Do Anything You Wanna Do

 

One of those groups who are let down a little by their front man's appearance - not that he isn't "charismatic", he certainly commands the stage....   but his owlish babyface and mullety hair-style, combined with the bared chest in the performance above.... well he's punching above his weight here in the studly rockgod contest

Top tune - but like quite a few things from that 1976-77 moment, it feels much more rooted in the Old Wave than a harbinger of the New. (See also Dictators, Bethnal, Patti Smith Group). The bare-chest and shaggy hair are the giveaway: this lot are a bunch of Who fans, and it's not even like they are flashing back to the instrument-smashing, amphetamine-blocked mid-60s Who (as with Pistols covering "Substitute", or The Jam). "Do Anything You Wanna Do" is more like an extension of the early '70s epic-Who of  "Won't Get Fooled Again", "Long Live Rock" etc. Melodically it also reminds me slightly of the Townshend-connected "Something's In the Air" by Thunderclap Newman. 

Not just the sound - it's the very ideology of the song that is far more Sixties than late '70s. Euphoric libertinism, a very un-punk confidence in the power of desire unleashed... 

Don't need no politicians to tell me things I shouldn't be

Neither no opticians to tell me what I oughta see

No one tells you nothing even when you know they know

But they tell you what you should do

The source of authority is the self and the self alone - even when it comes to getting a prescription for a pair of glasses. 

Now this bit....

Gonna break out of the city

Leave the people here behind

Searching for adventure

It's the type of life to find

... reminded me of the echt-Sixties freedom anthem "Born To Be Wild" and its "looking for adventure"

"A true Nature's child" - except for the  technocratically designed and administered apparatus of highway construction /  extraction-refinement-transportation of gasoline /manufacture of Harley Davidsons....   that entire enormous engine of post-war production-innovation-prosperity that buoys up the adventure of those allegedly breaking "loose" from it, yet secretly utterly dependent on it....

Irresistible song, though - with another great lyric

Get your motor runnin'

Head out on the highway

Looking for adventure

In whatever comes our way

I like smoke and lightnin'

Heavy metal thunder

Racing with the wind

And the feeling that I'm under

Yeah, darlin' gonna make it happen

Take the world in a love embrace

Fire all of your guns at once

And explode into space

Like a true nature's child

We were born, born to be wild

We can climb so high

I never wanna die

Born to be wild

"Fire all of your guns at once /And explode into space" - this where the complicity with the military-industrial complex almost rises to consciousness within the song

And weren't many Hell's Angels actually veterans of World War 2 who found a return to suburban-domestic quiet life to be too boring? (Some, notoriously, supported the Vietnam War and offered to beat up peacenik longhair protestors...)

On the subject of libertinism - hark at the cover of the Rods single! 

That's Aleister Crowley, with Mickey Mouse ears on!

Now I am told by students of the black arts that my interpretation (in Shock and Awe) of Aleister C's dictum  "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" is wrong - it doesn't mean you can do whatever the hell you like, it means that whatever the Cosmos has designed you for, has endowed and ordained as your nature or gift or vocation or purpose, you should pursue that to the limit, or rather to the no-limit. 

"Wilt" means "willed" -  it's not you doing the willing, you are being willed. Your deepest existential drive is not a matter of volition, something you decided for yourself, but rather emanates from ... the Force or whatever they call it (Thelema?).  So rather than being a Luciferian or "disobedient child" mission statement, "do what thou wilt" is really about a kind of submission to the World-Will.

However I must say, in practice, the maxim would seem to be a recipe for a "do-what-you-like" approach to pursuing one's desires - a psychopath or abuser could say, "just following my nature here! Just being my best monstrous self!".  

