Quintessence(s) of Old Wave (4 of ??)

 

There can surely be none-more-Old-Wave than this clip of Lindisfarne doing "Fog On The Tyne" on the Old Grey Whistle Test.

Scarcely believable that music like this could exist. 

As for the lyrics: 

Sittin' in a sleazy snack-bar suckin'

Sickly sausage rolls

Slippin' down slowly

Slippin' down sideways

Think I'll sign off the dole

'cause the fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine

Could a copper comprehend

That a crooked coffin maker is just an undertaker who

undertakes to be a friend

'cause the fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine

We can swing together

We can have a wee wee

We can have a wet on the wall

If someone slips a whisper

That his simple sister slapped them down

And they slavered on their smalls

Not only did they exist (still exist in fact) but they were hugely popular - the album Fog On the Tyne got to #1 and was the eighth biggest Brit seller of 1972. 

This was the Top 5 single off the album.

In the Top of the Pops rendition, the drummer reputedly hit a large bass drum with a rubber fish - but I see no trace of such antics here.

The next album rejoiced in the title Dingly Dell.

More albums with very Old Wave artwork

By this point, after the New Wave, they're just wet -  Smokie with strings

I associate Lindisfarne with The Strawbs - a group I find oddly fascinating not just as quintessence of Old Wave but also a quintessence of rock middlingness

Ah I'd got the idea it was an anti-union song, but apparently it's a celebration - and became a chant on picket lines. 

Now I vaguely remember that arch-Old Waver Steve Harley wrote an anti-union song

Which would make sense given that he'd been traumatized by a walk-out when the original Cockney Rebel demanded more pay and more say. 

Is it this one, "Red Is A Mean, Mean Colour"?

Hard to extract that sentiment from the lyrics - or indeed any coherent statement on anything

This one from '78's Hobo With A Grin  - presumably made during Grunwick etc etc - does include the line: "I don't believe in unions"

 

"I don't believe in unions, I don't believe in power

Tired of revolutions, they're dyin' hour by hour

Yes, I believe in open space, yes, I believe in human race

Yes, I believe in open space, yes, I believe in human race"

Some of the Strawbs actually went New Wave 

The lyric and album artwork seem Old Wave 

Although admittedly there is a twist to the sexism in "Nice Legs" - the singer gets his comeuppance. 

Discogs claims The Monks were intended initially as a spoof of punk rock. 

And also asserts that their debut album Bad Habits went double platinum in Canada. 

Quintessence of Old Wave (#3 of ??)

A classic from the original "decades blog" - Phil K goes beyond the facefuzz and the tight-crotch swagger,  to celebrate the "clean, clear, angular surfaces" of the Freesound

Quintessence of Old Wave (2 of ??) (nude rockstars slight return)

 Old Wavers in the nuddy continued... 

Shudder

Still, must admit find this one quite touching

Voted Guitarist of the Year in 1975, if I recall right, by the readers of Melody Maker

Out of much competition, this December 4 1976 cover and the first page of the spread inside might be the most Quintessency of Old Wave images out there (although I have some dillys lined up best believe)

Cusp moment - all the news and stories on the front cover are Old Wave in excelsis (believe that's a report on the Last Waltz?) but inside a bunch of news items and adverts point to the impending Noo

Hard to believe this none-more-Old-Waver would have such a large role in the Noo

"The author and young admirer"

Music-loving Johnny Plee introducing radio premiere of "Tubular Bells" and listing all the instrument sinvolved

Quintessence of Old Wave (1 of ??)

Who knew Roy Harper took a turn at acting? Playing a young rising musician in what the director admits was "a mess".

This film / trailer gets extra Quintessence of Old Wave points on account of actually featuring Whispering Bob Harris of Old Grey Whistle Test renown in it - presumably playing himself more or less as Harper plays himself more or less.

Amazing how many movies there are out there that one has never ever heard of - big budget efforts too. I guess the miss to hit ratio in the motion picture game is as poor as in the music industry. And unlike with records, they don't stick around in solid form, circulating in second-hand record shops and junkshops and car boot sales and charity shops. There must still be many many films that never made it to DVD. 

Now there is a Roy-in-the-bath scene in this trailer, which reminded me that while he's one of my favorite singers, I'd rather he hadn't taken his kit off at every opportunity

Was Harper in fact some kind of sex symbol? The Harvest marketing department certainly seemed to think so. And presumably Roy did as well

"Flashes", "flashing" - geddit?

Lost the beard in the '80s, kept the hair

Watch out Sex Pistols, how about this for EMI shareholders-upsetting controv? This is 1977 and whatever the album (Bullinamingvase?) that Roy did that year

Originally the album contained the song "Watford Gap" which contained somewhat disparaging lyrics concerning the Watford Gap service station, a motorway service area situated between junctions 16 and 17 of the M1 motorway, near Watford Gap, in Northamptonshire, England.

