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There are some pairings that seem so inevitable that any alternatives simply can't be imagined; Laurel & Hardy, Fish & Chips, Cheese & Onion, Lennon & McCartney - the list goes on, and to it could be added Glam & Christmas. For what is Christmas to most if not a gaudy orgy of glitter and coloured lights wrapped up in tinsel? And as these elements form the DNA of a lot of Glam Rock, there was a certain element of inevitability that the key players would have a bash at a festive song.
In recording their contribution, Slade surely found themselves in something of a predicament. After all, most their singles already sounded like a self contained party by themselves (and in Dave Hill they already had an in-built perennial Christmas tree on two legs) so how to go about writing a Christmas song that stood out? The answer, quite surprisingly, was to take a step back from their usual guitar onslaught and deliver a more measured and subdued minor key track that had Holder actually singing instead of trying to sandpaper your face off with his voice.
Make no mistake, this was a single for everyone to enjoy, not just the Slade fan. Instead of a lyric of cynicism or one that celebrated the more alcoholic merits of the season, 'Merry Xmas Everybody' was stuffed with virtually every Christmas cliché they could cram into three and a half minutes. Stockings, Santa, red nosed reindeers - they're all here to keep the kids happy, but their parents would have appreciated that wistful end of year stock take of "Look to the future now, it’s only just begun".
And not just that, 'Merry Xmas Everybody' has come to define Slade at the expense of the rest of their catalogue in the way the Statue of Liberty has come to define America. In fact, I've often wondered what the hardcore fans made of it all and whether it contributed to Slade's 'all downhill from here' career trajectory; their previous number ones had got there in spite of their rough edges and made little concession to niceties, but the softer 'Merry Xmas Everybody' was written with nothing other than a deliberate commercial hit in mind.
'In so doing Merry Xmas Everybody' was and remains an instantly recognisable seasonal reference point, one that has become a part of Britain's December in a way that makes it disconcerting to think that there was ever a time when Christmas carried on perfectly well without it. Unthinkable even. Whether you think this makes the pre 1973 generations blessed or cursed is up to you and how early the shops start piping this in over the PA, but few could argue there could have been no better way to round off what was undoubtedly the year of Glam Rock.
'I Love You Love Me Love' - study that title long enough and it takes on the enigma of a philosophical logic puzzle: using deductive reasoning, explain who loves who and why. There wasn't too much that was puzzling about the song behind it though; a slower grind than you normally get from Gary, (the music could be 'I'm The Leader Of The Gang (I Am)' played at quarter speed), 'I Love You Love Me Love' is not much more than a caveman chant from the football terraces that even a simpleton could pick up and repeat after one listen. Hindsight may furrow it's brow at the "They said I wouldn't dare, to show how much I care" lyric, but taken on face value then 'I Love You Love Me Love' is a simple, chest beating declaration of love, a series of vague statements of devotion given presence and force by the relentlessly slow turn of the screw beat and Glitter's overly intense vocal. 'Serious Gary' may not be as much fun as 'playing the fool Gary', but this is decent enough.
A double A side, and a single of two halves. On both songs Cassidy is on his own sans lover; on 'Daydreamer' he cares, while on 'The Puppy Song', he doesn't. Or at least he pretends that he doesn't. Something of an iconic single of it's time (I can remember both sides being played almost constantly on the radio), 'Daydreamer/The Puppy Song' is another notch on Cassidy's bedpost of credibility as a 'serious artist'. Admittedly, neither song is Leonard Cohen, but then neither are they Donny Osmond and it's all to the good that Cassidy is confident enough of his own talent not to feel obliged to serve up a relentless diet of sugary love ballads to a sweet toothed audience.
Of the two, 'Daydreamer' works best, largely because Cassidy's flat tone suits the wistful lyrics of the end of love and the hope of a better day ; "Life is much too beautiful to live it all alone" - anybody can relate to that sentiment, even blokes and it welcomes a far wider audience to the fold than your average male teen idol usually manages. On 'The Puppy Song', Cassidy tries too hard to match the sardonic 'sod the lot of you' tone of it's writer Harry Nilsson injected into his own version, but Cassidy's sarcasm comes out as more of a tongue twisting, ill-natured sneer and it makes this a lot less fun than it should be. But even so, the whole is a solid release that's stood up rather better than it has any right to.
