Music
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
For those who want it pure, without the distraction of Rick Wakeman’s music.
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.
Run, run, run
Just came back from the Making Light meetup, which was fun, if totally bib or tucker free. Before that I spent the whole day on a training course, so I haven’t had any time to read the interwebs, let alone come up with something to post about. Instead, have a video of a seventies rock band now only remembered for one song, one of the countless bands that put out some records, had some limited success, then vanished, never to even make it to cult favourite. Jo Jo Gunne managed four albums before they had to quit, had only one hit, never got much of a presence on the AOR channels either, didn’t do much other bands didn’t do earlier or better, but they still had a certain charm.
The point of seventies rock like this is not that it’s original or innovative, but exactly that you get what you thought you would get.
Battle Hymn
Just heard S. won’t be out of hospital tomorrow, as they want to keep her a few days longer to make sure she’s allright, which is … a bit annoying … It put me in the mood for a bit of schlock metal to get rid of some of my frustration — what better than Manowar’s Battle Hymn? The video shows all past and present members of the band rehearsing for their German tour back in 2007 iirc. Naff as fuck, but I’ve always liked this song, first hearing it at the same time as I discovered David Gemmel’s equally shock fantasy novels, especially Legend and Waylander, which it fit perfectly with.
2018: updated with a different live video because some fucker had to get the original video removed from Youtube.