JUNE 1977

 

All that needs to be said about this month is that Silver Jubilee Week in Uddingston was another early reminder of how utterly fenced-off I felt seemingly from the remainder of humanity. Everybody else was joining in, celebrating - celebrating what? - and if you abstained there was Something Wrong With You and people gave you funny looks in the Main Street, as well as compassionate glances towards my mother ("such a nice woman, such a shame..." etc., even though my parents were steadfastly not involved in this business either).

On the afternoon of Saturday 4 June the big procession made its way down Uddingston Main Street, and I duly made my way into Uddingston Library where I took out a copy of Black Music by the writer then still known as LeRoi Jones, a fierce diatribe against any notion of imposed order. On that evening's edition of Jazz Record Requests, Peter Clayton played "Bailophone Dance" by Pharaoh Sanders, one of the musicians described (and also photographed) in Jones' book. "Fucking hell," I quipped to myself. In one of the music papers that week, possibly Melody Maker, there appeared a reproduction of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's "what side of the bed" T-shirt. I noted the presence, among the good people, of Dewey Redman and Archie Shepp. I then knew what punk rock was, as I know in their bones did they.

After dinner that evening, I went to my couch in the bedroom and wrote the first section of the following. 

 

 

4 June

THE STRANGLERS: Peaches/Go Buddy Go (United Artists UP 36248)

No hesitation or apologies. The New Wave has infiltrated the charts. Even if the Stranglers are not technically punk rock - although if you think about punk rock in its original sixties garage band sense, they might be the punkiest of the lot - but they make a fuss and don't care about your patterned orders of bland benignity. Singer Hugh Cornwell sneers this seaside anti-shuffle rather than sings it, the bass could bite your teeth off and the organ is seeking refuge from Atomic Rooster - this is fantastically produced by Martin Rushent. This record isn't interested in being nice but in being different. Whereas "Hotel California" simply slinks away in shame, "Peaches" is deliberately confrontational. You won't be able to bop or smooch to it at the school disco and in the approaching summer of 1977 that matters (not least because school's out for the holidays). Taste? This spits that ghastly deceit right back at you. A great rock record, for those who recall how such things are supposed to sound.

 

THE JACKSONS: Show You The Way To Go/Blues Away (Philadelphia International/Epic EPC 5266)

 

Berry Gordy couldn't really work out what to do with, or about, the Jacksons, so now they're part of the Philly Sound and sound far more relaxed and confident as a consequence of being treated like grown-ups. This is a really superb, languid Gamble and Huff production with a splendid arrangement - that worrying lead guitar sounding at times like a mournful pedal steel - and a phenomenal lead vocal from Michael. Should be their biggest hit here since "I'll Be There."

 

GLADYS KNIGHT & THE PIPS: Baby, Don't Change Your Mind/I Love To Feel That Feeling (Buddah BDS 458)

 

Looking set to hit big, Van McCoy gives Gladys and her boys the latterday hustling uptempo Stylistics treatment but is wise enough to leave Hugo and Luigi out of things. Gloriously wracked lead vocal performance as ever.

 

CAROLE BAYER SAGER: You're Moving Out Today/Aces (Elektra K 12257)

 

Sixties songwriter - as "Carole Bayer" she co-wrote "A Groovy Kind Of Love" - comes back with an extraordinary record that sounds like an off-Broadway musical number gone awry. She wants rid of this weird man - what, one wonders, lurks in his sixty-one cassettes? - and the end result is like Dory Previn doing "Rainy Day Women" with vaudeville brass and thirties movie catchphrases ("Get. Out. Of. My. House. You. Dirt. Y!"). So unconventional that it's clearly going to be big, if only on a novelty level.

