the cusp of a changeover, dramatised in same-page juxtapositions in this June 4 1977 issue of Melody Maker
The band on the right is UFO
A cover of the Love song! 1967-in-1977!
Astonishingly faithful cover, in fact.
Interestingly. in the same issue, Caroline Coon, doing the singles, more or less says that punk is over already - it's become a cliche, something the industry will be churning out as product by the yard
Coon herself had been through several revolutions of the fashion cycle by this point...
UFO, a few years earlier, put out a record, Force It, whose cover tangles up Old Wave and New Wave
The design is by Hipgnosis, which in this case probably means Peter Christopherson, because the naughty couple in the bathtub are Genesis P (ghastly ponytail!) and Cosey FT - this must be just as TG are getting started
It's funny - I was watching part of Urgh! A Music War a few days ago, and at least as late as 1980 in LA, most of the audience reaction shots for The Dead Kennedys' spot looked more like the denim ad than the Pistols; I posted screencaps on my Bluesky account: https://bsky.app/profile/electriceden92.bsky.social/post/3kuc5siot522e
ReplyDeleteIn the UK, the transformation was, as you say, a blink of an eye - in the US, it seems to have been much more sluggish and haphazard, even among the base (maybe because the US standard bearers, the Ramones, didn't really bother? Johnny, Dee Dee and the later drummers maintained their bowl cuts, and Joey and Tommy never cut it at all); as I say in the thread, it's part of the 80s hardcore myth that aggressive adherents would seize, then forcibly shave ('scalp') unfortunate long-haired patrons, but it's never really explained what they were doing there to begin with
If you look at footage of New Wave concerts in the UK, you do see a lot of longish hair types in the audience, or just ordinary kids who haven't really changed their hair or their clothes much. Quite a few of the bands too, there's people - usually not the frontline people - who haven't really changed their look that much. The hair is still a bit long. Probably they've got rid of the beard or the 'tache they had a few years ago. The trousers are tighter.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYVDN27CrOo&ab_channel=Phantasmagoria138 10 years later, The Damned would cover Alone Again Or, to no especial point (who was listening to 1987-vintage Damned in the first place?). They change a few of the pronouns, but I can't bring myself to care.
ReplyDeleteIn honesty, the performative critical lambasting The Doors have latterly and massively unfairly received has coarsened my appreciation of Love, since the lambasters heralded Love as the replacement late 60s LA psychedelic band. But let's be frank: as good as Love were:
1) Jim Morrison was a far better singer than Arthur Lee;
2) Jim Morrison was a far more interesting lyricist than Arthur Lee, and
3) The Doors' debut album is a better album that Forever Changes.
I love The Doors and Love roughly equally - loved the Doors first and more formatively... but "Forever Changes", the first side of Da Capo, this is magical stuff. There's just less of Love than there is of great Doors stuff (but equally the Doors great stuff balanced out by a lot of misfires and duds on all the album after the first one).
DeleteSo I would strike the words "far better" and "better" and replace them with "quite different". They are competing in different races. There's no blues in Love, it's a less physically driving music.
Yeah, I was too harsh on Love there. But I do think I've got a point: the eventual backlash against the Doors has led to perhaps an overgenerous reassessment of Love. And Morrison was a better singer than Lee. I don't see how anyone could argue to the contrary.
DeleteUFO were hilarious style-shifters early in their career. The first album is a sort of Blue Cheer / MC5 back-to-basics move, with covers of 'C'Mon Everybody' and 'Who Do You Love', and a track called simply 'Boogie'. Then the difficult second-album is space rock with 19- and 26-minute tracks, and a song called 'The Coming of Prince Kajuku'. And then on the third album their hit their groove as the John the Baptists for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and they stick with that style for about a dozen records.
ReplyDeleteOne of the seminal influences on Spinal Tap, I always think, along with Uriah Heep.