The Stand-In Star: Alvin Stardust: "My Coo Ca Choo"

As the year draws to a close, this is a good time to recall how split this year has been between the US and UK charts - there was only one common #1, the unremittingly awful "Tie A Yellow Ribbon" by Tony Orlando & Dawn.  The Glam Slam, outside of Bowie (and at one remove, Roxy Music) was not getting anywhere fast in the US, and even then was, I'd guess, something of a cult for the teenagers hanging out at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco in Los Angeles, for instance.  For me Alvin Stardust is a purely UK-understood phenomena, someone whose whole persona is "rock 'n' roll" at a glance, all the odd signifiers of "danger" without any of said danger really there whatsoever.

He was born in London, was Bernard William Jewry, and grew up in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire (a town a few miles just north of Nottingham itself).  He was working as a roadie for Shane Fenton and the Fentones when Fenton got ill and died; Fenton's mom wanted the band to continue in his honor, and so they did, with Jewry taking Fenton's name and leading the band to some chart success in the early 60s.  The group broke up, leaving Jewry on his own, and by the early 70s he was given a new name by his label boss Michael Levy, and that was Alvin Stardust.  It's a bit more complicated than that, however; "My Coo Ca Choo" was written by Peter Shelley and recorded by him as well - but he didn't want to "be" Alvin Stardust, so Jewry once again stepped in and took on the task of looking moody, dressing in black leather, and generally being a rock star - a role I feel he acted as much as really was.  The song is pure glam stomp, seductive-style (though "Tom Cat! Y'know where it's at/Come on! Lets go to my flat/Lay down 'n' groove on the mat" is not exactly Bryan Ferry singing to his siren).  There is something reassuring about something so inherently safe and unthreatening appearing at this time (and how reassuring as well, that this public service ad featuring two girls can be viewed with a clear conscience even now, thank goodness.)  Perhaps the long years working in obscurity gave Jewry a sense of responsibility and perspective that others have sadly shown to have lacked; to take on someone else's part or role is in itself a situation that works best with some modesty and determination.  Stardust (and yes his name was a take on one Gary Glitter) remains one of those beacons in The Fog, a man who was pure showbusiness but somehow humble about it in a way that showed the Glam Slam to be the people's music.  How could it ever go?

Next up:  Every day?  Really?   

Underdog: The Hotshots: "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron"

There is an odd sense of deja vu here; this was a hit (in its original version) when I was born - and now, here it is again, in ska-style.  It's not that different from before - the tempo is slowed down a bit (making the Red Baron's actual name easier to hear) and there's a horn section dutifully puffing along.  I can't claim to know much about this single other than it's definitely by a UK band, and was a #2 hit on the Luxembourg chart. 

What I do know was that for sure the comic strip Peanuts was my favorite growing up - as soon as I found out there was such a thing as a used book store, I would go in and get old paperbacks from the 60s and at some point I also collected the much bigger anthologies - haphazardly coloring them in, getting to know the history of the strip (which had been going well over a decade by the time I was born).  I grew up with Peanuts as a constant marker of time (A Charlie Brown Christmas winter,  It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown* [which has Schroder playing WWI songs "It's A Long Way to Tipperary" and "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag" and has Snoopy fighting the Red Baron] for fall).  I am not sure if this latter show was ever broadcast on UK television, but I do know that Peanuts was gaining popularity around this time; and the wildly imaginative Snoopy has more than something to do with that.  Anyone can relate to him and his big heart and innate sense of what is right and wrong.  (I saw Snoopy, Come Home when it came out in 1972 and was traumatized - there are a lot of signifiers in the movie, if you know how to watch it.  Interestingly, it was a failure at the box office - ultimately too emotionally charged for kids like me, who didn't like to see Snoopy suffer so much.) 

Because of all these reasons - and no others, save to have a hit - The Hotshots recorded this and it was a summertime smash, the kind of song kids buy (as they did the original) and might remember, even though I've never heard it on UK radio.  Peanuts and Charles Schulz have passed into history as (I believe) both commercial success and highbrow art immortality**.  That is very hard to do, but Schulz did it; whether he ever heard this, I don't know, but I imagine he would have liked it if he did.  Thanks, old pal.

