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".