"In January 2007, Bernard Cribbins had a guest role as glam rock promoter Arnold Korns in Horror of Glam Rock, a Doctor Who audiodrama...."
Arnold Corns being "a band formed by David Bowie in 1971. Bowie played on the guitar and did most of the vocals, although his costume designer Freddi Burretti was considered as a lead vocalist. Mick Ronson on guitar, Trevor Bolder on bass, Mick Woodmansey on drums and Mark Carr Pritchard on guitar, Arnold Corns was one of Bowie’s side projects at the time, and something of a dry run for Ziggy Stardust."
Somehow I don't think this was the dream fusion of glam and hauntology and pulp modernism that Mark K-Punk was dreaming of...
There's probably more glam - in the lumpen-glitter Sweet / Slade sense - in this Cribbins turn from The Good Old Days... . "I was feeling rather queer", "the barmaid she was six feet two and every inch a gent"... nostalgia / retro, English-all-too-English-ness, music hall as unacknowledged root of the Brit tangent-mutant form of rock'n'roll...
Drag too
(Cribbins appears again, at 32 minutes)
RIP Bernard C
One of my pipe-dream someone-who's-not-me-should-write-that books is a full scale examination of the trad-jazz/music hall revival of the late 50s/early 60s and its huge impact on subsequent UK pop/rock - Jon Savage's 1966 goes into some of the Alberts/Bonzo/CND continuum, and my favorite section of Rob Chapman's Psychedelia and Other Colours is about connecting it to the Kinks/Who/Small Faces in varying degrees (I particularly love the connection of 'Some Mother's Son' with the tradition of war pageants in general and the then-recent Oh! What A Lovely War in particular, which seems incredibly obvious once you notice it) but it's ridiculously underinvestigated
ReplyDeleteTony Palmer's book All You Need Is Love: the Story of Popular Music - based on his TV series of the same name - has some good stuff on how music hall and the preexisting UK showbiz / variety scene affected rock'n'roll when it arrived in the country. How rock'n'roll bands might play on the same lineup as jugglers and comedians, places that still had a pit band (who would often resent a rock'n'roll singer coming on with their own backing band).
ReplyDeleteThere's some good stuff on trad jazz in George Melly's Revolt into Style. I think he disqualifies it as the first pop movement because it didn't have the generation gap / youth thing as an element (lots of the musicians were quite old) and also it was a revival. But it had some aspects - the wild dancing, the rowdiness, drinking and a little bit of drugs, sexual permissiveness.
Big Finish Dr Who is basically nerd comfort food (altho Chris Chibnall seems bent on taking the broadcast show down to that level now).
ReplyDeleteProbably the most glam Who ever got was Claws of Axos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Dki1w3PXY
https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/this-pretty-little-thing-here-the-claws-of-axos
I wonder how much Bowie's character changes and Dr Who's willingness to change its lead character and style came from similar roots in British theatrical traditional. I don't think Bowie was a fan of the show (altho he was asked to appear on it a number of times apparently) but they come from a similar place (a mix of SF, fantasy, theatre) and many of those involved with Who (esp. post-2005) have been Bowie fans.
One influence on glam that I'm not sure gets talked about much is the move of UK TV to colour in the early 70s. It took years for most people to have colour TVs but perhaps having TOTP in 625 PAL influenced the style of bands and those who watched them.
During glam, something like 75 percent of households in the UK still had black and white television sets. Probably a bigger impact came from an explosion of teen and young girl oriented full-colour magazines with pin up photos (although the color repro was pretty awful).
ReplyDeleteThe Doctor Who image changes only occur when they need to bring a new actor in to replace one who's retired from the role - within each set of series based on e.g. Pertwee or Baker, the Doctors image is changeless, as I recall. So it's not really comparable with Bowie - it's just a clever expedience to keep the series going. It never struck me as especially theatrical, Doctor Who - at least no more than anything in the UK entertainment sphere (which is pretty thesp-infested and all-round-entertainer / went to performing arts school / can "sing, dance, mime, tap, tragedy, comedy, panto, anything" versatile / "are you working, dear?" )
"an explosion of teen and young girl oriented full-colour magazines" - fair point. Did the awfulness of the the colour quality help any of the bands?
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't push the Who/Bowie connection too hard - but it is there for small but influential overlapping segments of their respective fandoms. A big difference between Dr Who and Bowie is that Who is a collective endeavour that outlasts any one individual. The style of the show is as much about the production team as it as about the lead actor - e.g. Baker has 4 producers during his tenure and the style of the stories changes. We're going to have to disagree on the theatricality - Dr Who was typified by a non-naturalistic style of performance. You wouldn't mistake it for Coronation Street. But, yes, that's not unique for its time given the nature of the British acting profession.
As for the Good Old Days, I vaguely remember that show from my childhood but I had no idea that it ran for 30 years and that "it was not only the performers who were "in character": the entire audience was required to dress in period costume". Which reminds me a bit of the Rocky Horror Picture Show - another throwback with heavy audience participation cosplay and singing. And also the collective cosplay you get in historical societies and SF/fantasy fandoms...