Another hit single expressing a similar life-stance to the Rods hit, from just a few years later: Thin Lizzy, "Do Anything You Want To"

Equally irresistible tune:  the Burundi-ish drums invent Adam and the Ants several months ahead of schedule, great dual-lead gtr. And some good lyrics from Phil

There are people that will investigate you

They'll insinuate, intimidate and complicate you

Don't ever wait or hesitate to

State the fate that awaits those who

Try to shake or take you

Don't let them break you

You can do anything you want to do

It's not wrong what I'm saying, it's true

You can do anything you want to do

Do what you want to

People that despise you

Will analyze then criticize you

They'll scandalize and tell lies until they realize you

Are somebody they should've apologized to

Don't let these people compromise you

Be wise too

You can do anything you want to do

It's not wrong what I'm saying, it's true

You can do anything you want to do

Do what you want to

Hey you

You're not their puppet on a string

You can do everything

It's true

If you really want to

You can do anything you want

Just like I do

You can do anything you want to do

It's not wrong what I'm saying, it's true

You can do anything you want to do

Do what you want to

Hey you

You can do

Hey you

Yes, you

The repetition of  "you"  drills in this idea of the listener being directly incited to autonomy - "Hey you!"

This advert flexes what Althusser called interpellation - or hailing. It's like a recruitment ad - "the country of rock'n'roll needs YOU"

Actually there are two you's  in "Do Anything You Want To" - object and subject. 

There's the "you" of the verses, persecuted and bossed around. And then that "you" busts loose, in the chorus, into free living. 

A perfect anthem of adolescence. 

The last lines are odd in this "nothing can hold you back" anthemic-ness context:

Elvis is dead

The king of rock and roll is dead

Elvis is dead

A sobering conclusion to a song based in the idea rock'n'roll shows you the royal road to freedom and self-realization -  early death (42 in Elvis's case)

And of course Phil Lynott would be gone by the age of 36... drugs and drink related illnesses.

As the Thin Lizzy tune ended, another song piped up on YouTube - in an advert - "nothing can stop me, I'm all the way up"

Yes the sentiment is imperishable - and this idea of rock-as-unbridled-freedom lives largest in hip hop

Underlining my sense that rap's politics are libertarian and magical voluntarist (positive thinking, visualization, manifesting) *

As with pre-punk rock, it's the worldview of the adolescent, the disobedient child. 

Of course, no way for a society to be run and thank god for the conscientious parentally minded professionals trying to keep the whole shitshow on the rails... 

Personally I am in favor of more rules and regulations - a World Government, with an arsenal of punitive powers for those destroying the live-ability of the planet. 

Not just Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future, hatching policies and solutions and hoping they'll be taken up ... but a whole judicial apparatus... 

A Super Ego for a world amok with id energies

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* Reminded of this surprising quote about his addiction to MTV from Harold Bloom

"My favorite viewing, and this is the first time I have ever admitted it to anyone, but what I love to do, when I don’t watch evangelicals, when I can’t read or write and can’t go out walking, and don’t want to just tear my hair and destroy myself, I put on, here in New Haven, cable channel thirteen and I watch rock television endlessly. As a sheer revelation of the American religion it’s overwhelming.... I watch MTV endlessly, my dear, because what is going on there, not just in the lyrics but in its whole ambience, is the real vision of what the country needs and desires. It’s the image of reality that it sees, and it’s quite weird and wonderful. It confirms exactly these two points: first, that no matter how many are on the screen at once, not one of them feels free except in total self-exaltation. And second, it comes through again and again in the lyrics and the way one dances, the way one moves, that what is best and purest in one is just no part of the creation—that myth of an essential purity before and beyond experience never goes away. It’s quite fascinating" 

Too many examples... 

addendum

I suppose "Anarchy in the UK" and its flipside "I Wanna Be Me" are the properly punk versions of the Sovereign Ego stance.... "I Wanna Be Me" especially sounding more paranoid and cornered than triumphantly free.... a portrait of identity confusion and fear-and-loathing of the media

I had enough of this

This is brainwash

And this is a clue

To the stars who fool you

Gimme World War Three

We can live again

You didn't fool me

I fooled you

You wanna be me

Yeah, didn't I fool you?

I ruined you

I got you in the camera

And I got you in my camera

A second of your life

Ruined for life

You wanna ruin me in your magazine

You wanna cover us in margarine

And now is the time

You got the time

To realise

To have real eyes

Down, down, down, down

And I'll take you down on the underground

Down in the dark

And down in the crypt

Down in the dark

Where the typewriter fit

Down with your pen and pad

Ready to kill

To make me ill

Down, wanna be someone

Wanna be someone

Need to be someone

You wanna be me

Ruin me

A typewriter god

A black-and-white king

PVC

Blackboard books

Black and white

Wanna be me

"Words that make the air bleed"

 

1978! Never heard of this - session? guest appearance? interview?  Doesn't seem like the sort of thing Capital Radio used to go in for. 

