rockfunkboogie

So doggone funky this Elvin Bishop tune - love the way it twirls and sashays in the gtr-solo-y sections

I expect if I trawled through the Struttin My Stuff album and his other records of that period I might find one other gem at least 2/3rds as groovy and charming

But "can I be bothered?" is the question (so far, the answer is "no")

The references in "Struttin'" to the girl in Atlanta who "ain't nuthin but a Georgia peach"  got me thinking of this other rock / funk / boogie beauty. which starts with the lines  about a Georgia woman suffering from a mysterious ailment and in dire need of remedial rhythm



That drummer with the pointy little beard looks coked out of his mind - unless it's just the itchy-itchy funk that's making him twitch

"Two degrees in be-bop, a phd in swing"

Now what this got me thinking of again is how the date of these recordings / performances - 1975 for both Little Feat on Old Grey Whistle Test and "Struttin My Stuff"  - is just a few years distance in time from punk-funk moves like Go4's "Damaged Goods" or various songs on Talking Heads's first two albums

Begging the question so why was that move such a big deal?  Wasn't it a bit after-the-fact?



I mean, sure, the postpunk rending of funk is "tense and nervous and unrelaxed" -   a different, uptight feel

It's less "black" - more suburban stilted stiff-jointed neurotic white-geek

So more striking - potentially leading to a new sound, new direction - rather than simply replicating (and reinforcing ye olde muso values of slick lickmanship that Old Wave white bands shared with their soul and R&B counterparts)

New Wavers doing it themselves and slight wrong versus  Robert Palmer actually recording with The Meters (and Lowell George)



Still, with Old Wavers routinely adopting funky modes all through the mid-70s , it remains odd that "we like funk and disco and what do you think of that, eh?" was such a powerhouse postpunk rhetorical stance to make

As I observed on an earlier occasion, talking about "nifty groovers"

"You almost wonder what the point of postpunk's vaunted embrace of funk and disco etc was as a gesture -  given that the funk was already so deeply imbricated with mainstream rock music. It didn't need to be added or restored, it's there. "

Take this Al Green cover - for which Talking Heads got a lot of praise and even achieved a modest chart hit in the US -  this is just a standard sort of Old Waver who loves black music move isn't it?

 (A wonderful and clever version of course, with the Jerry Harrison aqueous keyboards)





Robert Palmer learned to do the whiteboy-funky thing in the New Wave mode of doing it eventually






It's not even a question of amnesia of recent musical history - pre-punk seeming on the other side of Year Zero -  because you had Old Wavers doing their funky-disco move at more or less the same time as the New Wavers like Blondie











This one below by Paul McC actually sounds a bit like Talking Heads - or ACR's cover of "Shack Up" (at least until the goofy chorus)




Old Wavers disguised as New Wavers (but still Old Wavers at bottom) doing the funky-disco move



The Blockheads used to be called Loving Awareness!.

Of course the intersection point between rock and disco is the word "boogie" which in music history is polysemous - as I explored in this Guardian blog

Another version of the sublime "Rock and Roll Doctor"  (wish they'd done a whole album in exactly this vein)




Live "Struttin"



Bishop on the box

puerility

 B.A. Robertson - smarmy comedian popster with a string of UK hits. Starting big ("Bang Bang" #2) and ("Knocked It Off", Top Ten), then dwindling fast ("Kool in the Kaftan", "To Be Or Not To Be"). Followed by career as talk show host / TV presenter, notable mostly for having enraged Annabel Lwin of Bow Wow Wow into a live-on-TV rant about the shitness of his "shit show" (see end of post).

Julie Burchill argued that B.A. found the gap in the market that opened when Ian Dury lost his knack for tickling the national funny-bone  and also lost his tunesmith-supreme partner Chas Jankel. A nice theory although "Reasons To Be Cheerful Part 3" reached  Number 3 only the month before "Bang Bang" hit. But it's true that the Dury/Blockheads star was in the descendant, with Do It Yourself not selling well, and soon there would be didn't-quite-make-the-grade minor hit hit "I Wanna Be Straight" and Laughter, mirthless and altogether hitless.

"Bang Bang" certainly does seem to be an attempt to repeat (with just enough difference) the formula for "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick", Dury & the Blockheads monster hit of the preceding winter. Note the percussive echo of "stick" with "bang". Difference factor: instead of sex-as-timeless-universal force exalted by Dury, with "Bang" it's Romance ("when love has called/BANG BANG/the mighty fall"). And where "Rhythm Stick" roams  across Geography ("Eskimo/Arapaho/Move their body/To and fro" etc), the verses of "Bang Bang" traverse History (Marquis de Sade, Shakespeare, Samson and Delilah... and choicest verse: "Tony and Cleo struck out for the free-o/. down Egypt's way/But Caesar had squeezed her in Rome on his quilt for a day " etc).  It's a bit of name-droppy list song too, like "Reasons to Be Cheerful."

Clinching the Dury-manque surrogate role is the fact that B.A.'s delivery/ song persona - despite being a Scot man with a chunky brogue in conversation -- is Mockney wideboy.

"Cool For Cats" might also be the template here...  the sound of the single does come from a similar New Wave meets disco place.

The kind of "clever", catchy single that Radio One daytime deejays really really liked to get behind (see also Jona Lewie, Buggles, "One Night in Bangkok", et al) and yet was just New Wave enough for the earlier-in-the-night night time R1 deejays to play too.

Then B.A.R. did something I'm not sure had ever been done before -- follow his big hit with a song about having just had a bit hit ("Knocked It Off"), his feelings of taken aback triumph (like a fluke goal scored), success going to his head, but with faint but distinctly discernible undercurrent of worry about being a one-hit-wonder.  No  need to worry, the even-smarmier "Knocked"got to number 8.




Of these... the less said the better.

Oh dear

Double scotch...

Here's B.A. floundering with two of my favorite new pop stars