Originally published December 2006. The second ever post on this blog. The general shittiness of 1970s England was to become a theme.

Just how bleak were the 1970s in England? Well, we had a miner’s strike that brought down the government, power cuts that plunged homes into cold darkness, a 3-day work week, bombs going off in pubs, the Winter of Discontent, the National Front, a bankrupt treasury, and “Love Thy Neighbour” on television. No wonder brown was the dominant color for home decoration back then, very appropriate for a country totally in the shit.

Things were so grim that even our pop stars were making depressing movies. First there was pretty boy David Essex dying of a drug overdose at the end of Stardust, and then Slade came up with Slade In Flame in 1975. Given their image as fun-lovin’ glam bovver boys who wrote simple, dyslexic songs, you’d expect a colourful “Help!”-style romp but what you got was a gritty, cynical kitchen-sink drama about the rise and bitter break up of a Northern rock band. Though it had it’s funny moments it was generally as dour as an old Yorkshireman at closing time. If Ken Loach made a rock and roll movie it would have been like this. I only saw it once and remember liking it but my best friend at school was a Slade fanatic and claimed to have seen it 13 times.

The movie’s theme “How Does It Feel?” was another bitter pill and is probably the only time you could ever use the word “plaintive” about a Slade record. I think this is one of the best singles of the 70s, a reflective, melancholy ballad built around some very non-Slade things like piano and flute and a massive wall of brass. There’s something about that brass sound that reeks of leather coats and dirty pavements, I can’t really explain why. Much as I love their mindless headbanging numbers this gem shows that Noddy Holder and Jimmy Lea could write proper songs – with proper spelling too!

The British public didn’t warm to Slade as serious artistes, the movie wasn’t a big smash and “How Does It Feel?” was their first single in three and half years that failed to make the Top 10, so they reverted back to being cartoon characters and stayed that way ever since. Shame. a few more songs like this and their reputation could have been very different.

Download: How Does It Feel? – Slade (mp3)

What a great performance this is. How the stone dead audience aren’t going crazy dancing is beyond me.

Originally published February 2011

The main job of British movie and TV dolly birds in the 60s and 70s was to be passive objects for the likes of Sid James or Robin Askwith to phwooaar all over, or to scream helplessly and faint when Christopher Lee appeared in a cape. But with her imposing height, Amazonian build, and drop-dead beauty, Valerie Leon didn’t fit the part of the ditzy barmaid or virginal damsel in distress so she was usually the one being sexually aggressive and domineering — entering rooms like a panther in heat, thrusting her cleavage forward like a deadly weapon, giving off enough horny static to power a large city — and it was the men who got all flustered and ran to the fainting couch when she approached.

She looked like such a you-are-not-worthy goddess that a lot of the time she wasn’t cast as a regular human being and played a variety of jungle warriors, aliens, and reincarnated Egyptian queens. Even in the famous Hai Karate ads she was more like an amorous, unstoppable Terminator robot.

She was a ubiquitous presence on 1970s telly, forever popping up as the comedy crumpet on variety shows and sitcoms, and you could always rely on her to class up a production — at least visually. As a boy I would immediately, um, perk up when she appeared and would sit through some right old rubbish in the hope that she’d appear again, however briefly, in that low-cut cocktail dress or fur bikini and play havoc with my hormones.

I’ve no idea if she was any good as an actress because watching her my normal critical faculties tend to short-circuit, and her filmography is full of such nameless roles as “Hotel Receptionist”, “Lady in Bahamas”, “Serving Wench”, “Bath Girl” and, amusingly, “Queen of the Nabongas.” But one credit she should be proud of is having Roxy Music’s “Beauty Queen” written about her. I never knew that until recently and now the opening line “Valerie please believe, it never could work out” finally makes sense to me. I’ve never seen this confirmed by either her or Bryan Ferry but the internet says it’s true. I hope it is because someone as gorgeous as Valerie Leon should have songs written about her.

Download: Beauty Queen (Live in Newcastle, 1974) – Roxy Music (mp3)

Originally published September 2009

When Sex Pistol Steve Jones called Bill Grundy a “dirty fucker” on live television (amongst other four-letter pleasantries) in 1976 it caused a national outcry of screaming tabloid headlines and livid viewers claiming to have kicked in their television sets in disgust. Even though it only happened on a local television show in London (I saw it) it was on at 6 o’clock in the evening just when families were sitting down for their tea. Back then swearing was a very rare occurrence on British telly, even in the evenings after the so-called 9pm “watershed” when you’d hardly hear even a “shit” or “bollocks” (unlike today when there’s plenty of effing and blinding), so someone using the F-word* — at teatime! think of the children! — was like a bomb exploding in your living room.