 

GENESIS: Spot The Pigeon (E.P.) (Charisma GEN 001)

Track listing: Match Of The Day/Pigeons/Inside And Out 

It's something of a punk rock gesture for a band of Genesis' standing to be releasing what looks like a wacky, throwaway E.P., let alone score ("Match Of The Day" - see? Ahem...) their biggest hit "single" (and indeed their only one in three years); perhaps the success of "Solsbury Hill" was the jolt they or their label needed. Anyway this is delightfully uncatchy (and by their standards quite self-effacing) music, and I doubt if the band's fans can get it any higher up on the chart but in a sense it's a kick up the backside in many ways.

 

SEX PISTOLS: God Save The Queen/Did You No Wrong (Virgin VS 181)

 

For a record which may well be set to destroy any concept of "the charts" forever, it is best to start at the beginning. Or maybe just crash into the middle.

People don't want you to hear or buy this record. This includes Woolworths, whose standing order I cancelled this morning as a result. I wasn't that bothered because I'd already bought the single from Listen Records in Glasgow's very own Renfield Street in anticipation that Woolworths wouldn't be stocking it, and in future I'll be getting the week's new entries from HMV just up the road on Union Street.

The thing is this record tells you things you might not want to hear. Things which go against everything that might have been implanted in you and your ancestors' brains for centuries. The way they are viewed as gods, more than human (and yes, I've been reading Theodore Sturgeon) and how they are ultimately neutralised as a consequence.

This explosion of a rock 'n' roll record is everything "Anarchy In The U.K." should have been but wasn't. It's faster, more coherent, far more powerful. Note that the single is credited just to "Sex Pistols." It isn't "God Save Queen" by The Sex Pistols even though both groups now share the same producer (Chris Thomas) and there's more than a touch of Brian May in Steve Jones' guitar solo. This is us, the record seems to be saying, take us or leave us; we aren't going to bound up to you and lick your face or agree with you.

This is brilliant rock 'n' roll whichever way you listen to it. I'd say there's an awful lot of the Sweet about the song's attack - "Teenage Rampage" in particular - but even that is underrating what is by any stretch of the imagination a near-terrorist attack on pop music, or what we choose to deem pop.

My suspicion is that Johnny Rotten loves the Queen really - "We love our Queen!" he chirps twice, without any apparent element of irony or satire - but detests what Britain has forced her to become, an empty figurehead for rich tourists, an abandoned chalice of worship. "The fascist regime - it made you a morrrrrrON, a potential H-BOMB!" Flowers no longer in the rain, but in the dustbin. The spectacle has robbed us of any pretence towards individuality, systematically stripped us of any unique quality in favour of conforming to what other people are made to expect from or of us.

"NO FUTURE!" the band keeps crying as the song reaches its incendiary climax, but I interpret this in what I understand is the Situationist way - I haven't read any Guy Debord yet; the library doesn't have his books - insofar as, if you want there still to be a future, you're going to have to go out and create one yourselves. I hear Johnny Rotten just as I heard Pharaoh Sanders two-and-a-quarter hours ago and they both scream "NO BUT YES!" And on an elemental level, isn't it just great to hear musicians making noise again - highly-sculptured noise, but nonetheless noise?

I would therefore argue that you owe it to yourself as a human being to go out, risk getting a cold or getting beaten up, and hear this remarkable 45 rpm single, especially if THOSE people - we all know who they are - are so desperately attempting to prevent you from doing so, and importantly buy it and help get it to number one next week, although those who run things will I'm sure find a pallid excuse not to have that happen. This, however, is the sheep being separated from the goats. You have to take sides. For or against the future, but if there is no future, what is the purpose of life?

 

 

11 June

HONKY: Join The Party/Party Time, Funky Time (Creole CR 137)

 

Not sure you should be calling a band by that name these days, but this is pretty purposeful disco filler.