Next up:  pass the popcorn.  


*Kid Koala immortalized Charlie Brown's misery in this special in "Tricks 'n' Treats" on his Scratchcratchratchatch mixtape.

**Snoopy as the WWI pilot is such a famous image that it's on the cover of one of the lovely Peanuts complete works.
 

Prophet/Profit: T. Rex: "Children of the Revolution"

Without any doubt, the biggest star of '72 was Marc Bolan of T. Rex; there may be up-and-coming ones, he may have been eclipsed here by Slade, but here he is, caught up in...revolutionary ecstasy?  This is a serious bump-and-grind of a song, with an indefinite 'you' that is contrasted with an equally indefinite subject.  Just who are these children, and what revolution is going on? 

Bolan never intended his songs to just be jolly rave-ups to get pissed to; he wanted to make songs that would last, not necessarily message songs but ones that had some content to them.  Here, with purple glittery eyes, he proudly and even snarlingly states his prophecy; you can twist and shout, you can let it all hang out, but the children - well, they won't be fooled.  He seems absolutely sure of this, as if he has somehow already seen the future and knows what is going to happen.  If he is singing to his generation (the 'you') then they (and his younger fans) were upset and even offended by the line about the Rolls-Royce being good for his voice*.  He said that because he meant it; and if people were turned off by his workshy fop aestheticism, well, too bad.  In truth, it was his one obvious luxury; it wasn't a brand new custom job but one from 1960, but the kids may not have known about that, or cared.  He's showing off in a time when being a rock star meant (especially in the UK, I'd guess) that sure you had money, but you didn't talk openly in a song about your wealth or status.  Whereas in the US, that was more or less acceptable; if you came from nothing - like, oh, Elvis for instance - you had every right to sing about being able to afford nice things, to viva your Las Vegas.  But in the UK in '72, it wasn't exactly okay.  And so I think this song suffered, because T. Rex's audience wanted to be caught up in the revolutionary ecstasy too, only to find themselves tripping over a car, so to speak. 

Of course another place where Bolan's line would make sense is in hip hop; particularly the kind of self-knowing hip hop where material excess and aestheticism do battle, where achieving something good materially can indeed be good for you, but then how much bling is really needed to fill up that hole of need?  I don't sense Bolan knew that hip hop was about to start in NYC in '73; but his prophecy about the children of the revolution isn't just about the kids who all found themselves being described by Mott the Hoople in "All The Young Dudes" (particularly in Ian Hunter's totally endearing ad-lib lyrics at the end - how many kids took hope in "You in the glasses - I want you - I want you in the front**" - a lot, I'd bet). 

The children are, well, us - those kids who discovered hip-hop; the ones who didn't know a firsthand thing about the 60s, the younger and wiser ones, the ones who at the time were playing with a Spirograph and learning to tie our shoes; ones who, if their parents had participated in the revolutionary 60s, had nothing but artifacts and stories to absorb as the slogans and messages and lessons learnt were passed on.  We can't twist and shout; that time is gone, and anyone trying to bring back that time (as it will eerily be happening in the 70s) will get some attention from us, but in a different way - different because it is the hazardous and somehow incomplete 70s now, when anything of lasting value will be ignored or derided.  I know I'm making some big statements here, but at this juncture the world of MSBWT is moments away from the funhouse ride/haunted house that is 1973, and this strutting song of revolutionary fervor would give hope to us and to Bolan's loyal fans who were impatient to have a revolution of their own. 

Not that revolution is always going to happen; think of Elton John and Pete Doherty doing this at Live8 and wonder just who is actually more revolutionary, and how in order to give confidence and strength to others, you first have to have it for yourself.  That is what Bolan is doing; as much as Gen X is going to be that tough generation he's talking about, the real answer is that the children are everywhere, as long as they are genuine and willing to take up the fight. 

Next up:  It's not art rock, it's not prog rock, it's four guys from Manchester.         



*Bolan couldn't drive, so for him the car was an art object as much as anything else; I have no idea if, had he bothered to learn to drive, he would have avoided his accident just five years later.

**Not to mention the "I've wanted to do this for years" line.  I have no idea what he's talking about, but it's heartening all the same.