Being only 14 at the time I thought it was all very funny, swear words were thrilling things because they upset grown ups and we weren’t supposed to say them (though my mum only ever seriously frowned on the C-word) and punk didn’t just bring rude words to our television sets, but it produced a whole stream of expletive-laden records that pissed all over the concept of good taste and gave it a good kicking: The Pistols’ “Bodies”, The Stranglers’ “Bring On The Nubiles” and the brilliantly pithy “Fuck Off” by Wayne County & The Electric Chairs which achieved legendary, whispered-about status at my school even though most of us had never actually heard it. These records were talked about like illicit contraband amongst us kids, hearing them — or just hearing about them — gave you the same dangerous thrill you got from reading the dog-eared copy of James Herbert’s gory novel The Rats that got passed around school with all the nasty bits bookmarked.

Another record that was talked about like some dark dirty secret we all shared was the comedy album Derek and Clive (Live) by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore which came out the same year the Pistols dropped their bombs on Bill Grundy. Derek and Clive were the drunken, foul-mouthed twins of their cuddly Pete ‘n’ Dud characters and the album was so full of profanity and bad-taste that even Lenny Bruce would have been moved to write an outraged letter to Mary Whitehouse about it. In many ways the album was like the comedy version of Never Mind The Bollocks — it was banned by the BBC, WH Smith wouldn’t stock it, and it almost got them prosecuted for obscenity. I had it on tape and my mates and I would sit in the stairwell of my council estate at night listening to it in awe at the level of vulgarity on it, and of course we thought it was hysterically funny — as a song on the album said, I hadn’t laughed so much “since Grandma died or Auntie Mabel caught her left tit in the mangle”.

The most notorious sketch was “This Bloke Came Up To Me” in which Dudley Moore spews a tidal wave of filthy language that used to make me wet my pants but now seems to be less funny than just plain surreal. “The Worst Job He Ever Had” really is surreal as they drunkenly explore the subject of Winston Churchill’s bogies — of course, it’s also full of very rude words. Needless to say, these are highly NSFW as well as NSFSC (Not Safe For Small Children).

Download: This Bloke Came Up To Me – Derek and Clive (mp3)
Download: The Worst Job He Ever Had – Derek and Clive (mp3)

*The first person to say “fuck” on British television was Kenneth Tynan in 1965, an event so singularly notorious — it was discussed in Parliament — I first knew Tynan’s name because of that incident years before I found out he was also a brilliant critic and essayist.

Originally published August 2008

I can’t remember how and when I found out how babies were made but I distinctly remember not knowing. When I was very young there was a rumour going around my Primary School that the older sister of a friend of mine was on something called “the Pill” and while I had no idea what that was I gathered it was something scandalous and to do with having a baby. So my innocent mind put 2 and 2 together and came up with 3: for a while I actually thought a girl got pregnant by taking a pill. But back then the thought of just kissing a girl scared me out of my short trousers – I’d run a mile when they started playing kiss chase – so God knows how I’d have reacted to the idea that grown ups did, you know, that.

Even though I knew nothing of the intimate details of love I did actually have my first official “girlfriend” at the age of 10, though to be honest she was the one who asked me out. Her name was Simone Palmley (Simone sounds so exotic now, but we pronounced it See-mon because we were a bit common), a girl at my Primary School who I was told fancied me rotten and one day she came up to me in the playground and asked me out. Now, Simone was a nice-looking girl who also happened to be famous among the boys at school for being rather, um….well-developed for her age (“Blimey, she’s got bigger ones than me!” my mum said after she met her), so you’d think my reply would have been “Phwooooaar yes!” but instead I think I turned bright red and was so tongue-tied I had to be bullied into saying yes by her mates.

