Thursday, August 26, 2021

punk / glam - glam / punk

Punk was glam ripping itself apart" - Barney Hoskyns

"Punk... represents a deliberately scrawled addendum to the 'text' of glam rock - an addendum designed to puncture glam rock's extravagantly ornate style" - Dick Hebdige

True, and yet I am always surprised by how much punk is already contained within and preempted by certain glam and glitter tunes - sonically (glam's rarely ornate, musically - quite the opposite), attitudinally, philosophically 


 



like, why was pub rock even necessary? this is Watneys Red Barrel converted into sound (I might be channeling Bob Stanley here)


Not even mentioning all the direct transitions -  County, Dolls / Heartbreakers, Slaughter and the Dogs...  TV Smith had a glam band before the Adverts 


continuity versus rupture = a big dilemma for historians -
which one to emphasize

i generally opt to honor how it felt at the time, to the agents of history and the onlookers


musically the bit that goes in the transition between glam's hard rock and punk's hard rock is the little bit of boogie left in glam - that shuffle you can still hear in the Quatro tune

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