Dr Feelgood

On Friday nights BBC4 usually has some sort of musical theme running through its programming, last night it was all about the Old Grey Whistle Test, the old BBC flagship for all sorts of rock music not commercially enough for Top of the Pops. There was one and a half hours of the best appearances from the seventies, very nice it was too, followed by a look at the histoy of the programme, which I turned off halfway through. Whereas the music shown was fairly diverse, including people like Curtis Mayfield and Gladys Knight, the history was all about how prog rock ruled supreme until punk came along and liberated the world from aging hippies and half hour guitar solos. There was more than that going on in the seventies, neither prog rock nor punk were ever as dominant as the music press retroactively made them out to be and it is actually possible to enjoy both.

This overwhelming narrative, kept alive by the same caste of rock critics who established it in the first place means odd ducks like Dr Feelgood are lost in the noise, judged only as precursors to punk. Which is a shame, because Roxette, shown above, has more menace in it than everything the Sex Pistols ever did. The short, sharp guitar and understated drums and bass, the harsh, biting way in which Lee Brilleaux speaks the lyrics, not to mention his aura of barely restrained menace, makes this the creepiest stalking song I’ve ever heard. You can believe the song’s character would do something nasty to Roxette if she’s not careful.

To do away a band which could come up with gems like that as “pub rock” or proto-punk is to do them wrong.