Glam from Elsewhere in the Anglophonosphere

Well, if Canadian hauntology wasn't surprising enough, here's a whole book on Canadian glam

Yes it is an "untold story".

When I was doing my wide-trawling research for S+A, I did come across examples of glam 'n' glitter from Commonwealth territories.... but nothing that really asserted itself as essential to the tale. 

Mostly fairly straightforward Bowie-imitations. 

Sometimes well-done -  e.g. New Zealand outfit Space Waltz, fronted by Alastair Riddell

Canada's main claim seems to be Sweeney Todd, whose emulative pitch involved shoving the word "Roxy" into a song title. 

And it worked - it got to Number 1 in Canada. 

Then the band's Nick Gilder redid it as a solo song in an attempt to have a US hit.

But then Sweeney Todd rerecorded it - with a young Bryan Adams singing - also in an attempt to have a US breakthrough.

What a farrago!

(Gilder did hit on his own with songs like "Hot Child in the City")

It was also, around that time, covered by Suzi Quatro (whose image is rather toned down here - where's the black leather bodysuit?)

Ex-Runaway Cherie Currie covered it later too.

I feel like I came across some other Canadian groups that were a bit glammish but perhaps more proggish.

And then in Australia, the nearest to glam I came across was Skyhooks, who were probably more like 10cc pastiche-rock, or Down Under Buggles, or The Tubes meet Sailor. But who could really play, go head to head with ooh The Doobies maybe.

And then there was the Ziggy-damaged Duffo, who tried to jump on the punk wagon 

Lou Reed damaged too

New Zealand also had Split Enz were somewhere in a zone between glam and prog - a little bit Cockney Rebel, a little bit Genesis. And produced early on by Phil Manzenara. 

The Robert Dayton book on Canadian glam is to be published by Feral House.

Who recently published a whole book on glam metal - titled American Hair Metal: Can't Get Enough, it's by Steven Blush (a name I associate with hardcore punk)

I got sent a copy - it's heavily pictorial, full-color glossy!

Quite a departure from the old Feral House days of Apocalypse Culture and that kind of thing. 

But then I suppose for your edge-walkers, at a certain point only the mainstream at its most gross and vapid becomes truly transgressive,...   authentic Americana... the kind of exoticism / slumming combo that leads brainy people people to get into wrestling or demolition derbies or what-have-you...  

Bit like how the RE:Search people started getting into EZ listening and exotica and the like. 

Jaded palates need new frissons.

It's the ultimate taste-move, in the sense of a 'checkmate' to other edge-chasers, but also "ultimate" as in  there's nothing left, nowhere else to go.... a kind of self-stalemate

Unless, unless, you go round the circle completely and go back to the middlebrow, 'The Beatles are great', type position.

Glam Raiders / Glitter Ravers

Sampling from Kenny's "The Bump"

(ooh and right at the end a tiny bit of Steppenwolf)

Space Raiders almost seem like a belated belch from the back of Paul Oldfield's brain

Or like the runty lovechild of World of Twist and Denim

Space Raiders recorded for Skint and were thus aligned with Big Beat.

 

More glam-raiding -  "Monster Munch" samples the riff from "Teenage Rampage" - and further in, the chorus -  ensuring a flood of royalties into the coffers of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman (possibly also to surviving members of The Sweet, since its their performance). Well, more like a trickle of royalties. 

The opening track on the Space Raiders debut album Don't Be Daft

is  called "Raiders Rock the Nation" and the track's credit says "written by Marc Bolan".

 I can't work out the T.Rex  track it's drawing on, though.

It also features someone called Scraggy Pee.

A nod to Marc also in the title to this tune "Middlesboogie (U Gimme Hot Love)" (as well as a nod to their hometown Middleborough)

Now this grebo trudger from the second album Hot Cakes sounds very glam and so does the title with its echo of "Truck on (Tyke)"

An odd choice for a single, this - sort of ambient big beat

I used the word "grebo" above and it turns out aptly because my favorite act on Skint - well apart from Norman Cook - was Bentley Rhythm Ace and one of them, I discover, was in Pop Will Eat Itself. 

(Big Beat is all about about picnicking on pop history and regurgitating it entertainingly )

Adding to the rockdance provincial lumpen-ness, another person involved in BRA - on a guest level - had once in been in EMF. 

Although Bentley Rhythm Ace derive all their samples from the lowest strata of vinyl (car boot sales etc), they don't appear to have scooped up any scrags and scrap from the glam 'n ' glitter era. 

They did do a track called  "Kenny Beats (Part One)", though. 

This was my favorite BRA - it struck me as sort of Professor Branestawm version of plunderphonics. 

But also like a Spike Milligan version of freakbeat. 

Or perhaps I'm really thinking of The Alberts and "Professor" Bruce Lacey. 

"As a small boy Bruce Lacey was fascinated by junk.... No one in this world can convince him anything is useless in his" 

Talking of the Midlands - and of glam intersections with dance -  I once described Stafford's Altern 8 as the Slade of techno. Not really sonically but more in the overall daftness, image-gimmickry, and mis-spelled song titles. 

Mind you, Slade did say of their back-to-basics / rock-made-for-dance stance:

"The kids don't want to sit down and think about music.... 

"The kids want to rave".