Unfamiliarity breeds Contempt / declensions of Duncan

 

I thought I had heard everything - but  the munificence of all the vintage Top of the Pops episodes on YouTube supplied surprise

Here, in 1977, savagely behind the times, a group I never even heard of: a late glam / artpop outfit called Contempt.

I suspect the influence palette includes Queen, Sparks, Roxy, possibly 10cc, possibly Cockney Rebel, possibly Bebop Deluxe, maybe even Sailor

Cynical wordliness meets a clean frilly guitar sound and a dapper non-rock image.... and a bit of pomo  too (the song is essentially "Money Makes The World Go Around" from Cabaret merged with  "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend"

"Never even heard of" .... that might be because they only ever released a single single

Here's a funny thing, though - look closely, and this was produced by Martin Rushent. At roughly the same time he would have been producing The Stranglers and then a little later, Buzzcocks and 999. 

The name of the productions company is funny: Atit. 

As in "at it". Or "a tit".

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Another late-glam group, caught out by New Wave, rendered therefore untimely: Metro

I think these adverts were printed in this sequence, teased out over weeks.... or maybe it was within a single issue. 

Fop rock!

Metro described their sound as “English rock music, but influenced by a hundred years of European culture… Baudelaire and Kurt Weill”

One of their songs was later covered by David Bowie - "Criminal World" (on Let's Dance)

Duncan Browne was one of those figures who just cropped up repeatedly, slightly style-adjusted, in different phases of the rock dialectic

Donovan-ish in the Sixties 

(lovely song I think)

Then folk-tinged singer-songwriter (Murray Head on the moors)

His one hit, produced by Mickie Most (former Donovan producer turned glamglitterpop producer)

Then glammy-aristo in the Seventies, with Metro

Lotta nostril energy in this band portrait 

Then there's a later phase where it's yacht rock, more or less.... or in alignment with post-reformation Roxy slickness / Bryan Ferry solo

This cover is like a Roxy Music cover combined with an early Bryan Ferry solo album cover

I do enjoy this thing where artists keep moving with the times, adjusting their basic thing according to the new style - whether through desperation to finally score a hit, or simply their taste changing in alignment with everybody else. 

And why not? Fans do it, critics do it too.

Still Duncan B had the integrity* at least not to go "New Wave" - he couldn't move that far from his basic debonair mode. 

Greil M on DB

Unlike Bryan Ferry (but like Kevin Ayers), Browne was the genuine poshboy-in-pop article: 

Duncan Browne was born on March 25, 1947. The only child of Air Commodore and Mrs. C.D.A. Browne, Duncan initially intended to follow his father into the Royal Air Force. He was turned down on health grounds while still at the Workshop College, where he was a promising schoolboy actor and clarinetist.

A classical guitarist, he attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art for three years, where he studied Composition and Harmony with the legendary Anthony Bowles, who encouraged him towards a career in music

* (Actually Metro did go "New Wave" but without Browne's involvement)

* Actually I am wrong here  - Metro, with Browne involved still, did a very short-lived alter-ego as Public Zone, with Stewart Copeland on drums, and it's totally New Wave. 

folk versus glam (1 of ??)

Hubert Parry: "in true folk-songs there is no sham, no got-up glitter, and no vulgarity"

Folk is associated with naturalism - the idea that there is no artifice involved, no element of show. 

Performance, stripped of performativity or exhibitionism. The singer as the ego-less vessel or conduit for the people's consciousness. 

Green Gartside on Anne Briggs: "The beautiful melodies Anne sang unaccompanied were profoundly affecting, her unornamented voice a precursor to the anti-professionalism of DIY."

Folk would be the Quaker option, the nonconformist option (in the religious and Puritan-ical sense).

Everybody equal in this society of friends; the liturgy, barebones, stripped of ceremonial flatus. 

(Whereas opera, or heavy metal - at least in the 70s - is obviously Catholic. Pomp rock).

The Puritans despised and feared the theatre. 

The diagram below relates to anti-theatricality  - and the idea that some sorts of performance (the folk mode and the art approach) can actually be "real". That reality can be brought on to the stage, either through the performer as representative of a community, or the artist expressive of their inner self, their emotional reality.  

(More on the Diagram below)

Peter Sellers’s  spoof on Lonnie Donegan: Benny Goonagain (starts at 4.30 minutes into this satire of a current affairs show): 

Goonagain: 

Rock'n'roll? -  No! I'm a folk singer, man -  I sing blues, work songs - songs of the people and the peasant, you understand, cos they're ah workin on a railroad...

Rock'n'roll as something to diss-associate from - on count of it being commercial, amplified, gimmicky, substance-less. 

Reminded that Guthrie-remodel minstrel Billy Bragg went on to write a whole book about skiffle. 

"Roots, Radicals and Rockers" - you couldn't get a better articulation of the Folk axis of my triangle!

