name the one album that most competently bridges the gap between glam rock and post punk

no wonder steve albini loves them.
"he's a whore" is the perfect example.

yes, cause its ahead of time.
(reminds also of the later mbv,"fall","birthday party","talking heads" etc...)

not really the experimentalism of post-punk, but the first one is a pseudo-glam proto-punk record by an art rocker and the second is post-Roxy Music stuff by a band a bit energized by pub-rock and punk, esp. on the third LP.

I think part of that legend comes from Johnny Rotten playing that song on the infamous radio show he did while still a Sex Pistol.

http://www.freakapuss.com/imgs/zarjazred.jpg

Right, so more like Aerosol Grey Machine, but of course that's not really a proto-punk glam record either.

"roxy music - for your pleasure"

OTM

Amazed nobody has mentioned Zolar X yet though.

(Not to mention anything by Boney M. And about a hundred other things.)

Like say *U.K. Squeeze* (their first and most post-punk one).

Part of my problem is that I'm not really sure what people mean by "post-punk." (In 1980, I don't think it was a *kind* of music, or at least not a specific *sound*; people would have been more likely to call the stuff new wave or, uh, punk-funk {which was kinda stupid I admit.)

Or else *Crossing the Red Sea With the Adverts.* I don't know which.

(Which reminds me: When did Split Enz start? Weren't they some kind a glam band long before "I Got You"? Where are all the sheepfuxors when you need them?)

xp obv

Honestly, Roxy Music and Bowie are probably the best choices, for visibility reasons if nothing else. So I'm being half facetious. (Wait, though: What about Kraftwerk????)

This is also the album that bridges the gap between glam and comedy.

Actually, my new REAL nomination though (beat this) for somebody linking glam to post-punk is George Clinton. Not sure what album I'd pick though. But he's a link for sure.

Not glam? What, with those shoulderpads?

http://ilyka.mu.nu/images/david_byrne_big_suit-thumb.jpg http://www.derbydeadpool.co.uk/images/celebs/glittg.jpg

> the post-punk ethos of the times...<

See, again, I'm not sure what people mean by this. Were there any bands at the time who actually defined *themselves* as post-punk? If not, how was there a "post-punk ethos"? I mean, I love those *New York Noise* compilation CDs as much as the next guy (the new edition is really great by the way), but I wonder if said "ethos" exists only in retrospect.

I've met 'em both (OK, not at the same time admittedly, but still...) and I'm pretty sure they're not!

So anyway...

Or the Skatt Brothers' album.

Or the first Elton Motello album, with "Jet Boy Jet Girl."

In the UK at least, there were certainly an awful lot of former punk bands / musicians; and bands / musicians who had been inspired by the first wave of punk; who, by 1979, were anxious to distance themselves as far as possible from what punk was [being defined as by the media / turning into].

Consequently the ethos of those bands / musicians bore far more resemblance to the original punk ethos than it did to anything else; or indeed than anything else - including what was by then passing for "punk" - did.

(x-post)

And please show me ONE thread on ILX where Chuck doesn't mention both Boney M and the Skatt Brothers?

Anyway, I wish you would explain how they don't fit, rather than complaining about me mentioning them. Musically, how are "Walk the Night" and "Nightflight to Venus" not a bridge? Space, glitter, propulsive dancebeats, noisy guitars, rods beneath coats rammed down throats -- what else do you need?

But if you want to argue that I should've said the first Cars album instead, you have a point.

A case could also maybe be made for the first couple 10cc LPs, I'm thinking. Or maybe not.

I tend to think Low / Heroes / Lodger (and Scary Monsters for that matter) are firmly on the post punk side rather than forming any sort of bridge.

That said, you're right, Station To Station is kind of a lazy / obvious choice.... maybe Diamond Dogs, although a lesser album, better fits this particular bill?

I don't remember the tune. Apart from mixing punk and funk, does it actually sound like any post-punk bands, though?

It would be interesting to know the history of the term. I've always associated it particularly w/ British bands - PiL, early Rough Trade bands, etc.