I think the estimate of the number of people who'll be listening in is rather inflated... that would be literally every single person in Greater London, at that time. 

I mean, yes, "eight million people can listen" to The Pop Group, but are eight million people going to listen? Not very bloody likely. 

“Words that make the air bleed” makes me think of "when I fart, the sky bleeds" by Ted Milton on “Confessons of an Aeroplane Farter” - this is before he formed Blurt, who were not unlike The Pop Group, homegrown Contortions

Sex Maniacs

 

Does any phrase bring to mind the atmosphere, the aroma, of the British 1970s better than "sex maniac"?

Not a rhetorical question - I genuinely am curious if there's a more evocative word or phrase.

I mean, there's "secondary picket". 

The ad above is from 1976.  The Sex Maniac's Diary launched in 1972, which surely proves its echt-Seventiesness. ("Kinky" would be the much cooler 1960s precursor I should think) (In fact, the Diary has a Kink of the Week listed).. 

It reminds me of this forgotten book that I actually got for Christmas that year, I'm really not sure why, given that I was about 13 at the time.

A sort of spoof on Superwoman -  a 1975 best-selling guide to achieving female omni-competence by Shirley Conran - but also a genuine guide for the modern gentleman. Apparently it too was a best-seller.

A riff on "Male Chauvinist Pig" - another very 1970s phrase.

The only things I can remember from Superpig are Willie Rushton's advice on sex: a gentleman always says "thank you" afterwards. And also that prior to intimacy, a man should always undress top down - shirt first, then trousers and socks. Trousers removed while the shirt is still on, he considered an undignified look that would blow your image of suave savoir faire in the boudoir.   

Back to the Sex Maniac's Diary - someone I knew at Melody Maker, a freelancer, one of those interesting oddball characters who found their way into the inkie press, actually worked for  Tuppy Owens, the female entrepreneur-activist behind the "Sex Maniac's" brand (there were Sex Maniacs Balls and the Erotic Awards and all kinds of other products - this chap was involved in all of that). This would be late '80s, very early '90s, when you would have thought that the "sex maniac" concept would seem frightfully dated. 

Actually looking into her life, Tuppy Owens seems to have been a genuinely progressive figure.  And she died earlier this year in fact. 

The concept of "sex maniac" always makes me think of the wonderful trailer for this classic of softcore smut, a/k/a "funography"

I love the husky elation of the woman singing the theme song: "this is your life, Timmy Lee!"

I say "classic", but I still haven't watched the whole film, even though it's out there

Timothy Leer-y

There's also a film called Confessions of a Sex Maniac, but not sure if this is from the actual official series of Confessions... books / films, which always stipulated a profession or occupation or line of employment, that happened to lend itself to sex-mania

1974, need you ask... 

So is the conceit of the novel / film series that "Timothy Lea" is both the author of the books and the protagonist, doing a series of jobs that lend themselves to how's-your-father? 

Doug Keeley reminds of the Confessions of a Pop Performer flick - in which Robin Askwith's Timmy Lea plays in a glam band called Kipper

A rip off of the Confessions template 

Although there was a Confessions of A Plumber's Mate book.... 

Another rip-off of the Confessions template

                                                            Also from the 1970s, natch

Possible convergence of "sex maniac" and "secondary pickets", ahoy

Brings a whole new spin to the idea of trade union congress…

"Shop Steward" - another '70s-scented phrase of course

Andrew Parker points to the Australian counterpart - Alvin Purple

Whose occupation is water bed salesman

"Purple" - I fear this is meant to connote a la "crimson crowbar"

Ooh, something much much earlier - 1934!

However I think it was originally just called Maniac and then repackaged as Sex Maniac and repositioned for the porno market. In the '70s or '80s 

Not sure if any of the following have any relation to Tuppy Owens's brand

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A serious thought - the journey from "sex maniac" to "sex addiction" tells a story about our times. From permissiveness and libidinal liberation to a medicalized era and the idea of appetite-as-affliction

Mind you I suppose - as jocular as an expression as "sex maniac" was, it did contain the idea of psychopathology

What is the literature of sex mania? 

