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    #51
    40 years ago today

    The whole Svengali thing was hilarious sometimes. I laughed my balls off at that clip where he's being arrested after the Jubilee boat stunt. Someone starts shouting 'THEY'RE ARRESTING MALCOLM -THEY'RE ARRESTING MALCOLM!!!'

    That bit where he's claiming that Matlock Jones and Cook 'can't play' is mad too. Anyone with even the tiniest knowledge of rock knows they're a tremendous unit.

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      #52
      40 years ago today

      Calvert wrote: I love the idea of Mensi hanging around outside Stumpy's gaff screaming 'I'M AN UPSTART - WHAT YOU GONNA DO?'
      .
      I love the idea of Mensi hanging around under his window bellowing "Who killed Liddle? Did you kill Liddle? Who killed Liddle? STUMPY killed Liddle Towers"

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        #53
        40 years ago today

        Hahaha.

        Stumpy just kills the craic.

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          #54
          40 years ago today

          I have to say that I don't mind bands like 999, Angelic Upstarts and the Lurkers still going. Let's face it, you have reggae, country, blues and whatever artists playing into their 60s, 70s, 80s and, I don't know, 90s. Jah Womble may know. Oh no, it is only dead artists he is interested in. Anyway, I am not sure that there was anything about punk that suggested that they would all die young and leave an acned corpse. When you had Debbie Harry, Charlie Harper and Jet Black well into their 30s when they punk started, it wasn't even exclusively a young person's game then.

          I have decided that I love Charlie Harper. Firstly, as not only is he still playing but he is still playing pubs in Britain, selling his own t-shirts and chatting to punters. Secondly, the Subs genuinely did some great songs. Teenage, Stranglehold and PArty in Paris are great singles and on clear coloured vinyl. You can't tell the kids nowadays how exciting that was.

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            #55
            40 years ago today

            Calvert wrote: That bit where he's claiming that Matlock Jones and Cook 'can't play' is mad too. Anyone with even the tiniest knowledge of rock knows they're a tremendous unit.
            Yeah, twat. Put those three with any vocalist - hmmm, perhaps not Eddie Tenpole - and they would be fucking great. Lydon fronting them is fucking genius but is that because of Lydon or McLaren or a bit of both. The latter, I feel.

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              #56
              40 years ago today

              I have to say that I don't mind bands like 999, Angelic Upstarts and the Lurkers still going.
              You know what? You're right. They're still doing it and they certainly aren't doing it for the cash, there isn't any. Occasionally they'll have a Japanese or Australian tour sorted for them by a benevolent promoter/enthusiast which would be excellent fun, but mostly it's the Dog & Duck and I'm bewildered as to where they work up the enthusiasm for such gigs. The endless hours on the motorway, no money, no food and crap equipment would appear not to unduly bother them. They've more love for it in their mid-fifties than I had in my late twenties.
              Charlie is just a ledge.
              MsD says there was a thread devoted to Charlie Harper selfies on her punk site. Charlie has been everywhere, met everyone and is the soul of DIY punk.
              Long may he reign.

              CID is their greatest song, Bored. That and Left For Dead/ New York State Police ( B-side of Teenage)

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                #57
                40 years ago today

                McLaren was from the 60s counterculture and his main thing was Situationism, so it's fair to say there was a 'revolutionary' aspect to his ideas. He certainly wanted to make money, just like Loog Oldham or whoever, but it was still about ambushing record companies and media institutions too. He created situations well, but only around actual talent that he couldn't take credit for; he'd always fall flat without that.

                With the Sex Pistols I think he wanted a rude Bay City Rollers originally, but because of who was in the band - Lydon in particular - he got something much bigger and more important, and it ran away from him. The more control he had, the less successful his projects, cause his ideas were really based on an older person's outdated perception of youth culture - that it was crass, rude, trashy, belonged with the Soho world of sex industries, niche boutiques, police corruption etc.

                That is where countercultures lived back then, but not what they were ultimately about. By the 70s the fruits of the 60s had been consumed by hip kids who were very culturally literate and sophisticated in their outlook. He would have seen Lydon as an oik when really he was more of a working class intellectual into all kinds of music and culture, and with a shrewd perspective on it all. He could manipulate Sid Vicious cause he was a young mess, poor guy, but not Lydon.

                The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle shows you what McLaren wanted the story to be and probably put this idea that they were a daft hype or whatever in common currency, but it's really a film about McLaren's thwarted ideas rather than the band themselves.

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                  #58
                  40 years ago today

                  Yes, it really was a one-off alchemy / collision of all those elements, some accidental, some down to talent, drive, bravery and imagination. No blueprint was available and as I say over and over (it can't be stressed enough) no-one I knew saw punk as a career plan, more as something we could maybe get away with for a while. Before being killed or arrested or run out of town.

                  Not one person would have dreamt that in 30-40 years it would be seen as art or "culture". If I had, I'd have hung on to some of my stuff, taken photos and tried to do something more. But that would have killed that heady sense of freedom and danger.

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                    #59
                    40 years ago today

                    The price of Seditionaries clothes isn't the point. Primark sell cheap clothes.

                    Seds threads were attainable if you were dedicated - I left home at 16 with nothing, but I worked and was always a fan of clothes, didn't smoke, ate beans on toast and drank a small amount of cider, so was able to buy a few pieces and with imagination, bits of army surplus, cast-offs etc. made them go a long way. Kids who couldn't afford them could customize and create their own - and they did. Copies were available within months, anyway. Kids in the provinces don't have an automatic entitlement to hand sewn designer togs from Chelsea boutiques, so they're not deprived if they can't buy them.