 

QUEEN: Queen's First E.P. (EMI 2623)

Track listing: Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy/Death On Two Legs (Dedicated To...)/Tenement Funster/White Queen (As It Began)

While we're waiting for their next album, this four-track retrospective for newcomers to the band should remind them that there is a lot more to them than just "Bohemian Rhapsody" although the 10cc-type wistful camp of "Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy" sounds a bit pale and dated in the context of the Sex Pistols (whose "God Save The Queen" has, to nobody's surprise, "only" climbed to number two this week - there is talk of chart manipulation. My increasing feeling is that the only charts of meaning are the ones you compile yourself). Will there ever be a second E.P.?

 

FRANKIE MILLER: Be Good To Yourself/Down The Honky Tonk (Chrysalis CHS 2147)

 

Long-overdue first hit for the great, throaty Glaswegian soul-rock singer who in my opinion could outsing Rod Stewart all the way to Bellshill; superb, unhurried R&B.

 

BO KIRKLAND AND RUTH DAVIS: You're Gonna Get Next To Me/Stay Out My Kitchen (If You Can't Stand The Heat) (EMI International INT 532)

 

Slinky midtempo disco sensuality - almost an answer record to the recent Rose Royce hit.

 

EMERSON LAKE & PALMER: Fanfare For The Common Man/Brain Salad Surgery (Atlantic K 10946)

 

Punk really must have some big names running scared; this is, I think, the first single ELP have ever released in the UK and it's a stormy reworking of the Aaron Copland piece - one of the most simultaneously stirring and sinister pieces of music that I can think of - which works brilliantly as a pop record. Remember those, prog heads? ELP certainly do. Wouldn't this be quite the record to go to number one?

 

18 June

GEORGE BENSON: Nature Boy/The Wind And I (Warner Bros K 16921)

 

Another WEA 12-inch gimmick release but good to see the great guitarist back in the charts with this very sensual remake of the Nat "King" Cole oldie.

 

ALESSI: Oh, Lori/I Was So Sure (A&M AMS 7289)

 

Nothing at all wrong with mainstream American pop when it's done as beautifully (and, again, with as much sensuality) as this; a lovely jazz shuffle with vibes and flute, a sort of double Robin the Frog set of cousins to Steely Dan's Kermits. I can love both this and "God Save The Queen" because why should I not?

 

OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN: Sam/Changes (EMI 2616)

 

Old-fashioned Don Black-penned waltzing weepie which sounds as though it belongs on a Cilla Black album in 1968 but Olivia gives it her usual gamely treatment and this should be big with Two Ronnies fans.

 

HOT CHOCOLATE: So You Win Again/A Part Of Being With You (RAK 259)

 

Seven years into their chart career and still Hot Chocolate have never had a number one; that should have been "You Sexy Thing" but unfortunately for Errol and his colleagues it came up against "Bohemian Rhapsody." This brisk and extremely catchy Russ Ballard song should do it for them now, however, with Errol's vocals more direct and intense than they have been of late.

 

 

25 June

"DETROIT" EMERALDS: Feel The Need/Love Has Come To Me (Westbound/Atlantic K 10945)

 

Not a reissue, but a complete re-recording, mixed for 12-inch by Tom Moulton, and this is really spectacular dance music. Deserves to be as big a hit as the original was four years ago.

 

TONY ETORIA: I Can Prove It/Angel For Lovers To Be (GTO GT 89)

 

Subtly insistent Jesse Green-style hustler.

 

ELTON JOHN: Bite Your Lip (Get Up And Dance!)/KIKI DEE: Chicago (The Rocket Record Company RU 1)

 

The 12-inch single appears to be taking over; although I'm not sure the Elton track, oddly compelling though it is, is in itself particularly danceable, Tom Moulton does his best to make it so. The Kiki Dee track, however, though not remotely danceable, really stands out.

 

T-CONNECTION: Do What You Wanna Do/Got To See My Lady (T.K. Disco XC 9109)

 

Possibly the biggest record out of Miami since "That's The Way (I Like It)," an absolutely dynamic disco stomper and just about funkier than anything (although Sly Stone might want a word about that "If You Want Me To Stay" bassline); unlike some 12" hits, this fully justifies its seven-and-a-quarter minutes.