Roxy Music - "Ladytron" (1972) Old Grey Whistle Test

Does it get any better than Ferry/Eno-era Roxy?

The Cure - "10:15 Saturday Night" (1979)

I know this feeling only too well lately

Nick Lowe - "Cruel to Be Kind" (1979)

One of those perfect pop-songs, and right on the mark

Madness - "One Step Beyond" (1979)

This song and "Ghost Town" by The Specials were my introduction to ska so many years back- a sound I love so much, a sound that somehow simultaneously captures the suffering we experience everyday along with those moments of sheer joy at being alive.

"Hey you! Don't watch that; watch this!"

Steve Harley & The Cockney Rebel - "(I Believe) Love's a Prima Donna" (1976) TOTP

Fuck, I hate feeling like this...

And my apologies for the stupid ad at the beginning, but the song is worth it. I promise

See all music videos Steve Harley And Cockney Rebel

Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders from Mars - "Starman" (1972)

Hands down, my favorite Ziggy Stardust clip. Makes me want to break out the old eyeliner and lipstick (black of course) ;)

Mick Ronson - Slaughter on 10th Avenue (1974/2003)

Mick Ronson is easily one of the most underrated musicians of the rock era. A first rate arranger and a sublimely talented multi-instrumentalist whose fiery lead-guitar work for David Bowie's Ziggy-era band The Spiders from Mars proved to be a huge influence on both the punk and post-punk movements of the late-1970s and early 1980s, Ronson was a rock 'n' roll careerist, who, much like Bowie, had endured many failures before his star finally began to ascend. Before meeting up with Bowie in 1969 toward the end of the recording sessions for the Space Oddity album, Ronson had paid his dues knocking about in several bands in his native city of Hull, most notably, an R&B-influenced outfit called The Rats who had a few minor brushes with success in London before descending again and forever into obscurity. The story goes that when former Rats band-mate John Cambridge made the trek from London back to Hull to recruit his friend to join Bowie's new backing band, The Hype, Ronson was working as a Parks Department gardener. Understandably reluctant after his previous failures, Ronson was finally persuaded to agree and consummated his legendary musical partnership with Bowie only a few days later on the John Peel radio show. In hindsight, Ronson's influence on Bowie's glam-phase is incalculable, as he not only was the architect (along with Tony Visconti) of the darker, harder-edged sound Bowie adopted beginning with The Man Who Sold the World, but he also co-produced, with Bowie, many of the classic Ziggy-era albums. Following Bowie's sudden retirement of his Ziggy Stardust alter-ego in July, 1973, Ronson, at the behest of Bowie's manager, Tony DeFries, recorded his first solo album, which, if nothing else, clearly demonstrates the extent to which Ronson had a hand in Bowie's distinctive sound.  

Slaughter on 10th Avenue isn't the kind of solo effort you'd expect from a lead guitarist striking out on his own for the first time; rather, it attempts to present Ronson as a viable pop star in his own right, instead of merely giving him a forum to lay down impressive guitar solos. This is evident from the first song, a cover of Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender," which starts out reverentially enough, but soon converts this gentle (or sappy depending on your taste) chestnut into an over-the-top glam-rock power ballad, complete with Ronson's histrionic Bowie-esque vocals and dramatic Ziggy-style guitar work. It really should be a mess, but the song is so lovingly executed and sumptuously recorded that it simply works, and works well. Things get even more interesting on the Bowie & Ronson penned "Growing Up and I'm Fine," which listeners will either love or hate depending on their tolerance for (or love of) glam-rock excess. A fey take-off on Springsteen, it's the kind of song Bowie excelled at on albums such as Aladdin Sane, and though Ronson does a credible job on vocals, it's impossible not to wonder what Bowie might have done with the song; nonetheless, it's a great, glittery three-minute ride. And then there is "Music Is Lethal," another Bowie-penned tune that starts out sounding a little like "The Port of Amsterdam," but soon develops into a full-fledged Jacques Brel meets Scott Walker meets Bowie glam-opera. Overall, the production on Slaughter on 10th Avenue is consistently gorgeous and Ronno's guitar-work is spectacular (as usual), and while this is indeed a strange album that ultimately pales in comparison to the Bowie albums it, in many ways, tries to mimic, it still manages to feel like an essential document of a brief but inspired moment when pop hooks, gender-bending and high art could be taken in a single dose.

Joy Division - "Transmission" (1979)

As the holy grail, the heroes, and the heartbreaking maestros of the post-punk movement, Joy Division deserves to be a huge focus of this blog.  Within the next week, I will be beginning my Manchester series where I will be scraping the fascinating grime from the grim streets of the mecca of post-punk.  I will begin with Joy Division, and also explore their influences, Factory Records, and beyond. For now, I leave you to revel in Peter Hook's brilliant bass lines, and Ian Curtis's tragically passionate stage performance.  Oh, and not to mention John Cooper Clark's fucking fantastic introduction.

