Punkyditty from 1980 that swipes at Ronald Reagan and harps on his being a movie actor
The Bollock Brothers - a name constantly on the edge of one's vision as a music press reader, but I'm honestly not sure I ever heard anything by them until this moment.
J. Lydon involved - not Johnny but his brother Jimmy.
The main feller called himself Jock McDonald (a stage name haha)
The obligatory dubversion
Before Bollocks brothers, there had been the offensively monikered 4 " Be 2", for which they got some flak, but probably not enough. "One of the Lads", the debut, was rumored to be produced by Jimmy's brother, and it's a fairly blatant PiL impersonation.
The obligatory dubversion
There's an Irish element in among the dubdisco - is that a ukelele?
Now Johnny Rotten, he knows a thing or two about performing, m'boy
"It's my entrance, my own creation
"My grand finale, my goodbye"
Mentally I file the Bollock Bros / 4 " Be 2 " etc alongside this record
The back sleeve says "they wanted to destroy show biz... wring the neck of entertainment" . They presumably being Sex Pistols / McLaren / Glitterbest
It's a spin-off / side-project to an abortive punk rock movie titled Millions Like Us being made by Fred Vermorel and Judy Vermorel. Full story is here (although no explanation of the lyric that I hear as "London town where the Jews all pray"). Snippets of Sid's voice talking about not wanting to be an entertainer and the spirit of the eternal teenager (once you stop being a kid, it's all over - better to die young etc), taken from Vermorels's interviews that went into their Sex Pistols book.
Disappointingly there is no YouTube trace of the other Vermorel record - "Stereo/Porno"
What's so offensive about the name 4" Be 2", beyond probably being a dick joke?
ReplyDeleteIt's Cockney rhyming slang for Jew. Via 4 by two, which if I remember right is a measurement for a plank of wood or a shelf - 4 foot by two inches.
DeleteOn the band's discogs page it claims that "The band's name was taken from an old Irish joke about a plank of wood, and not rhyming slang." Yeah, pull the other one.
DeleteThat Cash Pussies record was always in every second hand record shop I visited. Always dog-eared, always with that dry mouldy smell.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, on the generations theme, this may be pertinent:
https://twitter.com/ezra_marc/status/1673084419933102080
"a unifying theory of generations: every generation is exactly the same, except for the top 5% most annoying members, whose neuroses define their era" - funny.
Deletealso possibly true - the loudest voices, the most attention-seeking types, these are the ones that get to write the narrative of what their time is About. they claim to be speaking for everybody but they are just speaking for themselves. meanwhile the rest trudge on, towards much the same destinations and with much the same outlook, as their parents trudged along.
On that very theme, here's a morsel on the extreme political conservatism of Sixties youth:
Deletehttps://twitter.com/edwest/status/1672931917220519938
Phil - That certainly chimes with my parents' own adolescent 1960s. They were not hippies.
Delete