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.
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Tom in FT /Popular • featured content/Pop • 6,271 views
Hard to believe that such a godawful tune has spawned 249 comments, innit?
My take on the punk thing. While pop (and dance/disco) was largely unaffected, the rock world most certainly was completely changed. Look at the Reading lineup for ’76 to ’80 to see the effect. We’ve now got to the point where there is no outstanding musical genre that dominates the scene completely, and people are generally tolerant of everybody elses (extremely widespread, these days) taste.
I’d say we’re living in Pistols World right now.
It’s punk wot won it for JJ.
I think in tribute, we should compose a punk version of NC, which finishes with the child, who having just been fobbed off by Mom, goes in to one with: “IT’S NOT FAAAIIRRRR!!! BUT I DON’T CAAAARRRRREEE!!!” etc.
“For taking off my safety pin this week, $3.95…”
I thought Verity Sharp was alright until I saw her patronising Scott Walker on The Culture Show on BBC2 and now she needs to be hanged for the greater good.
How DARE she! I’ll have to take your word, MC, as I didn’t see the broadcast, but anyone who fails to worship at the temple of Scott (never mind patronise him) deserves to be scraped to death with a blunt razor blade.
Sorry, but it’s always been Frank Sinatra’s world we’re living in.
Not Joe Brown’s then?
In any case, Sinatra was only renting the world from *insert safely deceased mobster of your choice*
“For not gobbing on the postman, a dollar twenty…”
I see James Whale’s now available for work, if anyone at Radio 2 is interested.
Don’t know if anybody else is currently listening to the proggy on Radio 4 about John Cooper-Clarke and his links to the Manchester punk scene, but I’m sure it will be on Listen Again, or whatever the BBC are calling it this week. Fits nicely with this thread, I think.
James Whale has been signed up for a shopping channel on TV apparantly.
Yes, wouldn’t it be fun if we had to deal with John Cooper Clarke on Popular? “Beasley Street” at number one, I’d have liked that. Or “I Married A Monster From Outer Space” –
“We could even have taken a different race / But, f— me, a monster from outer space!”
Judge Dale: “it was a bit unusual but we all loved it.”
Didn’t Dale say that about Napolean XIV?
It’s his code for records he hates.
Possibly a bit late but I wasn’t around when you were doing 1976 or not posting anyway.To me punk etc was just an intra-tribal fight – a lot of punks were just the younger siblings of the same rock press reading, gig going types of people who they slagged off. This seems to be confirmed to me the way that it was so quickle claimed by the rock canon. And the way 12 or so years a large proportion of them reacted to Acid House in the way their elders had to punk.
This is completely different from what happened in 1988 and afterwards with Acid House/Rave and which now over 20 years after it kicked off remains so alien to the keepers of the rock flame that you know you’ll never be hearing it on any Radio 2 playlist any time soon.
Surely that was the major rupture in pop music to me and a lot of those involved in 1988-92 and afterwards all punk did was to keep the tired old conventional rock warhorse alive…
re 50, 53 and 54 the Glenn Miller revival WAS kicked off in Canvey Island (at the Goldmine) the south-east’s most legendary pre-1988 dance club (I finally got there myself in about 1983). The Lacy Lady in Ilford was one of Chris Hill’s other big nights.
Always happy for Popular’s Longest Ever Comments Thread to be revived, Andy!
Didn’t Radio 2 do a history of dance music special just recently? I think that era’s music is starting to creep onto their playlists – the ‘acknowledged classics’ like Pacific State and Voodoo Ray at any rate.
Yes(and this is not meant to disparage those 2 tracks because obviously they were genuine parts of the scene and in ‘Voodoo Ray’s case a very early part)but then they’ll try to link it into ‘Madchester’ or something and try to pretend what happened from 1988 onwards had something to do with the Stone Roses and the Inspiral Carpets etc (because you know “they were proper musicians and played guitars”) when in reality you’d have had as much chance of hearing them at a genuine dance event as Val Doonican. I must admit I didn’t hear the Radio 2 series but Im going on when I’ve read/heard similar type things from the “rock” perspective and it’s like they’re desparately trying to fabricate a notion of the scene that fits their own ideas of how things were/are/should have been.
The Mojo/”real music”/pathetic “get-the-”decent”-’Hallelujah’-Campaign-to-Number-One” mindset of the punk-loving generation who run Radio 2 would no more start slipping Landlord ‘I Like It’, Cry Sisco ‘Afrodiziact’, House Crew ‘We Are Hardcore’, Sy-Kick ‘Nasty’ or a million other similar tracks into their playlist than start a Simon Cowell for prime minister party.
That said, the most enjoyable moments on Radio 2 this year for me have been when Dale Winton has been compelled to play SL2/ Altern8/ Orbital on Pick Of The Pops on a Sunday afternoon.
Re 269: the odd thing is that while on an intellectual level I agree with you entirely and Radio 2 clearly does have a public service obligation to the age group it is meant to serve, my ears tell me that house music (and it’s offspring) blighted my twenties, and with – admittedly a fair number of exceptions, including the aforementioned Voodoo Ray – I’d be a happy man if I never heard a banging four-four beat again.
Two hundred and seventy-one?!
Can somebody sum it up for me? Lordy.
I’ll try: you can be a punk rocker and own a space hopper, scenes never really disappear because they were always there in the first place and it’s probably best if you leave Radio 2′s programming to the programmers.
Clearing the dust away from this thread, and sweeping up the glass, it strikes me that I actually don’t mind this record now. L heard the Melba Montgomery original on the radio recently and was rather touched by it, and therefore so am I! It’s a sweet thing really.
My take on this thread after spending most of today reading it and re-reading some bits is that if all Punk ever was, was another means for the younger generation to upset their parents, then maybe Punk already happened, long before Al Martino opened his lungs to belt out Here In My Heart. Like if Wagner was prog, Debussy was punk kind of way. Obviously each new generation gets to stick their fingers up at their parents as rite of passage, recreate anew, but in order to create, first you must destroy. In 76, the process of destrution appeared to be far more intersting than what was created in it’s place. All those 3 minute, 3 chord tantrums never really amounted to much, but the kids who were inspired by them turned out to become everything their younger selves despised, so ultimately the cycle continues afresh. How many punks would look at their offspring downloading Gaga or Beyonce, shaking their heads, wishing that they had something like Subway Sect or The Clash or The Sex Pistols rattling cages today. Maybe they’ll come tomorrow or next year or next decade. And when they come, it’s only right that I don’t comprehend or don’t care. My moment came and went. For not being part of it, no charge.