David Bowie - Aylesbury Friars Club 1971 (2006)

David Bowie's September 25th, 1971 appearance at the Friars Club in Aylesbury, England was, for all intents and purposes, the first live appearance of the band that would soon come to be known as The Spiders from Mars (for this show, they were joined by ex-Animal Tom Parker on piano). Bowie had spent the previous summer months appearing at the Glastonbury Fair (in June), completing the recording sessions that would eventually yield Hunky Dory, and traveling to the U.S. to do a publicity tour (he couldn't perform due to not having a union card), during which, while in New York, he entered the orbit of Andy Warhol and Lou Reed. Journalist Chris Needs: "[Bowie] was still going around with his long hair and floppy hats, but he was still great to watch on stage. He had just got back from New York and was full of talk about the people he'd met there." At this point in time, Bowie was still in the process of building a fan base on both sides of the Atlantic despite his brush with success two years earlier with the "Space Oddity" single. However, it was no secret that he had nagging doubts about his ability to ever gain the kind of popularity he desired in the U.K. And legend has it that it was the 1971 Aylesbury gig that convinced him otherwise.

At the time of Bowie's performance, the Friars Aylesbury club had recently relocated to the Borough Assembly Hall after being kicked out of their previous venue eight months prior. The new location had twice the capacity and Bowie's appearance was highly anticipated for a number of reasons. As audience member Rick Pearce recalls, "Bowie arrived on stage to a collective "Oooh!" worthy of Frankie Howerd. I'm not sure what some people were expecting. Major Tom, or a drag act or something of both, but he certainly looked different. Wearing huge blue oxford bags, a white satin jacket and the red and black platforms seen on the reissue of the Space Oddity  album, he was light years away from your average beardy, shaggy, muso bloke." Drummer Woody Woodmansey has said that the band spent weeks rehearsing for the Aylesbury show, as it was their first as a group and something of a "coming out" party for Bowie. Interestingly, the show begins tentatively with Bowie and Mick Ronson doing an acoustic set, which includes a couple of Biff Rose covers, Jacques Brel's "Port of Amsterdam," and "Space Oddity," which Bowie self-deprecatingly prefaces by saying, "This is one of my own that we get over with as soon as possible."

Eventually the entire band joins Bowie and Ronson on stage for a 10-song set that includes great renditions of "The Supermen," "Oh! You Pretty Things" (which is preceded by some Monty Python imitations) and an early version of "Queen Bitch" with different lyrics. Aylesbury Friars Club 1971 offers a rare live glimpse of pre-Ziggy era Bowie, alternating between a modest hesitancy and an awareness that he is on the cusp of something great. While the audio source is certainly an audience recording, the sound is quite clear, if not slightly distant. Despite the sonic limitations, this show captures a key moment in Bowie's meteoric rise to fame in the early 1970s, and as such, it is nearly as essential as the more famous (and also amazing) Santa Monica Civic Auditorium show recorded the following year.

Swell Maps - A Trip to Marineville (1979/1991)

Even though brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks (not their real names in case you were wondering) had been tinkering in a band together for several years under the name Sacred Mushroom, it was not until the rise of the British Punk scene of 1976-1977 that they (along with several friends) began gigging and eventually found their way into a studio as the Swell Maps. The Maps had a hand in creating the D.I.Y. ethos of early punk, as bassist Jowe Head recalls, "We didn’t actually invent the DIY punk scene, because The Buzzcocks released “Spiral Scratch” before that. They had management though, so I don’t think that they really count! Also, Television Personalities and the Desperate Bicycles were getting their own labels together at the same time. We all became aware of each other, and supported each other's efforts- it was a shared sense of pride and pioneering spirit!" When the Maps finally got around to recording a full-length after a 1978 John Peel session created some buzz around their first single, "Read About Seymour," the result was A Trip to Marineville, a mad scatter-shot of an album that manages to offer some of the most challenging music of the British punk movement, but be forewarned: for the most part, this is not punk of the simple three-chord-thrash variety. Mixing in surf guitar, kraut-rock flourishes and some glammy overtones, there is simply nothing else from the original (post) punk era that sounds quite like Swell Maps. This is especially evidenced by songs such as "Gunboats" and "Adventuring in Basketry," which demonstrate the band's obsession with kraut-rock legends Can, creating a unique mash-up of anarchic sonic textures that Swell Maps would explore to even greater affect on their next album (and swan-song), Jane from Occupied Europe. Along with Wire, Swell Maps practically invented the template for art-punk, and are, in many ways, undeserving of their "badness to madness" reputation. Nikki Sudden: "We knew we were good, and despite what is still being written about us we could actually play. Listen to the records and you'll hear that we had a very good idea of what we were doing. Epic and I came to regret all the in-jokes we put about, but the music still stands up [...] We weren't 'conscious innovators' though. We just did what we did."