Sugar Rush: The Sweet: “Co-Co”

“Little kids like great hooks, interesting vocal styles, seamless arrangements.   They like to dance.  Nothing pretentious or self-important will do when the audience has a two-minute attention span and miniscule discretionary income.  And so the bubblegum hits still sound great today, where much that was critically acclaimed in the same period lacks any distinction.”

Kim Cooper & David Smay, Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth

It has come to my attention that in certain quarters in the UK (and elsewhere, I might add) the year 1971 has something of a canonical, near mythical status.  It is the cornerstone in the great Classic Rock era, to be sure, and for some it is the best year for music, ever. This is a judgement based on the albums of the time, for the most part, with a few acceptable singles mentioned as icing on the cake*.  I could be generous and say this is a generational thing, but as someone born in 1967 (and quite happy to rep for that year in any context) it strikes me as being anti-now, and also rather pretentious.  To those who enjoy today’s music perfectly well it says “you don’t know anything about music, really, do you?” and it reaffirms the notions or ideas – however hazy – that things were better “back then” and encourages more repackaging of albums, more box sets, more rarity-hoarding and nostalgia.  That these attitudes are held by and large by men and that all these products and thought pieces and so on are bought and held on to – more than a little defensively I think – by men just shows how the music industry latches on to people during adolescence and vice versa, and that relationship continues until that adolescent need ends, perhaps in middle age, perhaps only really in old age. 

The appreciation of the past, an honourable thing in and of itself (as this here blog attests, or so I hope) gets mixed up with people effectively ring-fencing musical tastes and prejudices until all they end up buying are reissues and perhaps even music before their own era**, anything but music of the present, which is confusing, noisy, repetitive and soulless***. 

Music writers find it easy to break down music into so many building blocks and categories, and some of those are given high honors – say, the albums of ’71 – while others are denigrated and hated.  If we go back to that time – hey, we’re here already! – we can see that while it’s the older brothers and sisters who are buying the albums, it’s the kids who are buying the singles, and that older sibling disdain for kid stuff is by now so hard-wired into music that the arbiters of what is “good” if not “the best” would look at this band and this single and throw it unhesitatingly in the trash. 

Which would be a big mistake, and is the 1971 brigade’s problem, not the kids’.

The profoundization of music that has happened in the mid-to-late 60s has made for a lot of beautiful music, sure, but what 7-year-old has any use for something that drags interminably on, has no real beat, has (ugh) solos and sounds vaguely unhappy?  None, that’s who, and as the albums world grew ever more serious and strange, the world of singles – bubblegum singles – grew as well.  And one of the main offshoots of bubblegum?  That’s right, glam.

With this single we now well and truly enter the Void, a place that is not at all dark or lonely but shiny-shiny stompy-stompy and multi-colored as a candy store.  Only an industry so taken with taking itself so seriously could churn this stuff out on the one hand and then uniformly dump it into the Void on the other, as if it was all some terrible mistake, and that all those album-oriented acts were making better music the whole while, more important music, more influential music…but for now there’s little kids to be exploited (more on that theme later, obvs.) via dolls, actual bubblegum, cereal boxes, lunchboxes, posters/t-shirts/decals – all of which they will later outgrow and reject for more “serious” music when they grow up.  It is that music that they get attached to late that will be what the industry will then exploit again, but with the added vehemence of adolescence, which as we know can be felt at 100 paces and practically glows in the dark.

It can be hard, in the midst of all this, just to appreciate the darn music and enjoy it for what it is.  Bubblegum is great stuff and even the lesser songs have a charm and unpretentiousness to them that is hard to resist.  The Sweet (formerly Sweetshop) were a band in need of a song; they went to fledgling songwriters Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman**** and asked for one, and here it is; produced by Phil Wainman, it is perhaps not what the band would have liked (their b-sides, self-written, were more rock, less bubblegum; they played them live and avoided their hits as best they could) but a #2 hit is nothing to sneer at; it got the band noticed as the first glam band besides T. Rex to have a huge hit, and this perhaps was enough.  (Slade’s first hit single around this time did fine, but they were still to crack the Top 10.)

