The Big Takeover: Sweet: “Teenage Rampage”

Or, whatever happened to the Glam Slam?  It’s still here (the previous song was from the RAK factory, after all) but it seems to be slowing down somewhat.  This song isn’t so much about Glamour as it is about Politics.  And yet Politics is glamourous for some; almost all politicians, no matter their stripe, have something of a high when they win and take power, much, I suppose, like the honeymoon period of a marriage.  Sweet don’t concern themselves too much with that here – it’s the kids – teenagers! – who are going on a rampage and taking over with their rules, their choices, their own constitution.  (Yes, the kids are going to form committees and hash out their rule -  democratically!)  Say “teenage rampage” now and people think of a melee, a riot, looting, cats and dogs in the street, COMPLETE CHAOS.  And yet that is not really happening here.  The music is by-the-book glam; the delirium documented, however, is real.  The Baby Boom peaked in the late 50s/early 60s, which is in part why so many songs at this time had the word “teenage” in them (“Teenage Dream” by T. Rex and “Teenage Lament ‘74” being the main ones, though as a rule the Glam Slam was all about teenagers, more or less).  Of course there is the fact that this song  (stopped only by the biggest song of the year, Mud’s “Tiger Feet”) appeared just as the effects of the three-day week were really kicking in – more freedom for parents, more freedom for the kids?  Or more chances to seize power, to do whatever they want, to discard the present and think up a future.  Their time is coming, and in looking around who can blame them for wanting to take over? 

Just about everybody who would become major figures in punk and post-punk were teenagers at this time, and I can well imagine some of them are already getting into music that is more adventurous than this; and they were to make music that held to no constitution or united scene whatsoever.  The Sweet had another Chinn-Chapman hit on their hands here, but in the end it sounds more like what would speak to, oh, Tony Blair more than John Lydon (though the Glam Slam got a free pass from the punks – how could something so shiny and unpretentious be bad)?

Next up:  Face to face with…who? 

Where The Wild Things Are: Hurricane Smith: "Don't Let It Die"

There were many movements that started in the 60s that gained ground in the 70s, as more and more people realized that it was personal action – not just voting or going to demonstrations but actually committing to something in their own day-to-day lives – that would actually be meaningful.  This ‘the personal is political’ attitude could lend itself to narcissism, true, as folks turned away from mass movements to something smaller that they could participate in themselves, in private – but then I think most 70s revolutions were private ones, not public ones. 

Of course, there’s being involved and being involved.  “Don’t Let It Die” was a charity single for the World Wildlife Fund (celebrating its tenth anniversary in ’71) and the scope of its work – protecting endangered species, fighting pollution, etc. – was beyond anyone’s simple ability for the most part*.  Helping pandas and bald eagles was as easy as buying a single; perhaps some were moved to join the WWF, but I am guessing the single did well as it was a way to help easily (through consumer culture as opposed to reading-The Silent Spring-culture) and it helped that it was a good song; so many charity songs aren’t (the last good one I heard was the US single for Haiti) and as such they tend to go straight into The Void, having accomplished whatever their purpose was, raising money for their cause, and making their various points. 

Charity singles usually err deeply on the side of sentimentality – after all, they are supposed to pull heartstrings – but Smith’s voice here is elegantly plaintive, sketching out the song (which he intended to give to John Lennon**; so if it sounds like something he could have sung, that’s why) as clearly as he can, but almost shyly as well.  Thus the bold lyrics, simple enough for everyone to understand, are slightly blurred, and the whole thing sounds as if it was recorded quickly, most likely at Abbey Road (where Smith had worked so closely with The Beatles and guided Pink Floyd from the start).  But it’s a muffled sound, as if the studio was down a well, or perhaps the mikes were next door; this is no “War” militantly proclaiming itself, but something nearly oblique.  Smith played his demo to Mickie Most, who said it was good enough to release as a single; and the roughness of the demo works with the lions and kangaroos and beauty of nature itself. 

This is a man in his late 40s, a man who’d served in WWII in the RAF, a man who knew about death, singing about the ecological necessity of keeping things alive; appealing to one and all to do their bit – not in a patriotic way, but as a way to show that you, the individual, who actually knows and cares about tigers and elephants, and think of them as a gift to the world, are willing to stand up and at least buy this single.  That death is a possibility haunts this song, a very grown-up one, very British as opposed to the more sentimental US version of the ecological movement, which could be just as “lite” and dippy as you could imagine***. 

The listener has the power to keep all of nature going; it is a stewardship that goes back to the Bible, back to Adam naming all the creatures.  They are yours; you should look after them.  Creatures that are wild and endangered have to be looked after; they are beautiful and rare, and can startle you when you least expect it.  Whether they are in the wild or in Chelsea Cloisters, down the street or in a nearly inaccessible place, those creatures deserve respect and protection, encouragement and yes, love.  This song is like a muffled echo from the studios and halls of Abbey Road, a rough and hopeful voice that speaks up for itself, modestly, in favor of those who can’t speak at all.

Next up:  well, everyone’s got to start somewhere.

*In the early 70s in Los Angeles, our kindergarten class went to another school to learn about the importance of keeping the Earth tidy from Woodsy  Owl:  “Give a hoot, don’t pollute!” was the catchphrase, and this particular Woodsy was so big and serious that it was a genuinely frightening experience. I thought something terrible would happen to me if I littered, and I haven’t since.

