opportunists knock

 

Yes that is Tears For Fears in their early mod revival incarnation: Graduate

Looking a bit like Mick Talbot's first band, the one with that song that goes "a man ain't a man with a ticket in his hand... YOU NEED WHEELS"

Good Lord, there is documentation

I don't mind the opportunism / bandwagon-jumping thing in rock'n'pop at all - in fact I rather enjoy it

Musicians are fans, just like the rest of us - they get enthused by the New Thing

(of course they also want to make it - make money, have hits)

Fans are fickle and move on, critics are constantly jettisoning one thing and jumping to the next... so why shouldn't bands? 

One thing I enjoyed in doing Still In A Dream is observing how nimbly the groups keep moving across the timespan of 1984-94.   

The Soup Dragons are mimsy C86 types and then they go baggy with a Stones cover, "I'm Free", copping a move off the equally nimble Primal Scream

Teenage Fanclub, whose "roots" similarly lay in C86 cutesy tweepop (Boy Hairdressers, BMX Bandits), i.e. un-rock 'n' roll as it gets,  suddenly start soloing like nobody's bizness on "Everything Flows" and A Catholic Education, taking their cue equally from Dinosaur Jr. and Neil Young. 

There are groups who start out a bit C86, then pass through shoegaze, and then tack to the prevailing winds of Britpop

But you get it everywhere, in every era ....  Phil Collins, in 1977, is drumming in the fusion band Brand X while also in Genesis... and then a few years later, as a solo artist, he's retro-souling ("You Can't Hurry Love") or contempo-funking (working with the Earth Wind and Fire horn section, duetting with Philip Bailey).

Sometimes it does feel slightly shameless, like "where is your aesthetic spine, your integrity, man?" - Gareth from The Pop Group, okay the jump to Rip Rig and Panic is logical, that's fine... but then Head? This relapse into raunch'n'roll is just too antithetical to previous form. 

Yet sometimes the shamelessness - the naked lust to have a Hit Single- becomes its own kind of cool.

Like who on Earth would have imagined that progger Dave Stewart (Uriel, Egg, Hatfield and the North, National Health, Bruford) would team up with Barbara Gaskin (who similarly sang in various Canterbury Scene bands) and score a  four-weeks-at-#1 hit with an 80s-synthpop rendering of "It's My Party"?  

And either immediately before or immediately after, Stewart had another hit with a similar moderne rendering of "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?" with former-Zombie Colin Blunstone handling the vocals..... 

We all need to make some bread, after all. Bills don't pay themselves.

1976: The Arse End of Old Wave (the New Wave barely in sight)

Feels like any week now it ought to be kicking off in terms of Punk Fiftieth Anniversary coverage. Magazine retrospectives, TV programs, exhibitions, books, documentaries... 

But what will they pick as the commemorative fulcrum?  The first, or the second, performance of the Sex Pistols at Lesser Free Trade Hall, Manchester? (The first is coming up very soon anniversary wise, just three days off, June 4... the second was in July).  The Ramones arriving in London for their July 4 1976 concert at the Roundhouse, all the fledging British groups in attendance?  The 100 Club Punk Festival in late September? The Damned's "New Rose", released October 22? Sex Pistols's "Anarchy in the U.K.", November 26? 

As you've probably noticed, I spend a lot of time perusing old music papers. And recently - mainly because I've never seen many of that year's issues until now - it's been the weeklies from 1976.

And here's the thing - judging from the contents of NME and Sounds that year, you would hardly know that something new and revolutionary is budding. The overwhelming preponderance of the coverage is Old Wave. Which of course doesn't know itself to be Old Wave yet, since the term New Wave doesn't exist and the Discourse of the Boring Old Farts only emerges towards the end of the year. The features, the record reviews, the record company adverts are business as usual,  the continuation of  early Seventies sounds:  prog, blues-rock, country-rock, sophisto-rock, hard rock, pomp rock, some final dribbles of glam. Nobody has the slightest idea they are about to be obsolesced.

Here below are some gleanings that give you the true Arse End of Old Wave flavour of 1976. So many artists I'd never even heard of - Roderick Falconer! Supercharge! Orleans! Spriguns! Cajun Moon! American Flyer! Frogmorton! Sparrow! La Seine! Widowmaker!

Post dedicated to Solstice, the Bolton longhairs who supported Sex Pistols at their June 4 1976 show at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, Manchester.

 

Yes, you are right - that is the future frontman of The Dream Academy right there

Even in the end of year critics picks, when the writing on the wall was writ large, the chart could not help reflecting the year's Arse Endiness, simply because there were hardly any punk / new wave records to figure in the tabulation

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This Arse End of Old Wave vibe actually persisted quite strongly even into 1977 - as advertising, as feature selection, as the front cover artists featured - even though 1977 is vastly more jam-packed with New Wave stuff. It takes a while for the newly signed New Wavers to get records out and there is a time lag effect, the residual hang-over of A&R decisions made in 1975 and 1976....  the newly-decreed Old Wave in sound and look signings are now putting out their second or third albums, contractual commitments have to be honored... adding to the fustiness is that the papers have yet to redesign, they still have the look of pre-punk graphically...

The Old Wave staleness wafted on into 1978

And is even addressed in the headline of this review - a rare appearance of “Old Wave” as a term

Here is Peter Stansfield with a different take on 1976 focusing on the punk glimmers 

He includes this July front cover on Sounds whicb is indeed an early sign of what to come 

 

But noticeable that the other featured artists are Old Wavest - Jeff Beck, Curved Air, Dave Byron