Entertainment For Lively Minds
Year Zero
Perhaps the ultimate muso talking point when it comes to seventies rock. The now big cliche that punk had to sweep away all old music to make way for the new.
Now I sit on the fence on this one a bit. I love the revolutionary, back to basis, anti-corporate message of punk, completely re-shaping the music scene, brilliant, on you go punk. I've just got one problem, this having to dismiss all prog, Beatles, Stones, Floyd, Wurzels and Pilot as worthless poop. Well they're not you know. Joe Strummer was talking out his rear in 1977 (the song and the year).
One of the biggest year zero puritans of course was the sadly missed Tony Wilson. Who 5mins6secs into this clip escalates an argument with Danny Baker over his oft-made claim that he never listened to any English music between 1969 and 1976.
Seems a tad extreme to me. Couldn't there have been a correct compromise between punks and proggers? I dunno, smashing the system without having to throw out a perfectly decent gatefold record collection? Or would a more compromising attitude at the time blunt the message?
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Lots of the punks were bloody hypocrites...
to name but one: Johnny Rotten has admitted that he liked Pink Floyd, despite wearing an 'I hate Pink Floyd' t-shirt, loved 'Kashmir' by Led Zeppelin and adored Van Der Graaf Generator.
Steve Jones
Never denied his love of Peter Frampton and Boston.
I did the Year Zero thing.
Flogged the lot.
Then bought it all back in dribs and drabs over the next thirty years.
Even the Yes and ELP.
But it did feel like it had to be done at the time.
It was like
a teenager rebelling against his parents - as you do - then agreeing with them when settled and in the mid-twenties with young kids.
Here's young Johnny getting on with his uncle Keith Emerson
Timing
Punk changed pop music forever - in a good way. Punk did not kill the establishment because throughout that time, millions still bought records by Yes, Queen, ELO, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Elton John, Led Zep, The Who and so on. Crowd photos at Pistols gigs show us many a pogoing feathercut.
The direct and immediate victims of punk were the candy pop bands like The Rubettes, Bay City Rollers, The Osmonds and G**y G*****r. They were fatally wounded because punk made them sound and look ridiculous. Even "proper" bands like Slade and The Sweet took a nosedive. The reason why Pilot may have similarly suffered is that image-wise they aligned themselves with the Smokeys of this world, who in turn looked like B-list glam rockers.
Many bands who came about in the mid 1970s "punkified" themselves a bit in order to look the part (The Police, The Stranglers). If Roxanne had been out in 1974 Sting would have had a tight, frothy perm sprinkled with glitter. Conversely,
if Pilot had released "January" in 1977, they would have had shortish hair, skinny ties and drainpipe jeans.
Declaring a Year Zero and only contemplating a certain style of music appeals to the adolescent mindset. Tony Wilson knew how to say the right things to his market - after all, these were the people that bought the singles.
'Ang on a minute...
Postulate:
The Sex Pistols were every bit as much a manufactured band aimed at commercial success/domination by their management as the Rubettes et al.
The punk scene was as much about hanging around with the latest cool thing as nodding your head knowingly and scratching you beard was with the prog scene 5 years earlier.
...no matter what the late lamented Mr Wilson asserted, NOTHING changed. A few musical styles went out of fashion while new ones came in. Happened before. It'll happen again.
Discuss.
Ducks and runs for cover...
Anathema
Have there been any punks with beards? Not the sculpted goatees from band like the Offspring - I mean real punks, with real freeform follicle growth and bugger grips (sideburns).
'bugger grips'...
that's new to me...
John Peel was quite
John Peel was quite dismissive of The Pistols as equivalents of The Monkees. I think that's a tad harsh, and plays into McClaren's bullshit image of himself as some master svengali puppet master.
Punk though introduced the very practical innovation of anyone being able to make a record, and the whole independent scene erupting. In fact, here's Peel yapping about these very subjects.
Yup...
The punk 'scene' was a good deal more manufactured than most scenes and, ultimately, it was just another phase along the journey.
The whole thing was simply a new generation of kids wanting to stamp out what went before and have their own music. The industry (AHW included) was more than happy to feed this desire.
Punk didn't kill off anything - here we are 30 years later - still discussing acts that punk was supposed to have done for, be they Fairport Convention/RT, King Crimson/Yes or Little Feat/James Taylor.
It's an old saw that there's a 'Year Zero' every 10 years or so - 67, 77, 88 and so on. I remember many otherwise sensible people declaring 'rock is dead' in 88 and proclaiming that dance music was the one true way. As with all these phases - they come and they go.
