1970s
Gary Naylor
Buildings can hold memories, the three dimensions of space supplemented by the fourth of time. Ten years ago, I started every working week with a meeting in a room that, for decades, had been used to conduct autopsies – I felt a little chill occasionally, as we dissected figures rather than bodies, ghosts lingering, as they do. Of course, Brutalism would shun such foolishly romantic notions, one of its key practitioners, Le Corbusier, famously remarking, “Architecture or revolution”. And with the white heat of technology still burning bright, he provided the template for the Park Hill Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The New York Dolls, The Ramones, Suicide, Television, Blondie, The Dictators, The Heartbreakers, The Shirts, Richard Hell and the Voidoids. From 1974 onwards, New York buzzed with bands. There were also Tuff Darts, The Fast, Pure Hell, Von Lmo and others who didn’t quite grab the brass ring. Out of towners like The Dead Boys, Pere Ubu, Devo and The Real Kids jostled for attention too.Despite the crowded market, The Senders were central to this mix. Formed in 1976 by ex-pat Frenchman Philippe Marcade, who had arrived in New York in 1974, they issued one single in 1978, a seven-track 12-inch EP Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
At some point in 1979 a duo called The Door and the Window are playing a London Musician’s Collective show in a large brick building along the road from Cecil Sharp House in Camden. One of them has a synthesiser, probably a WASP. The other has tape recorders and a guitar. The inscrutable noise made features clanks, grinding and drones.On a Saturday night in either 1979 or 1980 a band called Exhibit “A” are playing Covent Garden youth club The Central London Youth Project. It’s in a basement along Shelton Street, so is usually called “The Basement.” They’re young, and deal in a jagged yet Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A first encounter with Rustic Hinge and the Provincial Swimmers is unforgettable. Their summer 1970 recordings are so far out they at first seem unlistenable. Persistence pays though and the ear tunes in. It becomes clear this band swallowed the Captain Beefheart playbook and regurgitated it after applying a severe dose of the cut-up technique.Despite sending a letter which generated the interest of Beefheart fan John Peel, who wanted to add them to the roster of his Dandelion Records label, Rustic Hinge and Co were close-to unnoticed. There was a January 1971 mention in the underground Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Unlike the black and white Bait, Mark Jenkin’s highly acclaimed previous film, Enys Men (stone island in Cornish) is full of colour. Strange, saturated colour that doesn’t look quite real: a deep blue sea, a bright red raincoat, yellow gorse against brown bracken. And the flowers around which this abstract plot revolves don’t look real either. Such elongated stems and waxy white petals look like they come from outer space, not a windy Cornish coastline.Jenkin says the film, though not a direct homage to low-budget horror films of the 1970s, was created using a similar production process, and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Iggy Pop is one of rock’s great survivors but his fans are divided into two categories; those who claim he hasn’t done anything worthwhile since the late-Seventies and those, like this writer, who find much to enjoy, right up to the present.Every Loser-era Pop takes a break from the less visceral directions his solo career has pursued for the last 20 years, the jazz experiments and the knowingly crafted hat-tips to his Berlin years. Instead, while laced with delicious, crooned West Coast rock slowies, such as the lost sunrise sadness of "Morning Show", it's also righteously rooted in goofy Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
A disclaimer in the opening credits confessed that some scenes in this three-part history of disgraced Labour MP John Stonehouse had been “imagined for dramatic purposes”, but there was no need. The man’s life story fell comfortably into the “you couldn’t make it up” zone, and there wasn’t really much that screenwriter John Preston needed to add.It was indeed true that Stonehouse was given a job as a junior minister of aviation, that he negotiated a technology agreement between Britain and Czechoslovakia, and that he was later found to have been spying for the Czechs (he was depicted here as Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
CVC stands for Church Village Collective, a six-piece who hail from the countryside near Cardiff. They were the best live act I saw last year (of a long list which includes Melt Yourself Down, Paul McCartney, The Prodigy and Wet Leg). It was a joyously raucous and contagious gig, front-loaded with Seventies rock vibes and a sense of fun, so I’m intrigued to hear if their debut album can live up to it. But they’re a different proposition on record. The raucous rock wildness is missing, but the Seventies are there in a mellower, cheesier form.The best bits of Get Real, recorded in guitarist Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In December 1977, the music weekly Sounds included an article about the County Durham punk band Penetration. By Jon Savage, it was headlined The Future Is Female. The same four words would be used by the band for their promotional badges.Penetration were fronted by Pauline Murray. In the article, an unidentified male band member is quoted as saying “we’ve never considered Pauline as anything different from just another member of the group – why should she be any different? It's person to person that's important..."Pauline Murray said “I just feel as though I'm a boy. (laughter). Nooooo. You' Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Beatles loomed over everything else. It wasn’t inevitable, but the arrival of the revealing Revolver box set and Peter Jackson’s compelling Get Back film confirmed that there is more to say about what’s known, and also that there are new things to say about popular music’s most inspirational phenomenon of the 20th century.Just as it was when The Beatles were operational, the Revolver box and Get Back gave other things out there standards to aspire to. This pair of archive releases became a wholly unexpected yardstick for 2022. Obviously though, brows at labels aren’t furrowing about Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When Trevor Beales’s band Havana Lake released their only album in 1977, it was on a label which also issued records by The Ryman Country Band, The Saddleworth Male Voice Choir, The Slaithwaite Brass Band, The Thurlstone Bell Orchestra and a version of Sixties beat band The Merseybeats. Look was the offshoot of West Yorkshire studio September Sound Studios – anyone booked there could have a record pressed as part of the deal.Havana Lake’s CSNY-ish, Lindisfarne-leaning album Concrete Valley had more sympathetic Look Records bedfellows in the country/folk-slanted duo Harmony & Slyde, and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Merrell Fankhauser's first outing on record was with Californian instrumental surf band The Impacts, who issued their sole album in 1963. Thereafter, he was the prime mover in an unbroken succession of pop, psychedelic and freak-rock bands. His first solo album arrived in 1976.Commercial success? None that was measurable. The Impacts had a track titled “Wipe Out” but The Surfaris scored a hit with a different instro with the same name. His top-notch psychedelic-era band Fapardokly were only heard as part of an album with random other Fankhauser-related tracks which was issued in early 1968. Read more ...