Germfree Adolescents - X-Ray Spex

 

Provenance: I borrowed this album from a chap I worked with (alongside Crises by Mike Oldfield) and really enjoyed it. If memory serves, I loaned him Ted Nugent's Free-For-All. A fair exchange?

Review: I had no idea what I'd be reviewing today. I had noticed that I was on for a hat-trick of eponymous band names if I were to continue in the Van Halen / Santana vein, but I've already done Montrose and never quite plumbed the depths of owning a Bon Jovi record, so my options were limited. Would the Von Hertzen Brothers count?

Nonetheless, a tweet alerted me to the fact that today is the tenth anniversary of the passing of X-Ray Spex singer and bandleader Poly Styrene. I've wanted to do Germfree Adolescents for a while now, and here's the perfect excuse. 

Beyond all musical considerations, X-Ray Spex were an important force in punk history; how many women of colour can you think of who fronted, or continue to front, a rock band? Now ask yourself how many of those preceded X-Ray Spex? Not many, I'd wager (well done if you remembered the existence of Fanny, though!). It's easy in retrospect to discern some of the more conservative elements of the first wave of punk music, and whilst it's fair to say that bands like the Slits and the Raincoats offered new templates for the role of women in music, it was still a pretty white caper. The transformation of Marianne Joan Elliot-Said into Poly Styrene mattered.

Of course, all of this would be dulled somewhat if the music wasn't up to snuff. Fret not - Germfree Adolescents is a thumping album,

Yeah, a little bit of the sloganeering is a bit dusty (but it's effortless to forgive when delivered with such youthful gusto), as are a couple of the production choices - what's with all those echoed song intros? Those are going to be the only two quibbles you'll hear in this review.

I love that it's a punchy thirty-five or so minutes long; I love just how chunky and solid the guitars are; I love Styrene's police siren voice; and above all I love, love, love Rudi Thomson's saxophone, a quirky choice of instrumentation for a punk band but one that pays off over and again. I've long been a sax advocate - forget the cheezy stuff from the 1980s, forget even my beloved Steely Dan, and think of how exciting it sounds in the Rolling Stones, or skronking away behind Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, or when it cuts like a scythe through Roxy Music's 'Editions Of You'. In fact, that's what I'm feeling here, a lot of the time; just check out the ending of 'I Live Off You' for proof. Saxophone is also used to double the chorus melody of 'Warrior In Woolworths', one of the (slightly) more sedate tracks here, and it elevates the whole enterprise; so much punk music trades on being abrasive or energetic, but Germfree Adolescents retains those elements without compromising on being a bloody fine listen.

Those moments that are just smash-mouth rock music are, however, simply exhilarating. 'Art-I-Ficial' sounds like a missile launch, and 'I Am A Poseur' is what would happen if Motorhead incorporated a brass section into their ranks. It's easy, amidst the sturm and drang, to miss the lyrics being hooted out with such exuberance by Styrene, but closer inspection reveals how pleasingly surreal they are, bespeaking of personal alienation in an increasingly synthetic, consumer-oriented world. When Styrene fantasises about becoming Hitler on 'Plastic Bag', it's telling that after proclaiming herself "ruler of the universe" she sounds even more excited to be "ruler of the supermarkets".

Could such an album as Germfree Adolescents appear today? I think not. It's too guileless, too freewheeling and the product of too singular a vision to be midwifed in such an interconnected age. Someone in a suit would say "fewer songs about department stores, please", or a producer would try to 'fix' some of the singing or playing to make it more palatable through a laptop speaker. Never mind - what matters is that X-Ray Spex had day-glo boots on the ground at the right time, breaking down barriers with a gleeful, shack-shaking abandon. Safe journey, Poly Styrene.   

Fang Bang - Wednesday 13

 

Provenance: My time at the University of Exeter was largely pleasant, but being out in Devon meant for slim pickings on the rock front most of the time. The one oasis was the Cavern, a vaulted cellar in the centre of town where I saw acts like The Answer, My Ruin and today's subject, Wednesday 13.

In fact, I think I picked this album up after seeing the erstwhile Frankenstein Drag Queens from Planet 13 and Murderdolls frontman (not to mention his stint as a Faster Pussycat tour guitarist!). Wednesday 13 wasn't really my cup of mud, but when you're drowning in a sea of Newton Faulkner and Mr Scruff, you seize anything resembling a life raft.

