"naturally we're punks"

rrrrrrrrrright!

'ere we go now

a sociology lecture

with a bit of psychology

a bit of neurology

a bit of fuckology

no fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun

Recently*, it struck me that Johnny Rotten's wonderful jeering intro to "No Fun....  well, it's an ultra-distilled compression of "Gee, Officer Krupke". Kinda.  

In "Krupke", you have a series of experts in troubled and troublesome youth - the juvenile court judge, the psychiatrist, the social worker -  wheeled out to offer explanations for juvenile delinquency. And then you have the kicker,  the revelation that the real problem is that the kid's just born bad, beyond reforming or redirecting to a positive life path. Which the Jets turn into a taunting gang-chorus of "we're no good, we're no earthly good, like the best of us is no damn good". That bit - the oddly triumphant twist - is the "fuckology" bit.  It's Panopticonized youth telling the authorities and analysts to foucault. 

(And then there's the last line of all, the kiss-off  - "Gee Officer Krupke, krup you" -- as close to the F-word as you could get on Broadway then.)  

Adding "neurology" to the list of mocked disciplines is a nifty update on Rotten's part. 20 years on from West Side Story, neuro-disorders would have been emerging as a way to explain-away restlessness or mischief,  with medication prescribed as a fix-it. Even more so today,  it's how difficult kids are "managed". 

And of course, "punks" pops up in the lyric to "Krupke": 

"Golly Moses, natcherly we're punks"

Another connection... Rotten was a big fan of Alice Cooper (auditioned for the Pistols job miming to "I'm Eighteen") and Alice was a BIG fan of West Side Story . The band did not one but two songs  that interpolated lyric or melodic elements from the musical's songbook. And they named the album Easy Action after a spoken line from the movie.  

Masks part 143

 A nice little lesson in rock history here (what with Johnny getting the Pistols job through miming to "I'm Eighteen" on the jukebox, "School's Out" and "Elected" as proto-punk, punk as just a scrawled addendum to glam)

Maybe I'll dig out the liner note JR wrote for the Alice box set The Life and Crimes... 

Mad Alice's Diary

 

Unmissable glimpse of the early Alice Cooper live performance mode, hotel pillows ripped to scatter feathers everywhere etc - forming the background one of those odd little movies that you caught once on BB2 as a teenager and have never quite forgotten ("rolling in the hay" - how that made me and my girlfriend howl with laughter)

Wish I had known about this clip when doing S+A, although it doesn't add much to what is well documented and also related to me in the interviews. 

No Business like Show Business ( dark glam - slight return)

 

I always thought there was something Alice Cooper-like about Bauhaus - thrilling singles, more-than-slightly silly - so it's interesting to see the Sick Thing King pop up in this list of all-time faves done for an unknown magazine by Peter Murphy. 

"A wonderful escape into a frivolous nightmare" indeed. 

A list which otherwise nails our 'Haus (and Goth in general) as Glam Part 2. 

And then the giveaway that the Bau boys are purely in the business of entertainment - where ham meets sham -  Ethel Merman gets the lead top spot with "No Business Like Show Business"

The absence of anything by the Dame? (c.f. the two Roxy inclusions and an Eno).  The debt too obvious to state? A twinge of anxiety of  ultra-influence? 

Alice Bowie

'"Earache My Eye" is a comedy routine and song by Cheech and Chong from their 1974 album Cheech & Chong's Wedding Album. The routine is about a teenager (played by Tommy Chong) who wakes up and listens to a song by "Alice Bowie" (Cheech Marin), while his father (Marin again) yells at him to get ready for school. The song, unnamed in the routine, was released as a single under the name "Earache My Eye" ... The song was released as a single in 1974 and reached #9 on the Billboard charts and #4 in Canada....' - - Wiki


                                                 

'"Earache My Eye" consists of a song followed by a comedy skit. In the skit, Chong plays a rebellious teen. At the beginning of the piece we hear snoring, followed by an alarm clock, and then the boy wakes up noisily. He starts up a glam rock record, with Cheech Marin singing the lyrics as glam rock star character Alice Bowie who, as the name implies, is supposed to be a combination of Alice Cooper and Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie (at one point in his tune, "Alice Bowie" even mentions having orange hair, which the real David Bowie had sported at that time). The song itself is about a teenager fantasizing about becoming a world-famous rock star, becoming very wealthy and not having to listen to authority as a result, including being disowned for wearing his sister's pantyhose. The teenager states that he did not care if the world came to an end and that he was kicked off the basketball team by the coach for acting like a "queen".

'As the song continues into an electric guitar-heavy bridge, the teen's dad (Marin) barges into the room and yells, "I said turn that thing down and get ready for school!", and scratches the record, which annoys his son. The dad then tells his son to get his "fanny perpendicular" and get ready for school. The son then complains about an earache, prompting the dad to exclaim, "Earache my eye, how would you like a butt-ache?" The boy then gets even snottier, provoking his father to swat him with a belt. When he ridicules the spanking as painless, the father then whips him into sniveling, outward compliance, which lasts until his father leaves the room, after which the teen puts the record back on.

'During the latter part of the record ("Turn That Thing Down") – essentially, an extended, electric rock guitar-driven coda – the father can be heard knocking on the door several times demanding that his son "turn that thing down and get ready for school"' - - Wiki.

Here's the whole sketch + song from the Wedding Album








"... The song had its music written by Gaye Delorme and was performed by session musicians including Delorme on guitar and Airto Moreira on drums. It is best known for its guitar riff.'
- Wiki

It's a good riff.


Earache My Eye lyrics

My momma talkin' to me tryin' to tell me how to live
But I don't listen to her 'cause my head is like a sieve

My daddy, he disowned me 'cause I wear my sister's clothes
He caught me in the bathroom with a pair of pantyhose

My basketball coach, he done kicked me off the team
For wearin' high heel sneakers and actin' like a queen

The world's comin' to an end, I don't even care
As long as I can have a limo and my orange hair

And it don't bother me if people think I'm funny
'Cause I'm a big rock star and I'm makin' lots of money
Money, money, money, money, money, money
Ahh, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

I'm so bloody rich ha ha ha ha
I own apartment buildings and shopping centers ha ha ha ha
And I only know three chords ha ha ha ha

of course parodying glam rock, which already contains a hefty parodic content, is possibly redundant