The whole bubblegum/glam dynamic of hopped-up kids screaming and singing along and jumping up and down on their beds to their favourite song doesn’t really sit well in the considered views of those who prefer their music to be, well, grown-up; the very idea of presenting a year like a canon to be studied in college, as opposed to enjoyed outright as pure pleasure is a dead end for music itself.

I know the crossed-arms-tilted-head sceptics have drawn lines, but the magic – yes – of music is that it obliterates all lines, or rather has so many lines within it that it merely laughs at those who have cornered themselves, smug in their self-assuring circles that they have reached the peak, and all they see around them are valleys.  Ultimately I think this isn’t refinement but repression; repression dressed up and decorated with words like ‘heritage’ or ‘vintage’ or ‘for the more discerning listener.’

From my perspective, all this is trying to chain music when all it wants is to be free; Sweet fans have reasons to be grateful that their band and this song haven’t been captured and frozen in ‘the canon’ for perpetuity.  Glam is just warming up now, about to comfort and electrify in turn a nation that needs cheering up; a nation that was happily buying, on a regular basis, quickly made cover albums of recent hits, a kind of sub-bubblegum (“Co-Co” is featured on this album) that calls into question whether the “outpouring of creativity” of singer-songwriters and bands was all that valued in the first place.  Songs like this one are what the 1971 brigade are running away from, when there is nothing scary here, just an "inoffensive, jaunty hit" that kids of all ages can enjoy.  To be against that is to pretty much be against music itself.

Next up:  because sing-a-longs are what summer's about. 

*Strangely enough, three of the singles mentioned in The Word editorial were never UK hits - "Mr. Big Stuff" by Jean Knight didn't chart, "Ain't No Sunshine" was a hit for Michael Jackson, not Bill Withers, in '72 and the only "Black Magic Woman" ever in the UK charts was the Fleetwood Mac original from '68. 

**Well, who was buying all those Vera Lynn albums back in 2009?  

***This is known casually as the ‘Ian MacDonald syndrome’.   

**** Who also wrote “Tom Tom Turnaround” for New World and “Chop Chop” for Tony Blackburn, not to mention other early Sweet hits “Little Willy” and “Wig Wam Bam.”

A Child Shall Lead Them: 1910 Fruitgum Company: "Simon Says"

And now we come - all of a sudden, like a sugar rush - to the wonderful world of bubblegum music, which was a haven for garage bands who liked to make music for drunk girls to dance to (to borrow from Franz Ferdinand) as opposed to far-out psychedelic blues jams for those who wanted to get high. One of the great joys of pop is the complete inanity of it, that it does not and really should not be taken so seriously; and as you can see there was a lack of cheery, perky songs around at this time.

So in come the bubblegum army to give the increasingly heavy late 60s a big lift. The biggest source of bubblegum was one Buddah Records, run by Neil Bogart (he who later gave the world KISS and The Village People) - he saw the success of the Monkees and wanted in on the action - luckily he met the producing powerhouse duo of Jerry Kasenetz and Steve Katz, who proceeded to work with the 1910 Fruitgum Company (an actual band from New Jersey, btw, and not just a pseudonym for themselves) to do this song. I cannot say much about it except that the various looks on the faces here show that while this may not be what the group first got together to do (the b-side is called, after all, "Reflections From the Looking Glass") but it was what the kids wanted and it was dumb fun and what is wrong with that? (This is yet perhaps another variation of the childlike qualities of psychedelia, with this game* winning out as little kids were simply too young for anything else.)

What was one way out of the 60s? Bubblegum was maybe not what the serious types would have thought up, but it persisted in the US and in the UK, feeding into and energizing other music to make this old thing called rock 'n' roll new again (bubblegum + rock = glam). As absolutely non-threatening as this song is, it helped to refocus some on what mattered - sweetness, youth and a lightness of touch that during this time in particular were sorely needed. It reassured people - even those who hated playing this game - that there was still a place for simplicity in music, if not out-and-out nonsense. This is playground stuff, but it's the roots for a lot of what is to come; in a way bubblegum is the roots of a lot of good things about the 70s, if by good you also mean silly, addictive, sweet and ridiculous. That's fine; in fact bubblegum may have even pushed the whole 'back to basics' '68 movement along in its own way, just as much as The Band. Who knows? Anything can happen when travelling back to square one.


