Podrophenia the letter Y - is up for download: Chris Constantinou joins us covering his career from playing Live Aid with Adam Ant and Top of the Pops goss' - to The Mutants, The Wolfmen and his new 1000 Motels project with Rat Scabies, plus new Clash covers with @itsrudegrl
From the Podro playlist Lord Hastings, Piley and m'self spin in tracks including funky reggae, Toussaint's buried treasure and a non-skippable Yoko track also the only Roxy Music track written by their drummer. Dig in and download
X marks the spot Pod Pals as we run out a playlist of x related bands/songs and X film related
chat with a live session from Millsy of power-pop rockers Vix 20
While I'm still in recovery from the broken shoulder - how about catching up on what's been sizzling away over the summer months - and backtracking to the evening of 27th June, when all of punk, pub and garage rock's historical planets came into alignment.for a due soon album The Rhythm and Punk Revue
At the nucleus of this cross-generational get-together was the re-teaming of Wayne Kramer and Wilko Johnson - a pairing reunited for the first time since sharing a bill together at The London Rock n Roll Show 1972. Where the Feelood's were backing Heinz - and a gig Wilko has repeatedly gone record as saying changed his life. In fact, dig into the vid below for the King of Canvey in full flight - telling the tale himself.
Be warned - contains tales of mild peril and explosive effing and jeffing from the get-go...
This glittering gathering has come together under the banner of The Mutants working up new tunes written by Chris Constaninou and Paul Subsource and recorded with a roll-call of new wave, ska and punk legends. Dig about the latest issue of Vive Le Rock and in between a bulgiing edition covering the birth of New York Punk, Ian McCulloch interviewed - you'll find Chris giving the back story to these Mutant moments
Dig around the back pages and you'll find me reviewing Norman Watt-Roy's first solo album Faith and Grace - as well as Wilko's homecoming gig at Southend's Village Green festival...
It seems fitting that after two years and 24 posts, as Dear Diary reaches it's last entry - so we finish on King of the Blingers, Jimmy Saville who also bowed out with a closing coda this year. Light on entries but heavy on celebrations (three birthdays, Christmas and New Year's Eve) - a couple of moments to note include...
My First Concert: Adam and the Ants at Chelmsford Odeon (13th) - as we've mentioned previously an absolute skull-cracker of a gig, during the brief transitional shift when Adam was slowly shedding the hardcore of mohicans and kilted fans that had dragged around behind him as the shadowy Ant People - before the pre-teen/ Televisual crowd massed on the now cavalary jacketed Adam (with newly installed songwriting team-mate Marco Pirroni). The Chelmsford audience for this date was a sweaty swell of ructious skins and punks snarling, scrumming and thumping lumps out of each other at stage front, to a point where Adam had to stop the performance midway through one number - to bark at a hot-spot of rucking punks/skins..
The Shadow of The Damned: from the earliest Dear Diaries well May 79 - the as it happens (not in the Jimmy Saville sense) output of those first-past-the-post(s) punks have been rendered and recorded with regular entries. December 80 sees The Damned at their most dynamic - a one off Christmas curiosity single - There Ain't No Sanity Clause and the widescreen genius of double LP The Black Album.
Not surprisingly my second gig and follow-on to the Ants outing was The Damned at the Lyceum 5th July 1981 for their fifth anniversary gig with a setlist supporting the Black Album (details here)..
Now and then: all singles bagged December 1980
The Quinn Martin style epilogue: If, back then, some anonymous bod, had told me 'in 2011 you'll write the sleevenotes and interviews for Marco Pirroni's latest album (The Wolfmen - Married to the Eiffel Tower), and rattle off 8 pages of overviews and interviews for a magazine cover feature on The Damned' - it really would have scrambled my teenage brainwaves. In fact it scrambles my middle aged brainwaves now..
I mean, really, who'd a thought?