Later, this would also extend to frequent trips to a Monday night goth night run by a living skeleton named Francis...but I'll save the story for when I review Judas Priest's Turbo.

In any case, Wednesday 13 put on a raucous live show, and I spent the night quaffing cheap beer with good friends, so all in all a massive success. I bought this more as a keepsake from a cracking night out, rather than an album I knew I'd get a lot of replay value out of. Years have gone by since that gig and I haven't spun Fang Bang (great name) very much at all, so it's due a reappraisal.

Review: If the name Fang Bang wasn't enough of a giveaway. song titles such as 'Morgue Than Words', 'My Home Sweet Homicide' and 'Happily Ever Cadaver' should give you a clue that this release is kindred spirits with Rob Zombie and mid-era Alice Cooper; good, wholesome, comic-book and MGM monster movie fun. However, unlike the industrial-powered ramalama of Zombie or the spray-glam of Cooper, Fang Bang is anthemic pop-punk with a sleazy edge.

And so I ask you, faithful reader, have you oft seen me extolling the virtues of pop-punk on these pages? No, you haven't. The closest I've come would be my encomium to Sloppy Seconds and their mighty Destroyed album, with which it shares some of its ghoulish sci-fi sensibility. That said, Destroyed works as a clever-stupid, ramshackle, knockabout celebration of all life's most egregious sins, and remains very much an outlier in my collection. 

Fang Bang simply isn't as cute, clever or as charming as Destroyed (but what is?); but I'm surprising myself with how easy it's going down. Songs all blend into one, and as catchy as they can be - especially at the choruses - they're all just one hook short of being proper earworms. One feels that if Cheap Trick or the Wildhearts got to grips with these tracks they'd wind up with just the right amount of acid and saccharine. Still, 'Faith In The Devil' has got a nasty bite, and you'd have to be a fucking sadsack not to smile at the 'oi oi oi' section in 'Happily Ever Cadaver'. 

I don't really know what else to say - everything rushes along at a nice clip, as it should, and production bears all the hallmarks of the early 2000s, which has never been my favourite era for capturing noises. One plus is that Wednesday's raspy sneer fits in with the loud 'n' compressed flavour of the age - of all the other singers I'm familiar with, he most resembles his former employer in Faster Pussycat, Taime Downe. It lends a suitably cloacal aspect to mascara-and-glitter smeared proceedings, although it has to be said that his range stretches about as far as Russell Grant attempting to dunk a basketball.

But, look, if you can't raise a smirk to a song called 'Buried With Children' (which is really good, in fairness) and the lyric 'I've got blood in my alcohol system' doesn't make the corners of your mouth twitch, I can't help you. This is rambunctious Hot Topic splatter-punk with no little heart and a smudge of dark glamour besides. Fang Bang may not quite blast the rafters on a sedate Sunday afternoon, but crank this in a poorly-ventilated sweatbox with £2 Carlsbergs on offer and you've got the recipe for a helluva good, gruesome time.

The Psychedelic Sounds Of... - The 13th Floor Elevators

 

Provenance: Along with every other right-minded person, I own a copy of the greatest compilation album ever put together, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-68. On an album freighted with highlights, there are still some tracks that manage to break on thru' to the other side: the dark mood of the Electric Prunes 'I Had Too Much To Dream', 'Lies', a spot-on Beatles pastiche, by the Knickerbockers, and the swirling, propulsive 'Open My Eyes' by the Nazz, a group featuring the young Todd Rundgren, are all primo brainbenders. 

And then there's the bizarre 'You're Gonna Miss Me', almost in a category of its own, coming on like a diesel-propelled jug band piloted by a clutch of lunatics. Who wouldn't want a slice of that action? Anyway, I whacked a 13th Floor Elevators album on my Christmas list, and Santa was obviously feeling pretty hip that year because he brought me an Elevators box-set down the chimney!

Review: The Psychedelic Sounds... opens up with the inimitable 'You're Gonna Miss Me', and even though I've heard it countless times, it still elicits a small dopamine rush as the first four chords crash in, a tug on my cerebral cortex that here be something a bit special. What a tune! What a manifesto! Two and a half minutes of dementia filtered interpreted through the medium of white-knuckle rock 'n' roll. There are so many things to pick up on; the slashing guitars, Roky Erickson's snotty punk vocals, the perfect gem of a harmonica solo - but one other element both shines through and yet sits utterly apart, and that's Tommy Hall and his electric jug. 

