This made me chuckle
This made me frown
Still enough of a believer to consider it defilement to have a version of "Sex Pistols" tread the boards without Johnny Rotten....
Other bands that go the prosthetic singer route, I'm not so bothered.
Well, there's one and half others on the same Glasgow punkstalgia lineup that are doing that - The Stranglers, sans Hugh Cornwell, with a younger-than-the-others singer (younger-than-the-others - what am I saying? Only Jean-Jacques Burnel remains from the original line-up, what with Jet Black and Dave Greenfield now dead).
And then Buzzcocks are the 'half' - insofar as Diggle (I assume) is singing the Shelley-sung songs as well as the smaller number of numbers he originally sang.
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Talking of "punk is dad", I had a "rave is dad" experience the other night - went to see Orbital in LA. They were playing the first two albums - with an intermission in between! - and so, if you think about it ,that would necessarily largely draw a crowd who remembered those records from the early '90s - thirty years ago. So we are talking fiftysomethings for the most part.
Wasn't quite Cruel World levels of haggard, but yes a lot of baldness, bellies, and time-creased faces on show. You sensed a lot of memory-rushes were being triggered in the assembled, but that was not quite enough to galvanize manic dancing in the old style.
Some of the bar staff and the sound guy behind the mixing desk seemed on the grizzled, elderly side too. Perhaps veteran promoters and rave-scene people?
Surely now in their early sixties themselves, the brothers Hartnoll were great. Well, some of the material on those albums was a tad middling, but the killer tunes - fantastic. Triffic lights 'n' lasers 'n' projections too - that's something that has advanced in leaps and bounds since back-in-the-day. They got a very warm reception and they seemed to be quite touched by it.
This must be the fourth - or possibly fifth - time I've seen Orbital live, but the last time would have been way back in the mid-90s.
The very first time - when they were then almost alone in being able to play techno live - was the late 1991 rave conversion experience I describe in the intro to Energy Flash. Well, the whole night really was that - as opposed to any specific deejay or group that played - and above it, it was the audience's dancing 'n' demeanor as much as the music 'n' lights that blew my eyes. But Orbital certainly were a crucial component of this baptismal immersion in a new culture.
Then the following year, I traipsed down to Sevenoaks for an interview and they gave me my very first glimpse of the Silver Box - I don't think they let me twiddle the knobs myself but they showed how the 303 makes those wibbly-wibbly acid sounds.
Phil and Paul then - and now.
Come to think of it, it was probably this very cubbyhole in which they showed me the 303 in '92.
Also come to think of it - Orbital were punk-is-dad before they were rave-is-dad. If I recall right they had been into anarcho-punk and Crass and stuff like that before getting swept up in acid house.
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Punk-gets-parental is not really news - I can remember when we were still in NYC and Kieran was little (so early 2000s), some of his pre-school friends's mums had a hobby band, all-female, playing punk rock. And then a few years later, at my brother's kids's elementary school in Silverlake, at a school fair or fund-raiser, there was this band of dads entertaining the assembled with punk cover versions.
And of course there's that thing of parents buying tiny T-shirts with the Pistols or Ramones or Clash logo on for their kiddies to wear. (We did that, I confess - before it was completely played out, honest!)
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(A) punk is (grand)dad...
Just watched Blitz (ooh but it's clunky) and there was the surprise of Paul Weller playing the little evacuee boy's grandfather - silvery hair swept back in the 1940s style, face lined with ridges. He looks distinguished, though, as an old gent.
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