[peel] Re: Reconstructionism

[Martin Wheatley]

At 22:03 06/01/2009, Mark wrote:

>
>
>
>This is becoming something of a masterclass in revisionism!
>
>Gayness?!? In 1971?!!? On Top of the Pops?!?!?
>
>I suspect Mrs Whitehouse might have had sometning to say about that....
>

There was loads of gayness on early 70s TOTPs.   Bolan/Bowie/Hot Chocolate
and others - the difference was most of the audience wasn't sophisticated
enough to recognise it as gayness



>Glam was as much about football terrace boot-boy chants as it was 
>about androgyny. Did anybody really think Steve Priest camping it up 
>was for real?

Glam was about teenage girls   The boys were following prog rock


>
>Were the charts really "dminated" by Radio 2 slush? What about all 
>the fantastic soul records? Fair numbers of reggae hits too. Surely 
>the "dangerous gatecrashers" were longhairs like Sabbath or 
>Hawkwind, or genuine oddities like Lou Reed or Neil Young in the Top 10?

Radio 1 slush - Radio 2 at that time found Andy Williams a bit too 
adventurous for them
It was an m-o-r station

There were always the odd 'alternative' hit - most of them starting 
life with Peel


>
>Point taken on VdGG - just find PH a bit more interesting than 
>Yes/Genesis/ELP. Though his parallel solo career is some distance 
>from prog. Nadir's Big Chance is not Prog at all. Regardless of what 
>Trouser Press says, this is the stuff that appealed to the pre-punk 
>punks. I guess also VdGG were always somewhat underground compared 
>to big stadium proggers like ELP.
>
>Or Pink Floyd, who are, like I said, seemingly being distanced from 
>Big P Prog.
>

VDGG were not as big as ELP because that started as a supergroup from 
the ashes of The Nice
But VDGG did go on for longer
I remember seeing a Chrysalis label concert at Fairfield Hall, 
Croydon which included
3 bands (who alternated the order in which they played throughout the tour)
They were VDGG, Lindisfarne and Genesis (with Peter Gabriel).  The 3 
bands had about same
level of following at the time
VDGG were most definitely a prog band - Peter Hamill made a lot of 
solo albums later on which
were different but you could the same about solo stuff by members of Yes
I remember the first I heard 'Anarchy' I thought Rotten was copying 
Peter Hamill!

But we have to remember that it was those prog bands that punk was 
reacting against
They were never the same audience

martinw