 2008
(N.B.: the scintillating Barrie/Clough collaboration was entitled “You Can’t Win ‘Em All”)
Bill Amesbury, who produced this record, later became Barbra Amesbury.
Tom on May 2nd, 2008
I would also like to point out that my Mum had far more sense than to ever quote this, it was always Dad on her behalf. She just said “No”.
Erithian on May 2nd, 2008
Punctum: re CC Sandford - if I’m not mistaken, that’s Christopher Sandford, former Radio Caroline DJ. A site called The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame reveals that he played a character called Walter Potts in Coronation Street, who was a milkman who became a pop singer - and his hit song in the storyline, “Not Too Little Not Too Much”, became a real-life Top 20 hit for Sandford (20-odd years before EastEnders spawned hits in similar fashion). He released a few more singles, and the drummer in his backing band The Coronets was none other than Mitch Mitchell, later of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. And Sandford was also one of the culprits behind Yin and Yan’s spoof of another mid-70s number 1, “If”.
FT's Matthew H on May 2nd, 2008
I’m not convinced by his accent either.
I think it’s Mike Yarwood.
rosie on May 2nd, 2008
Erithian, I’ve had a peek ahead and although some of what’s to come doesn’t exactly stir the loins, it’s hardly as awful as this!
Erithian on May 2nd, 2008
I’m rather sceptical of the phrase “why punk had to happen”, but consider this - it was on 4 June 1976, a few days after “No Charge” reached number 1, that the Sex Pistols played a certain gig in the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Or maybe it was in the Tardis, because thousands say they were there whereas the venue only holds 150. But among the punters were Tony Wilson, Morrissey, Pete Shelley, Mark E Smith, Paul Morley, Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook. Ian Curtis and Mick Hucknall missed this gig but saw the Pistols in the same venue a month later.
Tom on May 2nd, 2008
Full list of attendees: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/04/the-sex-pistols-at-the-manchester-free-trade-hall-the-truth/
Tom on May 2nd, 2008
The one thing punk demonstrably failed to do was keep novelty or sentimental records from the top of the charts!
FT's DJ Punctum on May 2nd, 2008
Tom you plonker you mixed up Alan Dale with Jim Dale! You can hear the latter’s commentary on the special limited edition DVD shortly to be released: “It was not without some little irony that Mr Curtis realised that Mr Morrissey’s gladioli were about to be put into operation as weapons of tickling destruction to resuscitate the father of the man who had killed the son of his father cont. p. 1234…”
FT's Pete Baran on May 2nd, 2008
You can’t argue though that Pushing Daisies aside, Alan Dale is in everything these days. Not bad for a lame Robin hood sidekick.
rosie on May 2nd, 2008
I, too, am sceptical about “why punk had to happen”, and I don’t really see how making random loud noises with musical instruments one doesn’t know how to play (presumably music lessons are so terribly bourgeois) while screeching obscenities at toothache-inducing intensity stops people who like novelty and sentimental records from buying them. As Jean Brodie put it so succinctly, those who like that kind of thing find that the kind of thing they like.
mike on May 2nd, 2008
Hmm, I could tell you a Poignant Personal Anecdote relating to Red Sovine’s “Teddy Bear” (whose lyrics I have just re-acquainted myself with), but there is such a thing as over-sharing.
Don’t know about the Worst Number One Ever, but “No Charge” certainly has to be my Worst Number One of the 1970s thus far. (Telly Savalas being the closest contender, but I can at least muster a giggle over that one.) There was an awful lot of novelty faddism about during 1976 - Pet Rocks, CB radio, the Glenn Miller revival, even George Zamfir’s pan pipes - and this was just one more example.
(Whatever happened to novelty faddism, anyway?)
FT's Tom on May 2nd, 2008
It recurs occasionally Mike!
Erithian on May 2nd, 2008
ISTR James Hamilton covered the Glenn Miller revival in some depth in Record Mirror - did he speak about it afterwards Mike?
FT's DJ Punctum on May 2nd, 2008
I, too, am sceptical about “why punk had to happen”, and I don’t really see how making random loud noises with musical instruments one doesn’t know how to play (presumably music lessons are so terribly bourgeois) while screeching obscenities at toothache-inducing intensity stops people who like novelty and sentimental records from buying them.
Derek Jewell lives!
FT's Tom on May 2nd, 2008
Full credit to Rosie for holding the anti-punk line in what are likely to become increasingly sharky waters! I think there will be better threads to have this debate in though.
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
in ref “why punk had to happen” — as a punk absolutist at the time (17 in 77) i am VERY suspicious of the endless retro-fitting of this argument, which has been adapted and re-adapted and re-re-adapted to justify grown-up (non-chart) tastes in the present (1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005… ), and which actually locks pretty closely into Guilty Pleasures as an ideologically conformist pressure today
(this is a “where were you on the barricades when it mattered?” argument and shd be taken with a punch of salt probbly)
i don’t even slightly consider that punk — as truly an properly understood then and now (ie by ME) (if no one else heh) — is particularly anti-novelty or anti-sentimentality at all (or indeed anti-ABBA): it was anti claims to intelligence that weren’t that intelligent (or that confused being smart with being dull), and it was anti toleration of pro forma boredom (which would be a frustration with the charts as a whole — as a tapestry of all its contents — rather than any given feeble song)
i think at school we quite enjoyed this song as it was very easy to parody and use as a vehicle for jokes and so on
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
also i was just listening back to the red brain ep of slugs of time and haha bad brains are totally and awesomely in command of their instruments and musicianship! (bit of a special case possibly as i think they were jazzfunkers b4 they became punkers)
(weirdly enough slug-guest dave q and i were discussing derek jewell before the show began: a piece DJ’d written comparing three successive pink floyd shows on a pseudo-musicological level)
FT's DJ Punctum on May 2nd, 2008
My idea of punk in actual 1976 as I knew and lived it: Mike Osborne and Stan Tracey Saturday afternoon duo set at Bracknell Jazz Festival where they sent all the tradheads scattering with half an hour of WAKE UP free noise clarion calls which WITHOUT PUSHING A BUTTON IN THEIR HEADS very naturally ended up with their playing “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” as quietly and tenderly as anyone could ever have played it.
mike on May 2nd, 2008
ISTR James Hamilton covered the Glenn Miller revival in some depth in Record Mirror - did he speak about it afterwards Mike?
No, we never talked about it (although JH also played a lot of veh veh posh parties for the County Set in the late 1960s/early 1970s, and was quite used to dropping a bit of big band tuneage).
It was the Melody Maker who went really overboard with excitement over the Glenn Miller thing, though: a certain residual faction had been waiting for The Big Band Revival ever since Elvis, and this was their shining moment of opportunity. I seem to recall a centre spread’s worth of recommended listening from the jazzer rear-guard…
Erithian on May 2nd, 2008
Tom, I only raised the subject of punk on this thread because of the coincidence of “No Charge” being number one at the time of the seminal Pistols gig, but as an illustration of the contrast between what was going on “out there” and what was going on at the top of the charts, this is as good a place as any to start! But maybe we should restrict ourselves to the first wave of the new wave just yet. (I understand you’re not going to wait until autumn ‘78 to feature punk on these pages, if Spoiler Bunny will let me ask?)
FT's Tom on May 2nd, 2008
Fair play Erithian, yes there may well be a thread in which the question “Was punk any good?” can be met more head-on! Of course the question “was “No Charge” anything to do with punk?” can be and is being discussed here.
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
i suspect the recent long and digressive comments threads, plus our generally agreed-on feeling that something WAS wrong with pop as a whole (or a centre, a public space), do actually recapitulate the sense of the time: that pop was clogged, constipated, exhausted — for example even if you loved abba (as i did, before during and after being Mr Full-On Teen Punk), their dominance shades pretty easily into a sense that the charts no longer belonged to “us” (where “us” will turn out to be a highly contestable idea, torn between generations, and between niches, but this torn-ness wasn’t yet clear)
[apologies: re-edited to be in actual grammatical english]
rosie on May 2nd, 2008
If what’s coming up in the autumn of 1978 is considered ‘punk’ by some people then those people might be pleasantly surprised by my response to it. But I don’t see anything there within a million miles of the Sex Pistols and nothing that I personally would call ‘punk’ (since it isn’t wildly different to a lot of sixties stuff).
Some have challenged my stance on punk on the grounds that I was a fairly early admirer of the Velvet Underground and have always had a lot of time for Talking Heads (but weren’t the Heads part of what was being rebelled against?)
I don’t think this period was a particularly lean time for music, just a lean time for the singles market.