It's notable, though, that Donegan and his band wore suits and bow ties when they played live (at least on TV shows). Donegan sang Leadbelly songs but he didn't wear denim dungarees like Leadbelly (which was, if I recall right, an idea of his handlers, to pitch him at the folk revival scene - working men's clothes. 

Barefoot too! The full story behind this image is shocking.

When left to his own druthers, Leadbelly - like most blues performers - preferred to wear a sharp suit. and a bow tie. Singing - even about gritty subjects - was still showtime. (So in that sense, Donegan's fancy get-up was actually - inadvertently? - authentic).

White gloves!

Even jamming, he's done up to the nines

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I created this diagram as a teaching aid. It depicts the discursive space of pop music - it's about talk and rhetoric, rather than praxis and genre per se.

- how fans and critics imagine and understand the music…

- how artists explain what they do, to others and to themselves. 

(But could there be a fourth side, making it a square? See if you are as clever as some of my students)

Some artists are firmly established on one side or other of this triangle, and stay there.

But the most interesting careers either involve an artist located somewhere between one axis and another (Roxy Music exist between Art and Showbiz but are nowhere near Folk).

Either that or they are equidistant between all three sides (can't think of a good example here).

Or even more interesting, when the artist goes on a trajectory within this triangular space, starting in one place and moving to another (Dylan is archetypal, moving from Folk to Art, and then creeping back a bit, at times). Some veer all over the place, doubling back, and contradicting / erasing the previous location: consider the literally careering careers of John Lennon and David Bowie.

In The R.Elms of the Senseless (slight return)

Interesting reflections on the Robert Elms book Blitz: The Club That Created the 80s over at Michaelangelo Matos's substack Beat Connection

 

Although he takes a poke or several at the Elmscentricity of the Bob universe ("has no problem tooting his horn") and he firmly sides with the ravers against the nightclubbers ("I....  have no patience for anybody’s door policy"), Matos is more generous to this kind of "I'm-in-with-the-In-crowd-ism" than I am. 

Perhaps geographical distance, and not having to live through it in real-time, accounts for it! 

He satisfyingly skewers the Elms assertion that Rusty Egan invented modern deejaying (drily pointing out that Egan used just one turntable). 

Also satisfyingly skewered is the strained Elms argument that New Romanticism was not in ideological lockstep with Thatcherism. Regardless of who they actually individually voted for in 1979 or 1983, the whole slant was escapism combined with make-it-at-all-costs (with a strong vein of fake-it-till-you-make-it in there too). 

Matos mentions and highly recommends a doc I have never heard of: Soul Boys of the Western World:

"It it goes over the sun with the Blitz footage. This club took place in a Soho dive bar, and when the camera sails through it in this film, the walls pulse. It’s the most alluring thing I’ve ever seen in above-board filmmaking. I wanted to enter it and not leave. Within seconds, everything I’d ever read, or written, about the place came suddenly to life." 

While I shudder at the idea that this is an entire documentary devoted to Spandau Ballet, I might have to steel myself and watch it. 

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Earlier bloggige o' mine about Blitz and about Bob. 

Glam bandwagon jumpers (1 of ??)

Is this undignified, or just Donovan reclaiming the small debt that Bolan owed him?

Visconti-ish strings.

Here he performs "Cosmic Wheel" sitting down a la Tyrannosaurus Rex, stripped of the record's adornments.

Mickie Most produced the Cosmic Wheels album (Most of course wsa Donovan's original producer in the Sixties but by 1973 one of the kings of glamglitter production)

Suzi Quatro supposedly sings back-up on "The Music Maker", although she doesn't sound characteristic - I wouldn't have recognised her. 

The album was recorded in the next door studio to the one Alice Cooper did Billion Dollar Babies, and they got Donovan to sing on the title track. 

"Maria Magenta" - here Donovan seems to be aping Bryan Ferry a bit. 

But then again, he was doing this kind of prissy vocal in 1966....

"Wild Witch Lady" is T. Rex meets Dr John. Bolan-esque vibrato and whoops. 

Also seems like a Marc / Electric Warrior style tribute to a "dirty and sweet" young lady. 

Now, the genuinely undignified thing Donovan does on this album is "The Intergalactic Laxative"

Personnel

Donovan – guitar, harmonica, design, vocals

Chris Spedding – guitar, strings, bouzouki

Dennis Ball – bass[3]

Clive Chaman – bass

Phil Chen – bass

Cozy Powell – drums

Alan White – drums

John "Rabbit" Bundrick – piano, Moog synthesizer, mellotron

John Cameron - electric piano on "Appearances"

Tony Carr – percussion

Jim Horn – alto saxophone

Bobby Keys – tenor saxophone

Patrick Halling – violin

Jack Emblow – accordion

Leslye Ash – vocals

Valerie Charrington – soprano vocals

Nick Curtis – vocals

Lesley Duncan – vocals on "The Music Makers"

Julie Forsythe – vocals

Leslie Fyson – vocals

John McCarthy – vocals

Suzi Quatro – vocals on "The Music Makers"

Gaynor Stewart – vocals

Jill Utting – soprano vocals

Cary Wilson – vocals

Street (in)credibility

 

Don't want to do any spoilers but this pettishly flirtatious encounter between Russell Harty and Adrian Street takes a dramatic turn... 