*Whenever I had to play this game I did well until it got too fast and I invariably messed up; but this song never does speed up or play tricks. Bubblegum's too good-hearted for that.

Psychedelia Has A Right To Children: Keith West: " Excerpt From 'A Teenage Opera'"

Throughout the late summer a song has been steadily climbing up the charts, to rest at #2; it had the advantage of being played a lot (esp. on pirate radio) and being a narrative that could be understood by anyone - the sad passage of time, as experienced by not just one or two people, but a whole community. The sob stories that have just passed are merely personal - this is about a whole village losing its grocer.

How on earth could this have happened? Well, this is 1967 and we find ourselves at none other than Abbey Road with one Mark Wirtz, who had been hired by - remember him? - Norrie Paramor to work as an in-house producer for EMI. Wirtz was hip; he was responsible for Pink Floyd being signed by EMI and dug another underground group he saw playing at the same time - The In Crowd (soon to change its name to the even more underground Tomorrow), featuring guitarist Steve Howe and singer Keith West. He had had the musical idea of a teenage opera for some time and mentioned the Grocer Jack character to West, who promptly wrote the lyrics; the group recorded the song and it was a hit - (such a hit that for a while Keith West was a pin-up, much to his & Tomorrow's discomfort).

The song is as lush and orchestral and Beatles/Kinks inspired as you'd expect; West sings with compassion about an 82-year-old grocer who dies, the village's lack of food and the funeral, where the folks realize they should have been nicer to the old man. The most poignant and influential part of the song is the children's chorus - little girls who wonder where Grocer Jack is and want him back, even though their moms tell them he won't be back. I can't help it, their voices tug at me - the children are the voice of the village, missing Jack, helpless to change the way the whole village is going to have to operate. (The premise of the opera is that the songs are all sung to a young woman who must stay awake after a motorcycle accident; they are almost all songs about people in a village who are antiquated, about to disappear, if not gone already.)

That a song such as this did so well shows that the public maybe wasn't so scared of psychedelia as previously reported, if it's focused on an understandable narrative and has little kids singing on it. There was also the tantalizing idea of it being an 'excerpt' - that there was a lot to come and that a teenage opera was indeed possible. Wirtz found out, however, that the audience was maybe more fickle than expected (and he lost West's involvement, as he wanted to focus on Tomorrow), and while other singles appeared, none of them did that well and he soon stopped working on it in '68 to work on other things.

This is a pity, because had it been released (as it was in '96) it would have been the first real rock opera, complete with a whole cast of characters ("Auntie Mary's Dress Shop," "The Paranoiac Woodcutter," "[He's Our Dear Old] Weatherman," "Shy Boy*" to name a few). This year pretty much saw the flowering of the concept album - not to mention the album market in general, as the kids so happy to buy 45s in '63 had grown up and wanted something a bit more substantial. This - for all I know - would have done really well, but as Brian Wilson could have told Wirtz, doing something so concentrated and thematic is not easy. (The other lost album of 1967, The Beach Boys' SMiLE, surfaced first as bootlegs, then as a Brian Wilson album in 2004, and just now as an actual Beach Boys album.) A Teenage Opera was for some just as legendary - who knows what the talented Wirtz & Co. were getting up to at Abbey Road? (One Pete Townsend was certainly curious, and this in part inspired Tommy.)

What this song also cements is psychedelia's interest in and sympathy with children. This might seem a bit odd, but at heart it is the siding with the young instead of the old, the naive and hopeful as opposed to the tired and traditional. Children were to a point romanticized, but their spirit of adventurousness and tendency to blunt speech - then as now - meant they could at least be trusted, unlike the older generation who were - not to make a big point of it - square and didn't approve of anything the counterculture believed in, from pirate radio on down**.

There is also nostalgia; a whole world is disappearing and the spirit of the times is to reflect on this, to bring the old and new together in a mish-mash (think of the military-style jackets worn by The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix) that somehow liberates the culture from the past, even as it's being remembered (anti-vintagizing). The village is changing, old customs and ways are going, ones that may be going for good, for all anyone knows.

