Music videos that feature Thunderbirds

[Granny Gremlin]

Fair enough, except the Pistols weren't exactly badasses either though Sid loved picking fights (getting his arse whooped every time - so much so the Slits wrote a song about it called So Tough) - it was "all a con" (to quote Joe Strummer) - and not a particularly opaque one; the point was to lampoon that this is what the establishment expected of the day's lower class youth which  wasn't based in reality or fair - as well as the fact that it was always a con, with any band (that's what as Joe postulated in the interview I quoted).  Further, specifically about Belfast, Rory was from Ireland (a few miles west of the N Ireland border - Belfast was the closest major city ); used to it, knew the streets as it were - also a mature adult, a decade or so senior to any of the Clash.  Put the Clash in a race riot in west London and they had all the same nonchalance, but yeah, they were teens who knew they were off their own turf and were never used to feeling that safe besides.  They only knew what was on the news (sensationalised) while Rory had the inside scoop as it were.  Not the fairest comparison.  ... and never take anything Lydon says seriously (takes one to know one); I'm a little surprised you thought he'd make a credible expert witness as it were.  The Clash weren't poseurs any more than any other rock band were (e.g. The Stones as an easy example) as regards being badass, but more importantly they were very legit (not poseurs) as regards their message or anything they actually said in their music.

I know you read NME at the time, because you mention it so often, but your musical love was never punk, and the NME never really explained punk very well. And I realise I leave myself open to accusations of romanticising that era.

[Dave W]

You and your little filing compartments. Weren't The Clash arena rock too? The Damned as spoofy as Slade. Didn't Television's Marquee Moon feature more harmonic guitar leads than an Allman Brothers and a Wishbone Ash album put together?

Yes, I have my little filing compartments and I'm unapologetic about it.

Have we gotten around to a Blackmore connection yet? If not, why not?

[Highlander]

Is someone trying to terminate the thread....!

[Dave W]

It's too bad Uwe didn't have this new book when he was young, then maybe he wouldn't be so contentious.

[uwe]

I'm stirred, but not shaken. I had the Sex Pistols and the Ramones debut albums within a week when they came out (I kept the Ramones, sold the Sex Pistols, I had limited resources, I couldn't afford Slade's Nobody's Fools at the time though I had it on my record wish list I always kept scribbled in my wallet). I most likely read earlier about British punk in 1977 than any other forum member here. And covered Blitzkrieg Bop and I wanna be your Girlfriend with my first band ("Thunderbolt") as early as 1977. Along with Ted Nugent, MC5, Dr. Feelgood, Status Quo, Rough Diamond (remember them?) and Kiss as well as CCR, you know how eclectic I am!

I retain an interest: I only bought a fresh remaster of Never Mind the Bollocks a few weeks ago, plus a double CD compilation of PIL. Televison's Marquee Moon is on my office stereo. I think Herr Lydon is a very perceptive man and I have always enjoyed his interviews greatly - he just doesn't sing as well as Ian Gillan or Robert Halford, can we agree on that? The last Classic Rock has a brilliant interview of his. (Johnny Rotten in Classic Rock, in a lengthy interview, declaring his love for prog and making snide remarks that The New York Dolls "didn't know how to play when Todd Rundgren produced them"? My, how times have changed!) I'd have him for dinner anytime. Even in his worst moments he is good fun and when he's good, he's startling. Never Mind the Bollocks was still a sonic disappointment. I was expecting it to sound like the MC5 and it sounded like a glam rock band. That didn't go together in my mind, much as I liked and like glam rock. The Pistols sounded a bit like The Heavy Metal Kids to me (years later, Johnny Rotten would credit Gary Holton as an inspiration and admit that he "ripped him off") - sans the staccato piano and the embellishments, just listen to how Holton cockney-tears into it at 1:15:



Now, I really dug the Heavy Metal Kids, but I didn't see them as a threat to the British Empire. I guess I was expecting from the Pistols - after months of NME hype - a more system-questioning overall sound, the album sounded too conventional to me (I found the Ramones debut production more radical in fact). Of course, live the Pistols might have been another spectacle and sonic experience altogether. People make a lot of bones about the lyrics on the Pistols debut, but I was at that time still reading a communist weekly (bought it at the same newspaper stand in the next largest city where I also bought the NME - both were unavailable in our town), so my ideas about world revolution and internationalist overthrow of the capitalist system didn't really gel with Herr Rotten's nihilism, I couldn't picture the Pistols inciting English working masses to class war. 

[uwe]

Yes, I have my little filing compartments and I'm unapologetic about it.

Have we gotten around to a Blackmore connection yet? If not, why not?

At least you're honest about it!

As for your request, I'll dutifully oblige: Ritchie is on record for saying that he liked punk's raw energy and its showmanship and preferred it much to what The Eagles or Fleetwood Mac were doing in the second half of the seventies. He also dug Blondie "for their melodies".