                    Sex/Seds gave people the idea, a strong new look. It was up to others what they did with it.

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                      #60
                      40 years ago today

                      Kids in the provinces
                      Hahahaha.

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                        #61
                        40 years ago today

                        That's what Kim Wilde wanted to call her debut single until some record company svengali suggested she changed the title to something more exotic.

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                          #62
                          40 years ago today

                          Ha.

                          Well,I'm kind of tired of hearing people complain that Vivienne Westwood didn't sit up all night sewing so that she could personally deliver clothes to some teenager in Norfolk or somewhere. You got to see the clothes,it's no-one else's fault if you couldn't have those exact things. I didn't expect Davd Bowie to give me his red platform boots.

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                            #63
                            40 years ago today

                            MsD wrote: Ha.

                            Well,I'm kind of tired of hearing people complain that Vivienne Westwood didn't sit up all night sewing so that she could personally deliver clothes to some teenager in Norfolk or somewhere.
                            Yeah, you can't let shit like that stand.

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                              #64
                              40 years ago today

                              It's constant moaning.

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                                #65
                                40 years ago today

                                Cursed provincials.
                                We should send the Legions in to give them a taste of our Roman spunk.

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                                  #66
                                  40 years ago today

                                  Eeurgh

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                                    #67
                                    40 years ago today

                                    I was a kid in the provinces who couldn't afford even the cheap Smash Hits copies so had to cope with the local market's cheap iron-on transfer stuff which came off while the t-shirt ripped so gave the same look in the end anyway. We then moved up to London and.....still couldn't afford the cheap copies from King's Road, Kensington Market and Carnaby Street. To be honest, by then the whole idea of designer stuff made to look distressed seemed laughable and still does to this day. I still find it mad when you see those jeans with holes put artfully in the knees. It does, however, mean that half of my jeans are now in vogue.

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                                      #68
                                      40 years ago today

                                      Iron-on transfers, is it?
                                      Bloody luxury

                                      We used to dream of iron-on transfers.

                                      Best we could manage was to sew zippers stolen from tramps' pissy trousers directly onto our legs and pretend we were wearing flesh-coloured PVC's

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                                        #69
                                        40 years ago today

                                        Hmmm, I wasn't going to mention the PVCs.

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                                          #70
                                          40 years ago today

                                          I always had a soft spot for Sham 69, certainly for Jimmy.

                                          He fought bravely and sensitively against the Nazi-skin element amongst his band's fans;

                                          He wrote and performed quite a few catchy-shouty punk songs with neat little guitar breaks;

                                          he can hardly be blamed for the existence of Oi or the awful Sham parody bands like the Cockney Rejects;

                                          he was always interesting in NME interviews, on a journey of self-education about working class history;

                                          the Beano adverts for 'Kids Are United' were great;

                                          the idea of That's Life, a punk kitchen-sink concept album, still makes me smile;

                                          he did a guest DJ slot on RADIO 1 I taped (in about '79) where he played some really interesting stuff;

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                                            #71
                                            40 years ago today

                                            Also, Hurry Up Harry is a masterpiece of bone-headed simplicity.

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                                              #72
                                              40 years ago today

                                              I was never that much of a fan, but probably yelled along to Angels With Dirty Faces and Hurry Up Harry like everyone else. And, yeah, Jimmy Pursey always seemed a decent-enough guy. (We'll let that 'performance art' thing ride...)

                                              I seem to recall a comeback single that featured on The Chart Show a couple of times around 1988-89 that was quite interesting. Blessed if I can remember what it was called, though.

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                                                #73
                                                40 years ago today

                                                I was never that much of a fan, but probably yelled along to Angels With Dirty Faces and Hurry Up Harry like everyone else.

                                                Same here. "Yell-alongs" was the whole point of Sham 69, I thought.

                                                I remember hearing That's Life when I was ten and, even then, thinking the line "'We're eating a clockwork orange / But I'm spitting out the pips'" was a load of shit.

                                                When The Lady I Walked To The Registry Office With hosted the pub quiz at the boozer round the corner, her walk-on music was "Questions And Answers".

                                                She probably wasn't the first, and won't be the last, pub-quiz compère to have that as a signature tune, but it got the punters yelling along nicely all the same.

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                                                  #74
                                                  40 years ago today

                                                  Jah Womble wrote:
                                                  I seem to recall a comeback single that featured on The Chart Show a couple of times around 1988-89 that was quite interesting. Blessed if I can remember what it was called, though.
                                                  I remember Sham 69 reforming around 1993 and bringing out Bosnia, a single about the Yugoslavian conflict. The chorus was: "Bosnia! You're all losers!"

                                                  I'm not making this up.

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                                                    #75
                                                    40 years ago today

                                                    I remember hearing That's Life when I was ten and, even then, thinking the line "'We're eating a clockwork orange / But I'm spitting out the pips'" was a load of shit.
                                                    Ha - that sounds like a Pursey lyric. I can remember thinking that "We're all part of the human zoo! The animals are meee and yoooou!" left a little to be desired.

                                                    He was probably at his best singing about the kids and pubs (as the Bosnia line also suggests).

                                                    Wish I could remember the track from 1989. Whether Sham 69 or Pursey solo, the promo had him in front of a lurid red/black backdrop featuring a soldier, or similar.

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