This most untraditional of rawk instruments is all over Psychedelic Sounds; furthermore, it's not used to underscore the rhythm, as it is in folk, blues or skiffle setups (or, say, on Mungo Jerry's superb 'In The Summertime'). Instead, it clucks away like an insane chicken, providing at times an almost sawtooth effect, weaving in and out the churning beat of the bass and drums. So startling is this effect, one briefly wonders why jug wasn't more commonplace in rock 'n' roll, until you realise that the way it was deployed was unique to the 13th Floor Elevators' sound. They made this hyperactive jug-boogie entirely their own.

Of course, imitators are also hard to spawn when nobody listened to your the first time around.

Coming at the lysergic dawn of the psychedelic era, it has to be said that Psychedelic Sounds does not bear much resemblance to the stately patchouli 'n' paisley aural washes that would come to dominate the scene (albeit I think the ultimate psych track is the aforementioned 'Open My Eyes', which is drenched in phasing effects and features a cool 'wig out' section). Castin about for comparisons, I consider the first couple of Pretty Things - another band who would make a big psychedelic splash - discs to be kissing cousins to this bad boy. They are all rawer than steak tartare, all feature nasty sub-surf guitar tones that prefigure the Cramps, and in Phil May the PTs had a singer willing to sound every bit as malicious as Erickson. 

But! The Pretty Things didn't have no jug, and for the most part they played their blooz straight, whilst Psychedelic Sounds brings the weirdness. It's instructive that in an age of sampling, digital recording and guitar pedal setups that rival the bridge of the SS Enterprise for complexity, little recorded in recent years sounds quite as uncanny. The spirit of the age was to push the available tools to their limits (I think now, incidentally, of how nothing has ever since come close to the noises Joe Meek magicked into existence from the spare room in his flat). Perhaps, also, the murk of this album's production comes into play. The miasma oozing out of the speakers sounds, frankly, amazing, as every now and again some bass pulse, or shard of guitar, will unexpectedly push through the gloop of distortion, a random visitor from another frequency.

I haven't really named tracks, so if you're the sort who is partial to a spot of Spotify browsing here's a few artyfacts to get you going: 'You're Gonna Miss Me', naturally; the lurching, doomy bad trip nightmares of 'Reverberation' and 'Kingdom of Heaven'; and possibly my favourite track in their catalogue, the gleefully bonkers 'Fire Engine', a journey to the centre of the mind accompanied by the primal whoops and howls of home-made siren noises. Blast it at midnight and the neighbours will complain; keep blasting until sun-up and they will end up worshipping you. This is potent stuff!

Cool music(!) for cool people(?), dat's wot I say. This'll improve your health, wealth, wellbeing and eyesight.

Helen's favourite songs - part two

Last time out I rather optimistically said that they'd be a regular review or two between part one of this round up and the following installation. That was before I went away to Germany, came back and got lazy. However, a good session with the new Judas Priest album (Firepower, it's magnificent) helped me to regain my mojo and so here are five more of my friend Helen's favourite songs.

I Left My Heart In San Francisco - Tony Bennett

Going by the first five songs, and now this one, I feel Helen has a real affinity for the bittersweet side of life. Languid yet impassioned, '...San Francisco' is a perfect example of Tony Bennett's immaculate, effortless style. Starting off small and perhaps even intimate, the song crescendoes into a widescreen celebration of the city; you can almost picture the fireworks popping over the horizon as Bennett finishes up. This subgenre of jazz has never really been my thing at all, but this is enjoyable and eminently listenable.

Kiss Me - New Found Glory

Ah, now this is strange. As opposed to most of the picks that Helen and I swapped, this is one I remember contemporaneously. I must admit to having very ambivalent feelings around the whole latter day pop-punk scene. On the one hand, lots of my friends were big into it, and it was agreeably rackety. On the other, I didn't like its bland chugging efficiency, inclusive of instrumentation and singing. Nevertheless, this is a pretty fun rendition of the Sixpence None The Richer track, melodically faithful but with an alt-rock breakdown or two thrown in to placate the moshpit. Eh, not my favourite.