Portnoy's Complaint. 

The early creepy short stories of Ian McEwan (Ian Macabre as he was nicknamed) have an angle on the souring of Sixties liberation-drive into something seedy, sordid, and depressive-hedonist. There's one involving some blokes who work in a sex shop in Soho... and another about an all-nude singing-dancing-fornicating West End theatre production...  and then there's the ones about incest, child molestation (two of those, very different) and Los Angeles as where erotic politics slackens into nullifying decadence.

There's at least a couple of porn film called Sex Maniac and Sex Maniacs - both from the 1970s

But probably the place where the concept lived largest was TV comedy. Everyone is being accused of being one, or claiming to be one. 

As suggested by Phil in comments: 

Hanky panky, how's your father, slap 'n' tickle, get your end away, leg-over ...

cf words that feel 1980s onwards: bonk, shag, rumpy-pumpy, nookie

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How's about music? 

Well, there's this Ian Dury character Billericay Dickie.... 

Not about a sex maniac, but about a sexy windowcleaner - or is he? (Argument that the song is full of innuendo and is about about a sex worker who vigorously enjoys his work)

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I actually know a sex maniac.... Always on the pull, always going on sex holidays. 

This lad's like a characterological throwback to the 1970s - men with eyeballs popping out on stalks and necks that swivel every time a curvy young lady walks by...  panting... sweat popping off the forehead and damping up the hairy palms...  slavering for a glimpse of knickers... 

Like a young, very good looking Benny Hill with ultra-hip music taste

A dirty young man, in fact...

1970s-throwback too insofar as he doesn't use the apps, he's a chat up merchant, always getting girl's numbers in the street.

Funny thing is that he is of the generation that is supposed to have gone off sex, to be doing it markedly less than previous generations...   either dissatisfied by or deflected from the Real Thing by their porn addictions... or paradoxically turned off sex because of  its insta-availability through Tinder etc... in exactly the same way that streaming can create musical anhedonia, a wilting and atrophy of the urge... 

Not him though

x

The Parental Voice in Pop

 

"We gave her most of our lives.... never a thought for ourselves..." 

"We only wanted to be loved"

(always taken it to be meant as a clinging motherly or grandmotherly voice, a mixture of sponge and limpet... although others bits of the lyric suggests it's more about the mutual braindeath of matrimony: Rotten's last stand of cynicism before hitching up with Nora, for life)

"Nigel's whole future is as good as planned"

And now for something completely different... 

Ray Davies playing truant from his role as Head of the Family, keeping his head down and turning a blind eye... 

I am sure there's other examples of the parental voice in the Kinks songbook, must be something on Village Green Preservation...

Not a parental voice but perhaps a social surrogate for the parental - the congressman in "Summertime Blues" - "like to help you son, but you're too young to vote" 

Harry Chapin of course...  

Not forgetting Cat Stevens's "Father and Son"

Maternal voice internalized as spectral super-ego, not heard but invoked in "Triad" 

I love you too

And I don't really see

Why can't we go on as three

You are afraid, embarrassed too

No one has ever said such a thing to you

Your mother's ghost stands at your shoulders

A face like ice, a little bit colder

Saying to you, you cannot do that

It breaks all the rules, you learned in school

But I don't really see

Why can't we go on as three

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update 12/2 late night

Lots of good suggestions in the comments, but this one I remembered myself -  it dramatizes a dispute between a dad and his fruity, freaky glam-rock loving kid.

The full skit below concerns a teenager (Tommy Chong) who wakes up and listens to a song by "Alice Bowie" (Cheech Marin) and then his father (also played by Marin) yells at him to get ready for school and they have a fight.

