Thursday 5 July 2012

I have lots of writing to do, so it was excellent light relief the other night to watch a few episodes of Revolver from 1978, with Peter Cook goading the audience and lots of post-punk bands, and some reggae and funk, playing live on blistering form. What was really striking was how politically-charged so much of it was: my small sample of a few shows included The Rezillos 'Top of the Pops' (critique of consumerism and pop music) and Elvis Costello’s 'Radio Radio' (angry critique of media policy), not to mention the dazzlingly sarcastic 'Glad to be Gay' from Tom Robinson, which is very angry indeed, but not about the music biz this time.  OK, so far, so post-punk, but … this was all on a fairly mainstream TV show made by ATV and produced by Mickie Most, the same Mickie Most who shaped the cleancut pop careers of Suzi Quatro, Smokie, Mud and co., and who was best known to the public as a judge on the talent show New Faces. Can you see where I’m going with this? Can you imagine Simon Cowell putting a music show together that featured bands slagging off Apple, Google, and today's media billionaires who make a packet out of musicians? I can’t.  Nostalgia's clearly not what it used to be.

[ah, youtube link above is now dead. search for 'revolver peter cook' instead]