FT's Lena on May 2nd, 2008
I had no idea a Glenn Miller revival was going on at the time, but this was the year someone loaned some new Miller albums to my dad, who then taped them (letting me choose the order of the songs, as I liked them too)…my father knew the music well but was too poor to buy the records at the time…so I heard “Elmer’s Tune” and “In The Mood” and so on…he also made some Duke Ellington tapes as well, so I heard “East St. Louis Toodle-Ooo” and “Mood Indigo” for the first time as well…
I don’t know today’s song and I don’t think I’m missing out on much…the current US #1 was “Love Hangover” and just previous to that was “Silly Love Songs”…
rosie on May 2nd, 2008
As for musicological analyses, I got my first introduction to the serious study of popular music tby being walked througha musicological analysis of White Riot by The Clash. It was fun, but I don’t really have the time or the ear for musicology. I know, however, what I like!
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
velvet underground = indie not punk!
(sorry i will NOT turn this into a war for MY defn on punk) (i will try) (haha i will fail)
i agree abt music as a whole being richer than people think — what yr calling “singles market” is probbly not very different from what i’m calling “pop as a public centre”; a zone of cultural discussion and debate which — for some reason — rock as an intelligent* offshoot of chartpop had after glam dwindled totally ceded to non-rock musics (by no means all unintelligent, but rock shd have been more committed to the public examination of rock-form intelligence in all contexts inc.esp.the charts)
*for possibly on odd reading of intelligent
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
derek jewell’s musicology is ultra-bogus
FT's Drucius on May 2nd, 2008
“I, too, am sceptical about “why punk had to happen”, and I don’t really see how making random loud noises with musical instruments one doesn’t know how to play (presumably music lessons are so terribly bourgeois) while screeching obscenities at toothache-inducing intensity stops people who like novelty and sentimental records from buying them.”
Good lord, are you a time-travelling Sun journalist from the seventies?
FT's Drucius on May 2nd, 2008
“(but weren’t the Heads part of what was being rebelled against?)”
No.
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
i don’t agree with rosie all the time but i’m way more interested in hearing her reasons for disagreeing with what’s become by-the-yard music-crit orthodoxy than pseudo-amazed outrage that everyone doesn’t think the same approved thing
intothefireuk on May 2nd, 2008
I would have thought & IIRC punk was aimed at the extravagance & up your own arse musicality of prog bands like yer Yes/ELP/Genesis types. Not at the pop charts. Amongst other things it was back to basics call to arms which sneered at prog for being elitist, over complex & not street enough.
mike on May 2nd, 2008
Well, in the period immediately prior to punk, the status of the humble 45rpm single had certainly never been lower, at least in the eyes of your average rock listener. Asked to nominate his best single of 1976 in the end-of-year round-up conducted by short-lived inkie Album Tracking (QED!), Mike Flood Page snootily retorted “a contradiction in terms”, while (as I recall) the NME nearly didn’t bother doing a best singles list. So there was this massive schism between “serious” and “disposable”, based on an increasingly absurd premise - and this was certainly one of the reasons why Punk Had To Happen.
As a late 76/most of 77 punk absolutist myself, I saw it as a rejection of pretty much everything except punk (and reggae), based on the stance that the present was all that mattered, and that punk (and reggae) was the only music that addressed and examined the present in any meaningful (or at least “relevant”) way. All of which felt great to me as a 14/15-year old, gleefully ripping up the past in best crypto-Maoist fashion…
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
i’m arguing it was aimed at a lack or a gap in the charts (which prog sensibility contributed to)*: part of this back-to-basics was an insistent celebration of the “three-minute single” as the primary unit of/for value — ie not just as a loss leader for the coming LP
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
oops that pesky free-floating asterisk again: prog sensibility (and definitions of musicality good AND bad) leading to songs (or non-song work) that are way over three minutes and impossible to put onto singles
compression as a virtue: not in fact an unmusical idea
FT's DJ Punctum on May 2nd, 2008
Unstrangely enough, if you look at this particular chart, the most clearly “punk”-sounding single in there is a then 19-year-old rockabilly novelty record - “Jungle Rock” by Hank Mizell - leased and put out I believe by Ted Carroll, from whom McLaren used to buy all his old 45s from his stall right at the back of Shep Bush market before he moved to the Rock On shop in Camden and thus alas helped invent Nick Hornby but never mind.
FT's DJ Punctum on May 2nd, 2008
also: Ramones as Eno-esque art rock exercise in short/sharp pop minimalism are arguably UBER-PROG
FT's DJ Punctum on May 2nd, 2008
or would have been if they’d been insufficiently smart to know it
mike on May 2nd, 2008
Re. 43: I disagree that punk was a reaction to the state of the singles charts - perhaps the only area of agreement between old wave and new wave was that the charts were an irrelevant distraction - but I strongly agree that it initiated a change in status for the three minute single. It must have been around about this time - pretty sure it was June 1976, actually - that Stiff Records issued its first release, Nick Lowe’s “So It Goes”: a re-statement of faith in a) the three-minute 7-inch and b) the three-chord song, and as such an absolutely key John The Baptist moment. (The run-out refrain “But where it’s going, no-one knows..” thrilled me to pieces…)
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
“the only area of agreement between old wave and new wave was that the charts were an irrelevant distraction” <— SO NOT TRUE
haha defn of punk = no two real punks agree on its defn and WILL BITTERLY FIGHT IT OUT UNTIL THEY ARE USHERED INTO THEIR GRAVES
FT's DJ Punctum on May 2nd, 2008
Most of the June ‘76 hits can best be described as stiflingly serene. Lots of album tracks masquerading as singles, lots of reissues and new covers of old songs but few singles as things in themselves (funnily enough, one of the few which qualifies alongside “Jungle Rock” and “Love Hangover” is “Devil Woman” by dear old suddenly revitalised Cliff).
Wasn’t Chris “Renta Santa” Hill the main man behind the Miller revival (the Lacey Lady club in Canvey Island - I think? - where the definitive schism between future punks and future soulboys would go on to occur)? Siouxsie for one has definitely talked about this in the past - the thrill of dressing up (a thrill which they could not obtain from ‘76 Roxy or Bowie) mutating into something greater, etc.
Waldo on May 2nd, 2008
With love and apologies to our Canadian chapter but a ruddy Hoser again. And this was a comedy record and nothing else. Dear God, this was fucking bad. In fact it was so wretched that I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing and when it became clear to me that Barrie’s sentiments were serious, my incredulity swiftly gave way to anger. “No Charge” was completely beyond parody, although many notable wits went for it, including Billy Connolly again. They needn’t have bothered. “Deck of Cards” was never this grim. Just stomach-churning.
Erithian on May 2nd, 2008
Punctum (#45) ddly enough a letter to Sounds during the period when the Pistols were having their slight record-label difficulties a year or so later suggested that the label best suited to their future progress would be Charly Records - the very label which released “Jungle Rock”.
Mike (#42) - round about the same time a Sounds cartoon depicted Mick Jones promoting punk/reggae links thus: “Panks, roite, are oppressed the same as blacks, roite, so panks and blacks should get togevver, roite…”
Oh lumme, we’re getting into all this on the JJ Barrie thread, and it’s all my fault.
mike on May 2nd, 2008
Didn’t the Miller revival centre around the Hammersmith Palais, rather than the Essex soulboy scene? (Chris Hill’s Lacy Lady was in Ilford, by the way; Canvey Island was certainly a crucible for 1976 creativity, but in an altogether different area.)
“SO NOT TRUE”: Come on then, Lord Punkrot Wotsit! Unpack your meaning! Let’s have it out!
FT's DJ Punctum on May 2nd, 2008
Yes Ilford…dear goodness, mixing up Chris Hill with Dr Feelgood (who I note had a number one album in ‘76)…I am but months away from the kindly white coated man asking me if I know who the Prime Minister is…
mike on May 2nd, 2008
But then, there was never even a single entry-point punk paradigm in the first place. It was riven with factionalism, almost from the off…
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
at the time i totally absorbed the argument (and cannot merelky have invented it for myself) that singles mattered because they were a format that everyone would hear — not true of LPs, which were always niche-ier — and would hear not by virtue of you the consumer buying them and playing at home but by virtue of their being in the charts and accessible to anyone able to afford a tiny tinny radio
seizure of the central uplands of media was really really really important (lots of early punk is obsessed with television as a medium also: its awfulness and what to do about it)
Mark G on May 2nd, 2008
and somewhere, in a wood possibly, a turntable spins… “playa …. playa … playa …” …
FT's DJ Punctum on May 2nd, 2008
Stuck up in Glasgow, however, Peel was literally all we had to go by…and I note that the first Ramones beginning of time record was an ALBUM rather than a single (did anything off that first LP ever get released as a 45?).