Pull Shapes - The Pipettes

The Pipettes - hitherto, my familiarity with them extended purely to their existence, which is to say, I don't recall ever hearing a note of their music. Coincidence is a funny thing, however, and it was only recently that I read an article in the Guardian about member Gwenno Saunders, who has been releasing music in the Welsh and Cornish languages. Colour me intrigued. What an odd song! It falls somewhere between the Ronettes and Steps! I'm rather smitten with how quirky and guileless it is, and in spirit it does seem to be recovering some of that bubblegum naivete of the best 1960s pop. I do find the modern production a bit stifling for what should be a riot of jubilance, but perhaps the marriage of the two period is the point? Maybe I should just shut my mouth, eh?

Don't Worry Baby - The Beach Boys

Now for an echt 1960s experience, the Beach Boys! This is glorious. As someone who has listened to a lot of this kind of music, I can tell you that absolutely nothing about this song comes as a surprise. You can almost anticipate the chord changes, and even the melody, before you've heard the song. It dips into plaintive longing when you expect it to, it soars with a kind of serene radiance when you expect it to. So what? When it's done this beautifully, so what? The different voices weave in and out of each other like spring butterflies. The Beach Boys were, for me, the epitome of post doo-wop, pre-Beatles pop-making, and aside from dorky numbers about being cool to your school, you can stick a pin in their catalogue from around this time and alight upon a gem. This song clouds the eyes and slows the heart, so why wouldn't it be on a 'best of' list somewhere? I kiss each fingertip in turn!

Stand By Me - Ben E King

I don't really feel any requirement to talk about this. It is perfection writ large, the gold standard of popular soul. It exists in the stratosphere, breathing the same thin air as 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine', 'Respect', 'My Girl' and others of that calibre. The bass riff that introduces the song is immediately recognisable, and instantly hummable. Instead of winding up throughout the track, King bites down on the first lyric, managing to tread a path that both manages to be imperious and yearning at the same time. Speaking of the lyrics, they are both simple and yet universal, underscored by strong images of a faintly apocalyptic nature. But the malt-shop eschatology doesn't sound hokey; it only serves to provide a backbone to the ardour professed by King. Three minutes that will leave you staggered.

That was fun! I would like to finish up with a few final thoughts. Ultimately, although we gave critical appraisals of each other's lists, there was a shared sense that the exercise went beyond merely talking about music. Indeed, I felt a little bit exposed, because whilst I'm happy talking about music, to say 'these are my ten favourite songs' can be quite an intimate thing to reveal. When I was younger, a mixtape was both a gift to someone who had feelings for but also both a shorthand way of demonstrating good taste and a discrete way of hinting that, perhaps, still waters run deep. As it so happened, we did indulge in a bit of cod-psychology; I found Helen's list to have a seam of melancholy running through much of it, whilst she identified a very off-brand sexiness to a few of my picks. Helen's feedback, incidentally, was both thoughtful and insightful; I should also add she has a great ear for music she's not necessarily familiar with. I'm glad we did this.

Anyway, back to talking about some overheated guitar crap next time out!

Idol Songs - Billy Idol

Provenance: When I was in my mid-teens a girlfriend of mine asked me what I wanted for my birthday. "Oh, I don't know, maybe a Billy Idol 'best of' album?". Instead, she dumped me.

Fast forward to 2010 and I'm stood in a rain-lashed field in Sweden. Billy Idol is finishing up onstage with a version of The Doors' 'LA Woman'. He has replaced Los Angeles with Malmo, despite being 130km away from the latter location. Hitherto in the performance he has treated us to the following:

a) An acoustic version of 'White Wedding'
b) The Allen Toussaint song 'Working In A Coal Mine'
c) A shitty autobiographical song that references 'Hot In The City'; this is further compounded by the fact that he doesn't go on to actually play 'Hot In The City'

It was one of the most depressingly awful experiences of my festival-going life. Nonetheless, I finally got my hands on this doozy - subtitled 11 of the Best - for two quid at a car boot sale in Eastbourne.

Review: On the 29 May 2016 Twitter user @TadKosciuszko had this to say: 'Mt. Rushmore of "punk" - Idol, Ghetto Blaster Guy from Star Trek IV, Adam Ant, & the guy that led the mutant biker gang in Weird Science'. Funny and true. Just as it maddens me that The Tubes are often classified as punk because they used the word in one of their song titles, it boggles my mind that anything Idol did as a solo artist can be remotely considered as belonging to the genre. 