Rock 'n' roll has now split between pop and rock; avant-MOR as pioneered by Scott Walker is appearing, alongside a new station the BBC is putting together to play what the pirates did - sort of. Its name is Radio 1, and with it the chances of Wirtz' concept album took a dive, as its listeners weren't as adventurous as the pirate ones. What did they want? The answer is next.



*Done by Kippington Lodge, with the lead singer, one Nick Lowe, making his debut.

**A personal anecdote: When I was two-and-a-half I 'ran away' (the gate was open and I left to walk down the sidewalk). My mother predictably was concerned and called the cops, who found me not that far away being guarded as I walked by...some counterculture guy who was looking after me on my little escapade. No one famous, though this was in Hollywood, so you never know.

All Aboard!: The Seekers: "Morningtown Ride"

As the frenzied year of '66 draws to a close, we find ourselves on a train; the whistle blows and out it chugs, with its passengers - sleeping children - safely tucked away under blankets (where they are is cold, cloudy, maybe even a bit frosty - it is Christmastime)...and they go along the bay down to Morningtown, where everything will be sunny and pleasant. This is cosy children's music and folk music as well (the popularity of folk music is rarely shown by this blog lately, but it's about to branch out into folk rock - we'll get to that soon). Children's music is normally big around Christmas, but there is something here for grown-ups too - something akin to this song, wherein a train is also involved, also headed for a destination where things will be better. In the depths of winter, the promise of spring is not far behind; we are moving towards it, or it is coming to us, depending on how you see it. I have been known to like soppy songs for kids, and while I don't know this one from my own childhood, I do know others...

The promise of warmth and sunshine may sound odd coming from an Australian band, but this song was written by the American singer/songwriter Malvina Reynolds, who also wrote "Little Boxes" - she also contributed songs and appeared on Sesame Street, whose own theme song is also for children (obviously) but also is about a place where everything is just that much better. (Sesame Street was just the beginning for US public television's radical ideas on how to do shows for kids; it was thought up in '66 and the first episode aired in '69 - by '72 it was able to do this, which is a heck of a long train ride from The Seekers).

So, apart from this Christmas cheer - again, a bit sad for my taste, but maybe that's just Judith Durham's voice - what else is looming for the new year? Tom Jones is ONLY DREAMING at number one, The Kinks sing about getting nowhere on "Dead End Street," The Supremes are getting tough...and this new "power trio" called Cream lingering at the bottom, biding their time. Death, in a way, stalks the chart, from the top song to the continued presence of Jim Reeves, who had departed in '64 but persisted, Tupac-like, for years afterward. Fellow Australians The Easybeats longed for escape as much as anyone, but there was one song that talked about a different kind of escape; it starts '67 off very appropriately.

Feed-Back, Metal, Sound, Wire, Wood: The Who: "My Generation"

"The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!"
Mikhail Bakunin, 1842



"The amplified sound of the auto-destructive process can be an element of the total conception."
Gustav Metzger, 1959



First, here is man destroying something inanimate. The man is Gustav Metzger, and he is an artist.

And now this; it's art too; art which in part wouldn't be possible without the above example. Nor would it be really possible without this artist, either.

Gustav Metzger wrote his manifesto Auto-Destructive Art in 1959; a few years later it would become a lecture that turned into a 'happening.' That year was 1964, when The Who formed, drummer Keith Moon asking to join and being accepted when he accidentally smashed up the drum kit during his audition. Townshend famously first destroyed a guitar accidentally as well, but since this got them some renown immediately (could you imagine the Stones or Yardbirds doing such a thing?), the band continued to auto-destruct, drums as well as guitar, for some time. That Townshend would go on to link it to Metzger's manifesto is no pose, as Townshend was an art school grad who knew very well what it meant, politically as well as artistically, to smash up instruments onstage.

But there is another collage here, one that we haven't heard explicitly before - and that is the influence of jazz on UK rock, specifically in drumming. There is no getting away from the fact that Elvin Jones' drumming was IT for Keith Moon (who also loved surf music, which also has a fast and relentless beat). Those who were in theory allergic to the idea of jazz and rock being mixed up together (which reminds me of this old ad, of course) had that notion demolished by this song - which in construction is just as much jazz as it is rock. (Yes, one of the most totemic of rock songs comes out of jazz.) The utter freedom of jazz - to take a simple melody and then just TAKE OFF with it - is just what was needed here, particularly by the Mods, who were fans of modernist jazz (as opposed to trad) and would have understood immediately that it was for them musically as well as lyrically.