I don't actually remember the term "Post Punk" having been about at the time; although there were seemingly hundreds of names for all the different scenes and movements and genres and sub-genres and sub-sub-genres and sub-sub-genres (Spandau Ballet would have been called "Blitz Kids" and later "New Romantics"; Human League were probably called "Futurist" to start with....); with the term "New Wave" being used as a generall catch-all for just about everything and everyone that hadn't already been established before the 1977 watershed and which didn't fit into the new narrow definition of "Punk" as having to be 90MPH, guitar-based, shouting, swearing, thrashing, spitting, pogoing, spiked hair and leather jackets with studs in.

The first ones that spring to my mind would be Siouxsie & The Banshees, Magazine, Joy Division....

As for "post-punk," I heard it plenty in the '80s, no less for American bands than British ones. But again, it was a catch-all (pretty much the same as "new wave,"), not a specific genre., which narrowcasting I never noticed happened until the past few years.

Anyway, right now though I'm thinking the real answer to this question might be the first Foreigner album. (and they were both British *and* American, so all bases are covered!)

And since everybody will think I'm "joking" with that nomination (which I'm not, I'm thinking about their sound), just to make them happy, I'll ask: How glam were Cabaret Voltaire? I'm thinking they might be the answer that makes everybody happy. (Though the Cars were better. And glammier. And post-punkier.)

Good call!

By the same token, what of Gloria Mundi?

Well yeah, in England. (Or MAYBE in the US, but usually only if you read Simon Frith columns.)

xp - Of those, the "New Romantic" tag was huge in the US.

If I had to match them into pairs I guess that's probably the way I'd do it.

"Well yeah, in England."

Without wishing to sound unduly nationalistic or jingoistic ('cos, believe me, I most certainly ain't) did anywhere else actually matter that much (in musical terms, I mean) between 1979 and 1984?

From where I was sitting (which admittedly was in the UK - so obviously that would have tended to affect my perspective just ever so slightly!) apart from No Wave and a few other odd isolated bands / musicians and pockets of activity, there was fuck all happening anywhere else. Even France had a better scene than America, which seemed to spend most of that time catching up with what had happened in the UK during '77 and '78.

There's certainly nowhere else I'd rather have been during that time.

And hey wait, what about Savage Rose? (At least I didn't say the Shaggs.)

Though ACTUALLY, if you want to define post-punk as Raincoats Delta 5 Bush Tetras Au Pairs, another possibility might be...the first Runaways album! Or at least, uh, *Horses*.

That will do. It's more ILM to drag in all the stuff that doesn't rock and isn't catchy. Why not one of Bolan's shitty records, like Zip Gun.

Or what album effectively gets the rock 'n' roll out of teh glam and replaces it with [your favorite fill in the blank]. It would be helpful to have a lot of Trouser Press and New York Rocker back issues at this point.

This is my favorite thing I have seen anybody write all week. No kidding, I'm speechless.

But you really shouldn't dis France until you hear *both* Shakin Street albums. I mean it.

I think of Wire's third album alot when I think of Eno/Bowie/Roxy/Pop relevance to post-punk.

Walk the Night sounds great next to Gang of Four, sure. That makes it post-punk?

The Cabaret Voltaire song that sounds like the Seeds? How about No Escape? Two vaguely nuggets-esque tracks, one being a Seeds cover hardly makes them a glam band. Have you heard the rest of the music they released on Rough Trade around that time?

(And yeah, I've got like four or five albums of Cabaret Voltaire's early stuff, which is much better than their later stuff, and much much better than their much much later stuff. As I said above, I nominated them only because they seemed like the kind of band that most people here might agree on. Perhaps was wrong. But look what I wrote: I never *said* they were glam; I *asked* if they were. Obviously it really depends on how you define the term.)

Hell, the whole frigging '70s population of Cleveland, probably.

-- *From the Velvets to the Voidoids," p. 122

xp

xp x 2

I have the Metro album on vinyl, though! (Is that an expensive rare cult record now? If so, yay!)

(And actually, the Cars were Roxy at least half of the way, too.)

Because again Roxy/Bowie would seem to have more to do with inspiring New Wave then "post-punk per se" (though Stewart raised a few examples - don't know if Siouxsie really qualifies as "post-punk per se," though) so if the original poster was not thinking that "post-punk" = all New Wave made after 1978, then maybe they're not the best example of the competent bridging of the gap.