For the first eight or so years of my education I lived close enough to school to be able to come home for lunch every day. It was something to look forward to, a definite break in the schoolday where I could sit in my own living room, eat decent grub and watch ITV programmes like 'Handful Of Songs', 'Pipkins', 'Rainbow', Mr Trimble' and all the rest. Bliss. While it lasted that is - children's programming tended to stop at around 12:30 and after that things started to get a bit more serious when the likes of 'The Cuckoo Waltz', 'Follyfoot' and 'The Sullivans' kicked in to bore me back to school.
To watch anything post 1pm though would be an edgy experience, something akin Charlton Heston heading into the forbidden zone in Planet of the Apes. It was a time and place I had no business being in; 'Crown Court', 'House Party' or 'Pebble Mill' - if I was watching any of this then something was amiss. The world as I knew it was out of kilter and I was either home ill or else playing truant.
'Van Der Valk' was one such example of post 1pm forbidden fruit. It was a show that had Barry Foster (implausibly) playing the titular Dutch detective busily cracking crime around the canals of Amsterdam. I can't say I was ever much interested in his capers as an eight year old. It all seemed pretty boring to me, but a run of one of the series neatly co-incided with a spell of me at home poorly with something that was 'doing the rounds'. With nothing else on, I watched it. And then I watched the next episode and ended up getting hooked.
And hooked not because I enjoyed watching Barry do his stuff, but on the theme tune that played over the credits - 'Eye Level'. And it's a tune that came to become scratched into my soul as a permanent reminder of my time as a lad to the extent that I can get quite emotional listening to it. It's a feeling akin to some long lost girlfriend looking you up on Facebook to say 'hi' and chat about the old days.
Ah, but before I get carried away I've just read that back though and I can see it may be somewhat misleading. You see I suddenly realised that I hadn't actually sat down to listen to 'Eye Level' for years, largely because I didn't think I needed to. "I know what bloody 'Eye Level' goes like" I thought, but playing it through again tonight I realised that I didn't. Not really.
Because after listening to it from start to finish there are three things that surprised me; firstly, just how unsuitable a tune it is to soundtrack a police drama. The theme tunes to other police-type shows like The Sweeney or Z Cars always had a sense of urgency and danger about them, something to let you know that a spot of heavy drama was coming so wise up. 'Eye Level' though could realistically be used to soundtrack almost anything. Watching the tune play over the opening credits now then Van Der Valk could be anything from an antiques dealer to international gigolo. Anything except a detective really. Very odd.
And linked to this, the second surprising thing is just what a busy little tune it is. The main theme provides the oomph and backbone throughout, but one minute it's a strident Sousa march and the next it's as soothing as Satie. A bit schizophrenic really.* Which leads to the final thing that widened my eyes - just what a godawfully clunky fist Simon Park and his mob make of it. 'Eye Level' as it played in my memory was as smooth and soothing as cool stream in summer, but on record it lurches along with the grace and finesse of a baby horse on ice. Some of the horns don't even seem to be in tune fer gawd's sake. It's not terrible, but it is a bit amateurish, a bit village hall when a tune this great needs the Royal Concertgebouw of Amsterdam with Herbert von Karajan conducting to do it justice.
Well, perhaps not, but 'Eye Level' is a proper theme tune, just the way that the Lucozade the good doctor prescribed me that week I was off ill watching it was proper Lucozade, stuff that came dressed up like faux medicine in a glass bottle with sticky orange plastic wrapping. They don't make theme tunes (or Lucozade come to think on it) like that anymore. Or maybe they do - this is my blog so I'm allowed to manipulate the facts to fuel my own half baked theories. Proust had his biscuits, I had my Lucozade, and that's why 'Eye Level' will always remind me of fizzy glucose syrup in a sticky plastic wrapper. And sometimes you can neither expect nor want anything more from a tune. Can you?
* Matt Monro struggled with this on 'And You Smiled', which is basically 'Eye Level' with lyrics. The poor bloke doesn't sound like he knows if he's coming or going with all the tempo changes.
It was tempting to cut and past my comments on 'See My Baby Jive' here and just change the song title. Because most of what I said about Wood's favoured crush of multi-layered sound applies just as much here as it did there - as a producer, he seems incapable of jettisoning any one of his ideas and they all get mashed together in a smudged palette until Wood can't see the trees for the minute detail of the branches.
But I'm not that lazy. Or unfair. Because in the case of 'Angel Fingers', Wood hasn't just plastered a wall of sound onto whatever track he was working on at the time, he's actually taken Phil Spector's own songwriting approach as a template to fashion a song of fifties rock & roll nostalgia ('Will Dion still be so important to you on your wedding day'?). Appropriately subtitled 'A Teen Ballad', 'Angel Fingers' opens with the instantly recognisable 'Be My Baby' drum beat and builds to incorporate a yearning wash of hooks and motifs that recall - but don't plagiarise - every Spector, Brill Building, Leiber & Stoller, Red Bird Barry & Greenwich (et al) song you know or half remember.
