glam revisions and revivals (2 of ???)

Welsh neo-glamsters band who have the sound down.

This video, they seemed to be trying a bit too hard.



The name is a little perplexing though.

Rotten Apple

In this 1980 movie - often included in lists of worst movies of all time - the music of the Future (1994) will sound and look like The Glitter Band crossed with Amy "Knock On Wood" Stewart.

It was also released under the title Star Rock, which couldn't be more glam.

A mish-mash of Phantom of the Paradise, Rocky Horror, Stardust, Thank God It's Friday... with some unique rankness all its own.

The story:

In an uncut two-song prologue of the film named "Paradise Day," Mr. Topps [God] creates heaven and carves the first human Alphie out of a rock, sending Alphie to Earth to meet Bibi. The two take part in the 1994 Worldvision Song Festival. Despite being the most talented performers, they are beaten by BIM (Boogalow International Music) and its leader, Mr. Boogalow, who use underhanded tactics to secure a victory. The duo are approached by Mr. Boogalow to sign to his music label, but they soon discover the darker side of the music industry. Bibi is caught up in the wild lifestyle BIM offers, while Alphie risks his life to free her from the company's evil clutches. He eventually convinces her to run away with him and the pair live as hippies for a year (and produce a child) before being tracked down by Mr. Boogalow who insists Bibi owes him ten million dollars. Alphie and Bibi are saved by the Rapture, and all good souls are taken away by Mr. Topps who arrives on scene in a flying apparition of a Rolls Royce." [Wiki]

The story behind the story:

"In 1975, Coby Recht, a successful Israeli rock producer, was signed to a major label for the first time, that being Barclay Records, which was founded and led by French producer Eddie Barclay. As Recht described working with Barclay, "he really believed in me. But there was something there that I couldn't trust. I don't know why, but the guy looked to me like a villain." His experience with Barclay, as well as being a "moral guy" who never liked what went on in show business, inspired the story of a musical Recht and his wife Iris Yotvat were conceiving for six weeks while in Paris,and the antagonist Mr. Boogalow was based on Barclay. Recht explained that it was "supposed to be 1984, but with music." [Wiki]

So it was essentially a project conceived circa the glam-twilight, that took a while to get made, so got updated with some disco touches.

And in a certain sense it was an anti-glam film:

"Described by Francis Rizzo of DVD Talk as the Faust legend told through the lens of the music industry, The Apple is about a conflict between good and evil, a battle between the pacifistic hippies and show business people who only care about wealth and power. Journalist Richard Harland Smith, categorizing The Apple as an antisemitic "Christian scare film," compared the story to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf  and its ending to the Nazi's Final Solution; Smith wrote that the film involves a homophobic protagonist, Alphie, trying to save his "normal" relationship with Bibi from what the film considers satanic, which includes electronic music, glitter, homosexuals, and drag queens." [Wiki]

glam revisions and revivals (1 of ??)

(first in a series of glam echoes and glitterflashbacks that didn't make the inventory of "aftershocks" at the end of S+A)

Scarlett Fantastic, live review by Paul Oldfield, Melody Maker - 1988

Note Paul's extremely precocious use of the term "retromania" - I wonder if that's the first place I ever saw it? More likely I suspect that it was just floating in the ether already. 

cf. Stubbsy using the term "Britpop" in 1986. I'm sure I've seen an instance of it being used before then. 

before, they were the equally stylized artpop outfit Swan's Way, but the coordinates were the soul consensus of stylemags circa 84

Skanking in Space

(via Kingston Roots blog)

glam frog

RIP Steve Priest

                 

 A medley of Priest-ly bits from Shock and Awe's chapter 4, "Teenage Rampage":

"The Sweet’s first really monster-sized hit, reaching Number 1 in early 1973, “Blockbuster!” debuted what became a fixture of subsequent Sweet hits:  the interjection of a few lines of campy histrionics from Steve Priest, in this case the flustered, eyelash-fluttering “We just haven’t got a clue WHAT to do!” “Steve’s bit was something that came up in the studio,” says Nicky Chinn. “And from that point on, he always had a vocal bit in the songs, and he always sounded crazed.”


                                 


"... Where The Sweet had the greatest input into their career’s direction was funnily enough their image: clothes, showmanship, persona....  Their dalliance with excess started as far back as “Wig-Wam Bam”, when The Sweet glammed it up for their Top of the Pops appearance, with Andy Scott flouncing about with a hand-bag and Steve Priest sporting a Native American head-dress.  Because singer Connolly consistently avoided gender-bending, choosing to lean on his natural good looks and long blonde hair, bassist Priest became the instigator of androgynous mischief.  Milky skin, wavy red hair, puckered lips.... “I looked like a twelve year old girl,” Priest later recalled.

                          

Steve Priest, looking milky, on the left side of the pic sleeve. 

"After his fancy-dress Native American look, Priest escalated to wearing cat’s eye make-up and green hot pants over red tights. The climax came with the infamous Christmas 1973 appearance in which Priest dressed up as “a gay SS stormtrooper”.  What the look lacked in historical authenticity – the helmet Priest wore was from the First World War  - was made up for in cheap shock: less than thirty years after V-Day, the swastika arm band and Hitler mustache were still fearfully offensive to the generation that lived through the actual Blitz as opposed to just the “Ballroom Blitz”."

                             

                                    

Steve Priest, on the right, in a clinch with the only man mannequin in the bunch