You are a crazy person. Of course they inspired post-punk.

Tim, that's just silly.

All of which brings us back to George Clinton. (You don't deny he must have inspired the Gang of Four and Pop Group, do you Tim?) (But wait...was MILES DAVIS glam?? I wonder.)

Adam & The Ants did it! So did Bow Wow Wow!

all of it I guess! I give up.

I don't know. Probably.

And actually. nobody has mentioned PETER GABRIEL, either. Thank you very much. (In 1980, his third Peter Gabriel album was right up there with Second Edition Entertainment! Scary Monsters Remain in Light with all the post-punk post-prog post-funk fans you know. And he used to dress up like a FLOWER and stuff. So I think he may well our man.)

right, which is why i'm going with Adam & The Ants. Although part of me just wants to say Denim and be done with it.

Oh wait, Doctors of Madness was that reissue from two years ago that nobody even heard of before then, right? i have that! It's good! (And I think Dan put it out, duh!)

By definition a bridge connects things on both ends of the bridge.

post-prog death-glam. from 76. the pistols weren't trying to save me from THIS, were they? what a weird hybrid. yeah, bowie/roxy but hammill/nelson too and glimpses of some weird future where The Final Cut, Tonic For The Troops, and Tonio K inspire punk fiddle players to swallow razorblades and hit you with flowers. this future never happened. and for the record, i kinda hate anyone who has ever been described as a "punk" fiddle player. those dudes in the kilts and mohawks. you know the ones. but hey, waitaminute, Rush+Green Day=Yellow Card. They're top 40 or something, aren't they? Yeah, but they suck. And they don't have songs as good as "Suicide City" or "In Camera (Huis Clos)" Or "Out!" which would make a great punk anthem if it were sped-up and it lost the phasing and lugubrious phrasing. Is it a gay anthem? could be. Certainly the part that goes "I'm so incredibly down today/Nothing seems to go right/Just when I seemed set up with this guy/He flipped and said he'd seen the light" could be read that way. That and the title. what a confusing time. the picture on the back tells the tale. Pub rockers with glam war-paint on their faces and punk hair. You didn't know if you were coming or going! anyway, thanks to Kid Strange, Urban Blitz, Stoner (a bass player named Stoner! Nice!), Peter Di Lemma, and John Leckie for the album. And thanks to Rene Eyre for an album cover that just keeps on giving. Love Kid's lisp too. It wins one of my top spots. (Right behind Pearls Before Swine, Legendary Pink Dots, Blow Monkeys, and Current 93.)

-- scott seward (skotro...), September 14th, 2004.

and bowie and roxy were making post-punk records after, um, punk too.

Hahaha! very true.

I'd buy a DVD of the TV doc they did decades ago. I saw it on TV and they didn't even have an import record you could find in the US! Or at least Pennsylvania.

http://www.youtube.com/w/Deep-Purple---Hush---Playboy-After-Dark%2C-1969?v=1WyFL6Mwlv4&search=deep%20purple

I mentioned Mars. And Steve Treatment who was very Marc Bolan-influenced.

Don't tell me ABC cuz they were New Ro.

ALL OF THEM!!!!

I don't know The Idiot; is that a particularly glam-oriented Iggy record? I don't think of Iggy as being that much of a glam guy - I mean, sort of; he's sort of glammed out on the cover of Raw Power.

Maybe I conflate arty New Wave with Post-Punk, maybe the Fans are a bad example. I dunno.

There's probably more post-punk in the Roxy/Bowie/Eno/Iggy vein then in the Wanna Buy A Bridge thing. Maybe it's a Northern UK vs. Southern UK thing. Manchester and Sheffield vs. London.

Well, yeah, and Ozzy Osbourne was a big Paul McCartney fan. Which bands have more in common, though, Black Sabbath and the Beatles or the Stooges and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks?

Beet?
Cantaloupe?
Tomato?
Watermelon?
Banana?

I have this, the sound track anyway, on one of the Deep Purple deluxe editions from last year.

I swear I never even heard of Doctors of Madness til today.