An earlier post on the glam wrestler

A kind of sequel post, connecting Ken Loach / Barry Hines's Kes and Roxy Music's Avalon...

Son and father, glitter and coal dust

anti-theatricality and politics (theatre of war)

Donald Trump’s Pantomime United Nations

The Board of Peace might be destined to fail, but it still threatens to undermine an international system in which the U.S. was once the linchpin.

- Ishaan Tharoor, New Yorker

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and some trope detritus from recent months...

Trump reserves his energies for his own interests and those of his allies. Everyone else — a majority of our fellow citizens — amounts either to an extra he occasionally brings onto the set for his performances or a villain he invokes to make himself the hero of the story.... the message of his diatribes is that the only thing he can deliver after 13 months in office is fear itself. It’s a tired act. A presidency built on reruns is rapidly losing its audience.

- E.J. Dionne Jr., New York Times

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“Trump’s shoe ritual is humiliation theater staged by a man who heard someone summarize one paragraph of a dominance-psychology book, treated it like the Rosetta Stone of dickishness, and decided to make it the operating system of the executive branch.”

-- JoJofrom Jerz

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Bret Stephens: Frank, your thoughts about President Trump’s interminable State of the Union speech?

Frank Bruni: It was the Trumpiest Trump I’d ever beheld — preposterously self-satisfied, preternaturally nasty and profoundly delusional. Most of what he boasted about was hallucinatory. I haven’t been that fully immersed in fantasy since the first “Avatar” movie. I kept thinking I should have worn 3-D glasses.

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The longest State of the Union in modern history is now over. Donald Trump held court in the House of Representatives and said little of substance, but substance wasn’t the point. This year, he intended to put on a show, with an array of guest stars and special appearances. He was happy because he was playing the roles he clearly loves: game-show host, ringmaster, emcee, beneficent granter of wishes—and, where the Democrats were concerned, a self-righteous inquisitor.

... Tonight, however, was not about communication—it was about showmanship. Almost every line was a cue for applause from obedient Republicans; they even gave Jared Kushner a standing ovation. Every few minutes, Trump told a story and reached out into the audience like the host of The Price Is Right, telling people to come on down.

...  Trump managed to bait Representative Ilhan Omar into shouting at him, but for the most part, he seemed genuinely irritated that the Democrats sat through his show in stony silence.

As the whole business dragged on, the atmosphere started to seem less like a game show and more like the late-night Jerry Lewis telethons of the 1970s, in which a tired but pumped Lewis alternately griped at the audience, broke into maudlin emotion, or jumped up to welcome a new guest. The only thing Trump did not do was explain his policies—especially about war and peace—to Congress or the American people.

The largest American armada assembled since the second Gulf War is now encircling Iran. Trump never mentioned the buildup; instead he claimed that his one overriding interest was that Iran would forswear nuclear weapons forever. But the brief case he laid out was not for nonproliferation, but for regime change. The president claimed that Iran has killed 32,000 of its own people in recent crackdowns, a number far higher than most estimates. He made the accusation—rightly—that Iran is an odious regime and a supporter of terrorism. He vowed that they would never get a nuclear weapon.

And that was it. Back to the show!

But if some of the address was a game show, much of it was a bloody Grand Guignol theater of horror stories, almost all about immigrants preying on the helpless and the innocent. Trump led into these anecdotes by starting with an accusation that the Somali community of Minnesota was scamming the state. He followed up with stories of murder and mayhem, including the tale of a tractor trailer driven by someone in the country illegally—“let in by Joe Biden”—who hit a little girl. She and her father were, of course, in the audience.

..... Trump tonight went far beyond what even the most self-indulgent presidents would have envisioned. Beset by scandal, facing multiple defeats in America’s courts, and hitting levels of unpopularity that would make President Richard Nixon nod with empathy, he turned the State of the Union into a vulgar, populist carnival.

Trump made a great show of honoring a handful of U.S. military heroes. Meanwhile, thousands of young men and women are a world away, waiting for his orders to go to war. The president of the United States might have taken a moment tonight to tell their families why they’re out there, and what they’re supposed to do. But why bother? The show must go on.

- Tom Nichols, The Atlantic 

anti-theatricality in politics (slight return)

 

Things have been too grim for me to do these posts, but then this one came along (the theater kids being the (mal-)administration, if that isn't obvious)