Denim Disco
The Sound Of The 70's
About Me
- Denim Disco
- London, United Kingdom
- DENIM DISCO is a blog dedicated to the pop music and culture of the 1970's. ~ Glam Pop and Discotheque Rock ~ The Sound Of The 70's ~ Contact:denimdisco@hotmail.co.uk
Wednesday 24 April 2024
COCKNEY REBEL - OLD GREY WHISTLE TEST 1974
Tuesday 24 October 2023
SLADE ALIVE - EVERYONE'S A WINNER
Published in 1976, '' ROCK ON THE ROAD '' was a collection of essays on some of the major ROCK and POP acts of the day with photos by MICK GOLD. The book contained an excellent contribution from SIMON FRITH who describes how SLADE '' Weaned the hooligans off the football terraces and back into the concert halls '' . FRITH attended their EARLS COURT show in JULY 1973 and GOLD took photos at HAMMERSMITH ODEON in MAY 1974. What follows is an excerpt from the article and all of the photos that originally accompanied it
'' We went down the Kings Road first - a sunny afternoon and elegant accents, the shops were playing David Bowie and everyone looked suitably weary. French coffee and we got the tube at Sloane Square: it was packed with West Ham's North End. On their way rather than coming back, but happy like they'd already won. Scarves waving, shouting, elbowed ribs - no aggro, friendly but private. They knew something we didn't and by the time we reached Earls Court we'd picked up a Terrace Convention. Clenched greetings but they marched from the station at respectful distances. The singing began: rival anthems, graphic rudeness, but still no trouble. It was truce night. In the stadium the terraces came together and the enemy was outside ''
'' At a football match the energy of the crowd moves in response to what is happening on the field - it is almost possible to follow a game just by listening. Not completely though, because the bond between footballers and their audience is twisted by two factors. First the crowd is not at one: every moment of joy is someone else's moment of frustration, every step forward is someone's mistake. In games of particular excitement or boredom or skill or brutality the contradictory responses of rival fans can create a pitch of tension which quite transcends what is happening on the real pitch - the crowd's energy becomes self-generated. Secondly, although footballers do respond to their crowds, only rarely do they do so exactly. The crowd is willing them to break the limits of their and their comrades' skills, to ignore the reality of the opposition, the pitch, the weather. Mostly they can't and if you do listen to a football match what you hear is brief moments of exhilaration punctured by periods of lull ''
'' In it's cheerfulness and unselfconscious passion, Slade's concert was much more like a football match than any rock concert I'd ever seen. But it was unlike any football match too - Slade's bond with their audience was total and never broke: there were no twists. It was easy to say why: Slade's crowd was at one, they had all come to see Slade win and there was no opposition, no rival supporters, no reasons for bitterness: and Slade could and did respond to the crowds demands, they had no opponents to trip them, no lumpy turf, and although their musical skills are limited those weren't the skills they needed for this night anyway - skill here was not a matter of technique but of picking up moods and laying them down without missing a beat of the communal stomp ''
Thursday 12 October 2023
BURUNDI BLACK
Wednesday 11 October 2023
SPARKS ON THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL TV SHOW 1974
Tuesday 8 August 2023
STARING AT THE RUDE BOYS WITH COLIN MCGLASHAN
The following is an extract from a SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE FEATURE on REGGAE SOUND SYSTEMS in LONDON. It was written by COLIN MCGLASHAN and focuses on the interaction between second generation West Indian teenagers and their white counterparts in East London. The full article was originally published in on 4th FEBURAY 1973
'' East London is different. There is a relationship between black and white. You can taste it in Dalston market and not in Brixton and Shepherds Bush. It is not liberal tolerance, not always even liking. It is respect based on similar values: family, toughness, extrovert warmth. In 1968-9, a new generation of black Cockneys threatened to become the East End's trendsetters. In street football games they picked the sides, scored the goals, settled the arguments. It was a time when what was being peddled as pop music might as well have been Beethoven. ' Underground ' music at two quid something an album, freaky lollipop heroes you couldn't admire...it didn't take down the Mile End Road. In the youth clubs, the black teenagers had what the girls wanted: not super-sexuality, but style, social confidence, and music you could dance to. Out of that equation came the skinheads, London's white Rudies: their music was Reggae
There followed a strange period when black and white girls and boys mixed in the East End's clubs and discos with an ease and casualness you could see nowhere in England, perhaps nowhere at all. It seemed almost impossible to use words like ' integration '. Thanks to the adults, it didn't last
English society has always reacted with paranoia to groups of working-class teenagers in uniform - Teddy-boys, mods and rockers, skinheads. It credits them with starting patterns of delinquency that already exist, with alarmist publicity that ensures imitators to make the myth come true. Paki-bashing wasn't new. It attracted attention only when performed by another visible minority. Once it was unearthed by the media, most East End teenagers couldn't get out of their braces fast enough. While the Midlands and Manchester rushed to buy a cherry-reds and Ben Shermans, down in Bethnal Green you could almost hear the hair grow