FT's DJ Punctum on May 2nd, 2008
Also, being in Glasgow, I never got to see the Pistols on Grundy at the time; we had to make do with Scotland Today presented by John Toye and featuring young roving sideburned STV reporter Gordon Brown.
Mark G on May 2nd, 2008
“Blitzkrieg Bop” was that single. Pic cover? Fortune, mate.
mike on May 2nd, 2008
seizure of the central uplands of media was really really really important …to the grand-gesturing McLaren faction maybe (and to chancers like Billy Idol, obviously!), but the DIY, small-is-beautiful, back-to-basics, anti-star faction was just as strong, and there from the outset. It wasn’t “mass media is shit so let’s get on it”, it was “mass media is shit so let’s ignore it / create our own parallel media network” (fanzines, independent labels etc)
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
haha that’s bcz ramones = prog (less contrarian way of putting ths same point: us punk was, yes, very much less interested in the single)
this really is jumping ahead but my ideology was lensed through the buzzcocks, and the new hormones line on the single (including innovating the single-sleeve as a space for expressive intervention) (to put it in a knobbish way)
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
i disagree mike: the rise to prominence of the indie faction was a response to the failure of the first wave to maintain artistic control as it entered major-label territory, but — though it was often (much too often) presented as a marvellous solution it was more a retreat and a conceding of defeat than any kind of triumph: the start of the end of punk (or post-punk to spin it more positively)
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
version of “why punk had to happen” that i have no problem with at all: it provides lots more material to animatedly and interestingly gather to discuss than poor old j.j.barrie :(
mike on May 2nd, 2008
the rise to prominence of the indie faction was a response to the failure of the first wave to maintain artistic control as it entered major-label territory
Whereas I would argue that the indie faction was there from the start: both in terms of fanzine culture (the home xerox-ed likes of Sniffin Glue/Ripped & Torn/48 Thrills/London’s Outrage (Jon Savage)/London’s Burning (Jonh Igham) etc) and record labels (Stiff & Chiswick showing the way, New Hormones as the first “true” indie in early January 1977, i.e. at a time when only the Pistols (oh OK and The Vibrators if we must!) had signed a deal with a major). It didn’t require a symbolic fiasco such as CBS releasing “Remote Control” as a single against the Clash’s wishes to set the wheels in motion; the wheels were already in motion.
But then, my starting point was the Clash and Subway Sect interviews in Sniffin’ Glue #4 (October 1976): all quite earnest in terms of having no truck with established networks.
(Even if the Clash did sign to CBS a few months later… but even then they refused to appear on TOTP… which was their way of contriving to stay outside the game, if I’m being cynical.)
Waldo on May 2nd, 2008
At this rate, you numbskulls with all your bitching about punk will elevate Barrie to the pantheon of the centurians, which would be totally undeserved. I suggest radio silence until we get to something more relevant; and this certainly does not mean the next number one.
mike on May 2nd, 2008
Bollocks to that, you Boring Old Fart! The Kids Will Not Be Silenced! There’s something happening out there and you don’t know what it is, do you Mister Waldo? (Whoops, wrong paradigm shift…)
FT's DJ Punctum on May 2nd, 2008
Waldo - a job on peak time Radio 2 is yours for the asking. Possibly on Pick Of The Pops, for all your Rita Coolidge and Rod Stewart needs.
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
so not gnna happen waldo —:D
re fanzines: i’d be more convinced by this strand of yr argument if their authors and xeroxers hadn’t almost to a man decamped into the rock papers! someone like savage for example is i think conflicted (he is fascinated by new media and underground media but actually moves INTO television fairly swiftly ayfre gigs at sounds and then MM)
stiff/chiswick: disdained as “pub rock” and “new wave” by punk ultra-ists because of the cosy smallness of their ambitions; new hormones wanted to get records into the charts and knew they could
the clash: anything they did massively coloured by strummer’s sectarian hostility to the pistols camp — at the time their decision not to be on ToTP considered (by some) (bcz yes as you say this was factional from the get-go) to be a mistake if not a crime
subway sect: ok i can’t argue with this, except maybe to say that vic godard’s self-immolating nihilism was NOT typical (any more than their look at the time) — i love subway sect
vinylscot on May 2nd, 2008
I didn’t like this record very much.
I’m enjoying this thread even less. I had been dreading the onset of punk, because of the all the predictable, retro-fitted, pseudo-intellectual crap which certain posters will no doubt fill this board with, over the next few weeks.
I will no doubt have many further opportunities to voice my opinions on such matters then; I look forward to it:)
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 2nd, 2008
and erithian is right, the start of all this was indeed happening NOW and needs to start being talked about now — spoiler bunny’s nightmare is only just beginning
rosie on May 2nd, 2008
Mark @ 40 puts his finger on it: it has become an orthodoxy, and one from which one strays at one’s peril in the company of the pop punditocracy! But don’t underestimate my toughness; I’ve been through fires of which you know little! And (to bring up a 1976 pop culture catchphrase) I didn’t get where I am today by following the herd.
I was about to turn 22 and get married in the summer of 1976, so I was past the immediate age of youthful rebellion, and I was frankly not all that much interested in the singles chart. If it was full of bland platitudes then that was only to be expected; I and my contemporaries hadn’t bought singles for several years now, and found our kicks in the less glitzy and more challenging material to be found on albums. Singles were the preserve of commerce and as bland as baked beans.
One of the hazards of living in Reading as I did until a couple of years ago is that it is Market Research heaven, and not many days went by without being accosted by a person with a clipboard in Broad Street. It was fun in a perverse sort of way to be guided into the George Hotel to sit in front of a computer and go through a series of questions about gin, or chocolate, or soap, or whatever was the subject of the day. (The subject was always brand recognition, however.) The questions were damned fool ones about what consuming the particular brand said about you. Did it make people think you were cool and sophisticated, perhaps? Or edgy and andventurous? Old and frumpy? Ha! If I consume a particular branded product it’s because I like the taste, or perhaps because it’s all that’s on offer in a time of need, but never because I givce a shit about what anybody thinks of me for it. It’s the same with music; I like what I like and I like it because I like it and that’s all there is to it. I’m not having some high-flown arbiter of taste tell me what I ought and ought not to like.
Anyway, I reckon the hip young gunslingers are only jealous because they weren’t there to hear the Beatles/Beach Boys/Stones/Kinks/Who/Doors/Velvets/Captain Beefheart first time around! ;)
Erithian on May 2nd, 2008
vinylscot - yes, I did open a Pandora’s Box back at #15, didn’t I? But then, the Big Punk Discussion had to happen sometime in ‘76, and it’s maybe appropriate to have it in the context of a number one that coincided with a Year Zero moment (I suppose we could have had it in December instead). There’ll be an obvious thread in which to discuss it in ‘77, and by autumn ‘78 the purists will be able to have a right good moan. Maybe we can focus the discussion on those three threads (which will mean old JJ gets 200+ posts). Thereafter the influence of punk can be traced in all manner of odd acts reaching number one.
Erithian on May 2nd, 2008
And Waldo (#66) - Bo Rhap apart, JJ will be in good company with the other centurions we’ve had - Peters and Lee, Simon Park, Davies and Estelle…
Tom on May 2nd, 2008
I concede defeat: now is as good a time as any to begin this conversation. Anyway the next entry won’t be up until Monday at the earliest (and possibly Tuesday depending on the weather) so this one can run and run.
mike on May 2nd, 2008
Fear not, BOFs! For my part, I don’t intend to sidetrack every subsequent thread with punk-related musings - but June 1976 is, as others have said, an ideal place to have this kind of conversation. As well as the seminal Pistols Manchester show, The Damned and The Clash played their first gigs in June 76, thus initiating UK punk rock as a “movement” rather than a Pistols-centred coterie, and kicking off a sequence of events that would eventually have a profound and lasting impact on British pop music in general. And on a personal level, punk rock fundamentally changed the whole way that I viewed the world; I simply cannot overstate its importance in that regard, as it made me question all of my base assumptions.
Without a) the advent of punk rock and b) turning out to be a big fat flaming homo, I shudder to think what sort of stereotypical ex-public school prat I might have turned out to be, and so I have a lot to be grateful for. So please indulge me a while longer.