It's a shadowy homage at heart, and a regret tinged longing for the past - 'How it lingers, Angel Fingers. That's why I fell in love with you'. This time though, Wood has sense enough to allow some space between the dense slabs of sound to give the emotion room to breathe. Which is why while 'Angel Fingers' offers up nothing new under the sun, it affects in a way 'See My Baby Jive' never could. Nostalgia rarely sounded as good.
Listening to Donny Osmond's take on 'Young Love', I'm reminded of what Ulric Goldfinger once said to James Bond about something or other: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." Replace "enemy action" with "clear and cynical milking of a young audience with yet another predictable cover version that exploits both their own and Donny's inherent non sexual sexuality" and you'd be pretty much summing up my feelings about this. I mean, come on - 'Puppy Love', 'The Twelfth Of Never' and now 'Young Love'; it's a steady diet of full fat sugary pop (it's a wonder Donny kept those teeth so white) presented with no other end than to tug the heartstrings of a demography whose sole knowledge of love is to write 'I ♥ Donny' over and over again in their schoolbooks.
The usual reference point for 'Young Love' is Tab Hunter's 1957 version which Osmond and his band follow faithfully, the only real concession to originality being a spoken word verse in the middle. Osmond is a better singer than Hunter and he gives a more plausibly juvenile interpretation than the latter's stiff and rather too serious delivery that came wrapped in a voice sounding like someone old and square enough to be smoking a pipe inbetween verses. There's no such worries from Donny's squeal, but (and I've said this before) neither is there any sincerity in the 'Just one kiss from your sweet lips will tell me that your love is real' lyrics - Osmond is a cipher singing what he's been told to sing by those in charge of his career. Luckily though, those self same people choose wisely, and Donny's natural 'tools of the trade' and innocent charm are enough to carry it across it's brief running time without coming a cropper, but this schtick is wearing thin.
It's rather convenient that Gary Glitter should follow Peters & Lee to number one. Convenient for me and my pet theories anyway, because if the latter were once big stars that have been more forgotten than ignored, the artist formerly known as Paul Gadd most definitely has been airbrushed out of pop's history. Just typing the name 'Gary Glitter' here gives pause for thought, because instead of the massively quiffed, shimmery suited seventies superstar, the only image that lingers now is the bogeyman figure of a creepy Anton LaVey look-alike with an immoral taste in very young girls.
It's fair to say that Glitter has been effectively written out of his own past. Despite a recent revival of all things glam, he doesn't appear to be have had his hits compiled and marketed since his 1999 downfall, the alleged 'The Best Glam Rock Album In The World Ever' compilation doesn't have any of his songs on it (the closest it gets is 'Angel Face' by the Glitter Band), his 'Another Rock & Roll Christmas' is never played at Christmas and his back catalogue is long deleted in the UK and only available on very expensive Japanese imports. There was even outrage enough in 2008 for the advert to get pulled when Hewlett-Packard used 'Do You Wanna Touch Me' in a marketing campaign for their TouchSmart computers. Feelings evidently run deep.
I'm not going to try to defend the indefensible; Glitter's unsavoury activities with kids mean he deserves everything he gets, but the scenario above puts me in mind of Celine and Heidegger, a writer and a philosopher who were effectively labelled as damaged goods post World War Two through their embracing of anti-Semitism and the Nazi cause but who have subsequently seen their reputations slowly restored. Not that I'm going to suggest Glitter's output ranks alongside 'Being And Time' or 'Journey To The End Of The Night' in terms of important Twentieth Century statements of art , but he was top of the tree in his own genre and any album called 'The Best Glam Rock Album In The World Ever' that doesn't include 'Rock and Roll Part Two' or 'I'm The Leader Of The Gang (I Am)' is blatantly lying and re-writing the past in a way I find disturbing.
But anyway, enough of the man, what of the song? The signature stomping traits of twin drum Burundi sound and idiot riff picked out on guitar and saxophone are here, though they're faster than the proto grunge drawl of 'Rock and Roll Part Two' and this makes the song a lot less original for it. To compensate, 'I'm The Leader Of The Gang (I Am)' sets off at strident marching pace and builds from there. Though it rides a fairly straight rail from A to B, the tune shifts key whenever it threatens to sound predictable in a way that disguises well the fact that there's not really a lot going on here.