But at that age girls are scary creatures, they mature faster than us boys and are into things like clothes and make-up and kissing (yuck!) while we’re still snotty oiks who’d rather be playing football and reading comics. Simone was especially scary to a nervous Nellie like me because she looked so damn womanly, the dark-haired, curvy siren of the playground who seemed 10 going on 26. I never knew what to do with myself (or her) when she was around. During that summer when we were officially “going out” (which mostly involved going swimming at the local baths together) I could barely work up the courage to hold her hand and think I only kissed her twice, both times a hurried peck on the lips. I don’t know what other 10 year olds got up to, but for me it was too young for furtive gropings or snogging sessions in the back row of the pictures.

I don’t know what she was expecting from our “relationship” but it was probably more than what she got out of me. Little was I to know then but this was to become the defining characteristic of my future experience with the ladies: Kicking myself over golden opportunities missed because I was such a pathetic twerp and wistful thoughts of “If I knew then what I know now”.

Download: Girls – Moments and Whatnauts (mp3)

This seems like a very “school playground” record to me, I can’t really explain why but it’s probably just because it was a hit in 1974 when I was, you know, a kid at school.

I’m completely unsurprised that Strawberry Switchblade were big in Japan.

Originally published April 2009

I lived in Florida for 10 years and though it could be a relatively cosmopolitan place because of the large number of Hispanics and northern Yankees living there, every now and you’d be reminded that you were, in fact, in the Deep South. It wasn’t just the gun shops, the Confederate flag bumper stickers on pick-up trucks, the signs on shop doors saying “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service” or even the fact that black people seemed to live in a completely different world from the white folks. There was also the drunken redneck straight out of Deliverance who staggered up to me in a bar one night and, because I had no idea what he was incoherently mumbling about, said to me “If you cain’t unnerstand what ah’m sayin’ then get the fuck out of mah country!” and punched me in the face. Or the guy in another bar who told me that the English weren’t worth a damn and the United States should never have gotten involved in WWII because it wasn’t their problem. When I said that the Holocaust was a pretty important problem for everyone he replied “Aw, them Jews were askin’ for trouble” which was my cue to move to another stool. As you can imagine, being a left-wing, urban sophisticate from London, there were times when I wondered what the hell I was doing there (easy answer actually: it was hot, it was cheap, and the girls loved my accent.)

The bar jukebox soundtrack to those days was usually some loud and leaden Rawk music of the hairy and chest-beating kind: Lynyrd Skynyrd, AC/DC, Metallica — you know, real man’s music — but the one record I really, really hated which always plays in my head when I think about the South is “Old Time Rock and Roll” by Bob Seger. The song probably doesn’t mean much to your average Brit (unless they’re familiar with this scene from Risky Business) but it was a popular blue-collar classic down there which always got the Good Ol’ Boys rocking and made me want catch the next plane home — or at least cleanse my ears with some Pet Shop Boys. It wasn’t just that it made Status Quo sound cutting edge, what made it worse than all the others was its proud declaration that modern music was rubbish which, mixed with the ambience of cheap watery beer, rusty pick-up trucks and chewing tobacco, sounded like the rallying cry for every reactionary redneck cracker who still thought the wrong side won the Civil War. The line “Don’t try to take me to a disco, you’ll never even get me out on the floor” always made me think of the theory that the whole “Disco Sucks!” movement in America was driven by racism and homophobia — in that context it might as well been called “Old Time Rock and Roll (And Not That Fag Shit).”

But I don’t want to dump on Bob Seger too much because — while I might be a liberal city boy who does like disco — the truth is I am also quite a fan of his 1978 album Stranger In Town even though it does contain the offending song. I really liked the single “Hollywood Nights” and used to own it on silver vinyl. I still think it’s a tremendous record which motors along with the same exhilarating rush you get from flooring an open-top Mustang and zooming down a highway. It almost makes me forgive him for the living hell he put me through with “Old Time Rock and Roll”. Well, not quite, I still have nightmares about that bloody record.

Download: Hollywood Nights – Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band (mp3)

PS: I should add, before I get a deluge of “How dare you!” comments, that I knew many wonderful, intelligent people in Florida, including my lovely wife who I met there. And I have been punched in pubs in London and Wales so there are arseholes everywhere.

I hope you don’t mind all the repeat postings of the past couple of weeks, believe me they are way more interesting than anything new I could write at the moment. I’m just not feeling the blog muse right now so the repeats will continue for a while. Lucky I have 11 years of old drivel to draw from.

Here’s some sublime Philly Soul from 1969.

Download: Here I Go Again – Archie Bell & The Drells (mp3)