Just about a mile from where the motorways all merge

You can view the national edifice, a monumental splurge

It's the lonesome traveller's rotgut or bacteria's revenge

The great plastic spectacular descendant of Stonehenge

And the people come to worship on their death-defying wheels

Fancy-dressed as shovels for their death-defying meals

It's the Watford Gap, Watford Gap

A plate of grease and a load of crap

Harper claimed the food was "junk, absolute junk. I tried to get the media food commentators of the day interested, but none of them would help me because they were all kind of bought off in some way, they were in the pockets of the corporations. I got a reply from Bernard Levin – he agreed with me but wouldn't go public about it".

Subsequent pressings omitted the song at the behest of an EMI board member who was (also) a non-executive director of Blue Boar (the owners of the service station). Under duress, Harper replaced the controversial track with "Breakfast With You", a song he himself allegedly described as "pap".[citation needed] In 1996, "Watford Gap" was finally restored to the re-issued CD, with "Breakfast With You" now the closing track.

Controversy of another and more unsavory type stirred - retrospectively, not amazingly at the time (they were different times)  by the song "Forbidden Fruit". At the time, Harper claimed the song was just a fantasy, one he shared with Lewis Carroll...  

C.f. his mates Jimmy Page and Johnny Peel

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 This is pretty amazing - studio songscapery that takes the peaks of Stormcock to a whole other dimension

This is his "Starsailor" I guess

Optical Sound

 

(via Andrew Parker)

New Wavest (#3 of ??)

Clock DVA  -  a name one associates with industrial music. 

Well, they were actually on Industrial Records, weren't they? Put out a cassette via them, White Souls in Black Suits. 

Then Clock DVA were on Fetish, an imprint started by TG associate and ultra-fan Rod Pearce (he rereleased Second Annual Report and various other Gristle records). 

On Fetish, DVA were label mates with 23 Skidoo. 

DVA singer Adi Newton was into Burroughs and Gysin - cut up, dream machines. 

So all told, archetypally industrial. None more industrial. 

However, if you listen to their best-known tune, "4 Hours", from 1981.... 

... beneath the shrill wail of the horn and the doom-boom baritone (Adi bridging the gap between Ian Curtis and Andrew Eldritch), the song sounds like the Cars or The Undertones, something of that ilk

It's got that damped-strings (or is the term palm-muted?) rhythm guitar chug.

The breakdown couldn't be more archetypally New Wave. 

The lyrics, though, have something to do with the four hours of dream sleep, lucid dreaming, etc - i.e. typical industrial-style esoteric research. Sexual entanglements, stained sheets, etc.

After Thirst, Clock DVA actually briefly went New Pop, signing to Polydor for the album Advantage - an episode that seemed to embarrass Newton later.

The outcome somewhere between Lexicon Of Love and Floodland

After that Newton went back to the industrial left-field with The Anti Group

....  and then from 2011 a reformulated Clock DVA. 

They are still going strong - indeed they put out an album this year. 

sugared hiccups (UK rock 'n' roll 1 of ??)

 

"He didn't have much of a voice either, he was all nose and tonsil, a poor man's Buddy Holly. What he did have, though was... a certain persistent oddity, a real individuality. His first number one, What Do You Want?, was one continuous hiccough, a dying fit, agonized and agonizing, the words contorted almost beyond recognition. He spewed up the word 'baby' as 'biybe', choking horribly on each vowel, and that was the major hook... it was catching; it made him. One word mispronounced and he had his whole career going for him" 

- Nik Cohn, AwopBopaLooBopLopBamBoom. 

. 

Arrangement by John Barry!

Adam Faith's singing style - seemingly composed out of multiple speech impediments - is the ancestor for both Steve Harley and D Double E.

"Natch, he flogged it hard, spluttering and expiring like a man inspired, and he did very nicely. In retrospect, his big hits - Poor Me, Someone Else's Baby, How About That? - stand up as the best, most inventive British records of that time, the only truly POP music we were producing then."

- Nik Cohn, AwopBopaLooBopLopBamBoom. 

"But the most important thing he did was to introduce the concept of Pop Singer as Thinker, now so popular in documentaries and the Sunday Papers"

- Nik Cohn, AwopBopaLooBopLopBamBoom

Sitting in the hot seat - still warm from Carl Jung and Edith Sitwell -  Adam Faith, interviewed by John Freeman for Face to Face, wowed parents across the land: what a thoughtful, well-spoken, courteous and candid young man.  No hooligan he: reads books, listens to classical music.

Went on to a successful career as an actor.