And that's fine, because all Glitter is doing is recruiting to the glam cause. Anything other than a basic smash and grab stomp would be as much a violation of trade descriptions as that 'Best Glam Rock Ever' album title. Just like 'Can The Can' before it though, all momentum is lost at 2:28 when Glitter cuts the engine and then tries to restart it from scratch with a reprise of the opening 'Come on, come on' chant. But alas, it never properly gets going again and 'I'm The Leader Of The Gang (I Am)' peters out like a stalled engine that turns and turns but doesn't fire.
So, to sum up: 'I'm The Leader Of The Gang (I Am)' is a Mars Bar of a song - chunky and tasty but with little inherent nutritional value. Paul Gadd is a deeply flawed and troubled man whilst Gary Glitter wrote some insanely catchy singalongs. I see no reason why the twain should necessarily meet.
Ask someone to reel off a quick list of seventies pop stars and the chances are it will be stuffed full of your Bowies, Bolans and Abbas. And no wonder; those artists (and others from any decade other than the current one) transcended the decade to pass into the rough generic canon labelled 'stuff that's worth remembering'. Though evidently of another time, forever preserved in aspic they're also timeless in form either through their own inherent quality or else the kitsch/retro factor that keeps them alive as 'golden oldies' or via the DJ at the local theme pub.
But there's an argument to be made that Peters & Lee are a greater 'seventies act' than the lot of them, simply because they have never quite managed to break loose of the decade's grip. Forever left behind, Peters & Lee haven't so much been airbrushed out of history as quietly slipped down the back of it's sofa where they lie forgotten and covered in dust. Surprising really, the seven times Opportunity Knocks winners were the Pop Idols of their day with their own TV series and so media visible that not many comedy shows of the time were complete without a skit featuring a Lennie Peters look-alike ambling blindly over the stage before falling head first into the orchestra pit (Peters was blind from a young age).
And yet their songs are now rarely played or rarely revived, even in an ironic way. There are no Peters & Lee tribute acts doing the rounds and as a final slap in the face they don't even appear on those rather arch 'Guilty Pleasures' compilations. Not that I'm going to suggest that therein lies a treasure trove of riches just waiting to be discovered you understand, but there is much to enjoy here, particularly in 'Welcome Home', a song that though just a country tinged pop singalong at heart has an inherent unpretentious sincerity and genuine genuineness that's difficult to truly dislike.
The voices of the duo complement each other well with Peters' warm baritone contrasting vividly with Diane Lee's sharper soprano interjections - there's no fault with the vocals, but what lets 'Welcome Home' down badly is the bland by numbers musical backing. The slack muzak wash sounds cheap and off the peg when 'Welcome Home' could have done with a full orchestra arrangement that spiralled and spilled over into a crescendo on the chorus to blow it out of its comfy slippers.
I can picture it now (and for some reason I'm using Suede's 'Still Life' as a guide track in my head so humour me), after the "When you come back, and you're beside me. These are the words I'll say to you" that closes the verse there's a pause until violins start up and build, a kettledrum rolls ever louder until the whole brass section kicks in with a thumpfull of release on the chorus until "Welcome home, welcome. Come on in, and close the door" sounds like glorious celebration rather than armchair observation.
Admittedly, Peters and Lee were never out to rock any boats, but they deserved a better vessel than they got on here, and in this state 'Welcome Home' is likeable rather than loveable. Likeable was more than enough to carry it to number one, but loveable would have carried it a whole lot further as the years rolled by.
Play this to the uninitiated and, for a few seconds at least, you could probably fool them into believing they're listening to the opening bars of 'Anarchy In The Uk'. The comparison doesn't bear too close an inspection I'll grant you, but there's something about those rolling power chords and clunky bass stabs that sound like a blueprint for the punk classic. And maybe it was at that - Slade had more of an influence on the class of '76 than revisionists would care to admit, but that's a story for another time and another place
As for the song, Slade had by now got the loud verse/even louder chorus format down pat and in that respect, 'Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me' serves up more helpings from the same pot. More of the same then, but slightly less so - there is something naggingly unsatisfactory at work here, and after a few listens I'm finding I can't decide if Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me' is a step sideways or a step backwards. If you forced the issue by holding a gun to my head then I'd have to plump for the latter, and I'd give two reasons for it.