So that's it chums - we're all done with Dear Diary. If you've been in from the beginning, a huge thank you is due for sticking around - if you've been a dipper-in or occasional grazer of these scribbled bits - a tip of the titfer is due to you too.
What's next - there's a new monthly motif possibly lined up for 2012. A magazine based take on vintage times - but more on that in Jan. So until then, have yourselves a hoot for hogmany, a knees-up of a New Year's Eve - and I'll catch you next year x
The singles list is fairly sprightly, but beware the album chart - a giddy mix of nutty comps, new wavers and A O R-tists
Without question - the most muted month in the history of Dear Diary doings. As the
action switches (temporarily) to the trusty ol' Silvine notebook - where the news
is...
Coming 105th in Cross Country Run (and some poor puffing shunters 'got lost'
apparently). Well it was through the woods. And who knows - some of those runaway nags may still have been on the gadabout. On the 8th: a trip to Leigh, buying Adam's King's album and, where we pop in to see Liz
Karslake whose older sister (Jo) later became Mrs Ron Wood
Everybody's favourite Science Teacher Mr Hamilton - spent a lump of the lesson
unravelling and popping holes in the baggy formulas and theories that made up Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World.
A trip to nan's for Pie and Mash (also Sounds and The Unexplained too).
And how about this - pals Andy Hampson and Barney pop up as presenters on TV's musical yoof show - Something Else. Dexy's Midnight Runners were the turn on this episode and you can catch a Dexy's extract from this exact edition below. Calendar-wise. It's the return of our school year's lumpy chums Mullen and Turnidge who 'went mad'. Although there's no anecdotal evidence to support this - I suspect 'narking' them was probably the root truth of the meltdown.
Records bagged were Kings of the Wild Frontier and The Black Album. Two albums that, for me, were Narnian wardrobe
moments of other worldliness and portals to punk/new wave's potential possibilities and technicolour dreamscapes, that left formulaic punk fodder seeming generic, dated and faded. A bi-dynamic pairing which are equally, early outings in new wave
experimentation - and templates that stand as indicators and shapers of the 80s fads and fashions that
followed: new romanticism, narcissism, new-wave-goes-pop, guitar twang, psychedelic revival,
60s revisionism, goth.
Black Album not pictured - it's buried in the loft somewhere
Exactly 31 years on from buying these albums - I've seen most variations on both bands this year Adam (June), ex Ants -The Wolfmen (July) and last Saturday, The Damned
recreating the Black album at The roundhouse (review here). The Damned, who've always delivered and never disappointed live are now, more polished and accomplished than ever. The Wolfmen take Adam's antics into new glam/garage areas. And Adam has compressed his characters into a composite rather than move on - but he hasn't lost it ( in a performance sense) either.
Two tasters from both then - The Damned's midnight cinematic shimmer, with a coda that always reminded me of the Hooray for Harold Lloyd incidental music...
Fight,fight,fight - when I had rumble with Rochard
(pronounced roach-ard). Our school year's notoriously handy Judo bloke. It
started when he whipped a few stinging flicks of his school tie at a mate o' mine in the changing rooms - and ended with me having quick a
straightener with him. Although the PE teacher walked in put the handbrake any more fiesty hi-jinx.
In other news, it's a weekend in London at cousin Sylv's
where we call in to see her best mate Nick Saloman (who stopped by the blog
for a guest spot earlier this year) and his legendary record collection.
Including the rare Hot Rods edition of the Damned's debut album and tales about
his childhood chum Stuart Goddard. Dig about and you'll spot Nick's mum making
an appearance in Adam Ant's biog!
The London weekend
Then later - an evening at the pub to see his Nick's band
the Von Trap Family, who had managed to nip a couple of spins on the Peel show, where I wore my dad's old Mothers Pride coat for it and put purple crazy colour in my hair. Would you believe in moment of psychedelic synchronicity Nick Saloman as Bevis Frond has just released a new
album - The Leaving of London
Crazy Horses
And those wild horses are back, busting loose and
running riot through the school grounds.
