As the winter of 1976 sped forward, leaving the unquenchable summer in its rear view and punk encroached on the normal world, one by one the treasures and talismans of the old guard were being ridiculed and destroyed. It was predicted in some quarters that by the turn of the year the old regime would be replaced by a new, younger, forward thinking group of replicants that would dictate the way art and culture would go in the not too distant future. All that may have been well and good had the ‘fucking rotter’ episode with Grundy not got in the way.
Who knows what shape or form punk would have taken had a very pissed young Jones held his tongue for another couple of minutes. It may have been oh-so different, a completely different animal, able to dictate the terms and conditions of its own destiny. Conversely, it may have fizzled out and within a few months been swept under the carpet and put down as just another wayward spike in the unstoppable trail of mainstream music. Life, could have been very different. We could have been eternally stuck with the so called dross of the mid-Seventies, music with no sense of direction and seemingly nowhere to go.
In the years following Punk’s nascent snarl, we were constantly reminded that pretty much everything we liked before we discovered the Sex Pistols was inferior and passe. The relics of the recent past -like, yesterday, last week- were just that, relics from an ancient sub culture that was dying in public and needed putting out of its misery. Hit it on the back if the head with a spade and leave it at the side of the road. The anger and sneering of Punk, as i recall, was aimed more or less directly at groups like Queen. and Pink Floyd. Dinosaurs in their late twenties, directionless, meaningless, odourless and colourless.
A loaded gun won’t set you free. So they say…..
At the time, despite album sales going stratospheric in the previous couple of years, the singles chart was a hotch-potch of styles and artists that represented a madhouse of mainstream pop for your delectation. Abba were about to enter one of the most successful periods by any musicians in the history of music. The charts were dominated by lightweight, nothingness pop; Elton, Showaddywaddy, Leo Sayer all commanded high positions in the week of ‘Anarchy’s’ release. I assume that the intention of the Pistols was to wipe away all that had gone before by way of some outrageous situationist prank. Which Malcolm McLaren attempted the following year with differing results and a disastrous ending. It didn’t even come close to wiping out the old guard, it just wiped out the Sex Pistols. The old guard just went into hiding for a while then regrouped and carried on as if nothing had ever happened. They gave birth to a monster. They called it ‘The Eighties.’
A cursory glance at the uk top 50 from November 1976- on the day Anarchy was released- reveals The Rubberband man to be the best tune in the survey by some distance. The (Detroit) Spinners were one of the best and most under-rated vocal groups of the 1970’s, their canon of work, truly exceptional. They had worked their way through the previous 15 years or so on myriad labels, including a a long period associated to Motown which provided them with a few UK hits and a couple of the biggest dancers on what became the Northern Soul thing. They signed with Atlantic in 1972 and set a course of huge commercial success across the whole decade, many of which crossed over from the R&B charts into the higher echelons of the pop charts too. Their greatest hits LP is as good as, and representative of, the decade as any of the records the new world had to offer. Soul is what kept the lights on, and indeed kept us alive during the dark days as the nation and it people changed drastically and under trying circumstances. Away from the histrionics of Prog, a ton of Soul was the real Nation’s Favourite, racking up huge sales and with the onset of Disco and the aforementioned Northern Soul turning club culture into a necessity beyond pastime and becoming the lifeblood of many of the country’s youth.
Some people may be rediscovering this for the first time, some of the absolute diamonds of Seventies pop soul have been largely conveniently forgotten about, those that aren’t are condemned to perpetual misery on some god forsaken oldies station which does nothing to preserve the glory of some of these precious artefacts. Or filed away in a mental box and left to gather dust in the attics of our lives. The Rubberband Man is an unholy force for good, a feelgood record from a very different and difficult part of our modern history. That and its near cousins are what really reminds us of that period before the pied piper of Punk led us down a garden path from which quite a few never escaped from.
Below we have an unbelievable, mind-blowing live performance from the seminal American TV Show Midnight Special recorded in September of 1976. Watch and marvel, the best thing you will see all week. Guaranteed to blow your mind. Give yerself some space with that bass and let the coolness get into your vertebrae.
enjoy.
x
bernie@happening-things.com 