Au Pairs - Stepping Out of Line: The Anthology (2006) / Equal But Different: BBC Sessions 79-81 (1994)

Stylistically, The Au Pairs are most often compared to Gang of Four, the legendary Leeds band that played a seminal role in rise of post-punk, and while both bands were well-versed in radical leftist politics, structuralism and a jaggedly dissonant yet entirely danceable musical aesthetic, The Au Pairs were anything but derivative, as the band was fronted by the awe-inspiring Lesley Woods, one of the first openly lesbian musicians of the rock era, whose voice was equal parts bluesy sultriness and punky aggression and whose stage presence was a force to be reckoned with. Joining Woods were fellow Birmingham natives Paul Foad on guitar, bassist Jane Munro and drummer Peter Hammond, a lineup that was unconventional in itself for being equally comprised of males and females in a truly collaborative context, while the songs also set the band apart by putting forth an uncompromisingly feminist perspective on gender politics during the early years of the Thatcher-era. Jane Munro: "At the time- to me anyway- the stuff that we were doing didn't seem that out of the ordinary because most of the bands we were gigging with or who were influential at the time also had political and/or feminist lyrics- the Gang of Four, the Slits, the Clash, the Raincoats, the Mekons, to name but a few. In retrospect though, to judge by the number of people who remember and were influenced by the band, I guess we must have stood out- possibly down to Lesley terrifying the audience!" As with some of the other bands Munro mentions, lyrically, The Au Pairs could occasionally come off a bit politically didactic to certain ears, but musically, post-punk rarely sounded this dynamic and this fierce.

Lesley Woods

The Au Pairs formed in 1979, with Jane Munro being the last to join: "I joined the band by a kind of happy accident, really. I was on the periphery of the Moseley music scene and the other band members and I had a mutual friend, Martin Culverwell, who later became our manager. I'd bought a bass guitar and had progressed as far as the bass line from 'Peaches' [by The Stranglers] and Martin said he knew a band who were looking for a female bass player. Lesley rang me. The four of us had a jam together at a room over a pub, and the rest is history." After playing a number of gigs together, the band wasted no time in recording their first single, "You," and after releasing their second single, "Diet / It's Obvious," a year later, they were invited to record some BBC sessions. This momentum allowed The Au Pairs to begin recording their debut album, Playing with a Different Sex, which was issued in 1981 on Human Records, a label owned by a friend of the band. Munro: "We wrote the songs by jamming around a riff or melody line that one or other of us had come up with; it was very much a joint process. Lesley wrote the lyrics and, no, we didn't always agree with her views but she was a very strong character and invariably got her own way." Comprised of a heady mix of Punk, Dub, Reggae, and Funk, along with Woods' whip-smart and ironic evisceration of bourgeois notions of sexuality and gender, Playing with a Different Sex was a stunning, defiant debut that garnered the band immediate attention from the music press. Songs such as "We're So Cool," which is sung from the perspective of a woman halfheartedly trying to convince herself that "things are cool" with her emotionally vacant lover and "Armagh," which details the torture and sexual abuse of wrongly imprisoned Irish women at the hands of the Tory government, were matched by the album's memorable cover, an iconic Eve Arnold photo of women fighting in the People's Liberation Army. Lesley Woods: "The Chinese woman on the cover isn't wearing a uniform but this searing dress. It's not like when people say women can fight as well as men because they usually dress up in a uniform; this woman is going into battle as a woman, running into battle carrying her gun."

Paul Foad

Due to Woods being the driving force behind the band's aggressively politicized lyrics as well as a mesmerizing figure on stage, the music press began to focus almost exclusively on her in terms of album reviews and interviews, something Jane Munro feels didn't always offer an accurate picture of The Au Pairs: "They became more and more obsessed with the band's political stance and Lesley's lyrics. As a result she became the unelected spokesperson. I was never in my element doing interviews anyway and they always seemed to be dredging over the same old ground, so to some extent it suited me to let Lesley get on with it. If the rest of us had been more assertive it would probably have been better for the band though- we might even have been able to demonstrate we had a sense of humour, although I doubt the press would have been interested in that- not controversial enough." Make no mistake, however; the early eighties were highly politicized times, and music gigs in the context of the punk and post-punk scenes were always about anger in response to the corrupt values and general apathy of mainstream culture. This also made the gigs as much about connecting with others ideologically and sharing information as they were about hearing music; in other words, these gigs were a catalyst for political activism. Paul Hammond: "You could have a go at attacking issues through music because there were places to play for bands [....] We'd play to thousands of people, mainly students and all in anger- all wanting to do something. That's gone now."

Steve Harley & The Cockney Rebel - "Come Up and See Me (Make Me Smile)" (1975)

Starting here wasn't the plan given the blog's title, but my heart was torn asunder tonight, and this song captures how I'm feeling perfectly. Harley is such a master of sarcastic irony. I just want to tell the world to go fuck itself. Know what I mean?