Punk didn't come out of nowhere, it had ingredients that existed before, that's all I'm saying. The most punkish thing about Slade was that they were fearless in not appearing "musicianly" though Jim Lea always had issues with that.
Were they Beatles-influenced? You bet! Never made any bones about it either, Lea's chord structures so often came from the Lennon-McCartney book of songcraft.
Why didn't their "Whatever happened to ..." album sell? Because they were too old, too glam, too apolitical. Why didn't The New York Dolls albums sell at the time (or the Ramones ones?)? The haircuts though were not jumping the bandwagon - they wore skinhead/Oi style haircuts when it wasn't fashionable to do so and the cover of that album was tongue in cheek (picturing them with their former look), if you turned it around they looked like this
That's hardly jumping the bandwagon, that is taking the piss in a very Britisih manner.
I had hoped that I would receive more credit for the mentioning of The Hammersmith Gorillas, now they were really obscure!
And you didn't know The Adverts? That surprised me, but I've noticed in the past already that my concept of punk is very UK 1977-centric. There was no way getting away from it in that summer if you read NME. And Gaye Advert was the poster-girl of the movement.