Erithian on May 2nd, 2008
I love how some people’s tone is getting a bit snarly as we embark on punk. Any minute now someone’s going to call someone a fucking rotter.
Waldo on May 2nd, 2008
Mike/Marcello/Mark (The Holy Trinity) - You boys couldn’t be more wrong. I most certainly am aware of “what is happening out there”, as I suspect I am one of the very few on the blog to have witnessed the Grundy incident live. Waldo the fake punk will indeed be revealed anon but certainly not yet. My point was that we should simply move off “No Charge”, a risible piece of shit, and certainly not to abandon the punk debate. But you “kids” are like blind dogs on heat.
I’d be delighted to host “Pick of the Pops” but would speak my mind like my great hero JW and would thus last about five minutes. Indeed I would much prefer “Pick of Waldo”, in which case Rita Coolidge and Rod Stewart needs would have to be satisfied elsewhere. Plenty of Kathy Kirby and Val Doonican, though.
mike on May 2nd, 2008
However, if you really want to get back to JJ Barrie: we have been awfully remiss with our periodic Clem Cattini Watch. Good old Clem drums on “No Charge”, just as he did on (in reverse order) “Save Your Kisses For Me”, “Barbados”, “Give A Little Love” and “Whispering Grass”. He can pick ‘em!
Waldo on May 2nd, 2008
Erithian # 74 - Yes, I take your point.
Billy Smart on May 2nd, 2008
I’m sort of with Rosie on punk rock - I generally find it the least interesting part of the Mojo/Uncut canon (the first Clash LP must be the most feeble ‘classic album’ that I’ve ever heard), though when things get postpunk then that’s about my favourite period.
This may be to my having to endure a lot of tedious people in their thirties reminiscing about the good old Joe Strummer at The Roxy in ‘77, you don’t like that Happy Mondays acid house rubbish do you, son? when I was a teenager… Now I’m the age that these old punks were then I do try not to repeat their mistake with the young who cross my path.
‘No Change’ clearly made a lasting impression on one of my old primary school teachers, who was still reading out the improving lyrics to us in assemblies as late as about 1982!
FT's Tom on May 2nd, 2008
One of the things I’m expecting/hoping to happen in the aftermath of punk is a bunch of new commenters (not that the commenters I’ve got aren’t terrific of course) - not only are new commenters “coming onstream” memory-wise but I think quite a lot of people have the late 70s as a listening-back cutoff: they may or may not have agreed with the year-zero rhetoric but it has an impact on what gets written about, talked about, played. Also, of course, punk is far from the only big shift as the 70s wind down.
(Not that they’ve really started winding down yet: let’s not get too eager, there’s a lot more to come…!)
FT's Tom on May 2nd, 2008
Also, something I might well put in the FAQ are a list of those threads where broader topics get chewed over - it is a fair bet that future readers looking for “the advent of punk” will not immediately think “JJ Barrie”. The Guilty Pleasures discussions might come into this too, and I’m sure there are more.
DJ Punctum on May 2nd, 2008
As with the Clash, so with the Mondays; to get them fully you had to be there and in it at the time, before either had the chance to curdle into canon fodder. I rarely/never revisit the first Clash album (because of course it should never have been released or even recorded, in the same sense that the first Buzzcocks album, i.e. the one with Devoto done for New Hormones and turned up in multiple forms on CD a safely suitable number of years later, was never “made”) but you HAD to grasp the soldered end of the dustbin lid that “White Riot” and later “Hallelujah” would throw through the complacent, gliberal glass of the charts of their times. I saw the Clash at the Glasgow Apollo in May ‘77 - I stood at the cowardly back and immediately ducked out once the chairs started flying and the real shit began - but knew in my BONES that this was where to go, just like when the Jam first came on TOTP to do “In The City” - yes MOD, but frankly fuck that because I WAS a Mod, and yes Weller says vote Tory to wind Strummer up, BUT the ENERGY and JOUISSANCE that were identifiably OURS (as in generation) knocked the cloth-nosed prematurely arthritic classy likes of Supertramp into the grave and after the Clash or the Mondays you couldn’t seriously expect to take the Mr Bigs and the Wonder Stuffs that were on offer from the big river as “new.”
In truth it was life versus death. LOVE versus “like.” Abigail against Beverley. Ken for all his faults against Boris who is nothing but a fault. Burroughs versus Amis. Proud screams against suppressed coughs.
And in the truest possible spirit of punk I would suggest that those smug gliberals propagating their shabby comfort blankets of the New Right with canting, content-free platitudes against “pseudo-intellectual crap” (how typical, isn’t it, of the commonsensical gliberal to deploy the “pseudo” prefix, scared of the reality of having to face the real thing?) are fully free to fuck right off to the abundance of Yaroo Spacehoppers Alessi What Were We Thinking Is Not Rat Is Hamster Double Deckers Cat’s Done A Whoopsie ZZZZZEXY ZZZZZZZZEVENTEEEZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ message boards on the internet where they can talk to people who’ll agree with everything they say.
rosie on May 2nd, 2008
Did you mean me, Marcello?
FT's Tom on May 2nd, 2008
I’d rather they didn’t fuck off anywhere :) One of the themes of Popular right from the beginning is that things don’t vanish or get swept away - the 50s way of doing things lingers well beyond Merseybeat and rock; the old 70s guard doesn’t suddenly disappear at the first sniff of Rat Scabies’ leathers; SAW fight street-to-street with retro jeans ads; the summer of Britpop is filled with filthy raps and singing soldiers; manufactured Cowellite pop manifestly fails to wipe out rock, and so on. Pop is plastic: it doesn’t decompose, it hangs around. So the Alessi Spacehopper Stewpot world is the world punk was born into and the story of punk is partly its attempt to negotiate that world - you can’t tell one without the other.
(Here’s an idea: maybe big counter-things happen in Britain when light entertainment is particularly strong rather than weak or moribund?)
LondonLee on May 2nd, 2008
But, but, but…Supertramp’s biggest selling album came out in 1978!
I was 14 in 1976 (I saw The Pistols/Grundy thing live too, but I think I was more interested in eating my fish fingers at the time) and hated that noisy punk stuff but it did look like a bit of a lark. It wasn’t until 2 years later that I “got” it and then unfortunately I read “The Boy Looked At Johnny” at a very impressionable age and it’s Year Zero attitude affected the way I look at 76-77 even now. It was probably responsible for me selling my ELO albums.
rosie on May 2nd, 2008
Anyway, I’m not long back from eating my Friday fish and chips on the beach for the first time this year. And as it happens guys and gals, what’s come up in the random playlist even as I write is a particularly splendid piece of quintessential seventies that didn’t make number one so can’t properly be taken into account. Candi Staton’s Young Hearts Run Free speaks to me as clearly to day as anything from the period. It was one of the tracks I selected as my ‘Walney Island Discs’ session on Abbey FM the other week. And I love it - so there!
Chris Brown on May 2nd, 2008
I too was aware of this record before I’d heard it. And still am, because I haven’t. Comments on this thread - and particularly the fact that so few of them have anything at all to do with poor old JJ - aren’t encouraging me to search for it either.
It has crossed my mind that reading Popular can’t be a terribly pleasant experience for Canadians.
Waldo on May 2nd, 2008
# 84 - I rather thought that going to a cheesy message board to “talk to people who’ll agree with everything they say” is actually the main function of it, which is exactly why I have resisted my own blog. Spitting out dummies on Popular, however, is, in my view, pretty graceless, as we are all free thinkers here and there is no right or wrong answer to anything. Just opinion.
Now for cider.
vinylscot on May 2nd, 2008
Rosie on post 85 - I think the pretentious one was actually referring to me - he did quote from one of my earlier posts.
I’m not going to claim I know any better than him, but I’m from the same city and I’m about the same age as him. You really can’t comment unless you were really there; being in Glasgow and reading the NME just isn’t enough. The guy knows his stuff, I’ll agree, and generally has pretty good taste, as shown on his own blog, but his pretentious prattle is just that. Not everything either needs or deserves to be intellectualised, even when it’s done properly.
By the way, Marcello, the Clash didn’t play Glasgow Apollo in May 1977 - they only did Aberdeen and Edinburgh up here on that tour. So if you’re going to pretend you were there, at least get your facts right!