Decent pop music will prevail through it all.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing
'Year Zero' had to happen the way it did.
And would we be talking about it now if it hadn't?
But 'Year Zero' will never happen again, because it's already happened and because now we know better.
The wonderful thing about music *now* is that we can enjoy *it* and all the music that's gone before.
We don't need another Dylan or Springsteen, Sex Pistols or Joni Mitchell, because they are here and they always will be, if we want to find them. So, put iTunes on random and bliss out when Buddy Holly is followed by Tinariwen and The Beatles by Animal Collective. Its all out there and it's all good.
(You had your tongue buried in your cheek when you chucked in Pilot though, didn't you :-) Not even gonna mention the W**z*ls
The Wurzels
Never Mind The Bullocks was one of my CD purchases last week.
Marvellous. Ooo ah.
Funny..
..Wasn't Danny Baker all over Cat Stevens in a fairly recent Word interview? He seemed a complete expert on Yuseefs ouvre.
To paraphrase the great Mose Alison, his mind is on vacation, but his mouth is working overtime.
I'm not sure what you mean?
Why is that funny (ha ha or peculiar)? Isn't Danny Baker allowed to be a fan of ELP, the Sex Pistols AND Cat Stevens?
I think some wires are crossed
It was Tony Wilson, not Danny Baker, who said that he didn't listen to music between 1969 and 1976.
Danny Baker has said...
...on more than one occasion that he hasn't listened to any new music since 1979
The Ting Tings...
...are his new faves (true!).
Must have been someone else I saw then...
...at The Who concert at the Manchester Belle Vue back in '75?
Don't take it seriously
All this "year zero" stuff was a pose intended to provoke. The really stupid people were the ones who believed it. Many still do. I used to plug records to Tony Wilson at Granada in 1977 and he was always telling me about one of his favourite groups.
Sad Cafe.
Good chap.
Jog my memory
Sad Cafe wouldn't have been a Manchester act by any chance???? I can see Wilson's two blinkered stances in life, one regional, one musical, in deadly conflict here, and the regional winning by two falls to a submission.
And to back you up somewhat, Dave Goodman, sometime Sex Pistols producer, claimed that when they arrived at Granada Television to perform on So It Goes, Wilson was trying to turn them all on to the music of Genesis. "No, it's really good if you give it a chance"
PS I've also noticed other people insisting good popular music started a lot later than it did. The NME the other week claimed that David Bowie had "invented all decent music". Understandable, since before Bowie there was that notoriously lean patch for music called the 1960s!!
Nowt wrong
with Sad Cafe. Let's have more stories about record plugging David. Ever come across Geoffrey Hughes on your Manchester travels? A great character in the area and fine ligger. Also, as I have just learned, Paul McCartney's voice in the Yellow Submarine fillum.
Never met Tony, but knew people who knew him. In his latter years he predicted a second coming for Prog. Bless.
"All this "year zero" stuff was a pose intended to provoke.
The really stupid people were the ones who believed it."
Nice, Dave.
You have just dismissed thousands of people who *did* believe in punk as the great destroyer. Sneering at people who got swept along by a cultural wave from your world inside the biz is nothing to be proud of.
I was just discovering Genesis and Pink Floyd when punk hit (as ever I had my finger on the pulse) but whether it was just a pose intended to provoke or not doesn't make the initial post any less valid.
As I said above, hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Imagine...
...if a similar Year Zero music arrived today. Would you, with the benefit of age and hindsight, 'fall for it' and ditch everything you love from the previous years of your life?
Did you do that in 88 when dance music had it's 'Year Zero' event?
I suspect those that 'fell' for the punk phase were those around 12-18 years old at the time, just when you're looking for a music to call your own and help you put some distance between you and the older generation - be they older brothers or parents. It's no coincidence that this is exactly the same age when kids are most receptive to big new ideas and looking for a way to change the world.
By the time you hit your 20s, it's blindingly obvious to anyone that there are no year zeros and, guess what, all the music that seemed to come out of the blue, fully formed, is in fact being played by people with an appreciation of the music of previous years.
Those of us a little older had a similar 'Year Zero' experience in 66/67 when we first heard Hendrix, The Dead, Jefferson Airplane etc etc. We fell for it as well...
I'd perhaps modify David's quote to read something like:
"All this "year zero" stuff was a pose intended to provoke.
The really stupid people were the ones OUT OF THEIR TEENAGE YEARS who believed it."
Agreed
I was 15, just at the right impressionable age to go for a year zero
It's also a testament to the power of the inkies at the time (remember them?!), as some of the journos pushed this message week in, week out. I can't name names - much as I'd like to blame Parsons and Birchill, but I can't remember who said what - and I mainly read Sounds.
