No misogynists or transphobes today, just music!
In the summer of 1977, Marc Bolan of T. Rex got his own music TV show on British television, and it was one of the strangest and most fascinating things I’ve ever seen. All six of the shows that were produced are now up on YouTube.
Bolan, a glam idol a few years past his prime, seemed to have a budget of roughly £4, with cheesier sets than most 70s game shows, but nonetheless was able to convince several big name musical acts, as well as some promising newcomers, to come up to the Granada Television studios in Manchester to perform.
This wasn’t a talk show. There were no interviews with any of the musicians who appeared on the show, just brief intros from the spaced-out Bolan, who also managed to fit three (badly) lip-synched songs of his own in every episode.
There was no studio audience either; the show simply ran canned applause over an animated segment as the various songs ended. But they did have a small troupe of more-or-less synchronized backup dancers who danced over recorded music several times per episode.
The show’s biggest get was David Bowie, who performed a low-energy version of his then-hut-song “Heroes.” He was also supposed to perform with Marc, but Marc fell over partway through the number and the show’s producers ran the truncated segment under the show’s end credits.
Along with Bowie, the show hosted such British pop luminaries as the Bay City Rollers, 10cc, and … Hawkwind (?), as well as a number of newer punk-inflected bands like The Jam, the Boomtown Rats, Eddie and the Hot Rods, and Generation X, featuring a very young Billy Idol. Other acts included a band called Rosetta Stone, most of whose members seemed to be about 14 years old, and the Radio Stars, apparently friends of Marc’s, who performed the same mediocre song on both of their appearances on the show.
There were also some eminently forgettable pop acts that are probably best fast-forwarded through.
The show was slated for at least one more season, but, tragically, Bolan was killed in a car accident before any more episodes besides the original six were filmed.
Check out the Wikipedia entry on the show for more details as well as lists of the performers on the various episodes.
Here’s episode one, the first in a Youtube playlist of all the episodes.
Oh, and feel free to post anything you’ve been listening to in the comments below.
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Hawkwind? Cool! Which song did they perform?
@personalpest Hawkwind performed Quark, Strangeness and Charm. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_cUrKnq9CdM
responding to personalpest: Hawkwind performed “Quark, Strangeness, and Charm.” If you search YouTube for “hawkwind marc bolan” you’ll find the performance without having to fast forward through the rest of the show.
Welp, gotta find that Hawkwind episode now. I hope they had their dancer with them.
I was going to suggest that Rosetta Stone looked about 14 because they were still going well into the 90s but, it turns out, that was Rosetta Stone (Irisih band) (1977-84), not Rosetta Stone (goth band) (1988-present).
Members of ‘Radio Stars’ had once been in the band ‘John’s Children’ at the same time as Marc. Their friendship went back some years.
Ooo I have a (very tenuous) Marc Bolan connection in that his singer friend Linda Lewis was a regular in my local at one time.
She would make me laugh because she’d very solemnly tell me that she would never discuss it, due to her respect for his wife who she very much admired, but she did indeed sleep with Bolan. And then she’d wander off to “not discuss it” with someone else, haha.
Here’s one of her hits.
@steelcaress:
I take it “Top” and “Bottom” were considered too risqué at the time?
A musician friend once invited me along when he was meeting up with Huw Lloyd-Langton.
There were quite a few people there and we got chatting. After finding out about everyone I said to my mate, “Hey Robb, we’re the only people at this table who haven’t been in Hawkwind.” To which he replied “Oh, I used to be in Hawkwind.”
Huw did say that next time he gigged I could pop on stage and wave a tambourine for one number so I didn’t feel left out.
Speaking of bands that everyone has been in…
Fun Fact: the 1976 science-fiction novel Time of the Hawklords (1) portrayed mythologized versions of Hawkwind rallying the people in an apocalyptic future; it was a brazenly corny my-rock-idols-adventuring-in-Storyland exercise of the sort to be found all over Fanfiction.net—which I regard as its quark, strangeness, and charm. It’s this kind of story:
…Next came Lord Rudolph the Black, most recent champion sworn to the ranks of the Company of the Hawk. About his lips there played an eternal, mysterious smile as he adjusted the strap of his great bass called Boneshiverer, which all men feared and all women loved.
(Among other things, their eccentric dancer Stacia is a catgirl—specifically described as such, and I get the impression she wouldn’t object.)
(1) Initially attributed jointly to Michael Butterworth and Michael Moorcock—to the latter’s surprise; later editions are credited to Butterworth “based on an idea by Michael Moorcock”. Moorcock, of course, would have a lengthy and storied career inspiring—and often collaborating in—Heavy Mithril,
And here’s Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine”, with Lemmy and Stacia:
It’s been a rough couple of weeks for me and having a Hawkwind discussion just pop up here is cheering me up.
@Full Metal Ox
I’ve heard that’s one of the only examples of Stacia wearing clothes on stage! Of course, that might be apocryphal.
Lemmy is rather underrated as a songwriter. I wonder if the band ever regretted dumping him.
@ LouCPurr
Just for you…
According to Wikipedia, Hawkwind (including it’s present lines, but not including The Amazing Stacia) has had some fifty different members over it’s life.
And The Fall, (mentioned above) had had sixty-six.
Make of that what you will.
Alan, John’s Children, aha, that makes sense.
Also, there’s a whole book devoted to interviews/profiles of ex-fall members.
I will have to do a Fall post. They’re actually my favorite, band. RIP Mark.
Had not realized there were so many Hawkwind fans about.
More good news for fans of quirky and hard-to-come-by cult music: the entire run of New Wave Theatre(1) is on the Internet Archive…
https://archive.org/details/new-wave-theatre-episodes-1-through-25
…as well as (for the moment) YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV7jbhKEWwaF3hK2V9wKynrqY894o-ID6
(1) 1982-1983 and thereafter in reruns on USA Network’s Night Flight; hosted by the late Peter Ivers, it was a free-for-all mosh pit of the L.A. music and performance art scene, punctuated with fake commercials and sardonic pseudophilosophical rambling.
A sample episode:
There was a rather excellent series called Ideal. Mark E Smith was in that. As Jesus.
For lots of members, while it doesn’t quite measure up to the others discussed, I still remember the ‘Genealogy of Jethro Tull’ diagram that was in the 20th anniversary album, which listed all the (twelve, I think) different lineups up to that time, along with all the different members of Jethro Tull over the years, and all the other bands that those members had been in before or after, charting it all out like a family tree.
Just checked on PACER to see if any developments in Trump’s recent legal shenanigans.
As people may have heard he’s been having a bit of trouble finding lawyers willing to represent him. So who has he got…
Oh wow.
http://www.flnd.uscourts.gov/filing-without-attorney
(He does have 3 lawyers willing to act for him; but they don’t have rights of audience)
Anyway, to get back to music…
“Quark, Strangeness, and Charm” is my favorite Hawkwind song.
I met Michael Moorcock once. Maybe twice? But definitely once, to speak to with just the two of us about 10 years ago.
The 70s are still with us here at WHTM.
I don’t know how you “explore” or “plumb” the depths you do in this stuff but keep hold of the rip cord so you can get out if it begins to consume you.
@GSS ex-noob:
The 70s are still with us here at WHTM.
Which has the ring of a US classic rock radio station slogan.
People here love reading legal documents right? So further to the above, this is Trump’s
rantmotion asking for the appointment of a special master. It gives some interesting detail though about what went down on the day of the seizure.https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763.1.0.pdf
And to keep on the musical theme.