Firstly, the musical balance is off kilter; the verses are slightly too subdued and the chorus slightly too shouty, overdone and obvious, meaning the whole just doesn't flow as well as 'Mama Weer All Crazee Now' or 'Cum On Feel The Noise'. The joints are more visible, the edges more ragged and it lacks that final coat of polish to make it slippery. Second reason would be the lyrics; the two songs namechecked above worked so well because their themes celebrated Slade's own good time laddishness in a way you could take or leave. Tales of love or anything like it were always a banana skin with them and yet that's exactly what 'Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me' is all about, though lust rather than love would be a more accurate description of Holder's tale of teaching a game girl on how she can show him a good time.
But what might seemed like a bit of harmless slap and tickle fun in 1973 now smacks of something rather more misogynistic to modern ears. Fair enough, nobody would ever look up to Holder as a male Andrea Dworkin, and 'Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me' is as much of it's time as the 'Confessions Of' films. And yet the 'And I thought you might like to know, when a girl's meaning yes she says no' winces like a migraine, not least because the distortion of grammar to make the line fit shows that they knew exactly what they wanted to say. There was no excuse for that lads, not even in 1973.
Boiled down to basics, 'Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me' offers as much of a proto metal rush as their best work and it will carry you off like a river in flood if you let it. Only this time it's advisable to close your eyes and hold your nose before jumping headlong in.
There was always something about 10cc that I never could take to with open arms. From their very name in, there was always an aura of the smug and knowing about them, something of those clever clever kids in the upper Sixth, smirking at jokes that only the 'in-crowd' will get. And yet underneath all of this annoyance, there was always bedrock enough to their output to not be able to dismiss them out of hand, and 'Rubber Bullets' is a good enough example of what I'm getting at.
Built around a vibe 'borrowed' from the Beach Boys' 'Fun Fun Fun', 'Rubber Bullets' basically re-writes 'Jailhouse Rock' from the point of view of the authorities. While Elvis and the Purple Gang were out to have a rocking good time in clink, 'Sergeant Baker' and the National Guard are out to put a stop to it with the titular ammunition and the rather ill humoured claim "I love to hear those convicts squeal, It's a shame these slugs ain't real". It's a nice idea, a clever one maybe and it canters at a fair old trot (apart from where it goes all slow and hymnal when the 'Padre' talks to the boys) but it's a loveless piece of work, the sound of a clever band busy slapping themselves on the back to celebrate their own cleverness.
Only it's not that clever. Not really - the Beach Boys themselves had already pulled a similar trick by re-writing 'Riot In Cell Block Number Nine' as the (frankly execrable) 'Student Demonstration Time'. Unless that reference was part of the joke too. You just can't tell with those crazy 10cc guys. I could go on, but easier I think to let them be hoist by their own petard - enter 'Rubber Bullets' into Wikipedia and you get Eric Stewart discussing the song -
"That's a double track solo on that. It's, it's very, very high, of course, going through a Marshall stack, then I slowed the tape to half speed – seven and a half [inches per second] – and recorded it, you know, going [plays singles picked notes slowly] and when you speed it back up you've got an octave up, but there's a screaming fuzz on the top of it, that's an octave higher than it was recorded. So it's a very unusual sound done in that way, just an experiment. Because 10cc, we love to experiment, we used to love to waste time".
That's fine Eric, you waste as much time as you want experimenting. Just don't expect me to waste mine in listening.......and that would have been my full stop if I'd been feeling particularly bitchy. But as I said up front, it's never quite that easy to dismiss 10cc out of hand, and so it's not here.
For a start, 'Rubber Bullets' is a very well constructed song full of prog-like twists and turns that never disappears up its own arse. And that's because no matter how clever it likes to think it is, 'Rubber Bullets' is never ever pretentious; it doesn't aim itself direct at the 'proper music' chin stroking muso and it's poppy enough for to welcome everyone to join in the party (which puts it at least one step higher that 'See My Baby Jive').
Secondly, despite it's jocular tone and Americana references, its 1973 setting would have lent 'Rubber Bullets' a harder, political edge than is perhaps apparent now. With violence ever flaring in Northern Ireland, parallels between Sergeant Baker's attempt to put down rock and roll with the British Army's use of rubber bullets to quell disturbance (with three actually killed by those bullets during 'the troubles' between 1972-73) are glaring. The band don't explicitly side with anyone and the 'Load up, load up, load up with rubber bullets' can be taken either way, but the use of a dumb sounding voice on the above "I love to hear those convicts squeal, It's a shame these slugs ain't real" suggests where sympathies mainly lay.
