Blitzkrieg Bop

The Ramones are a brand. And I don’t care.

Despite my green anti-materialist credentials I have a secret vice. I like looking at pictures of shoes. I don’t buy them very often (protestant guilt, lack of money, lack of decent shoe shops in this one-horse town, feet that don’t fit). But I like to look.

So I am on the mailing list for Schuh. And so I saw today a picture of something called a Converse All Star The Ramones Hi (that phrase is wrong for so many reasons). And I went: I want them.

Identity

I always hated the term ‘new wave’ (punk for people who don’t like punk). And I always hated those ‘women in rock’ articles you used to get. And still do. But I quite enjoyed a recent Radio 4 show called Women of the New Wave.

The great rock’n’roll swindler

Thirty-odd years ago, when I was a teenager, I thought Malcolm McLaren was old. Things look different when time passes. Today, I think he was young. Too young, anyway, to be dead.

I’d be lying, though, if I said I was mourning. I’m just thinking... Was he a visionary or a charlatan? Or something else?

Noggin the Nog meets the Undertones

I don’t often listen to Desert Island Discs but I made a point of doing so last week. I wanted to hear Frank Cottrell-Boyce and find out more about the man who wrote the radio series One Chord Wonders.

He came across as a gentle and generous soul: the sort of person who gives Christianity a good name. He also described Oliver Postgate as a kind of proto punk (it’s the DIY ethic). I liked that.

Two Tribes

A recent Guardian article asked ‘are pop tribes a thing of the past?’ Funny, I was just thinking the same thing myself.

When Husband complains there’s no good music any more I tell him it’s got to be there. It’s just that we don’t know about it, because it’s not meant for us any more. On that basis, maybe I’m wrong about the lack of pop tribes. It might just be my age, but young people look alike to me: all skinny jeans, self-conscious hair, and uniformity.

So I’m halfway through the regular punk-versus-hippie conversation that I have with my sister and I stop and ask my niece what there is now. And she says ‘in terms of style you mean?’ And that is exactly the point. It is only about style now. Once, it meant something.