Billy Smart on May 2nd, 2008
Spoiler alert! Remember that we might well be talking about The Clash in about five years time, if we’re all still here…
But if I seemed a bit harsh, then they did make some records that I really cherish - all of London Calling, especially - for which I suppose that I can just about forgive them their version of ‘Police & Thieves’ - which just sounds like an insultingly clumsy act of desecration a man who wasn’t there at the time (though my big sister was).
vinylscot on May 3rd, 2008
92 Billy Smart - the part in my post #91 about not being able to comment if you weren’t there didn’t really come out like I meant it to! I must prrof-read beter;)
Of course you can comment if you weren’t there - that’s part of what this exercise is all about, I would imagine.
I was really referring to the self-appointed “experts”, who take it upon themselves to TELL us what it was all about. There are no absolutes in this sort of thing - opinions are what makes it all so fascinating.
To have some individual, who was barely out of school (if at all) at the time, and many miles away from where “it” was happening, lecture us about context with an incomplete romaticised understanding of what was really going on at the time, is frankly insulting. To have that individual claim to have the intellectual high ground while being somewhat economical with the truth (and demonstrably so!) regarding his own experiences, is really just too much.
When we are castigated for not agreeing with him, while being told to go elsewhere if we want people to agree with us is just cowardice…
…and I won’t go into the quality of his writing, suffice to say I’m quite sure he would be absolutely heartbroken if anyone ever “got” all the obscure references in one of his rambles.
I will continue to read these rambles, and comment where I feel it is merited. I welcome them and look forward to them, even if I don’t agree with them. I will also post my own, independently constructed comments and welcome any reponses which may further the discussion.
“No Charge” is still a crap record!
rosie on May 3rd, 2008
Waldo @ 90: Now for cider
[FX: large rabbit comes bounding into the forum; knocks jug from Waldo’s hand]
crag on May 3rd, 2008
I’ve found it increasingly harder to find an appropriate moment to comment on the last few Popular entries- not having “been there” at the time I feel my merely musical thoughts on the tracks under discussion would struggle to find relevance in the thread. Sure, i’ve got my own thoughts and theories on why punk “had to happen” but as one of the younger contributors here all my info on the period is by necessity “book knowledge” and can’t help thinking my comments would be like a young historian trying to tell a WW1 veteran what it was REALLY like to be in the trenches at the Somme.
I agree w/ Tom (#82)- i do hope new contributors turn up in the punk aftermath(not at the expense of our current commentators obviously!) to offer a fresh perspective and shake things up a bit.
One thing i will say about Punk though- the worst thing about it was the whole Year Zero thing. Fair enough, a backlash to the whole Yes/ELP/Genesis stranglehold was necessary but the dismissal of everything else too would, in time, have a negative effect on music till the end of the 80s…
crag on May 3rd, 2008
Oh and yes “No Charge” is indeed still a crap record!
mike on May 3rd, 2008
The Clash played Glasgow Apollo in October 1977. Was that the gig you attended, Marcello?
intothefireuk on May 3rd, 2008
There’s nothing like a good shit fight is there. I expect more of this in the near future with the punk & pop overlords knocking the crap out of each other. For my part I have to say that I was blissfully unaware of punk at this stage. In fact I was getting involved in listening to, and seeing bands which probably would have been the antithesis of punk e.g. Genesis, Hawkwind etc. The first time I became aware of punk would have been later this year when friends of mine (who’d been with me at these gigs) started frequenting venues like the marquee,vortex, nashville & roxy club (some of these prob.77). I never really fancied it though and missed out on the 1st flush of punk (prob. 2nd as well). The first punk-ish record I recall hearing was Eddie & The Hot Rods Marquee EP (Sept. ish ?)closely followed by ‘Teenage Depression’. I’ll have more to say of punk as we progress for now though the long hot summer was about to start…. and the silly season about to continue……
rosie on May 3rd, 2008
I don’t think you “had to be there” to comment; that, after all, is a large part of what makes Popular a great community on the whole. It would be a shame if younger commenters only came in with what they remember, instead of giving a fresh insight into older stuff they may never have encountered before. It’s an enriching experience. How many of those younger commenters have gone right back to the beginning and sought out those early tracks (there’s none, up to about 1981, that I haven’t found somewhere and they’re all in my big random mix, even the ones that make me cringe.) It would be interesting to read their assessment, provided that it’s an honest one and not “it’s old and therefore crap”
So we’ve moved from the fifties, when none of us were there really, and we’re all exploring stuff that’s either legacy or totally new to us, through the sixties where a few of us were there and it’s been great to hear the take of Tom and others who weren’t. Now we’ve reached the seventies, lots of us were there and some of us had moved on, and there’s a corresponding increase in possessiveness and sensitivity to comment from outside.
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 3rd, 2008
yes in interweb argt over the last five-six years one of the most salutary and er humbling* things for me (as a highly opinionated pretentious pseudo-intellectual!) has been exploring how stuff that unfolded for me in real time has impacted on on someone quite like me temperamentally but 25 years younger — how things i see as meaning thus-and-so mean EXACTLY the opposite to them, arriving as compacted hand-down knowledge and by-the-yard assumption… this is both disorientating and exciting (cz the basis they have for being right — that they’re young and impatient w.geezers patronisin em — is no difft from the basis i had for being right back in 76) (truism obv but still hard to process)
*ok not THAT humbling but they probbly would be were i in any realstic way humblable
intothefireuk on May 3rd, 2008
The thing is music is intrinsically tied to associated memories & experiences and these have far more significance to the individual than any musical analysis, as interesting and objective as that may be. I enjoy reading everybody’s comments here but they probably inevitably say far more about the commenter than they do the music.
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 3rd, 2008
actually — and yes yes i have posted far too often on this thread and will stop (for a while) after this — the curious thing abt this emerging topic (how the newer younger posters will interact with and challenge the older posters) is that j.j.barrie’s record is in fact about exactly this dynamic, in a way which is entirely counter to pop world’s usual assumptions, which are:
i. the young know things the old don’t (swagger swagger)
ii. the old should not push the young around so much (mope mope)
i wonder how many other number ones (or charting singles as a whole) stake such a strong claim as “no charge” against i. AND ii? this song says “the young owe the old a bunch of stuff and shd respectfully behave so as to acknowledge this”
intothefireuk on May 3rd, 2008
I really must edit my comments before I time out - yes I am stating the bleedin’ obvious !
crag on May 3rd, 2008
Until recently I didn’t think being around at the time was an issue either- however of late i’ve felt many of the comments have been much more centered on personal recollections contextualising the tracks under discussion. This of course makes perfect sense for those were there and makes for v interesting reading for someone like me who can only view this period as ‘history’(hopefully “i woz a punk before you woz a punk” style comments will be kept to a minimum though). Basically I know the ‘theory’ regarding this period, but not the ‘practical’…
Ironically enough although we’ll be discussing hits i can personally remember shortly, at the time i was actually feverishly devouring the sounds from the era prior to the one we’re discussing currently i.e mid 60s to mid 70s!
Re:#98- how many contributors were actually aware of punk at this point? My dad always says he remembers with clarity the exact time he first heard Presley in ‘56- was it the same w/ punk 20 years later or more a gradual growing awareness?
intothefireuk on May 3rd, 2008
#104 Again it’s down to personal opinion but I would say there was very little awareness of punk until the Bill Grundy incident when it exploded onto the front page of the Sun - the filth & the fury.
rosie on May 3rd, 2008
There are all sorts of little epiphanies in this story. I’m not old enough to have “been there” for Elvis Presley but I do remember hearing the Beatles for the first time and sensing I was hearing something special, even though I was only eight. (Round about the same time I remember being bowled over by the key change in Ketty Lester’s Love Letters, although I had no idea at the time that it was a key change, just a musical moment that set my spine tingling. No doubt there are back-to-basics purists who would condemn that as decadent, never mind a stray augmented ninth!)
I have challenged the received assumption that punk “had to happen”, but punk did happen and I’m prepared to accept that it was inevitable given the particular state of social, economic and cultural tides at that particular moment. It was, however, just another epiphany and it wasn’t as all-embracing as some would like to think.
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 3rd, 2008
in the unending torrent of my blather upthread i thought i’d already said this but i didn’t: i first encountered the pistols in the shropshire star, a transcript of the grundy incident (and i was most agitated by their side-issue sneer at beethoven and spent ages fashioning in my head the arguments i would put to them to get them to see they were wrong)
mike on May 3rd, 2008
How many contributors were actually aware of punk at this point?
I was certainly aware of punk at this point, crag. The Pistols and Ramones in particular were picking up a fair number of press mentions, and this was at a stage where Eddie and the Hot Rods were being placed in the same category.
Loads more that I could say on this topic, but to be honest I’m still a bit shaken by being on the receiving end of some of the unpleasantness upthread, so I’ll shut up for now.