Although I'm still no clearer who the strange girl is who follows me home. And
sits on the bus!
Records added to collection include: ver Subs - Party in Paris (with Capt Sensible on keyboards), Adam
Ant - Dog eat Dog and The Professionals with Steve Jones doing a B A Robertson barnet..and of course The Von Traps..
We posted a pic, some years back - of a buzzed-up teenage me wearing a just-bought muslin shirt (Anarchist Gang design). It was one of three tees bought from the ex-Seditionaries stock being sold off at Boy, while 430 King's Rd was being refitted as World's End. And behold, here's the very date in week two of our holiday (a week spent at home with trips and days out: Clacton, nan's...) 6th August!
After two weeks away, the record buying is back on track with everything from Spizz to Crass, being added to the collection (although I can't seem to find Discharge's (Fight Back). The Damned pitch in with three appearances - look away if you don't want to know the answers: White Rabbit (on import), the Rat Scabies produced Urban Gorilla and the entire band (minus Vanian) backing Magic Michael on Millionaire. We'll have more on this one-off curiosity later (with an exclusive from C Sensible)
But the key 45 here is Adam and the Ants. I'd heard 'Kings' deep into a Peel show one night - it may well have even been the playout track - the disjointed twanging and modal tones of Marco's riff, the clattering war drums and the tribal callback and chants crackling out of my radio at near-to-midnight, made it sound like nothing on earth - and of course I was hooked from the first hearing.
Well really! How's your blooming luck - all those stolen moments of flashes and snatches of free-eyefuls (if you'll pardon the phrase) from LOTR and she only goes and winks at my best mate Whitlow doesn't she (17th). Incredible! Although there's a snip of follow up news (22nd), but I'll leave that for another time...
He was the UK's last proper pop star. I've got the albums, the singles, the box sets and even worn the t-shirt (Frontier Tour 1980). But in just over 30 years I've only hit two Adam Ant gigs. The first at Chelmsford Odeon - when Adam was simmering up to Ant Music's boiling point and the audience still a molten mix of snarling skins and spitting punks, who would break into random bouts of head-cracking and high flying fist-fights at the spill of a pint or any period of extended 'bogging'.
The second was last Wednesday. In a loaded, low-key Southend sweat-box venue where Adam reanimated a patchwork of his former personalities: King of the Wild Frontier, the Dandy Highwayman, Prince Charming - rendering them into a multi-sided composite of the characters that's almost Johnny Depp meets Axl Rose with a Bolan-ish tone. Read what you will into that..
Dig through the Ant Music back catalogue and all the hits are 'bankers' - perfect pop constructions. But for me, the magic always lay buried (pirate style) in the muscular punk of the early works, the B-sides and the bootlegs. If you'd asked me to rattle off a fantasy set-list..Fat Fun, Fall Out, Beat My Guest, Lady, Vive Le Rock would have been a few of the tunes. And as if by magic - Adam beat me to it, drafting up the dream set-list of hits, oddities and obscurities.
You can't help feeling slightly sorry for the those only there to hear the hits. This being a playlist pooled from the fanzine-era and Dirk days of darker matters: Cleopatra, Plastic Surgery, Physical, Deutscher Girls
Adam now moves at a more stately pace and doesn't present with the same breathless energy, or the full frontal attack of the young up 'n' comer he once was, but the presence is just as punchy, the voice is still intact - switching from crowd-rousing growler to crooner boom. The jawline and cheekbones are still sword sharp, while the band (with double drummers) blitz it like a Spitfire.
Unbelievably Adam Ant is nudgingly close to his sixtieth birthday.
Allsorts: The Adverts, Adam Ant and Amos Milburn - just a few of the A themed tracks and acts playlisted in the first installment of our Podrophonic Alphabet, getting a run out on S6 Radio tonight..(9 - 10:30)
As well a handful of songs to bring you, there's guest appearances, as Gaye Advert and TV Smith stop by to say hello - and former Ant man, now Wolfman - Chris Constantinou gives us an exclusive interview on why Adam Ant is Live Aid's forgotten rocker..
