1970s
Kieron Tyler
Carolyn Crawford’s “Ready or Not Here Comes Love” is a 1971 recording. It sounds like a Motown classic from 1968 or so – a confident lead voice soars over backing vocals, light orchestration and a tight arrangement designed to get feet moving. Most of all, it’s about an instantly memorable melody.Kim Weston’s “It Takes a Lotta Teardrops” is as good. From 1967, it was co-written by Vicki Basemore, a Detroit-based writer who also co-wrote “Ready or Not Here Comes Love” and wrote for Motown too. Weston adopts a pleading tone on a similarly impactful track.Then there’s “The Intruder” by Melvin Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Close to the back of Jon Savage’s 1991 book England’s Dreaming, there’s a section titled “Discography.” In this, he goes through the records which fed into and were spawned by punk rock and the Sex Pistols, the book’s subject. The wide-ranging selection begins with Fifties rock ’n roll and Max Bygraves, and ends with the “post-house dance music” of The Justified Ancients Of Mu and Renegade Soundwave.When the mid-Seventies are reached, he says “the Murray Head 45 ‘Say it Ain’t so’ referred to in Chapter Nine is long deleted.” This chapter examines the birth of the Sex Pistols: tracking John Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Spanish director Fernando Trueba’s Memories of My Father adapts the Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince’s 2006 family memoir, which was published in English as Oblivion: the Spanish-language title of both book and film, El Olvido Que Seremos (“Forgotten We’ll Be”), more literally catches the mood of the writer’s tribute to his father, Héctor Abad Gómez, a doctor and prominent social reformer who was murdered by paramilitaries in his native town of Medellin in 1987.The writer realised that, two decades after his father’s death, his achievements were starting to be forgotten, even in close Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Over 50 years into her career, Suzi Quatro could be forgiven for taking a break. And yet, last spring, staring down almost one hundred cancelled shows, her first instinct was not to put her feet up but to team up with her son Richard Tuckey on a new collection of songs as a follow-up to their recent collaboration on 2019’s No Control. With songs referencing imprisonment, darkness and solitude, it’s fair to say Quatro had the pandemic on her mind while pulling together 18th album The Devil in Me - but, unsurprisingly, her take on the isolation blues wears a hard rock sheen.The album bursts out Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
“They think it’s all drugs and sex up here, Mrs H.” “Bless me.” The reality, at Kitchenly Mill Race, runs more to a nice pot of Tetley’s and a plate of Gypsy Creams. But “people are funny around famous folk”. At this Tudor manor house in Sussex – boldly enhanced in the 1930s by an Arts-and-Crafts wing – resides none other than Marko Morrell, lead guitarist of prog-rock legends Fear Taker. Or rather, he doesn’t, save for the odd impromptu overnighter with his lofty Danish consort Auralie and little daughter Molly, being otherwise engaged with his Chelsea townhouse, his Manhattan recording Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bill Nelson knew February 1978’s Drastic Plastic was the last Be-Bop Deluxe album. In his essay for the book coming with the new “deluxe expanded” box-set reissue, he writes “that, as far as I was concerned, was that, the final Be-Bop Deluxe studio album, an era ended and a new one was about to begin. As the songs developed, I felt that the album might provide a kind of bridge to what might happen further along the road. It was definitely a half-way house between Be-Bop Deluxe and Red Noise.”Be-Bop Deluxe split in August 1978 and Nelson’s new band Red Noise first played live on 2 February Read more ...
Saskia Baron
There was always something a little diffident about teenage Marion Elliott-Said, who created her on-stage persona Poly Styrene after putting together her band X-Ray Spex from a small ad in the back pages of the NME in 1977. Male fans and the music press wanted her to be a punky sex kitten thrashing around on stage, but she was always more thoughtful in her lyrics, which touched on slavery, gender stereotypes, genetic engineering and our limitless hunger for shiny plastic goods.Born in ‘57 and raised on a council estate in South London by her English mother, she didn’t see much of her Somalian Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A decade ago, Alice Cooper reconnected with his roots. He created a sequel to his 1975 album Welcome to my Nightmare with Bob Ezrin, the producer whose vision crystallized Alice Cooper, the band, and shot them to stardom in the early-Seventies. The survivors of that original outfit also played on the album, their first recordings with the singer in 38 years. After a couple of decades firing out increasingly stale metal, Cooper suddenly sounded refreshed and full of mischief. That same team partly reconvened for 2017’s Paranormal. Now they’re at it again. Alice Cooper has had more comebacks Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Witless punk” was the weekly music paper Sounds assessment of Disco Zombies’s first single “Drums Over London”. NME’s Paul Morley was more measured, declaring it “ill-disciplined slackly structured new pop but the chorus alone makes up for it.” That was March 1979. Heard now, “Drums Over London” comes across as energised pop-punk with a sing-along chorus and a wacky bent.The band’s next release followed in September 1979. Considering when it shops, the Invisible EP’s second track “Punk a Go Go” made little sense. Issuing a punk novelty when the world had moved on was perverse. However, the Read more ...
Daniel Baksi
Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto) is Italian filmmaker Elio Petri’s dark 1970s satire on state corruption. The narrative follows an unnamed, psychologically-distressed police chief who, after secretly committing a brutal crime, inserts himself into the ensuing investigation. He does so – he tells us – not to assure his innocence, but to verify his own conviction: that he is a citizen above suspicion.Performing the role of that titular cittadino is Gian Maria Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Dorian Benediction” begins with a muted organ and spectral chorale. Minimal drums, an electric piano, vibes, melancholy saxophone and a jazzy solo guitar fill out the picture. Over its four-and-a-half minutes, the atmosphere is haunted and haunting. This is music which appears to have seeped from the walls of a baroque church. It’s the final track of The Free Design’s third album, 1969’s Heaven / Earth.“An Elegy” is more direct but still as mysterious. It’s also jazzy and strings colour the arrangement, but there’s an epic quality as the song moves though a series of crescendos. This time, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
"Three plus versions of the same album. It’s ridiculous, but I’m glad.” The first paragraph of Richard Hell’s text in the booklet accompanying Destiny Street Complete lays it out. There are, indeed, three versions of his and his band The Voidoids’s July 1982 album Destiny Street on this double-CD set. It seems excessive.Reviews of Destiny Street at the time of its release were positive. Creem said “Hell himself has hit on a style – part Nuggets-era basement rock 'n roll, part speed-balling protest (not in content, but in attitude) rock, part confrontational CBGB psychodrama – that gives the Read more ...