Monday, February 4, 2019

punk (just) before punk




Coincidentally published around the same time as All the Young Droogs's release, a piece at Dangerous Minds on the well-droogy Heavy Metal Kids - whose Gary Holton got some inspiration from Alex in A Clockwork Orange. The argument advanced - Heavy Metal Kids as missing link between glam and punk - is also advanced in Shock and Awe in the chapter entitled "Ultraviolence".



Only problem with Heavy Metal Kids -  what kept them from being punk - was A/ they were just a bit too theatrical and over the top (a bayonet in the stage?)...  B/ the music was too good-times pub boogie in the Faces style.  With Gary's Ronnie Wood-like hooter, the effect is more like Black Crowes with a gorblimey guvnor accent than a blast of fresh air clearing the stale Dingwalls/Marquee/Rainbow fug of the first-half  Seventies.

Also the name is confusing, because they have nothing to do with heavy metal the genre, but the name makes you think they do - and thus part of something existing, rather than start of something new.









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