That The Who are a precarious balance of elements is obvious with this song - Moon's explosion at the end balanced out by Entwistle's droll bass solo before it, just as Daltrey's nearly-swearing stuttering sneer balances out Townshend's straight-ahead playing, which is, as the song 'ends', literally detuned and then fuzzed up while huge chords bashed out between strings being grated like cheese - this is not a normal band. The Who are taking the idea of a pop band and altering that idea to the point where 'normal' and 'regular' are suddenly quaint notions. Whether the audience thought this was just a good song they could dance to or performance art hiding within a pop tune I don't know. As a song it has persisted way beyond what Townshend's aim was - to give voice to those who didn't fit in to naff, boring society they found themselves in, the kids who liked to go and have FUN, gathering their buds in May instead of sitting around politely, "barely daring to breathe or Achoo*."

The generation gap erupts again and again, but the gap is never between those who are older and younger but those who get it and those who don't. It wasn't a big hit at first in the US, but musicians & their audiences there have taken it as their own, from Patti Smith (who in one much later live version berates her own generation for having produced George W. Bush) to Green Day. In the UK everyone has done it from Iron Maiden to Oasis and The Sweet.

Destruction as art, transforming negative into positive energy, beauty in ugliness; not only are musical styles being mixed up here, but it as if art itself is being remade before our ears and eyes, that pop is symbolically and literally destroying itself in order to continue. The guitar has to be played because it is his instrument, but then it too seems not enough, music itself is not enough. Pop music carried on as usual, only some noticing the violence and different feeling in the air**. This is defence as attack, a "big sensation" which claims to be an ordinary night out, a concrete slab through the window of pop. Mod couldn't last long after this, commercialized and demonized as it was, but The Who made the point of performing this at Monterey, astonishing an audience that had thought it had seen everything. 1966 will prove that 'everything' is a relative concept.




*I should add here that poetry was reaching an apex of sorts in the mid-Sixties, as it also was now a forum for free speech (for those on both sides of the Cold War) and was a way of saying what ordinarily would be almost inexpressible. Ariel by Sylvia Plath (1965) was just as sensational at the time as The Who, making its own lasting impact. That Pete Townshend would later work with Ted Hughes makes me wonder if he read it at the time...


** The Beatles listened to and absorbed what The Who were doing, 'accidentally' putting feedback on their '64 Christmas hit "I Feel Fine" and then a year later doing a Mod-speed-rush on "Day Tripper" - one of their toughest songs yet.

Free For All: Chris Montez: "Let's Dance"

It is usual that in crisis, there are two responses; flight or fight. But what to do after? Or, rather, what to do if there is no actual sane response? What if the problem is so big as to be out of your control? What if you're a kid, it's 1962 and the adults are all huffing and puffing about something that may well be a problem, but even you, as a kid, can see there is nothing concrete to be done? The only sane thing to do, then, is dance.

Dancing may seem absurd, at first*, but it's not too far-fetched to say that periodically there are songs that assert that the only thing to do is dance - or as Lady Gaga (one of the many direct descendants from this song) sings, "Just dance, gonna be okay." Dance is an assertion of the continuation of life in the face of chaos there - but Chris Montez, however, isn't even that worried; he wants to dance with a girl - he doesn't really care what it is they dance to, how they dance - it's just pure instinct. Other songs that take their cue include this one, which doesn't even mention dancing, as such, but it's the beat, it's the "Round and round and round - Whoooooooooo!" defiance that can be traced right back to the "Oh wail!" of Montez and his delightfully chirpy organ bopping along top the steady (dare I say...primal?) beat. (This garage classic is also a direct descendant, obviously; I could go on...)

The feeling that the world could very well end doesn't really apply to this song; but the general sense that it's the end of something...and the beginning of something else can be seen in the chart itself, where a certain quartet of young men sit unobtrusively, for now; and in a short while I will be visiting the NME chart to talk about a song so stunning that it opened the ears of anyone who heard it.