[song]

My mamma talkin' to me, tryna to tell me how to live

But I don't listen to her 'cause my head is like a sieve

My daddy, he disowned me 'cause I wear my sister's clothes
He caught me in the bathroom in a pair of pantyhose
My basketball coach, he's done kicked me off the team
For wearing high-heeled sneakers and acting like a queen (queen)

The world's comin' to an end, I don't even care
As long as I can have a limo and my orange hair
And it don't bother me if people think I'm funny
'Cause I'm a big rock star, and I'm making lots of money
Money, money, money, money, money
I'm so bloody rich, I own apartment buildings and shopping center
And I only know three chords, watch me burn you fools

[skit starts]

I said turn that thing down and get ready for school
Hey, what are you trying to do? You ruined my record, man, I just bought it
I don't care what you just bought
You get your little fanny perpendicular and get ready for school
I'm not going to school
What do you mean you're not going to school?

It's what I said, I'm not going to school
And why not?
Because I'm sick, that's why not
Sick, you're sick, all right
What's wrong with you now, prince charming?
I got an earache

Earache, my eye, how would you like a butt ache?
Now, get your little fanny out of that bed and clean up this room
It looks like a pigsty, you hear me?

(oinking sounds)

All right, that's enough, that's enough
You pushed me far enough, young man, you're gettin' punished
Now stand up, no I said stand up!

Ah, let go of my hair, man
Now, young man, I have talked to you and talked to you and talked to you
Til' I'm blue in the face, and I'm done talking to you
Good, does that mean you're done spitting on me, too?
Shut up, I'm not done talking to you, now turn around and bend over
Or what are you going to do, you pervert?

Pervert? What are you snobby little
Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow
Oh, shut up, I haven't even touched you yet
Now I want you to know this is gonna hurt you a lot more than it's going to hurt me
Oh wow, that didn't even hurt
Oh, yeah?

Oh, wow, what are you trying to do, tickle me?
Tickle you? Yeah, I'll tickle you, ow!
Oh, is that tickle, huh?
Come on, I'll tickle
Come on, lock it up, honey, come on
Oh no more, no more

All right, now you're gonna do what I tell ya?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
You gonna talk back to me?
Yeah, yeah, 

what?
I mean no, no, no, no, no
Alright, now you get your clothes on and get your little butt ready for school right now
Do you understand? 

Yeah, alright

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Update: 12/ 3

how could I forget this one? 

sourced in this anti-drug single (as mentioned in the comments) 

4 Hero's sequel to "Mr Kirk's Nightmare"

"peace and love is here to stay" (mystery of subcultural persistence part 56)

The mystery of subcultural persistence, aka non-synchronisation: the fact that rock epistemes overlap and Eras do not end punctually but bleed across the supposed periodizations that journalism (first draft of...) and history (second draft of...) work with

Example: this NME 1977 review of a benefit in Brighton for Release - the hippy era organisation that defended people charged with drugs possession. This in an issue with The Clash on the cover

Release was started by Caroline Coon, who had herself already nimbly transitioned to being a figure in the punk scene as a journalist (working on the first book about the music in fact) and would quite soon manage The Clash (she can be seen in Rude Boy).

Intriguingly one of the bands reviewed in the 1977 Release Benefit concert is Here and Now, featuring teen drumming prodigy Kif Kif Le Batteur, also known as Keith Dobson - within a few years he'd be leading his own noisepunk outfit The O12's  and running the ultra-DIY cassette label Fuck Off Records. Then a few years after that, he'd front as singer-guitarist World Domination Enterprises who were either late postpunk or bang-on-time noise-rock (a British parallel to Big Black, except with a human drummer and humane lyrics)

Here's some subcultural persistence I eye-and-ear-witnessed myself: a free festival in early 1986 in Oxford that me and my pals accidentally stumbled upon when going for a night time stroll across Port Meadow. Probably just months before I interviewed World Dom for the first time. 

World Dom not on the bill, nor any remnant of Here and Now as far as I can tell (although Robert Calvert and Nik Turner are separately there, sans Hawkwind), but loads of groups I never ever heard of and clearly on a completely different circuit to the one that was covered in the weekly rock press

And then high on the bill - despite being I'd have thought fairly unknown then - Cardiacs, whose frightmare theatricality boggled my mind when I saw them (not knowing even their name when I saw them and completely unprepared for their early Split Enz lunacy)

Cardiacs seem like a New Wave sore thumb in this company of Magic Mushroom Band and Webcore and Mournblade. 