About a year after the special I was able to snag a double album. Really wish I still had it. My mom went insane, etc...

Starz - S/T Debut

Exclamation point. Salacious material and filth included.

Let's invoke Michael des Barres bands post Silverhead but not Detective. Chequered Past. Stuff Earl Slick did post Earl Slick Band, which is first Silver Condor record.

Speak for yourself. Get BeBop's reissue of Live in the Air Age.

a top 200 all-time album for me. still sounds fooking sweet 25 years later! it's glam like humphrey bogart, and post-punk like mr jones.

Not to mention Angel Face, Asphalt Jungle, Les Dogs, Edith Nylon, Les Frenchies, Gazoline, Guilty Razors, Loose Heart, L.U.V., Marie Et Les Garcons, Metal Urbain, La Souris Delinguee, Starshooter, Stinky Toys,
Taxi Girl or Telephone, obviously, right?

OTM in every conceivable respect.

Without wishing to nit-pick, the original incarnation of Adam & The Ants (by which I mean the bondage / S&M fixated sociopaths who recorded "Young Parisians", "Deutsche Girls", "Cartrouble", "Zerox" and Dirk Wears White Sox rather than the camp glitter-rock pantomime act that emerged from their ashes in 1980) were very definitely, by every definition that I've ever been aware of, a punk band.

Dirk Wears White Sox would be an interesting nomination 'though.

You might be forgiven for thinking so but unfortunately the term "post punk" is a misleading misnomer and reality ain't quite that simple.

This thread is littered with bands who were musically (and, I would argue, if I had the time the energy or the inclination, attitudinally) "post punk" both before and during punk.

I can assure you that everyone who was paying attention to the UK punk / post-punk scene had heard of them.

Even if they hadn't heard of them before Dave Vanian joined them in 1978, they certainly heard of them when he did.

Not that it helped their album sales much.

I think part of that legend comes from Johnny Rotten playing that song ("The People You Were Going To") on the infamous radio show he did while still a Sex Pistol.

Except he didn't play that song, he played "The Institute of Mental Health (Burning)", which isn't remotely punky and doesn't sound mych like Van der Graaf either.

How glam were Cabaret Voltaire?

Cabaret Voltaire always always ALWAYS said the biggest influence on then when they started was Roxy Music, esp. a gig they played in Sheffield ca. '72. Music AND dress.

"Do you see Siouxsie as being more in the Roxy Music camp? Joy Division in the Bowie trilogy camp? Magazine ... ?"

Pretty much everyone was in the "Bowie camp". The "Roxy camp" was a subset. How many Roxy fans didn't like Bowie? Or hadn't been Bowie fans?

Because again Roxy/Bowie would seem to have more to do with inspiring New Wave then "post-punk per se

BRIAN ENO WAS IN ROXY MUSIC!!!!!

Are you calling me out? Am I gonna have to throw down?

... probably not the exact quote. I doubt very much that the Fall were influenced by Roxy Music but, then again, I don't know - Martin Bramah had a touch of the Phil Manzaneras about him

What language is this? If I'm understanding you correctly then I must assure you I'm most certainly not asking you out - and even if I was, the last thing I'd want would be for you to go down.

It really doesn't bear thinking about.

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/08.21.03/gifs/count-0334.jpg

I can only talk from experience (see my Musical Education thread). My sister was a glam rocker and a punk - she got into the Velvets as a direct result of Bowie, she also had a Neu! album, which I'm pretty sure she didn't buy on the recommendation of Dave Brock!

I'm trying to start a Biggie/Tupac style feud over the fact that you called my Station to Station choice lazy. I can see you're not gonna be much help.

Anybody else have choice words over the idea that Station to Station is the most competent bridge between glam and post punk? Bring it on, fuckers!!!!