FT's Tom on May 3rd, 2008
My moments of real musical epiphany have tended very much to be not aligned with when everyone else had those epiphanies! I am a regular latecomer.
FT's Tom on May 3rd, 2008
On the one hand, the more vitriolic than usual tone of the thread suggests that punk was and *still is* problematic, interesting, something that NEEDS to be thought about/intellectualised/trolled over.
On the other, I’m not going to spend my bank holiday weekend moderating flamewars, so please try and keep the disagreements civil and non-personal from this point on, thanks!
crag on May 3rd, 2008
I know what u mean, Tom(#109)- it was a very awkward state of affairs for me growing up, listening to my friends rave about Erasure and Deacon Blue when my personal choice of listening at the time was “Trout Mask Replica” and “Electric Ladyland”!
I only started buying contemporary records round about ‘89 and round about the same time, aged 16, had my own punk teen epiphany-about 12 years late!
Hey, its fashionable to be late though, isnt it?
Alan Connor on May 3rd, 2008
This would be the wrong record around which to resurrect Resurrection Watch, but here’s an odd thing. I thought I didn’t know this at all (as with a lot of ‘76 - wonder if this applies to others born in the early ’70s), BUT as I read Tom’s description, realised that it must have the same words as those I’d seen in one of those email circular thingies. You know, with animated GIFs around it, and in a daft typeface.
(I liked it in that form.)
rosie on May 3rd, 2008
Blimey, crag, Trout Mask Replica is a heady brew indeed - where did you hear it first? And more to the point, since everybody hates it when they first hear it and anybody who says otherwise is a liar, where and why did you listen to it a second time?
Kat but logged out innit on May 3rd, 2008
I’m not familiar with this tune but having had a butchers at the lyrics just now, Bells Be Ringing in terms of email forwards and general parental guilt-tripping. I have no desire to seek this one out, I have to say.
As regards the rest of the discussion: I’m 26 and obv didn’t experience punk first hand, but it already feels like a well-trodden path of discussion for me thanks to the above-mentioned Uncut/Mojo canonisation. The history is interesting and the music is alright for the most part but not particularly *exciting* or emotionally significant for me. Perhaps one *did* really have to be there? I’ve been thinking about this particular theme a fair bit whilst writing the Blog ‘92 stuff but my thoughts still aren’t quite coherent yet…
crag on May 3rd, 2008
Re:#113- I bought “Trout Mask Replica” on spec when i was either 13 or 14 after reading good things about it in the music mags i was already reading constantly. I’d already heard Beefhearts voice on “Willie the Pimp” from Zappa’s ‘Hot Rats’ a year or two previously-not that that really prepared me…
Don’t believe me all you like, Rosie but i genuinely didn’t hate it at all on first listen- I can’t say i LOVED it either and certainly can’t claim to having UNDERSTOOD it(whatever that might mean) on that first listen but I was intrigued enough by it and certainly enjoyed it sufficently to have no trepidation about listening to it a second time. After a further 4 or 5 spins it became my favorite album which it remained for many years(before i stopped worrying about things like having a “favorite album”) and I still greatly enjoy hearing tracks from it whenever they show up on my MP3 player now- “Veteran Day Poppy” turned up earlier today by coincidence and still sounded great.
I often wish my ears were as open and receptive to new sounds now as they were in my teenage years…
rosie on May 3rd, 2008
When I’m asked to appear on Desert Island Discs I’m having Ella Guru as one of my eight!
Rob M on May 3rd, 2008
In my role as tech support for A Major ISP, I have to confirm customers usernames and passwords, usually with clues. One such customer had a password of ‘ellaguru’ and I said to him as a clue “Think Beefheart” and he was surprised that I’d heard of it. I explained that most techies are musos too.
LondonLee on May 3rd, 2008
The first time I saw and heard The Pistols was the first time they appeared on the telly - Tony Wilson’s “So It Goes” program which came on late Saturday nights in London — and my sister and I were shocked by the Godawful racket they were making. I remember that far more vividly than the Bill Grundy episode. The next day the Sunday papers were full of this new youth scandal called “Punk” — “More Like PUKE Rock!” is one headline I remember. When punk hit the media it hit very fast.
mike on May 3rd, 2008
Yes, my first exposure was also seeing the Pistols on So It Goes, in late August 1976. Earlier in the same show, there was also a brief item on the Ramones, accompanied by a snatch of “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”.
To be honest, I was more baffled than converted. The “conversion” had more to do with Eddie and the Hot Rods than it did the Pistols - their Live At The Marquee EP totally rocked my world. Then along came The Damned’s “New Rose”, the first British punk single, and in my case I can honestly say it was life-changing. By the end of 1976, I had renounced my prog past. I stopped buying albums and started buying singles (with a new numbering system: Live At The Marquee was Single #1, as far as I was concerned).
Simultaneously with all of that, I got massively into punk fanzine culture (particularly Sniffin’ Glue, which became my new bible). My local Cambridge record shop, which went by the unpromising name of “Remember Those Oldies”, had a separate room at the back for fanzines, and it stocked an impressive range; I’d venture to say that it was the largest outside London. The guy who ran the shop (Lee Wood) went on to start his own punk label, Raw Records, in the spring of 1977.
There are a couple of points that I’d like to reinforce, as they sometimes seem to get lost in the accepted versions of rock history.
Firstly: pre-Bill Grundy, only a tiny, tiny minority of people had any sort of interest in this stuff. Post-Bill Grundy, the overwhelming reaction to punk continued to be a strongly hostile one. Cloistered away at boarding school, I came in for a lot of stick for listening to punk (while being fully aware of the inherent absurdity of being a public school punk rocker). My classmates hated it - I mean, really HATED it - and I lost most of what little popularity I had.
(Of course, they all loved it two years later, when the threat had been neutralised.)
Secondly: there was no orthodoxy, and no single definition of What Punk Was All About (as the more tolerant amongst you might have gathered from that conversation with Lord Punkrat upthread, and I’m sorry if that got too detailed too quickly). There was an intellectual wing (you should have seen some of the fanzines!), and an equal and opposite anti-intellectual wing. An idealistic wing and a nihilist wing. A feminist wing and a misogynist wing. A fashion wing and an anti-fashion wing. An art school wing and a council estate wing. A “long live rock and roll” wing and a “we oppose all rock and roll” wing. A “let’s take over the charts” wing, and a “let’s operate on the margins” wing. It was about plurality, not orthodoxy - although the latter didn’t take long to establish itself, either.
Or at least, that was my impression of it all: 14 years old, too young to join in, reading and listening from the sidelines, in no danger of having my surging idealism tainted by messy reality. Which was actually a pretty bloody great way of experiencing it all, if you ask me…
Billy Smart on May 3rd, 2008
Not as early as 1976, but probably by 1977 - and certainly by 1978, I was aware of punk rockers as folk devils, like football hooligans and skinheads; they had green hair, they spat everywhere, they couldn’t play their instruments and made a terrifying noise, and they wanted to kill people - especially the Queen.
I was only five!
mike on May 3rd, 2008
Aged five in 1967, I had a similar view of the Rolling Stones, with Mick Jagger little short of the Devil incarnate…
LondonLee on May 3rd, 2008
The atmosphere in 76-77 could be very hostile. My sister’s mate Sue went headfirst into punk and had spiky orange hair, bondage trousers, the whole works. Walking down the street with her people would just stop and stare with this look of utter distaste as if they’d smelt something bad, at one point someone even spat at her. The King’s Road was a particularly tense and intimidating place, I was literally too scared to step foot inside Boy.
Chris Brown on May 3rd, 2008
By the time I was five, the green-haired punk was still around as a comedy figure, although it’s probably safer not get too detailed about that time yet.
As the above implies, I don’t have any nostalgic horse in this race, but suspicious as I am of consensus I tend to the view that punk - or *something* - had to happen at this juncture.
Mark M on May 4th, 2008
I missed punk completely on the reasonable grounds that I was only five at this point and I we had just moved to Poland! But re: Mike at 119 – two things ring true here – the first being the huge range of people who were punks and for whom it represented a brief swerve away from their standard listening habits (Robert Elms, say). The second is it ties in with the conventional political theory that most major movements triumph as impossibly wide coalitions that starts crumbling the moment power is achieved because the disparate elements only ever agreed on the fact they were against the status quo (cf the French Revolution, the Iranian Revolution, New Labour; top Communist poster boy Che Guevara failed to get this completely and he and thousands of other people paid with their lives in futile uprisings that never had any chance of succeeding because there was no broad base of popular support.)