(I should also add that after this huge hit Montez - unlike Little Eva - was encouraged by his label to go and get a college education; having done so, he returned to music and has been making music ever since, in both English and his native Spanish; clearly some are more lucky than others in the music business, and in the early 60s the artistic side of music - of regarding pop as art - was not necessarily a view shared by all.)


*I have nothing to back this up, but I think dance and music grew up together and were the first arts, beyond cooking, of course.

If You Get The Notion: Little Eva: "The Locomotion"

In the fall of 1962 the world was at a crisis point; it in just such circumstances that people either take music very, very seriously or throw themselves into one craze or another, if only to distract themselves for a few moments from what is actually taking place. Enter one young girl, a babysitter who could sing, who was fortunate enough to work for two young songwriters at the Brill Building; add also a new dance craze (so new it was actually created by the song, which somehow I think is a first) and lots of oohing and hand clapping and horns like trains in the back and here you have it - "The Locomotion". If only music was as simple as that! But the more I think about it, the more I find here - not just another song signifying the innocent US swinging and chugging towards (possible) oblivion - but the start of something big.

This is the first song in this blog both sung and (co-)written by a woman, and also therefore represents the tip of the rather large iceberg known as the Girl Groups, a phenomenon that sadly I hardly get to write about here, as much as I love it. (Can anyone vouch for the greatness of this box set? I intend to get it, now that we live somewhere big enough to store it.) After the big titan men of rock seemingly disappeared, it was in part these girls who kept it all going, Little Eva included. As unlikely as it seems, not is this song the historical first for women for this blog, but in its own way as a kind of...civil rights song. Not an anthem, maybe, but you don't call someone Little Eva and have her sing about (underground) railroad trains without some forethought - and there is something powerful in this song, a kind of "Let's make a chain NOW!" exuberance and vitality that doesn't just speak to the dance floor but to something in US/UK culture; a need to distract yourself by choo-chooing away, maybe, but also a sense that a release of energy is in itself energizing.

It is not just a commonplace to note that the 50s were a time of pent-up feelings and notions and that the 60s gradually saw a lot of the formality of the 50s evaporate - you can hear it happening here, a song heard 'round the world as tensions grew more and more. That it was a babysitter who sang this call to rise and march (as I interpret it, anyway) is amazing - having been a nanny myself once, I can only imagine the gulf between her old life and new one, not that she got to sing for so long. But as vital as this song is, Little Eva is immortal, a warm, encouraging voice in the impending nuclear darkness.

Simon Cowell Ain't No Dick Clark: Duane Eddy: "Because They're Young"

Lately I have been thinking about this odd transitional period a lot, and how those who were just infants at the time - I am thinking of one man in particular here - would love nothing more than to go back to it - in essence, to return to a time when the 60s weren't "the sixties, man." It was a time of sharp suits, of short haircuts, of business and commerce, an utter squareness that was at the same time vastly ambitious and, while willing to nod towards the idea of a generation gap, didn't think it was anything that couldn't be remedied through some careful grooming, etiquette lessons and practice, practice, practice. In short, this is showbiz - the hot spotlight, the gloved-and-pearled upper level seats, the big orchestra in the pit, the works. (The show Mad Men starts in this time, and its popularity alongside the X Factor and various Idols may or may not be a coincidence.)

You might think Duane Eddy is a long ways away from all this, and in his utterly committed way he makes showbiz look a little...flashy. (Have Twangy Guitar Will Travel speaks more of his country background and Arizona pal/producer Lee Hazelwood than his actual New York City roots.) Even if this, the theme song to the movie Because They're Young is relatively slick, it still has that pioneering what-the-hell rock 'n' roll vibe to it, Eddy's guitar as ever the sonic equivalent of that long, cool look - of interest? of provocation? - that made him so popular in the first place. Music for people who are getting down to do something, as opposed to music that is merely about presenting something in order to...present something. Who knows how many people listened to this and his other songs and were not just interested but compelled to find a guitar and learn how to play it? In the field of music, it is the artistry that lasts, far beyond anything else; it is the heart, for lack of a better word, that gives young people courage. Not the businessman's idle pleasure, as he plots an even bigger version of something that is, in itself, already exaggerated.