Although that's true, it doesn't make the hippie phase fake. Hippies didn't spring fully-formed from the earth. People evolve with the zeitgeist /fashion; many punks / "new romantics" were soul boys and girls* before. It's not a "construct" to change your hairstyle.
* or hippies/hairies - the punks not the NR generally
First time I've seen that on video (had to listen on the radio back in th' day) - it looked more like a very formal edition of Saturday Night at the Palladium than most Eurovisions I recall. Almost all of which would've been in the seventies.
I didn't want to start a new thread, but the retro Pop show on ITV is astonishing, shocking and entertaining at the same time; I can't post a link, cos I don't want to navigate the ITV website, but blimey it's worth finding. What is that spoof rap song I've just watched?
johnr wrote: I didn't want to start a new thread, but the retro Pop show on ITV is astonishing, shocking and entertaining at the same time; I can't post a link, cos I don't want to navigate the ITV website, but blimey it's worth finding. What is that spoof rap song I've just watched?
1: Coward Of The County - KENNY ROGERS
2: And The Beat Goes On - WHISPERS (legs & co)
3: Atomic - BLONDIE
6: Carrie - CLIFF RICHARD
8: Baby I Love You - RAMONES
10: So Good To Be Back Home Again - TOURISTS
18: Living In The Plastic Age - BUGGLES
23: Together We Are Beautiful - FERN KINNEY
25: Games Without Frontiers - PETER GABRIEL (credits)
30: All Night Long - RAINBOW (charts)
40: Hot Dog - SHAKIN' STEVENS
46: Running Free - IRON MAIDEN
48: Hands Off - She's Mine - THE BEAT
No room for Donna Summer (32), Sammy Hagar - again!(37), the Police (38) Captain & Tennille (39), and the Vapors (45).
BBC4 editied the debuts of Shakin Stevens and Iron Maiden from the early performance. Shakin Stevens drops out the top 40 after this week, only to re-enter the charts a week later. Peter Powell says that the Ramones are going to be huge!
I only became aware of Shakey following This Ole House so this was a surprise (or shock). I almost felt a whiff of nostalgia as he did his trademark strut at the end with possibly the first sighting of a slide guitar on TOTP since Pussycat's Mississippi.
And that wasn't Saxa doing this thing with the Beat on Hands Off She's Mine. Did TOTP think that by sticking on another black bloke half his age that we wouldn't notice? I'm almost offended.
I think I was vaguely aware of Shakey as a Karaoke Elvis or maybe as a prototype of Vic Reeves' club singer. His 1981 success was maybe caused by very young kids who were scared of seeing pop stars in make-up and thought Shakey represented some throwback to true masculinity.
New Wave of Heavy Metal - IIRC this week's chart is pre-Ace of Spades, which is really the single that opened things up. I tend to think of Maiden as the poor man's Zeppelin and Motorhead as the poor man's Sabbath.
From 1981, I recall the studio kids smirking somewhat at Ian Gillan's Spinal Tappish attempt to cash in on Cold War nuclear escalation:
NWOBHM was kicking in ahead of Ace of Spades, which was a hit (though only #15) much later in the year. Saxon had already made the Top 20 a couple of times, as had the returning Judas Priest, with others like Gillan and Iron Maiden - who also had a Top Five album - also scoring hits.
satchmo76 wrote: I think I was vaguely aware of Shakey as a Karaoke Elvis or maybe as a prototype of Vic Reeves' club singer. His 1981 success was maybe caused by very young kids who were scared of seeing pop stars in make-up and thought Shakey represented some throwback to true masculinity.
He was just another in a line of British acts in the 1970s and early '80s that evoked '50s rock & roll. Showaddywaddy, some of Mud's material and Matchbox come to mind. These acts bought into the '50s nostalgia that was big in the 1970s and early '80s. Shakey was just better looking and more charismatic than Matchbox to attract a broader audience. But when the '50s nostalgia gave way for the '60s nostalgia, even Shakey gradually faded.
I never could stand Shakin' Stevens. And didn't he wear eye make-up, or did it just like it?
Shaky (no 'e') did indeed wear a bit of slap - mainly to disguise the fact that he was already well into his thirties by the early 1980s and a veteran of the touring circuit.
As G-Man says, that ongoing UK vogue for rock 'n' roll revival (buoyed enormously by the global success of Grease) meant that he was always likely to make it at some point. Much like Showaddywaddy and also The Darts, his shtick was both familiar and family-friendly - hence he lasted a little longer than more pseudo-rebellious exponents such as The Stray Cats, etc.
And all despite this (oft-seen) near-suicidal attempt to promote the single Shooting Gallery - one of his earliest TV appearances, alongside ver Quo and a young Richard Madeley:
Gangster Octopus wrote:Shakin' Stevens And The Sunsets had been going for years doing student gigs and Communist Party benefits. I saw them back in '76.
Just caught up on this weeks, went from sublime (Squeeze,Another Nail In My Heart), to the ridiculous (Rush, SadCafe) back to the utterly sublime (The Jam, Going Underground!).
Sad Cafe, hmm. My Oh My - which I'm assuming was the track on TOTP - won my vote when we had that 'sounds most like the Rolling Stones (without being the Rolling Stones)' thread a year or two ago. They were total hacks, FWIR.
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