One name I do recognise: Shake Appeal, who would later become Swervedriver, but at this stage - one assumes from the name - are modelled directly on The Stooges 

I also recognise with a shudder the name Jake the Pilgrim, a Goth combo whose dry ice adorned performance I would endure a year later when they supported A.R. Kane in some South London pub. 

Oh yes, and Ozric Tentacles, in nascent form here I should imagine, later to be big figures in the free festival / techno-trance crossover moment of the '90s (and from who I gleaned a revelation: you can be tripping balls and you still retain your aesthetic discrimination... drugs don't improve a middling experience, they just intensify and 3D-ify its middlingness.)

Reprisal taken belatedly... 

Something in between punk and the new hippie resurgence

Student Selection (4 of ??) - Rominimal

 

A student's suggestion for a DIY micro-scene of the 21st Century - Rominimal  (Romanian minimal techno)

When I heard it, I thought this is a bit son-of-Villalobos  and apparently he is the foundation stone of this sound. 

Which is a bit of a for-discerning-types-only scene, I'm told - sophisticated. They drink wine on the dancefloor!   

I'd never heard of this sound but the scene has had a smidgeon of attention from the electronic dance media. 

As a child I had a phase of being really interested in Romania, or Rumania as it was often rendered then. But for other reasons - I believe it had and still has the largest area of wild forest in Europe and as a result a lot of cool animals (see I was into the idea of being a naturalist when I grew up - my other big obsession as a country was Canada, for similar reasons). Then a bit later I got really into the legend of  Vlad the Impaler and did a school project, with the grisly bits penned in red Indian ink.  Somewhere in the middle of that, I had a phase of wanting to go on a cruise - and one of the more intriguing ones you would see in the back of colour supplements and the TV Times and Radio Times was a Black Sea cruise that stopped off in Romania.  And in our house, we were fans of Ilie Năstase, the literally dashing tennis player with an exciting style of net playing who brightened Wimbledon at a time when remorseless speed machines and baseline playing was starting to dominate. Got a faint memory that he might have soured in his old age, politically speaking, but I could be wrong. 

Grown up interests related to that country: the philosopher E.M. Cioran (Oneohtrix Point Never's favorite), who extracted darkly witty aphoristic gems from his melancholy view of the world,  a sort of post-Nietzsche Morrissey. There's a lot of cool electronic composers also from that country. 

But I am unfamiliar with the popular music of that part of the world, or indeed the underground dance music. 

Interesting thing I learned recently - Romanian is not a Slavic language as you'd expect with the Balkans, but a mutant form of Italian (Perhaps that's why it's called Romania -  they speak Roman)

Student Selection (3 of ??) - P-Model

The return of Student Selection -  a series that never really got started (just one post I think - actually two) but was intended to showcase cool music that my students have turned me onto. 

Quite a few classes are based around a prompt - send me a clip of your favorite tune in such-and-such a genre, or sometimes a specific artist (Bowie or Joni). For a recent class on New Wave / Postpunk, a student who is very knowledgeable about the genre nominated this from a Japanese group that shamefully (what with being a postpunk historian and all) I'd never heard of.   

Listening it struck me initially as "none-more-New-Wave" - like how could anything be more New Wave than this? The angularity, the synth bit, the strained vocals....

But then, listening more, I discerned an odd resemblance to Led Zeppelin - the beat reminded me of "When the Levee Breaks" (or Billy Squier's Zep-clone "The Stroke"). The vocals get quite soaring and Plant-y. And when the noisy guitarburst comes in, it's excitingly noisy but it's definitely a solo - not so far from something Jimmy Page might let loose. 

And what d'ya know? As the knowledgeable student revealed, P-Model is a classic example of the Old Wave / New Wave switcheroo. Before, they had been an unsuccessful prog band and like so many Western counterparts (Police, Cars, etc) they wholesale embraced the New Aesthetic  - sonically, sartorially, in terms of record design. 

Geometrics heightened by the obi-strip

None-new-wavest of all time, possibly, this back cover:

And not least a significant element of the total make-over is the band name P-Model, which is  "we are product" / "we are machines" in its oblique sleekness. 

But you can tell these dudes can really really play - they got the chops and in classic crypto-Oldwaver fashion are shoving all that snazz into the strictures of the New Thing. 

Listen to the demented clockwork virtuosity of this one