Funny thing is, I'm pretty sure that while all this was going on, Sounds were running an Encyclopedia of Psychedelia.
I'm not stupid
but as a young kid I must say that I did believe it at the time.
To me it was a very adolescent and rebellious time and there was a real feeling of energy and change, it is hard to equate to anything around today but is was a very exciting period.
Of course if I was older at the time and already in the cynical old record business I might have looked down on it as a teenage fad and seen through it all David.
I am not a fan of rap music but I'm not going to say all young kids are stupid because they fall for the rebellious image and lyrics - it's just classic teenage rebellion.
Of course I am now older and wiser (and subscribe to The Word) so my tastes have widened somewhat and I can look back at that period as a really fresh time and still love most of the music from the period.
For me I didn't really see it as a Year Zero though, it was more of an adventure, I started off with a fanzine, then released cassettes by bands and formed my own group. I could delve into Punk's influences such as Velvet Underground, New York Dolls and Iggy and then see it evolve with great music from Magazine, Public Image, The Fall etc.
Punk Rock makes me laugh
It was all so terribly silly, really.
Surely not as silly
as "Britpop" though?
Nothing silly
about the Punk wars. No, I take that back. But it was also fun.
Something to tell your grandkids about, when they cover the subject in history lessons.
I was late to the party by a few decades
Punk does and means nothing to me.
Sex Pistols are pretty terrible.
The Clash have a few good songs but I don't enjoy the albums.
Post-punk was much, much more interesting with Siouxsie, The Cure and the mighty Joy Division.
Can't help thinking that the
Can't help thinking that the Candyman was spoiling for a fight somewhat here, with his ridiculous assertion that "it's all over". It's only because Wilson wasn't allowed to get a word in edgeways that he didn't come out with his pet theory about there being a revoloution in music every five years. A fine chap and much-missed, yes, but as a talent-spotter it has to be borne in mind that he ran a label in Manchester yet somehow contrived to miss out on the Stone Roses, The Smiths and Oasis.
But wasn't the reality more.....
....that in year zero (sic) we shaved, cut our hair and stopped wearing flares, as we celebrated the new energy in music. Of course we still had all the old stuff at home and listened to it, but didn't feel the need to dress up in the old way, as we were dressing up in the new way. Dressing up. I also no longer wear my velveteen britches, but still enjoy the odd madrigal. Fashions change swifter than tastes.
Indeed...
Every year zero brings with it new clothes - that's the point of a year zero - it's a chance for 've kidz' to listen to their music and wear their clothes.
Remember though that every generation has it's own year zero event. In the grand scheme of things, the punk one was no different to the late 60s one or the 1988 dance one.
It's only a 'year zero' event if you're at just the right age to see it as such.
For some of us who were too old for punk it just seemed like a bunch of kids suddenly discovering their grandads Eddie Cochrane records - all the stuff *we* threw away in *our* year zero 10 years earlier.
By the time punk arrived..
..I was 19 and already on fiendly terms with Dylan, Fairport, Lois Armstrong Robert Wyatt as well as all of the usual underground suspects, I just couldn't take it seriously as music and it was as simple as that for me. I later became a massive Clash fan, but not until "London Calling' but by that time they had turned into a great rock band in the British tradition, I still think that their first LP has some good songs, but it is very badly performed and sounds like it was recorded in a bin under the Westway.
Love UK punk
I'm a huge fan of early UK punk. There's an excitement that screams through all the early releases of The Pistols, Damned, Clash. The Buzzcocks 'Spinal Scratch' EP is still thrilling to hear. Much more so than the more polished works a lot of these bands would later produce. Or even the more muso approved American counterparts like Patti Smith or Television. they make you feel more alive. I prefer Holidays In The Sun over Marquee Moon and I don't care.
I think of punk
as the great second wave of pop music after 1965/66, with that era's run of brilliant singles by the Who, Thh Small Faces, Beatles, Byrds etc..being mirrored in the punk era with the Pistols, Costello, Clash, Jam, Ramones, Television etc etc. I think the great thing about punk was that suddenly anything and everything was played. I went to a 1981 New Years Eve party at a club in Toronto and the mix of music from the DJ booth was an astoninshing mix of dub reggae, punk, funk , jazz , African and even The Jackson Five's "I Want You Back and a whole bunch of other great stuff. UK DJ's brought all sorts of new stuff to public attention, people like Peel, Kershaw etc deserve a lot credit for this. The year zero thing is a meaningless slogan. Enjoy the music. As always it is still out there waiting to pleasure you.