Saturday, October 06, 2007

Punk's still dead

As we type, showing on Smash Hits TV is Donny Tourette's Top 20 Hair-Don'ts.

This if anything throws into sharp context this NME campaign to get the 7" reissue of God Save The Queen to number one, today supported by Ryan 'death to mainstream indie' Jarman, a man so completely against the major label alternative junta that he's dating Kate Nash. (And incidentally, next time you accidentally watch Transmission, keep this in mind - Steve Jones interviewed Nash on T4 a couple of weeks ago and teased out of her that yes, she is squiring of late, and her boyfriend is called Ryan. Jones, whose job it is to be across all showbiz gossip and musical manoevurings, had clearly never heard of him.)

And yet, for a magazine that claims to only look for the next big thing, this is a depressingly retrograde step to take. The fact it was 'only' number two is so entrenched in the fabric of the British punk story of 1976-77, almost Magna Carta in its detail of really outselling Rod Stewart's I Don't Want To Talk About It (a claim, incidentally, for which there is no supporting evidence beyond hearsay and supposition, let alone discussion of why a record banned from the BBC, IBA and almost all chain record stores should have outsold Stewart at the peak of his singles popularity). It doesn't need pointless further promotion to line the pockets of realtor agent John Lydon just because of what he supposedly represents. There is no 'wrong' to be 'righted'.

1 comment:

Chris Brown said...

I've always thought had my doubts about that story too, although I don't blame them for making it up if they did.
The point I really wanted to make (and will probably make again, so brace yourselves) is that if you've spent the last three decades dining out on the story that your record was so dangerous that the the entire record industry and media conspired to prevent it from being a Number One, doesn't campaigning for it to be one now constitute an admission that it's no longer any kind of threat to anything.

Oh, and it's funny how Mr "I hate corporate indie" Jarman never seemed to mind his records being distributed by V2, founded by Richard Branson and owned until recently by Morgan Stanley.