You can spot Chris on Bass below
And cherry-popping here..
And - we want your DIY idents. But more on that tonight
"My name is Malcolm McLaren, I have brought you many things in my time"Malcom introduces himself in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle
Given a multiple choice of Malcom McLaren's talent and character, where do you place a tick: genius or jinx, myth-maker or manipulator, situationist or self publicist? The correct answer is - all of the above.
McLaren's early history is one of fractured families, student riots and art college sit-ins. In 1971 he opened a profitable outlet for his outsider stance through the most English of institutions - shopkeeping. Kicking against the trends of glam, hot pants and heavy rock, McLaren, and girlfriend Vivienne Westwood, sold fifties outfits and rock 'n' roll accessories to Teddy Boys and bikers at the wrong end of King's Road (430: formerly the site of Hung On You, Mr Freedom and Paradise Garage) nestling like a neighbour from hell next to the Chelsea Conservative Club.
Three years later they refitted the shop as SEX, retailing rubberwear to suburbanites and creating a catalogue of inflammatory imagery that brought police raids, confiscations and later an arrest for wearing the infamous two cowboys shirt in public. Still at 430 King's Road, Seditionaries: Clothes For Heroes opened in '77, with a collection consolidating all that had gone before: rock 'n' roll and cultural icons reformatted in shock-horror collages, under-the-counter imagery posterised in cartoon colours or stenciled with situationist slogans - and adding spiky new lines: tartan bondage suits, long sleeve muslins, Spider-man boots and parachute shirts.
By the mid-seventies, following a brief period managing the New York Dolls (dressing them in red patent leather and hammer and sickle imagery), slow-shifting whispers about the hate couture on sale at 430 King's Road drew new blood to the shop, becoming something of a club house for a handful of bored teenagers. And, like a dayglo Fagin, McLaren focused and stoked this shapeless momentum into a movement of Molotov cocktail combustibility. When punk, the Pistols and all hell finally broke loose, it was just another chapter from the McLaren scrapbook of anarchy, chaos and controversy, but a chapter that perhaps overshadowed his other hits and highlights..
Recruiting college chum and member of Suburban Press Jamie Reid as punk's graphic designer
Creating the template of historical references and Burundi Beats for Adam Ant
Spotlighting Boy George's potential as frontperson (George performed with a pre-Annabella Bow Wow Wow)
Styling Bow Wow Wow’s pirate chic, which, underwrote the new romantic wardrobe.
Breaking Hip Hop in the UK by way of Channel 4 'Tube' special.
Putting world music on a world stage with his Duck Rock album
Whatever you're take on him is, the fact remains, McLaren was a career subversive, a serial situationist and a repeat offender - before, during and after punk. His real skill was technique more than talent, mixing and matching mediums - film, fashion, politics and Pop Art - although music was always a key ingredient (just lend an ear to the SEX jukebox). Whether dressing New York street-toughs in red leather, London bovver boys in Destroy shirts or discovering adolescents in launderettes and Harlem based break dancers - mixing street level chic with with art school concepts for maximum publicity was his signature style. I'll leave the final word to Barry Cain, who worked with McLaren on his (still unreleased) autobiography.
"He’s the Brian Clough of pop who should’ve managed England. Knowing Malcolm, I think love got in the way – he’s an incurable romantic. But we should all be thankful he turned the world dayglo"
The New York Dolls - Red Patent Leather Recorded while McLaren was the Dolls manager and taken from a live set that also includes Something Else later covered by Sid Vicious.
This really is a marvellous, marvellous piece of footage. Taken from the Dress For Pleasure documentary it uncovers SEX's bread and butter customers. Watch out for the chap who looks like Stanley Unwin, casually chatting at home in his black rubber number.
