Thursday 12 April 2012

12th April

1979: Have we discussed how The Story Of 1977 flagrantly lied to us, the credulous viewer? It overlaid the Something Else Legs & Co routine (linked through here) with Pretty Vacant and made out that that was how it had originally gone out. About par for that documentary's "watch our repeat series all year, it's shit" attitude, but surely there's a limit. That Zandra Rhodes-inspired routine gets dragged out to demonstrate how the show somehow demeaned punk despite showing loads of it til after the well had run dry, but there was another Sex Pistols dance routine, this to the post-Rotten single Silly Thing, the emphasis on the former word. Fair enough, as by April 1979 punk pretty much had been reduced to jumping about in rainbow coloured jackets while the airwaves were clear for Racey to invoke the spirit of Mud. Actually that's unfair, Sham 69 were still fighting the good fight, though like the Pistols they had essentially regressed to beleathered rock and roll cliche. Once spotted you can't watch Pursey go arse over tit with audible thump at 1:45 enough, I find.

1984: Yellow posing pouch, monumental swept-over hair, overballsy disco cover... no, nobody ever accused Dead Or Alive's Pete Burns of being a shrinking violet, and in return the branded balloons cascade. To go from that to Robert Smith artlessly scraping a violin must be some journey, The Cure sitting down and apparently causing some controversy in doing so. Robert seems quite laid back about it, indeed.

1990: But of course The Cure were standing up again soon enough, with overelaborate sleeves.

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