**”Across The Universe” by The Beatles, a John Lennon song, was donated to the World Wildlife Fund charity album (No One’s Gonna Change Our World, 1969, organized by Spike Milligan) as the group didn’t really know what to do with it.  On that album it was sped up a little and bird noises were put on the track, which may not make a lot of sense but that’s the ecological movement for you. 

***As Pagan Kennedy says in her great book about the 70s, Platforms:  “Ecology connotes the connection among living organisms – cute organisms like baby seals with tears dripping from their big black eyes.  Seventies ecology was about saving endangered species and local beauty spots, picking up litter and cleaning the air; if you were sensitive, it was about feeling kind of weepy when you thought about the plight of the earth…the word environmentalism, on the other hand, is not cute.”  She says the ecological movement did have some benefits – the founding of the EPA and passing of the Endangered Species Act among them – but that this phase passed and became a fashion movement instead, and that the ecological movement’s coverage by the press was the ‘safe’ option as the Vietnam War continued on and people grew tired of it and yearned for, well, cuteness instead.)         

I may as well add here that the whole idea of nature’s usual state being ‘in balance’ (y’know, the whole circle of life business) was also part of the 60s-early 70s ecological movement, a movement that influenced everything from cybernetics to those communes where people tried to mimic this so-called balance inside geodesic domes.  That this was all something of a sham was revealed eventually, but Adam Curtis’ series All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace ( esp. “The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts”) shows how messed up a lot of things got, including the whole Population Boom idea, which meant I didn’t get to have a brother or sister.  Thanks a lot, guys. 

I Spit On Your Grave And Stick Out My Tongue In The Process: Ray Stevens: “Bridget The Midget (The Queen Of The Blues)”

I often wonder if all humanity wants is funny noises. Or noises which think they’re funny. Like a cat spellbound for hours by a stray thread on a carpet, I suspect we still have very simple tastes and are easily pleased; although few records strive as hard to please me and fail as spectacularly as “Bridget The Midget”; so perturbed was Lena at the thought of having to write about it that she passed the assignment on to me.

That is perhaps not an entirely fair condemnation. I thought the record was hilarious when it was in the charts and I was seven; with the possible exception of Simon Cowell, I am hard pressed to think of any adult who would find it funny. And yet that was the record’s core audience in 1971; it was a much requested item on the BBC radio show Junior Choice, whose immense popularity at the time accounts for several otherwise inexplicable major hits of the period. So pervasive was the affection for it that the title became a nickname for the headmistress in Grange Hill at the opposite end of the decade.

That was the story in Britain, at any rate; in the States, the record peaked at #50 in charts where, for a contemporaneous while, the late Janis Joplin achieved the posthumous double; number one album (Pearl) and number one single (“Me And Bobby McGee”). The latter did not even make the UK Top 50, in common with “What’s Going On?,” “Clean Up Woman” and “Mr Big Stuff”; but only the redoubtable Marc Bolan, with “Hot Love,” stopped “Bridget” from going all the way here.

Stevens, from Clarkdale, Georgia, is one of the least palatable figures in the last half-century of pop; close examination of his initial run of US hits reveals a similar infantile fascination with capital F “Funny” (“Ahab The Arab,” “Gitarzan,” “Jeremiah Peabody’s Unending Novelty Song Title”) and, from 1968, the inevitable, earnest craving to be simultaneously taken seriously; hence sententious pieces of social non-comment like “Mr Businessman” or gloopy God-bothering singalongs like “Everything Is Beautiful” (a number one in a 1970 America in need of reassurance) or “Turn Your Radio On.” Against that, it must be noted that he made the first recording of “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and, in his alternate role as producer, writer and arranger at Monument Records throughout the sixties, helped and encouraged many important names, including Brook Benton, Dusty Springfield and Dolly Parton.

The latter is particularly relevant since the speeded-up “Bridget” sounds remarkably like Dolly, and that perhaps is the only interesting thing about the record. It does cause a feeling in the neighbourhood of sorrow that a record which clearly involved a lot of complex work and application (singing “Bridget”’s lines at drawn-out half-speed to make them sound normal when speeded up, multiple overdubbing, etc.) has so little of merit about it. She is two feet tall, tap dances on the side and has a backing group called “Strawberry And The Shortcakes,” while Stevens does some unconvincing white soul hollering and slows his voice down to 16 rpm to play the would-be lecherous stage invader.

But there is no payoff, no provoking point of actual laughter – despite “Bridget”’s strange periodic giggles all the way through the record - and therefore no purpose, other than (like the David Seville/Chipmunks hits) to please those who imagine that voices speeded up are in themselves funny. From this distance, it looks like a tongue stuck out at Joplin’s memory, and at soul music in general – the record this actually recalls most strongly is Little Stevie Wonder’s “Fingertips Part 2,” a genuinely revolutionary (and genuinely funny – “What key? What key?”) record which, unsurprisingly, did nothing in 1963 Britain. You might argue that things like Mayfield’s “(Don’t Worry) If There’s A Hell Below, We’re All Going To Go” and There’s A Riot Goin’ On represent the kind of reaction this record deserves.

However, Stevens proceeded to more hits of both stripes, peaking with 1974’s abysmal “The Streak,” before eventually succumbing to telemarketing in the nineties and regrettable, if not surprising, far-right drum-banging from the late noughties onward. The problem is that something like “We The People” is as expertly put together and choreographed as “Bridget” – and there is the ultimate danger in believing too fervently in funny voices.

Next: a club classic from Argentina.