What followed was London's great Reggae War. Black teenager's suddenly found youth clubs attractive. Starved for years of anywhere of places that would let them in, they travelled across London to anywhere with good sounds. They arrived twenty, fifty, even a hundred at a time. Some youth leaders with near-empty clubs were delighted: most neighbours weren't. Police virtually picketed some clubs and discos at closing-time: mayhem, predictably followed. White youngsters who had been happy with a one-third black minority, found themselves outnumbered: they fled or called in reinforcements of heavies. The game of musical clubs lasted perhaps nine months. Black teenagers wandered round a shrinking circle of youth clubs that played their music, to the accompaniment of clashes, residents petitions, frantic committee meetings. Most clubs chucked their Reggae records in the dustbin. Segregation returned
But the skinheads had changed something. As late as the spring of 1971, you could see the juniors from the Mile End Mob at Sloopy's Disco or the A-Train, wearing West Indian-inspired gear like long open overcoats { a fad taken up by white youngsters around Brixton and translated into the crombie } and stingy-brim hats. They were dancing hesitantly to reggae and American soul numbers with lyrics like '' going back to Af-ri-ca 'coz I'm black '' . Remembering the generations of West Indians whose teachers obliged them to chant '' Bri-tons never-never-never shall be slaves '', those white youngsters presented a pleasantly ironic spectacle
No white kid, one of Britain's leading pop gurus told me confidently in 1971, is ever going to dig James Brown, much too strong.... A month later, James Brown's Albert Hall concert drew a sixty per cent white crowd. The black kids listened decorously; it was the ex-skinheads who leapt up and down and danced in the aisles and rushed for chartered buses for his second show in the East End. A devoted minority of white working-class teenagers haunt the Brixton reggae shops. And at Tiffanys, Mecca's archly renamed palais-de-danse at Ilford, there isn't a black face in sight. But peering through the plastic palm-fronds from the balcony, you can spot the thighs that have learned to move to other rhythms, learned, indeed, to dance to a very different drummer. The DJ plays two Otis Reddings and then James Brown. '' And we're really getting it together down there.... A lot of sex machines here tonight. ''
* The photos that accompany this article are screenshots from the documentary film EXTREMES. They show members of an EAST LONDON BLACK STREET GANG called THE BATTERY BOYS, who were being interviewed alongside their WHITE ASSOCIATES. The film was shot in 1970 and released the following year
Tuesday 1 August 2023
PUNCH ON THE ROAD - A BBC DOCUMENTARY FROM 1976
'' In May they took a big gamble, they gave up their jobs, got themselves an agent and became full time professional musicians. That summer was the most exciting time of their lives. There was the possibility of a recording contract and the chance to audition for Opportunity Knocks. they'd all tried to make it before and failed every time, but somehow they thought this time would be different ''
Bradford's PUNCH were a hard working HARMONY POP band who plied their trade around WORKING MEN'S CLUBS in the NORTH OF ENGLAND. A film crew from THE BBC followed them during the hot summer of '76 as they attempted a step up into the big time
The band are captured playing sets that mainly consist of the popular tunes of the day. At a gig in SUNDERLAND they're rewarded with £43 for playing three 40 minute spots
'' You brainwash yourself into thinking you're going to make it, otherwise I don't think you would carry on''
The film shows them passing an audition for OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS and their continuous slog the clubs while they search for a record contract. It ends with them playing a cover of the KINCADE hit '' DREAMS ARE TEN A PENNY '' to a receptive audience
'' We all just want to make a better living than we are now. If we didn't get into the top ten and get international recognition, I'm sure if our money went up, we would be happy ''
WATCH THE FULL DOCUMENTARY ON YOUTUBE:
The promised OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS appearance didn't transpire, but the band secured a RECORD DEAL with the RED BUS label and recorded a song penned by MITCH MURRAY and PETER CALLANDER. The pair had recently scored some big hits for PAPER LACE and '' BALLAD OF THE GOOD LUCK CHARM '' was in a similar vein to those . The single was released in NOVEMBER of that year, but their luck wasn't in and the single failed to chart
Friday 28 July 2023
TWO SUPER RARE JUNKSHOP GLAM TUNES ARE BACK ON '45
JUST ADD WATER RECORDS have recently issued two of the RAREST 70's JUNKSHOP GLAM numbers on 7'' VINYL
'' IT CAME IN THE NIGHT '' by A RAINCOAT first saw release in the UK on EMI RECORDS in 1976. The ART GLAM outfit were led by ANDY ARTHURS who went on to produce a number of NEW WAVE acts, including 999, THE SOFT BOYS, TONIGHT and LITTLE BO BITCH. The recording sits somewhere between the MIKE BATT penned '' HUMPHREY SONG '' and the TWISTED NURSERY RHYME feel that SYD BARRET utilized in early PINK FLOYD numbers. Underground film maker KENNETH ANGER later used the song in the soundtrack to his movie RABBIT'S MOON. The JAW release features a picture sleeve { originals came in a standard company one } and a new B-SIDE "Vote For Me"