I've always loved glam rock -- Bowie, The New York Dolls, Mott The Hoople, Queen, T. Rex. The flamboyant and gender-bending style. The attitude, sparkly and swagger. The first time I heard Sweet was Fox On The Run. It was my favorite song on the Dazed and Confused Soundtrack. I think it was the swirling, bubbling synthesizer that drew me in. At the time I had no idea that Sweet was a part of the 1970s glam world. Later, I found out that they sang Ballroom Blitz. That's the same band? Then, in college, I bought Action and fell in love with tunes like Lady Starlight and the title track. As I pieced together their discography (in a pre-Internet age), I noticed that the band's sound inexplicably wavered between hard rock, glam and bubble-gum pop. I could never put my finger on what Sweet was all about. I just loved a lot of their songs.
This week, I picked up a copy of their 1977 album, Level Headed. The album is anything but steady (as the title would have you believe). Each song seems to be a world of its own: hard rock a la Cheap Trick, Bolanesque acoustic numbers and then... disco. Capitol Records' A&R folks must have been shaking their heads when it came to this LP.
In the end, the unsteady and unpredictable nature of the album is what I love. But, it is the final song on side A that I absolutely love: Love Is Like Oxygen. This song is a perfect statement about major label rock & roll at the close of the 70s. It was confused, sometimes desperate and experimenting with its own identity as a means of survival, often unsuccessfully. It is the glorious, final pop hit of a band in the midst of an identity crisis. It scored a top ten hit in several countries, including Finland! Love Is Like Oxygen is as perfect a swan song as you're ever gonna hear.
In the late 70s, as punk and post-punk bands spiraled towards their new wave destinies, prog dinosaurs stood paralyzed in the shadows. Bands like the Sex Pistols were meteors, igniting a global firestorm that would trigger prog's extinction. The British music press (Melody Maker, Sounds, NME, etc.), once proponents of prog darlings Genesis, Yes and ELP, now bashed any band releasing songs in odd time signatures and singing about aliens and whales. The punk revolution had turned the U.K. music industry and press on its head within a year (1976-1977). For me, this is one of the most interesting times in pop music. Although prog groups saw their audiences rapidly dwindle (Yes audiences had dropped from 20,000 to 3,000 by 1980's Drama tour), many record labels had built fortunes on the works of prog artists and were willing to foot the bill for some interesting transitional experiments. Yes' Drama , ELPs' Works , Genesis' . ..And Then There Were Three... were p...
Never underestimate the power of corporeal politics. Today, hundreds of thousands of people marched through the streets of American cities demanding political action on gun control. In downtown Portland, ME thousands streamed down Congress St. and gathered at City Hall. I was there. It was powerful. When you are united with others in your community, marching, there is an energy -- a sense of unstoppable momentum. It is also reassuring. We are not alone in standing up to the insanity. We are one. I am inspired by the Americans (especially the women and young people) who have once again discovered the power of peaceful, non-violent protest. If we continue to march in these numbers, politicians will hear us. The continuing volume of our chants and rhythm of our marching feet, knocking at their door, will remind them to legislate on behalf of us -- the people. All of the money in the world can't pay back the moral deficit and heal the wounded conscience of NRA-backed legislators...
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