As it so happened, both Idol and Ant were at the vanguard of the original London punk scene - but neither would make their name playing that music (though I should point out that Simon Reynolds does an excellent job at delineating how punk midwifed Ant's particular style in the superb Rip It Up And Start Again).

Despite retaining the more overt visual trappings of punk, it was Idol that moved further than Ant away from punk's initial art-school leanings. Who knows? Maybe the spiked-peroxide quiff and leather jackets acted as an affirmation to Idol, an aide memoir to himself that, beneath the poppy hooks, the expensive videos and the even more expensive nose candy, he was still a scrappy rabble rouser who dropped out of a Sussex University English degree in 1976. Certainly, in that sodden field in Scandinavia, he made great play (not all of it coherent) about how we all need to return to the roots - and rootsiness - of rock 'n' roll. Curious sloganeering for a man who made his name with a very airbrushed flash-metal sound, and who would later pioneer mixed media releases (yes, really) with his 1993 Cyberpunk album which came packaged with a 3.5" floppy disk.

But let us not judge Idol the man, let us speak of Idol the musician. Here are eleven, count 'em. Of the best. By his, or the record label's estimation, one presumes. Now, as much as I've been down on Idol thus far in this article, let me say this - by my reckoning, there are three tracks on here that are brilliant, and possibly qualify as masterpieces within the realm of pop. This troika of triumph is 'Rebel Yell', 'White Wedding' and, greatest of all, 'Flesh For Fantasy'. The first two rock hard and feature tasty guitar work by the underrated Steve Stevens, but have the kind of precision-tooled studio polish that sounds great on a transistor radio and a melodic sensibility so strong that they grapple your cerebral cortex into submission.

Time for another reference to an ex-girlfriend of mine! This time it's to go on record with an apology to Bianca. Back in the day I'd listen to Spree FM in her kitchen in Berlin, which would play 'Flesh For Fantasy' virtually every day (or so it seemed). Bianca made it known she liked the song; I greeted this opinion with the mockery I believed it deserved, but today I am a changed man and I have this to say: Bianca, if you're reading this, I am sorry - 'Flesh For Fantasy' is incredible, even if lyrically it's mostly gobbledegook. On this issue - and this issue alone - you were right, and I was wrong.

What of the other eight songs that comprise his 'best'? Well, as you can probably guess from my annoyance that Idol forswore 'Hot In The City' back in 2010, I really like that one. Same goes for the mellow, dreamy 'Eyes Without a Face'. These are tier two Billy Idol songs. Then you have the curios like 'To Be A Lover', which contains all the trappings of church-inflected soul - bluesy piano, call-and-response female backing singers, tambourines - but winds up sounding like an ersatz mechanised gospel fever-dream. There's also 'Dancing With Myself' - which was recorded with his previous band, Generation X, and is by far the most 'punk' thing on this collection - and 'Sweet Sixteen', a weird, glabrous, spacey drowning pool of synths and angst.

Pretty much everything else on here is pony. At the very least, it's entertaining crap. I don't skip the clunkers like 'Catch My Fall' or 'Don't Need a Gun' when I give Idol Songs a spin as at the very least they stand as testament to Idol's 'swing-and-a-miss' approach, one that was evident even during his commercial peak. For all his faults, missteps and periods of inactivity I'm a sucker for the leathery old charmer. I'd even take another chance with the live experience on the basis that I'd be treated to (at least) eleven of the best.*

*(I was trying to find a place to include a "mo', mo', mo'" gag but decided it would only cheapen this august and serious blog.)

Under The Savage Sky - Barrence Whitfield & The Savages

Provenance: I heard a track from this album, 'The Claw', on a sampler CD from Classic Rock magazine. It really stood out from the crowd, and I'd never heard of Barrence Whitfield nor his troupe of Savages, so decided to take a punt. I am well aware of the 'one good song on an otherwise shit album' issue, and indeed, have fallen victim to that particular pitfall myself before now.

Review: Wow, this is a lot of fun! A no-frills garage rock band fronted by a soulful blues shouter, packing twelve songs into 35 minutes, ensuring nothing outstays its welcome.

