PatB you’ve said that your a little bit older than most of us here.
That makes no difference when it comes to music, which spans time and human experience.
Come on, give us some of your favourite music.
The more the merrier (or something like that).
Bit too young for the era, but always liked Golden Brown (it is about smack, isn’t it?). Anyway, I saw this yesterday, and thought of you guys.
The more I read about them, the more I like them and the line up was great that day
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Great song and two fingers up, unashamedly, to the erstwhile bandmates. I have a box set of the first five Steve Harley albums. Before everyone was fired they did release one cracker of an album Psychomodo.
XTC, who I’ve been listening to a lot lately, used session musicians a fair bit, particularly when the original members had been whittled down to just Colin Moulding and Andy Partridge.
Jet Black, co-founder of The Stranglers, died a couple of weeks ago, alas. And today’s big obituary is Terry Hall of Specials, Fun Boy Three, Colourfield. Rumours that it was very sudden, but ill say no more.
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Yes, Golden Brown was all about heroin. An earlier song of theirs on the same subject was Don’t Bring Harry.
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KarenEliot, I put that ps in to acknowledge that Harley was a talented muso.
There’s a plethora of stories about huge egos in the music biz. Steve Harley is probably one of the lesser stories, if it weren’t for the huge hit that ‘Make Me Smile’ became. I’ve only mentioned it because of the connection with my cousin Lee. Cousin Lee was one of the Millwall hardmen. At the time Steve Harley was a small, stringy bloke. When they used to fight in the school playground, most times Harley would come out on top.
Both my cousin Lee and Steve Harley came from very hard/brutal backgrounds.
another ps: for the record on a number of occasions I had stand-up fights with my cousin Lee. I lost most of them.
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The closest I ever got to the Sex Pistols was in the toilets of some little club in London. Standing at the urinal, as you do, a bloke came in and stood at the next urinal.
Alright, mate, I asked.
Yeah, it’s all good he replied.
The guy was Paul Cook, the drummer in the Pistols, and at the time about the only sane one amongst them.
1977 was the year of the Queen’s silver jubilee. Us subjects held street parties in celebration. That summer a geezer called Malcolm Mclaren hired a boat and the band he managed, the Sex Pistols, performed a floating gig on the River Thames, taking the piss out of Queenypoo’s jubilee. The floating gig didn’t last long. Police launches forced them to dock at Westminster Pier, by the Houses of Parliament, and Mclaren and the Sex Pistols were arrested.
The songs that the Pistols played on that boat were from Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, which was the only studio album that they ever made. The title of the album landed the Pistols in court again, where defending Queen’s Counsel John Mortimer produced expert witnesses who were able to successfully demonstrate that the word ‘bollocks’ was not obscene, and was actually a legitimate use of Old English. Of course, it wasn’t just the album’s title that stirred controversy. The songs God Save the Queen and Anarchy in the UK caused an outrage, don’t you know. This next track is from Never Mind the Bollocks and is called Pretty Vacant. Rumour has it that the Pistols recorded Pretty Vacant in one take…
Although this track was recorded almost half a century ago, it could almost be an anthem for our modern age.
Or am I getting too old…?
Happy Christmas, everyone.
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