Mark M on May 4th, 2008
I’m also distrustful of the retrospective historical determinism in the idea “that’s why punk had to happen”. “That’s why punk could happen…” seems closer to it.
FT's koganbot on May 4th, 2008
Not only didn’t it have to happen at this juncture, from my American perspective it didn’t happen at this particular juncture, or any juncture. Which isn’t to say that it didn’t exist, but rather that it wasn’t an event. Just something ongoing that came to specific attention in different ways at different times. Which also isn’t to say that the various specific events (e.g., Britain 1975-77) don’t have their specific impact and don’t matter in their specificity.
But I’m being vague here, so let’s just say I woz a punk before you woz a punk. But that’s only an accident of birth, in that I was 16 before you were 16. (I think I beat Rosie by several months. Not sure about Dr. Mod.)
The “punk moment” began in September 1970 and hasn’t totally gone away since then, but it was in full flush through about March or May 1971. Not sure what happened to April. I remember a day of sunshine in late March bringing an end to something, and I picked up my pen in May and got it down (”it” not being the sunshine but the previous darkness, though obviously if I’m writing it down in May it’s not previously been altogether bleached away in late March). But “it” wasn’t as virulent in May as it had been in February.
But I would not have called it “punk” at the time, and not just because the term wasn’t in general usage yet as a positive music-related term (in fact, the positive usage was already under way; see next paragraph) but because when I did start paying attention to the term “punk rock” my intuitive understanding of it was that it meant weak kids - actual punks, old meaning of the term - acting tough by mocking and taunting and hurting people, and the music it meant was the music that went with it, i.e., punk rock circa 1966, also known as garage rock (but not known as either in its time). The epitome of this music would have been “96 Tears” and “Get Me To The World On Time” and “Pushin’ Too Hard.” Was basically Stones and Yardbirds and Dylan misheard by the creeps and made dumber and nastier and less self-reflective. It was only reluctantly around 1976 or so that I acceded to the general usage that applied the term to the Stooges and Dolls and and Ramones and Sex Pistols - and by extension to me in my punk moment 1970-71. And also, if it was to apply to the Stooges and Dolls and Sex Pistols it had to apply backwards to the Stones and to Dylan. But it can’t apply to any of them, or to garage rock, as a musical “moment” in the way that British punk in 1976 is a musical moment.
But as for my personal punk, the term was around in 1970, a copy of the July 1970 issue of Fusion magazine with Nick Tosches’ article “The Punk Muse” actually being in my bedroom. But if I read it, I don’t remember it, and I think I would. My guess is that I might have looked at the first few paragraphs, decided that they were snide comedic-parodic fake monographic fooling around, been a combination of bored and scared, and not read further. Which is too bad, because it wasn’t snide at all, it was very romantic and visionary in an interesting way that I’m not sure I understand (the vision being teen greaser boys trying to get into teen girls pants, but Tosches is trying to write his way into the romanticism of this: “The Cleftones knew. They knew the secret of the universe was up in Betty’s drawers and no one else’s.”). I may livejournal about this sometime today, seeing as I finally bothered to read the piece for (maybe) the first time TODAY, and feel very foolish for not having read it earlier. It’s way more interesting than Dave Marsh’s Question Mark and the Mysterians piece in the May 1971 Creem where Marsh coins the term “punk rock.” Anyway, if I had read the Tosches piece, I think I’d have remembered these lines: “A Honky Blues/Music (Honk1) scene, on the other hand, is a visionary expiation, a cry into the abyss of one’s own mordant bullshit.” Which was me in a few months, but maybe I did read and didn’t remember because it wasn’t me yet.
There are various types of punk, obviously, but we don’t get to embrace them all in ecumenical enthusiasm since they don’t necessarily get along with one another. The two types that were in a tension-filled blood match in my psyche were the high romantics and the junior-high-school creeps, with some figures having a shot at embodying both (Richard Meltzer, for instance; the Sex Pistols, maybe).
FT's koganbot on May 4th, 2008
But anyway, what’s at stake in, e.g, the various versions of “punk” and the who and the what and where did it come from and all that… Well, just an example, but if someone says “PUNK, that means ANGER, and it was the music of BRITISH WORKING-CLASS YOUTH” (you really do still hear this line), then they don’t have to actually think about anything, since those words seem to explain themselves easily, the anger of the working stiffs and the dole queues etc. blah blah blah. But if for instance it’s the music of an eastern Michigan college town in 1967 through 1973 or various middle-class Cleveland suburbs in 1968 through 1975 and bohemian gathering spots in New York’s Lower East Side, then the why and the what and the meaning aren’t self-explanatory, and if the later Brit supposed working-class punk lifts its initial musical vocabulary from this American quasi-intellectual sideways mobile lumpen middle-class, this isn’t so obvious why either, and you have to think about which working-class kids, since punk was hardly the music of an entire economic class. (And some more stuff that I’ll think about later when I wake up.)
FT's koganbot on May 4th, 2008
Mark, you’re being anachronistic calling the Velvet Underground “indie.” Even if their “influence” is indie, songs like “Heroin” and “Sister Ray” make no sense if they’re not aimed at the larger public space. The fact that they didn’t reach this space is no matter. Ellen Willis was dead wrong in saying “The Velvets were the first important rock-and-roll artists who had no real chance of attracting a large audience.” How does she know? The band didn’t know this. The record company didn’t know this. Had at least as much shot as the Grateful Dead (who took years to hit) and the Strawberry Alarm Clock. Really, 1967, you didn’t know what could or could not happen.
Waldo on May 4th, 2008
Rosie # 94 - Very well played! As Captain Mainwaring always said: “I wondered which one of you would br the first to spot that!” And yes, Bunny exacted due correction on Waldo (who is too clever by half sometimes) by snatching my supply of Katy Cider (a heavenly and nourishing brew) and replaced it with Woodpecker.
That’ll learn me!
DJ Punctum on May 4th, 2008
Mike (#97):
That was it! Embarrassingly (or not) I think it was the Stranglers I went to see at the Apollo back in that halycon springtime (it WAS thirty-plus years ago).
Meanwhile the gliberal responses to my last post from the expected quarters are pathetically predictable but I certainly had the likes of vinylscot in mind rather than Rosie. How can I attack one and not the other? Simple. Rosie and I have had our well documented disagreements in the past (oh, and to add to the list, my dad played me Trout Mask Replica when I was about five or six and I loved it, which gets me thinking that Beefheart is best appreciated when heard very young, before one’s views of the world become more solidified [and thus it is entirely logical that someone like Evan Lurie should work so well in the context of the Backyardigans]) but she always argues her case seriously and cogently from a committed anti-commonsensical point of view. Whereas the trouble with vinylscot is not his hostility - since hostility and disagreement are essential components of any messageboard worth bothering with - but the fact that he posts exclusively with a view to antagonising and provoking; the same angle deployed by the deliberately dumbing newspapers in this country who systematically use the word “intellectual” as an insult (to further their own financially-dictated demographic interests); a pride in ignorance and a kneejerk detestation of and contempt for anyone he deems “different” (and how ironic a mirrored reflection of ‘77 punk is that?).
My problem with the Popular comments boxes is precisely that there are too many people here who want to treat it like an online Central Perk - they bound in, squat on the sofa, sip their decaf, say their stock piece, seek to have their tunnel-visioned viewpoint of the world confirmed, don’t even bother to listen to what anyone else has to say on the matter and won’t entertain their thoughts being challenged or questioned at any costs, and then gleefully trot out again.
Any online forum worthy of that name has to have its intimidating or threatening element. Just like the Debating Society at my school, where I cut my arguing teeth, was threatening. Just like the Oxford Union was intimidating. Just like watching Citizen Kane or The Prisoner was threatening. Just like reading IMac or Morley or Penman when they were at the top of their NME game was intimidating. Because they made me want to be something or somebody more, inspired me to seek to exceed myself. This will no doubt provoke anguished and enraged bewilderment to the likes of vinylscot who essentially want a quiet/quietened life of who-could-argue-with-that-and-hey-wasn’t-it-great consensus drivel, as opposed to the committed regulars here who offer serious (and on the side also very funny), intense and GENUINELY provocative viewpoints and models which actually make me, as a listener, want to go back to the music they’re talking about and listen to them completely anew. I’m thinking of Mark and Mike but also (even though I disagree with about 95% of what he says) Frank (and others, including Rosie and Waldo); challenging and, yes, if you want to think of them that way, intimidating minds who even if they make you want to go AARGH! at least do infinitely more to provoke serious thought than the dull mediocrity on offer elsewhere.
