Horslips - Fool the beast Live 1975

10 Seventies Acts I was never over-impressed with

1. Elton John
2. David Bowie
3. Pink Floyd
4. Rod Stewart
5. Bruce Springsteen

6. Black Sabbath

7. Bee Gees

8. Kiss

9. Alice Cooper

10. Billy Joel

Strawbs - Lay Down

Seventies pop music, eh?

Obscure but good stuff from 1973

The Golden Child by Penelope Fitzgerald

I recently read another Penelope Fitzgerald novel, her first (of nine). The Golden Child came out in 1977 and it has been said that it "offers a satirical version of the King Tut exhibition at the British Museum" (of 1972). It also pokes fun at museum politics, academic scholars and Cold War spying. it has 11 main characters and without visual clues I got some of them mixed up a bit adn the denouement which is of the detective genre was not that gripping but it is otherwise good stuff with some very funny lines. I wished I'd marked the funny lines. I read that the original draft was 75, 000 word but the publishers got her to cut it too 50,000. Good thing.

Some examples I found

In order to continue living in a very small terraced house in Claphain South, [ ... ] he had to repay to the Whitstable and Protective Building Society the sum of f 118 a month. This figure loomed so large in Waring's daily thoughts, was so punctually waiting for him during any idle moment, that it sometimes seemed to him that his identity was changing and that there was no connection with the human being of five years ago who had scorned concentration on material things.

'[t1he true international solidarity was not between workers, but between queuers'.

The courtyard was entirely filled with people. A restrained noise rose from them, like the grinding of the sea at slack water. They made slight surges forward, then back, but always gaining an inch.

One Inch Rock and Germaine Greer

Mentioning T Rex's One Inch Rock set me thinking about that strange song and what it may mean. Some time ago it crossed my mind that "I asked her name she said Germaine" was a reference to Germaine Greer. That may be the case. Quite what more we can say I know not.

In the book Ride a White Swan: The Lives and Death of Marc Bolan Lesley-Ann Jones writes

Times were a'changing on all fronts. Germaine Greer, outspoken Australian feminist and International Times and Oz magazine contributor, was now a household name, thanks to her best-selling 1970 work The Female Eunuch. Championing the cause of women's liberation beyond 'mere' equality with men, Greer became a high-profile figure on the London scene, and an unlikely friend of Marc (Bolan), (DJ) Jeff (Dexter) and June (Child). Jeff recounts outrageous nights in restaurants, when Germaine could always be relied upon to let down her hair and get up to mischief while Marc would be beside himself with mirth.

A website here refers to One Inch Rock as "a thinly veiled attack on Germaine Greer".

The lyrics are

Met a woman she's spouting prose She's got luggage eyes and a roman nose

Her body is slung from side to side Need a lift she said much obliged

I'm riding piggy-back Then I came to her shack

We go inside the place it's a mess She said my name's the liquid poetess

She unties her mouth And her buckskin dress

She drinks from a bottle labelled tenderness I'm in one hand in the other's a can

She puts me in the can And smiles through the wall

I got the horrors 'cause I'm one inch tall Next thing I know's a girl by my side

Dressed in a bayleaf she's trying to hide I asked her name she said Germaine

Do the rock do the one inch rock.

Another cassette

Another cassette I found is Volume 1 of a two volume collection of 28 classic rock numbers. I don't think I ever owned Volume 2. I bought it in a sale and Volume 2 was missing then.

Volume 2 contained T Rex/Ride a white swan, The Who/My generation, Peter Frampton/Show me the way. Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel/Make Me Smile, Canned Heat/Let's Work Together, Fleetwood Mac/Albatross – which I would have loved (the rest are okay - Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity/This Wheel's On Fire, Pink Floyd/Money, Dire Straits/Lady Writer, Lou Reed/ Walk On The Wild Side, Lynyrd Skynyrd/Freebird. Meatloaf/Dead Ringer For Love, Far Corporation/Stairway To Heaven, Deep Purple/Smoke On The Water).

If I remember rightly I bought the cassette for Free/My Brother Jake plus Derek And The Dominos/Layla, Thin Lizzy/Waiting For An Alibi, Status Quo/Caroline, Santana She's Not There, Electric Light Orchestra/Roll Over Beethoven, Jethro Tull/Living In The Past, Rod Stewart/Maggie May, Black Sabbath/Paranoid. I'm alsop happy enough with Mott The Hoople/All The Young Dudes, The Jimi Hendrix Experience/Voodoo Chile, Cream/Strange Brew , Rainbow/Since You Been Gone/Traffic/Paper Sun.

In some ways this is a broad range of rock and shows what good stuff was going down back in the late sixties and early seventies. I currently have on my ipod and listen to exactly half (ie 14) of these tracks.