Sweet, T Rex & Roxy Music – The History Of Punk
You’ll probably find it surprising to see The Sweet, Roxy Music and T Rex together. They share a heritage of what was commonly known as Glam but three very different sides of the coin (3 sides?). However, they all had some hard-edged tunes, sexuality blurring, and a bit of spice and an edge.
Bowie, Alice Cooper and Suzi Quatro could also be included in this and numerous others like Slade and Wizzard, but we’ve covered them already and this is a punk not a glam site!
Roxy Music
Roxy Music were verging on the almost serious side but mixing art with glamour. Here was this glitzy offbeat art ensemble, with Brian Ferry screwing up his eyes like he was having a good wank and calling it style and a Eno looking like an inhabitant from planet Jupiter who thought music was for wobbling.
Roxy Music put together a mishmash of half-formed but essentially visionary ideals about being Continental, being from somewhere else and being weirdly sexy, and the result was an extraordinary debut album.
Roxy brought a notion of sophistication to pop. But once they realised this was what people saw in them it was their downfall. As Ferry developed into a crooner par excellence and a clotheshorse for Anthony Price and the band produced ever more polished romantic ballads it was their record covers, which for a time always featured amazing models, became more interesting than the music.
Their first album, their decadent image and stance definitely had an effect on punk, particularly members of the Bromley Contingent. Off-looking, offbeat and weirdly sexy… the perfect antidote to Emerson Lake & Palmer and their ilk. Listen to Virginia Plain at full blast and appreciate!
Editions Of You – Eat your heart out X Ray Spex!
T Rex
Another hippy warbler who from producing records with unfeasibly long and silly song titles suddenly with the help of Toni Visconti (who when asked how Bolan became so successful only knowing 3 chords replied ..”If U were Marc three was all you needed) produced Electric Warrior, an album of breathtaking brilliance, that catapulted him into the charts. Electric Warrior mashed Chuck Berry riffs, mystical lyrics, nonsensical lyrics, fat simple crunchy riffs to a sexy groove and makeup for our little elfin one. An album where every song was a peach was followed by a stream of classic, intoxicating, pure pop singles.
That was followed by a fair set of albums but as unfortunately as glam receded so did Marc. While Bowie was always one step of the game and others just bailed out Marc became an overweight parody of himself before punk and his influence on it gave him the chance to bounce back.
His album Dandy In The Underworld was launched at the famous punk club the Roxy Club in Soho WC2 with various punk personalities present and ended up in a massive food fight with of course Captain Sensible.
The Damned supported him on tour and his comeback TV show featured acts such as Generation X while he mixed with artists like Siouxsie and Raped. A car crash robbed us of him. Yet again his influence was felt by people such as Siouxsie, The Damned, Buzzcocks, Blondie and not least The Ramones who recognised that a simple pop melody works every time and that 3 chords are all you ever need to know !!!!
Highlights….Children Of The Revolution, Rip Off, Telegram Sam, Metal Guru, Solid Gold Easy Action, 20th Century Boy ( as covered by Siouxsie) and Jeepster as covered by Eater.
The Sweet
Originally churning out pap like Coca, dressed as native Americans, these boys hit the big time with the Winnichap writing team who gave them, like Suzi Quatro, a string of perfect pop punk glam monsters which they promptly went and had hits with.
On stage the boys faced a bit of a problem though. As good looking boys in makeup they attracted the younger teeny bop crowd. But as real musicians with a risqué stage show to boot they often found themselves in hot water and they wanted to rock not pop. Their sound was up tempo more akin to post punk power pop, but songs like Hellraiser and Ballroom Blitz would have fitted in seamlessly into 1977 and even heavy metal but by then they were serving up pop again with Love is Like Oxygen.
Classic toons – the uncannily David Bowie sounding Blockbuster (Jean Jeanie), Ballroom Blitz (as covered by Lemmy and the Damned !), Piece Of The Action, Teenage Rampage and Hell Raiser (a raucous mother of a teenage tune)
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