'Rubber Bullets' is a song that's both clever in a good way and clever in a bad one. Yes, they still sound too bloody smug for their own good (and running at over five minutes, there's a good ninety seconds of smugness that could have easily been pruned), but it's also a startling example of wrapping salt in sugar and getting a song of subversion to the top of the charts - 'Load up, load up, load up'; the tune rolls off the tongue with ease and in it's own gleeful way it's a more chilling statement than any protest song of genuine anger could have mustered. And how clever is all that?
At base level, 'Can The Can' is exactly the same fun but meaningless bubblegum pop that writers Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman churned out for The Sweet in their pre-glam days; 'Wig Wam Bam', 'Little Willie', 'Poppa Joe' and 'Can The Can' - they could have been quads separated at birth. 'Can The Can' is brought up to date (1973 date that is) with a contemporary and in your face burump a rump drumbeat, but what really gives this legs beyond its era is the ferocious vocal from Quatro herself.
Such is her.....enthusiasm..... she could have sacked the band en-masse and carried the song all on her own. And though her Detroit squawk means it's hard to make out what she's on about, it matters not a jot because by god she sounds like she means it and her high octane scream of 'SCRATCH OUT HER EYES!!!!' sears like a blowtorch in the face. In an alternate universe where rock isn't dominated by blokes she'd be fronting AC/DC, though Quatro herself reined it in from here and would never sound as quite wild as this again.
Exciting then, but just like whenever Dick Dastardly breaks off from leading the Wacky Races pack to paint a fake tunnel detour on the face of a wall, 'Can The Can' lets itself down when it tries to be a bit too clever and become something other than a dumb ass rocker; about two thirds in, the song winds itself down before climbing back to a peak in what's meant to be a tension building bolero. Instead of the desired slowburn, all it achieves is to lay bare the innards of the track to show there isn't really much there beyond Quatro's sound and fury. It gets interesting again the moment she starts back up her caterwauling, but too late - by then the damage has been done and 'Can The Can' limps to a sheepish close instead of defiantly waving its fist in your face. Shame.
In terms of image, Roy Wood and Wizzard were as glam as Danny La Rue in panto, but their sound was a curious mix of 50's rock & roll/doo wop and overcooked Beach Boys harmonies that plastered a six foot thick wall of sound homage to Phil Spector's sixties production work. If you're going to ape anyone then you may as well ape the best, but whereas Spector's finest were akin to dressing a bare Christmas trees with lights and tinsel to make something basic all spangly, Wood tended to take an already decorated tree and pile on more and more lights and baubles until the thing buckled under the strain of it's own weight.*
Wood is no slouch when it comes to songwriting and the underlying tune (pleasantly reminiscent of mid seventies ABBA) already had more key changes and shifts of direction than Spector's magnum opus 'River Deep, Mountain High' and didn't need a lot of tarting up. But while the latter's production added drama and gravitas enough to make you think you were listening to the work of the gods, Wood's endless crush of instruments and backing vocals only serves to wrap the tune in a weighted sack that he then chucks in the canal.
Every available track, every millimetre of empty space is filled with something/anything until the whole churns impenetrably with the groan of an overloaded washing machine, sluggish with it's own weight and fit to blow a fuse. It's all way, way too much because there's no way in to the song, no point of entry where the listener can hang on to a beat or rhythm and follow it to the end. By way of example, there's a saxophone solo at the bridge, only it doesn't sound like a solo at all - it only gains prominence over the deluge of sound because Wood's voice falls silent for a few moments. And even then it feels like it only falls silent through sheer inertia at having to battle through the morass of sound to make itself heard. To listen to 'See My Baby Jive' is the aural equivalent of typingsentencesandparagraphswithnospacesbetweenthewordsandnopunctuation, like standing on the pavement outside a house party that you weren't invited to. Surely pop singles aren't meant to be this hard going?
* And in that respect the earlier Christmas metaphors are good ones - Wizzard may be most famous for the hardy perennial 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday', but in truth most of their output had an upbeat, Chrismassy vibe with a percussive wash of bells and horns. 'See My Baby Jive' is a classic example - you could re-record it with some snow and Santa lyrics and you'd be hard pressed to tell the two apart.
And here's something else that's always puzzled me - "I'm comin' home, I've done my time" schmoozes Tony, but "done my time"? Are we to assume he's been banged up for crimes unspecified? I know there are interpretations that suggest he's back from a war or the army, but the lyrics go on to say "I'm really still in prison, and my love, she holds the key" so that seems pretty cut and dried. And what it does in its cutting and drying is give the song an uneasy ambiguity over whether we should be rooting for the returnee or not. If he'd been fitted up A Team style for a crime he didn't commit then fair enough, but if he's been sent down for sexual assault ("three long years" sounds about right) then you kind of hope the woman has long since packed her bags and cleared out.