Bostonian Barrence Whitfield (real name: Barry White) is now in his 60s but you would've thought that a record this lusty and vital was made by someone half his age. Make no mistake though - this ain't snotty kid music, as is clear from 'I'm A Full Grown Man', which carries on the ripe tradition of grown-ass braggadocio pioneered by the likes of Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley. This is tough, muscular R&B with a punk edge, delivered with the same kind of assuredness and command exhibited by the great soul stirrers of yore.

And 'The Claw'? Check it out:



I don't know about you, but I'm a sucker for that diamond-edged guitar sound and a skronkin' ol Bobby Keys saxophone. It's there on 'Rock 'N' Roll Baby' too, sounding every bit as joyful and demented as the sax on 'Blue Moon'. (The saxophone is the most maligned instrument in rock music - I think I've said it before, but I'll say it until I'm as blue in the face as the aforementioned titular astronomical body; used rightly, whether slinking away sinuously in Steely Dan's 'Doctor Wu' or covering the first row in spit, as in Frankie Lymon and the Teenager's 'Why Do Fools Fall In Love?', it's devastating.)

I'm going to make a criticism, and then proceed to dismiss my own qualm immediately. The criticism? Under The Savage Sky feels as familiar as Arsenal labouring against a team in the bottom three. The dismissal? Who gives a fuck when it's this fun? 'The Wolf Pack' is, as one can deduce before even hearing a solitary note, a tribute to Howlin' Wolf, which in theory could be terrible. However, when the rollicking Hubert Sumlin riff (doubled on saxophone) is met by Whitfield's dead ringer Chester Burnett yodel, it's impossible not to crack a grin.

That's the deal with this unholy collection; every time you detect a hint of The Hives, or a soupçon of Wilson Pickett - perhaps a seasoning of The Seeds, or a suggestion of Sam & Dave - it's like a reward for digging all this sweet ass music, mingled with the reassurance that someone else is still out there, sweating and hollering and keeping the flame alive. About the only time that this magpie attitude towards appropriation oversteps the mark, I think, is on 'Angry Hands', which has a guitar motif that is a near identical twin to that on Alice Cooper's 'I'm Eighteen'.

There's not much left to say. If you like catchy, rough-edged R&B, Under The Savage Sky is the bad boy for you. I haven't investigated any further back just yet (this album came out in 2015) but I get the impression that I won't be disappointed. By the same token, I bet these guys absolutely bring it in a live setting. You can almost see the steam coming off this platter and it's a studio cut, good grief. Just imagine. Just imagine.   

(Oh yeah, I've got one quibble with that Diffuser list I linked to in my first paragraph: Len's 'Steal My Sunshine' always was, and ever shall be, an unmitigated pile of crap.)

Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols - The Sex Pistols

Provenance: I'm no punk, believe you me, but this is as canonical as it gets. Got this in an independent record store in Bournemouth that was by the town centre bus stops. The guy who worked there absolutely loathed me for liking bands wot did guitar solos.

Review: You've got to be shitting me, right? This ain't punk.

To clarify - formally, Never Mind the Bollocks... is closer to some of the classic rock and power pop of the era than it is to its genre contemporaries. Trying to speak intelligently about punk as either an aesthetic or an attitude is difficult, because it often depends where and when you're talking about.

But if you associate punk with a lo-fi sound, an amateur ethos and a prickle of danger, you would not be thinking about the Sex Pistols. This album is every bit as big, bright and chunky as any of the classic rock bands supposedly so derided by the young pups of punk. Never Mind the Bollocks... is also a wonderful bit of grave-robbing, as practically every guitar lick is copped from the golden age of rock 'n' roll. That's not just me either - goddamn Chuck Berry could hear it too. Hell, for a gaggle of snotty upstarts they certainly do like their interpolating guitar breaks, as much as any blooz rock band. The one element that does stand out from the crowd is Johnny Rotten's sneering alveolar trill, but even then, is it any weirder than, say, Family's Roger Chapman?

And yeah, one other thing - the songs are fucking brilliant.

At the end of the day, who gives a monkeys if the Sex Pistols were ultimately resurrection boys who added a smear of mucus to their retrograde rockin'? There are still real, visceral thrills to be had; the blathering about going under the Berlin Wall on 'Holidays In The Sun', the sand-blast nastiness of 'Bodies' and that opening couplet of 'God Save The Queen' are all absolutely spot on. I should probably acknowledge that, writing in 2017, I've become somewhat inured to the 'Sex Pistols as shockmasters' narrative, especially as every blessed documentary about British pop music in the 1970s is obliged to include a transition depicting the dinosaurs of prog (scene: Peter Gabriel dressed as a flower) being swept away (music: opening bars of 'Pretty Vacant') by the rising tide of punk (scene: it's only the bloody Sex Pistols!). Yawn.