On what planet? Certainly not in the States -- well, except for Tangerine Dream, maybe. I remember being in Germany in the early '80s, while I was already writing for the Voice, and almost thinking I was *discovering* those groups. I don't even think I remember the term "kraut rock" being used for them until, hell, the late '80s at least. You'd hear Can mentioned sometimes when people were talking about PiL, but honestly, I think people now overrate the extent to which kraut rock was a reference point in punk or new wave when it happened. (KRAFTWERK were, to an extent, but you didn't name them.) I honestly think Amon Duul and Faust were really obscure to American post-punks, at least, and maybe to Brits too. (In my metal book, published in 1991, I group Haspshash and the Coloured Coat in with the "unthwarted-by-talent improvise-freely-and-babble-Krishna-nonsense-atop-an-obsessive-bongo-groove unidentified-flying-rock" of Amon Duul, the Godz, Yoko, Can, Faust, and the Chambers Brothers; even then, I don't know that I'd heard anybody call it kraut-rock yet.

Tim, I could go back and check, but refresh my memory: Who do you think this thread belongs to? You keep nixing all the other bands everybody else nominates because, um, they don't sound like the Raincoats or whatever. Which is fine, but who does that leave for you?

(Wait, maybe somebody SHOULD nominate Yoko, come to think of it.)

I asked which Krautrock bands had a presence in the U.K. Not the states.

"Tim, I could go back and check, but refresh my memory: Who do you think this thread belongs to?"

I think there have been a lot of interesting cases made. My original thought was really glam oriented post-punk guys: Steve Treatment and Ziro Baby. The idea of Roxy Music and Bowie as post-punk oriented glam guys, on the other hand, was what I was questioning. (If the Berlin trilogy Bowie albums are "post-punk" records, then it was post-punk happening while post-punk proper was happening. Is a record like Heroes still a GLAM record, though?)

I mean, I get the idea you have extremely limited definitions of both genres. Which is fine, I guess, though I don't know what purpose the limits would serve. And either way, I don't know what your definition *is*, beyond "stuff I heard somebody call glam or post-punk once."

And if someone wants to call Duran Duran a post-punk band, that's fine. I'm just saying that it doesn't fit my sense of what that term means.

i'm kinda wondering if by 72/73 - when u.k. glam was hitting a peak - if american audineces weren't also just a little bubblegummed out. serious bubblegum efforts were being cranked out left and right up until the mid-70's and glam might have been overkill/overload in the u.s.

http://www.kissfaq.com/casa/1974.htm#1974

kiss, t-rex, parliament, fanny, and the hudson brothers.

The mudrock element. yeah, i don't know, happy days and sha na na were huge in the 70's, but later on a little bit. people were still getting over the 60's fascination with the 20's.

the same people who were buying nick gilder albums in 1978 (and who, in 1980, would be buying pat benatar albums?)

Besides the Clash, you mean? (And all of oi! ?)

They are still very popular in Germany and Norway.

If you back to the top of the thread you'll see I actually started off by describing this choice as "OTM", so you see when I subsequently recanted that choice as being lazy I was already driving by and shooting myself....

"Metal Urbain would be my pick."

You see? It's all about France. Told ya so.

I don't know if you're consciously or subconsciously paraphrasing this, but I remember reading an interview with Jim Kerr, many years ago, in which he was asked to what extent he had been aware of Krautrock and how much of an influence it had been on Simple Minds in their early days.

His response was that the full extent of that knowledge and influence consisted of his having once purchased a copy of The Faust Tapes, solely because it was cheap, having played it once, hated it, and then used it as a frisbee.

Tell me you're not going to nominate something by Sham 69, please....

".... one of the big Slade football hits was "You'll Never Walk Alone," from The Sound Of Music."

I believe Slade covered "You'll Never Walk Alone" on one live album that they released during the wilderness years between their early-mid '70's Glam Rock peak and their mid-'80's reinvention as a heavy rock band; but afaik they never released it as a single and they certainly never had a (UK?) hit with it.

Also it wasn't actually from The Sound Of Music, it was from Carousel which was written by the same people, Rodgers and Hammerstein - yes, the very same people who wrote that other giant Post Punk smash "Happy Talk" - and subsequently covered by Gerry & The Pacemakers and just about everyone who's ever been to a football (soccer) match; particularly Liverpool FC.

This was cited in something Julian Cope wrote. Apparently, they'd met one time, got on really well, until the subject came up about the Faust tapes album. Jim tells Julian about lobbing it off some skyscraper as a frisbee, and Julian then says about "right there, I realised we could never be friends."