Not that Tony Orlando or Dawn were ever troubled by such moral niceties - 'Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Old Oak Tree' is supper club fodder to the max. And it's fodder driven by a nauseatingly irritating Hammond organ with side order of cheese that never plays one note where ten will do. The backing vocalists chirp in and out like an echo while Tony....Tony is as professional as ever in his lead vocal with his voice injecting the same level of interest at the start when he's dreading seeing no ribbons on the tree as he is at the corn filled finish when he sees there's a hundred on there. The tune may be memorable, but then so is syphilis and I'd hazard a guess that 'Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Old Oak Tree' is one of the songs playing over the tannoy in Hell's reception when they're processing the new arrivals. Just to give a taste of what's to come.
Whenever I'm asked if I believe in UFO's, my usual response is along the lines of there being two propositions at stake; either there is life on other planets or else we are the only living entities in the entire universe. One of these statements must be true and, as both are equally staggering concepts to comprehend, it doesn't matter which. Which reasoning brings me to 'Get Down'. There are two propositions at stake here too; either it's a song recounting how O'Sullivan doesn't like his dog jumping up on him or else he's using 'dog' as a term of endearment for his lover. Both of these are equally fantastic.
Or rather the former is - after describing a night babysitting in 'Clair', it would appear that O'Sullivan is dead set on obsessively compulsively documenting the minutiae of his life like some proto Tweeter - does he truly think world needs to know about his dogs antics? No wonder then that his next single was all about him trying to decide between milk or plain chocolate biscuits at the local supermarket.* If, however, the latter proposition is in fact true then it's not fantastic at all. Just very wrong.
But whatever - 'Get Down' is a rockier affair than previous (that's Chris Spedding and Herbie Flowers on guitars), a tougher Chas and Dave knees-up that bounces with purpose despite O'Sullivan's trademark flat vocal trying to keep it earthbound. Yet as fun as the tune is, I keep coming back to those lyrics; no matter what interpretation you adopt, they still come across like a hastily improvised guide vocal for a tune he forgot to write 'proper' words for. More than that, the 'Once upon a time I drank a little wine' middle eight suddenly appears as if it wandered in from a different song altogether. All very strange. 'Get Down' is light hearted and jolly enough if playing in the background, but look too closely and you'll end up wondering just what the hell it is you're listening to.
* This is not in fact true.
Declarations of everlasting love were the DNA of Donny Osmond's solo career. As long as the lyrics were pledging forever to some starry eyed girl then it was fair game for a Donny makeover, though he sometimes bit off more than he could chew. Like here. 'Twelfth Of Never' is a crooner's song, but Donald is definitely no crooner. If anything, he sounds even younger on this than he did on 'Puppy Love'. Again he gives it his all, but his yelp levels the song's promise of eternal love to the hollow boast of a schoolyard crush and there's nothing in Osmond's delivery that convinces this is anything other than puppy love. Which is kind of ironic really.
What Osmond needed of course was a Stock, Aitken and Waterman type writing team feeding him tailor made songs for his voice and his audience rather than have him tackling standards that leave him floundering in the depths. Again, it's not entirely his fault. There's no doubt he's sincere, but what does a sixteen year old know of forever? It's cute enough, but 'Twelfth Of Never' by Donny Osmond is the seventies equivalent of a modern day 'pop idol' publishing their autobiography at age 21. The fans will lap it up as manna, but the paucity of content gives it little lasting value.
In 1934, the Austrian legal philosopher Hans Kelsen published his 'Pure Theory Of Law' that sought to site the authority of law in terms of its social origins or 'norms'. Thus, byelaws gain their authority from the norm of legislation which in turn gets its authority from the norm of parliament (trust me, I'm going somewhere with this). Ultimately, all legal power can be traced back to, and legitimised by, a single source of authority, what Kelsen termed the 'grundnorm'. Had Kelsen taken the time to apply his theory to the discography of Slade and its place in the seventies Glam Rock canon (he didn't die until April 1973, so there's no excuse for him not having a crack), then he may well have located the grundnorm of Glam in 'Cum On Feel The Noize', a song that in many ways encapsulates everything Glam Rock aspired to or could ever aspire to be.