[Granny Gremlin]

Sure Lydon is plenty of fun... all I meant was you can't take anything he says at face value, which you seem to understand but ignore when it suits.

[uwe]

That's my art as a lawyer! 

[Highlander]

I considered HMK a bit of a let down post seeing them, but then again, they were supporting Alice on the WTMN tour, so...

[uwe]

I consider that Kitsch album with its archtypical RAK glammed up over-production (including background vocals by these RAK label mates here)



as a cult period piece. And there was something unsettling about Gary Holton - in a nice way. That Victorian Age lecherous street urchin meets Marty Feldman meets Steve Marriott shtick, maybe he was the first steampunk. Whether the Black Crowes' Chris Robinson ever saw him? I wouldn't be surprised. 




Anybody squeezing the sheer poetry out of "her mind is short but her legs are long" has delivered a commendable contribution to English literature. 

[slinkp]

The thing that interested me most about the Pistols was what happened in their wake.  I credit Jones, Cook, and Matlock as a solid stripped-down rock and roll band,  and Lydon as a very watchable performer with an ear-catching sneer, and some of those songs were catchy, but aside from that, it's just rock and roll and with plenty of recent precedent, not least in the Ramones. In retrospect it's hard to hear - from the music anyway - why the Pistols could have triggered such hysteria, or how they were supposed to have destroyed music as we know it.  And yet - somehow, they were the band credited by dozens (hundreds?) of others that proved far more musically adventurous.  The Pistols never ranged as far afield as, say, X-ray Spex, or Siouxsie and the Banshees, just to pick a couple ... or over here in the states, Bad Brains or Black Flag.

But somehow, they were the band that kick-started all those other bands. The Ramones were the originators and had longevity, but the Pistols seemed to galvanize more people into picking up instruments and making something new. And I love them for that.

[uwe]

Rotten had charisma and he was credible, Matlock, Jones and Cook were better players than the guys in most other punk bands, two years earlier they would have formed the core of a more than decent hard rock/pub rock band. England was/is a class society (no lost wars shook up the social pyramdid), it was a fertile ground for Rotten in tandem with Mclaren to be provocative.

Punk destroyed nothing for good, it just knocked other music off the shelf for a brief moment in time, but within a wink of an eye you had the New Wave of British Metal (with a punk influence, they played things faster and more rhythm guitar oriented than the hard rock bands of yore, young Iron Maiden was definitely punkish in its frenzy, how many 70ies hard rock bands can you remember with a dedicated rhythm guitar player, but in the 80ies they were all over), even Prog recuperated after a while (and I hear punk in some things Steve Wilson/Porcupine Tree does/do). It has a lasting influence. I still hear punk ingredients in a lot of music today, there has been a shift towards rhythm guitar backing as opposed to playing riffs and having the singer holler above that. In bands like Coldplay, U2, REM, Jimmy Eat World, Simple Minds, Snow Patrol or Oasis, I hear a lot more Sex Pistols than I hear, say, Deep Purple, Led Zep or Black Sabbath. And that rhythm guitar focus (after a decade where the lead guitar ruled spreme) made/makes punk accessible, it's a lot easier to shift a few bar chords sitting on your bedside (and that can have its appeal, I'm not knocking it) and then form a band than it is to come up with a separate riff that is rhythmically and melodically different to what you are singing. Doesn't sound that great on an acoustic either, try playing Black Dog or Lazy with it in your first year as a guitarist. 

[Basvarken]

how many 70ies hard rock bands can you remember with a dedicated rhythm guitar player

AC/DC, Y&T, Scorpions...
Didn't have to think too long about that

[gearHed289]

I most likely read earlier about British punk in 1977 than any other forum member here.

I started playing bass in the summer of '77. Punk had just broke in America. I saw a story on the evening news about it, and it started turning up in Creem, Hit Parader, and to a lesser degree, Circus. I didn't get it at all. I got my bass, and I was determined to be the best I could be, and punk seemed to be the exact opposite of that. What I saw was a bunch of guys playing poorly, sticking pins in their ears, and vomiting on stage.  So, I stuck with my KISS, Queen, Zep, Aerosmith, Sabbath, and McCartney records. I remember seeing the Ramones on Don Kirschner's in '78, and I was secretly drawn to the energy, but I still never bought a punk record. I get it now though. It served a purpose, just like "alternative rock" did in the early 90s. It shook things up and made people rethink things. I wasn't much of a 90s "alternative" guy either.  On the other hand, I was a HUGE "new wave" fan. And I ran so far away....

[nofi]

almost all of the 60's british invasion bands had rhythm guitars, from the beatles on down to herman's hermits. for the songs that were being written the rhythm guitar was just as important as any lead guitar since most bands were putting out three minute pop tunes with little or no solos.