The truth is, Never Mind the Bollocks... is little more than an update of a structure and sound that was popular twenty years before its release (rock 'n' roll, baby), and one could make the argument that its simple chord progressions and cavernous drum sound are the legacy of a genre - glam rock - that had its heyday only a few years prior. If you sped up the stomp of, say, Slade, Gary Glitter or Mud, would it sound so different to what the Pistols were selling? To these jaded ol' ears, the most 'punk' song on the album is 'Sub-Mission', if only because it wouldn't be out of place on Iggy and the Stooges' Raw Power. 

The Sex Pistols were a great band, who represented a mood, a time and a moment that was bigger than they were. Ultimately, the music didn't go anywhere daring, but nor did it have to. It was still recognisably loud, spirited and disruptive, and if not revolutionary then certainly revanchist when it came to rock 'n' roll reclaiming the mantle of rebellion. And besides, even if I were not privy to even a semi-quaver of their music, I would love them anyway purely on the basis of their interview with Bill Grundy. Also, there's a good chance that had the Sex Pistols not existed we wouldn't have been treated to Sloppy Seconds and that, frankly, is an intolerable state of affairs.

Motivation Radio - Steve Hillage

Provenance: This is a very new album for me, as I received it for Christmas 2016. However, the reason I had wanted it stretches back a few years. I had been to see Gong play in Exeter, for whom Hillage served as both guitarist and support act. I was rather taken with his solo work I heard that night, especially 'Salmon Song'.

Gong were fantastic that night. The late Daevid Allan dressed in a gnome costume augmented with compact discs and regaled the audience with a story about collecting psilocybin mushrooms from "the wooded glades of the city." May he and Gilli Smyth enjoy the long and cosmic trip back to Planet Gong.

Review: Ugh. After wrasslin' with Ted Nugent's brutish and nasty Craveman it's a delight to lift one's gaze beyond the horizon and peer into the depths of a universe filled with a pure and positive energy. Okay, perhaps Steve Hillage hasn't exactly awoken the New Ager within, but the attitudes of discovery and wonder that pervade this album are certainly infectious. Hell, it's even there in the album cover; a wide-eyed, blissed-out Hillage, dressed like an initiate into a vaguely sinister cult, superimposed upon an image of 'The Dish' at Parkes Observatory. The inference is clear; keep your eyes on the skies and your ears tuned into the music of the spheres.

So what was Hillage concocting back on Earth to aid our ascent to a higher plane? The short answer: something endearingly eccentric.

Within the first track you're already tasting some really cool flavours - strange synthesizer sounds, Hillage's oddly attractive vocals (with no attempt made to hide his English accent) and some questing guitar work. Somewhat unexpected is the definite funk sound that is perceptible early on, and becomes more marked on songs like 'Motivation' and 'Saucer Surfing''. Reading around, I learnt that Hillage had, at this time, become quite enamoured with US funk acts such as Earth, Wind and Fire, and had consciously tried to capture some of that groove. Not that you'll ever confuse this with Mothership Connection.

With his adoption of funk, Hillage has also sloughed off a fair amount of the trappings of prog. That's not to say that this collection is any less weird as a consequence. So the seemingly straightforward heavy riff-rock of 'Light in the Sky' is undermined by Miquette Giraudy's breathy, panicked (and somewhat unexpected first time around) contributions. 'Radio' is the most singular song about radio since Helen Reddy's disturbing 'Angie Baby' (go on, have a listen and try explaining to me what's going on). In a final flourish, Hillage flips the sweaty priapism of Buddy Holly's 'Not Fade Away' into a song about universal love and personal inspiration. Come on, that's adorable!

At a remove of some forty years some of the sentiments can seem twee or naive to the average punter, and the synth tones are decidedly retro (so much so that they are possibly in vogue again). Was it a queer duck in 1977 too? Received wisdom suggests that such sensibilities couldn't survive in the midst of the punk crucible, but on the that punk score received wisdom is utterly wrong. (As an aside - I've lost count of the number of BBC music documentaries that show Rick Wakeman in a cape or Peter Gabriel dressed as a flower and there's a keyboard playing an interminable solo the whole time, and it's interrupted by a narrator going "But then..." and suddenly it's the intro to 'Pretty Vacant' and the Sex Pistols have destroyed everything that came before them. Everything. I mean, it's just pathetic. You can't even call it revisionism, it's just stupidity.)