So I am not going to shoot myself by saying I won’t post here again but I am also speaking up for the actively provocative over the passively accepting.
mike on May 4th, 2008
The term “punk rock”, as it related to 1960s Nuggets-era US garage rock, was in usage in the UK before being re-appropriated for the Pistols et al; there was even a extended definition for it in an NME “dictionary of rock”, that was published at around the start of 1976. My take: the term crossed over because the Pistols and the Hot Rods were playing 1960s punk rock covers in their live sets. (”Stepping Stone” and “No Lip” / “96 Tears” and “Woolly Bully”.) Then as the scene around the Pistols grew (yer Damned, yer Clash), the term grew with it.
But it was also recognised very early on as an inadequate term - how could a “Year Zero” music re-cycle a ten-year old genre? - hence the propagation of the alternative term “new wave”, which I think was being bandied about from at least the late summer. “New wave” was seen as a respectable synonym for a while, but due to its comparative prissiness it became increasingly naff (McLaren and the Pistols heaping scorn on it in a Spring 1977 NME feature), and so the distinction between “punk” and “new wave” started to grow.
The distinction between UK and US punk was also clear from the outset. I bought an imported copy of Punk magazine and was baffled by its comparative maturity and sense of history, and by its lack of Year Zero-ist polemic.
I like what koganbot says about the idea of “punks” as misfits and weeds. Johnny Rotten made for a thoroughly unlikely alpha male thug hero, and there was a notable lack of lumpen machismo around 1976-era punk, which embraced homosexuality and asexuality, and provided a watershed for (ahem) Women In Rock. (So from my perspective, the Cult Of Sid is where it all started to go wrong…)
(Apols if this comment is a bit of a rambling mess; I’ve also not been up for long!)
crag on May 4th, 2008
Rosie, the thing i dont quite get is that your description of punk -”making random loud noises with musical instruments one doesn’t know how to play while screeching obscenities at toothache-inducing intensity” is how the vast majority of people would describe Trout Mask Replica(apart from the obscenities bit).Certainly Beefheart is more a much more extreme listening experience than, say, “Anarchy in the UK”.
Anyway..
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 4th, 2008
“apart from the obscenities bit” <— d00d listen more carefully! “hair pie: bake 1″ etc etc
(ok they are very VERY elliptical obscenities)
crag on May 4th, 2008
Re:#133-”Hair Pie:Bake 1″ is an instrumental, though! Granted, there is “Old Fart at Play”, but its hardly “Fuck Off” by the Electric Chairs, is it?
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 4th, 2008
still i think beefheart wd be saddened if his work (TMR esp) were not filed as full rich obscenity
(incidentally heartened to discover via google that jayne county is alive and well and still performing yay sex-change)
rosie on May 4th, 2008
Ooerr - I was getting worried in the threads immediately before this one that Marcello and I were finding an awful lot to agree about. And then, just when I thought things were getting back to normal, he starts paying me compliments! At least, I assume “anticommonsensical” is a compliment. I’m not, after all, a great believer in “common sense” because it is the cop out of those who which to cling to their standpoint without making the effort of justifying it. It’s the “It stands to reason” of Alf Garnett and the editorial line of the Daily Mail. My academic provenance, after all, is quantum physics in the first instance, and literary and philosophical studies of a distinctly Derridian bent in the second instance (nobody who has been exposed to the mind-bending concepts of quantum physics need be afraid of Derrida or have any use for mind-altering pharmaceuticals.)
Anyway, Marcello, I’d just like to ask you in a friendly kind of way to step back and consider that while your personal insights are of immense value, you do have a tendency to be very protective of your own experience, and to deny, sometimes in a way that comes across as just plain terrified, that there is any alternative to that point of view. But you contradict yourself, because you have yourself said that within the culture of Uddingston Grammar School you were apart from the crowd in your tastes, and made to suffer for it.
At risk of getting ahead of ourselves, in three months from No Charge I’ll be starting my (mercifully short) teaching career in a very large bog-standard comp (albeit one with a much wider range of social intake than many) in Hull. For three years I’ll have a first-hand view of what the sort of young people who were buying singles were listening to, and it bore a strong correlation with the sort of thing that hit number one during the period. Some of them probably read the NME, but not many. In a school with almost 2,000 pupils, there might perhaps have been half a dozen hard-line punks. Some, but not many, more will have bought an outfit from Zanzibar in Spring Bank at some point. Many, many more were devoted Northern Soulers. Not many will have visited a punk club, but a good many (not as many who claimed to though, I suspect) will have attended Wigan Casino all-nighters. Punk was a Yellowbelly (Lincolnshire, and by extension London and the rest of the effeminate South) thing.
As a measure of what what the slightly older working-classes were listening to, I’d rather judge by the jukebox in the “Little Queens” than the pages of the NME, and I don’t thing the Pistols were getting much play there. You were more likely to hear JJ Barrie.
crag on May 4th, 2008
rosie on May 4th, 2008
crag @132: It’s exactly how I heard TMR in the beginning. There was a cabal of lads at school who would insist on playing TMR at parties to scare the bejaysus out of everybody else. It was years before I could make myself sit down and listen to it, and a little longer before it finally clicked. Even now I’m inclined to say that it’s either the most innovative, original and mould-shattering piece of rock music ever, or it’s the biggest load of rubbish ever to be flung in the face of a gullible public. There is no possibility of any shade in between, but it is possible to hold both views at once (quantum physics again.) But running right through TMR is a wit that is lacking from the excesses of the Pistols.
I once knew a man who thought John Coltrane was god. Me, I think ‘god’ is a tad excessive, but anyway, this man bought a second-hand saxophone and proceeded to blow into it, flexing his fingers manically on the keys as he tortured the reed, and made a noise that sounded superficially like free improvisation. That didn’t make it free improvisation, though, and it didn’t make my friend John Coltrane.
To take a literary parallel: Finnegans Wake is the piece of genius (punk writing?) it is only because of Dubliners
mike on May 4th, 2008
Re. Rosie’s #136: I’m also keenly aware that by posting here about my highly atypical experience of 1976 UK punk, I might be helping to perpetuate the retro-fitted myth that Punk Came Along And Suddenly Changed Everything. Presumably it’s residual annoyance at the propagation of that myth which has helped to fuel the Guilty Pleasures boom… but we don’t have to get into all that again!
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 4th, 2008
one thing i very much want to do her re my own experience — is to tease away my attitudes and responses at the time from (personal) retro-fitting, to distinguish how i actually felt from how i wish i’d felt: how i may have adapted my memories to suit subsequent ideological shifts (for example: but i think i’ll postpone the discussion) as i have become more anti-indie i suppress that side of my passions back in the day (by 1979 i was a total full-on diy indie-ideologue; as i now consider this a giant post-punk misstep — mine and lots of other peoples — i fight back over-hard against acknowledging its earlier manifestations; i WAS pro-top-ten-as-battlefield from the post-grundy start, but not at all in a coherently argued way)
it’s going to require heroic spoiler-bunny discipline to keep me in line on this i think — but this is a value of the gradual re-unfolding process of popular, that stuff which has over time compacted into a personal orthodoxy of handwaving shortcuts can be re-unpacked and shaken around until the truth drops out of it
a logged out p^nk s lord sukråt wötsit on May 4th, 2008
haha and the full extent of my pre-punk punkism at this date, viz june 76, was — just like mike — a all-by-my-lonesome semi-secret love of GONG!!
vinylscot on May 4th, 2008
Well I certainly seem to have opened a can of worms.
My post no 93 clarified what I meant by posting “if you were not there”. It’s perfectly valid to post; such posts are equally as valuable as others - they offer a different perspective.
What I object to is being lectured to by someone who a) pretends they were there; and b) decrees that his version of events is the only legitimate version, and that anyone who challenges that is automatically tagged a “gliberal”. (I still can’t understand why I MUST agree with his version, but if I agree with anyone else I am failing in my duty to the messageboard).
It appears from recent posts that at least one has been through this with him before, so I apologise if this is covering old ground. It also seems that quite a few of the regular, intelligent, posters have also identified with what I wrote.
I sincerely hope this can be an end to this type of ad-hominem attack. I will endeavour to confine any future criticisms to the content of the posts, rather than the poster himself. I would expect the same courtesy in return.
LondonLee on May 4th, 2008
I could never take American “punk” seriously, especially the LA variety - they had big cars and swimming pools!
mike on May 4th, 2008
Re. 141: There is one tiny link between Gong and UK punk - silly n