There's no mistakes this time, no loose threads and no missed gears - Slade are firing on all cylinders, shooting with both barrels, cooking with gas, running on a full tank and every other cliché you can imagine, so much so that this entered the charts straight at number one. No messing and no wonder - the verses pile up and slide into the thundering chorus as if they were blown there by a hurricane and for once, Holder's lyrics have an agenda you can follow in that they are both a playful 'fuck you' to the critics ("So you think my singing's out of time, well it makes me money") and a self deprecating, self assessment of a band who are as surprised as anyone to find themselves at number one for the fourth time ("And I don't know why. I don't know why, anymore").
'Cum On Feel The Noize' boils down to a frank acknowledgement of what both Slade and the genre at large were all about, and it's nothing to do with political statements, a social conscience or confessional songwriting - come on feel the noise, that's all you need to do to have a good time. By breaking rock music down to its most basic, primal components, Slade produced not only their best song, but also one of the most enduring statements of the era and a touchstone for the times (if you ever want to explain to 'the kids' today what Glam was all 'about', then just play them this. 'Nuff said). And coupled with 'Block Buster' it provided a much needed one-two British counterpunch antidote to the sickly stench wafting off some of the previous number ones, the last two of which combined to keep Slade's own 'Goodbye T' Jane' at number two. Hindsight has shown where the folly lay.
Though David Bowie was inextricably tied up with the Glam movement, his fans tended to be rather sniffy about the connection, probably thinking he could 'do better' the same way a parent hopes their offspring don't hang around with the rougher boys from the estate. It's true that Bowie's output tended to be more spacey and cerebral than your average Glam act, but his single 'The Jean Genie', released at almost exactly the same time, pulled the rug from under the snobs by sharing a very similar guitar riff with The Sweet's 'Block Buster'.
Was it a case of The Sweet raising their game from the throwaway pop of 'Wig Wam Bam', or was Bowie dumbing down? Neither really, the main theme to both is a solid enough rock effort that neither scales the heights nor plumbs the depths (and the similarity was co-incidental). But where 'Block Buster' does score higher is in the lyrics. By the time of 'The Jean Genie', Bowie was well into his cut-up phase of writing, and his tale of Genie making underwear from dead hair got lost in translation between Bowie's head and his mouth. 'Block Buster' features hair too, long and black to be precise, but it's a far more direct and disturbing record altogether.
The key thing to note from the start is that the song is called 'Block Buster' - two words, not the single word it's usually referred to as. And that's important. Opening with a wailing klaxon siren, 'Block Buster' deals with the confusion surrounding the escape of Buster ("The cops are out, they're running about"), a character who will "steal your woman out from under your nose ".
It's not made clear what Buster's agenda is, except that "he's more evil than anyone here ever thought". Interpretations have suggested that he's a serial rapist turned on by 'long black hair'. If this is in fact true (and even if it isn't, there's no doubt that Buster was up to something equally bad), then surely the gap between subject matter and method of delivery has never been wider. It reminds me of the title character of Green On Red's 'Hector's Out':
"Dreaming is for losers who just can't make it work
And Hector's out of prison, he's gone berserk"
Buster and Hector have a lot in common, but whereas that song came wrapped in a slow, steamy, twitchy, American Gothic soundtrack to emphasise the danger, 'Block Buster' is as Glam a stomp as Glam can be. True, it has a far harder edge than earlier Sweet singles that suggested writers Chin and Chapman had been paying close attention to the rise of Slade, but it's still all mirrorballs and baking foil. And it's this dichotomy between darkness and light that makes 'Block Buster' such an arresting track, a happy meal laced with ground glass. Even the sight of Steve Priest on Top Of The Pops pouting the "We just haven't got a clue what to do" line with a face full of make up and a too small World War One German helmet on his head barely lightened the mood.
By the end of the song, Buster is still on the loose and it fades into a blizzard of repetition, noise and sirens that made Bowie's track sound tired and pedestrian in comparison. 'Block Buster' might be crudely drawn Glam pantomime writ large, but it's cast purely with villains out to get the kids (and their parents) watching from between the gaps in their hands covering their eyes.
There are some pairings that seem so inevitable that any alternatives simply can't be imagined; Laurel & Hardy, Fish & Chips, Cheese & Onion, Lennon & McCartney - the list goes on, and to it could be added Glam & Christmas. For what is Christmas to most if not a gaudy orgy of glitter and coloured lights wrapped up in tinsel? And as these elements form the DNA of a lot of Glam Rock, there was a certain element of inevitability that the key players would have a bash at a festive song. 