However, in real time - the time you take to tune in to Motivation Radio - it is genuinely difficult to resist. If music can be escapist, then what better than an album that gives your inner consciousness a road map of the Milky Way and blasts you off with all best wishes in the world? Some music is aimed at the body, some towards the groin, some towards the head. Motivation Radio aims for the galaxy, and is all the more better for doing so.

Destroyed - Sloppy Seconds

Provenance: I wasted a lot of time on a music forum that is nevertheless indirectly responsible for my marriage. It was also directly responsible for the purchase of this album, based solely upon the passionate advocacy of one board member (sorry, can't remember who) on a thread about greatest punk rock albums.

Review: Destroyed starts with a lengthy quote from a John Waters film which segues into a song called 'I Don't Wanna Be A Homosexual'. It sets the tone for an album whose main concerns are sex, junk food, B-movies, puking and under-age pornographic actresses. That is pulls it off with wit and panache is incredible, considering that almost every song has been fine-tooled into a laser-guided offence missile.

It's also my favourite punk rock album. Ever.

As a left-leaning liberal type (NB: for my American readership, I'm essentially a communist) I feel that I should find kinship with something more progressive, or conscious, or at the very least less puerile. I've tried, believe me. But my iPod, which doubles for my car stereo, tells me that Destroyed is one of my most frequented albums, second only to Accept's Balls To The Walls. I've tried the Clash, the Pistols, X-Ray Spex, Dead Kennedys, Propagandhi and more - and enjoyed them - but nothing has come close to this puke-spattered masterpiece in terms of sheer unadulterated fun. If I'm on a long drive, Sloppy Seconds are my guys.

Why? Because it's great to be speeding along the motorway yelling to the gang vocals of 'So Fucked Up'. Or just waiting for the payoff line about masturbation in 'Runnin' From The CIA'. Even the two covers on my version - John Denver's 'Leavin' On A Jet Plane' and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's 'The Candy Man' are brilliant shout-alongs. As an added bonus, 'Janie Is A Nazi' is easily my favourite rock song that references National Socialism (it's a short list, but it managed to knock 'Chain Lightning' by Steely Dan off top spot (which is definitely about the Nuremburg rallies, screw any other interpretation)).

Sloppy Seconds do two very simple things very well on Destroyed - marry clever, funny lyrics to instantly hummable melodies. That they achieve the philosopher's stone of pop songwriting on practically every cut is remarkable. And it's not all nihilistic stoopidity; both 'Black Roses' (about abortion) and 'Veronica' (suicide) are surprisingly plaintive, and the latter reveals a degree of pathos and vulnerability not found elsewhere on the album.

The other songs that stem from a wellspring of spite are also interesting - 'Germany' is a bizarre, hilarious revenge fantasy, 'Blackmail' is a decidedly un-PC litany of misdeeds and 'If I Had A Woman' is the snotty cousin to Ian Dury and the Blockheads' splenetic 'If I Was With A Woman'. Incidentally, I don't think either song serves to do anything other than highlight the inadequacy and fragility of male identity, both being so nastily misogynistic in tone that only the most demented Men's Rights Activists could approve.

However, if forced to sum up Destroyed in one word, I'd have to return to a word used earlier on: fun. Every trick bubbles with a lusty vim and gusto, each new depravity or excess gleefully delineated by B.A. (vocalist, credited as 'yells' on the liner notes) over buzzsaw bubblegum guitar (played by the magnificently monikered Ace Hardwhere?). To give you an impression of how addictive and infectious it is, Destroyed is one of the very few albums I can hit replay from the beginning as soon as it's finished.

Probably the most perfect distillation of puerility I've heard on record, and all the better for it. If you agree with me life can all too often resemble a verse from Supertramp's 'The Logical Song', too po-faced and serious by half, then this is your doctor feelgood. You can't convince me that shouting along with 'to stop this pandemonium / We're gonna blow 'em up with sodium' (surf-punk ghoulfest 'The Horror Of Party Beach') while careering down the M27 isn't going to be the highlight of my day, or yours for that matter.