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I believe Marc Bolan would've given Ziggy a run for his...ummm...wardrobe.
"And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision."
Occasional musical musings on https://darkelffile.blogspot.com/
This is somewhat related:
Ridiculous Fashion & Album Covers Of 1970s Swedish Bands
http://sobadsogood.com/2013/01/10/ri...swedish-bands/
I think the eighties hair metal look was just as bad if not worse.
By the time the Bugaloos were on I was just getting out of that Saturday morning age. I kinda had issues with Kroft shows as a kid. I remember my brother and I quitting HR Pufnstuf when we decided every plot line could have been resolved by just melting Freddie the Flute. OK, maybe we were already a little too dark for that kind of show. Anyway, I guess I missed Joy and those legs. Still, I had already discovered Laurie Partridge and damn, that was a crush that BURNED.
It certainly was a lot more calculated and corporate than the glitter kids of the early 70s. It just didn't feel like an authentic movement, just soft metal dudes dressing up to get a bigger audience while their riffs and playing were questionable. I know we complain about grunge bands and Guns n' Roses on PE, but those just blew away a lot of the hair metal dross that was clogging up the radio playlists and MTV.I think the eighties hair metal look was just as bad if not worse.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
Well, if you're just talking about the 13 year old fans (as opposed to older ones), I imagine it's a bit like how Elvis shaking his hips appealed to teenagers in the 50's, or how The Who smashing their gear onstage appealed to teenagers of the 60's, or how Alice Cooper and his various antics appealed to teenagers around roughly the same time frame as Kiss. In other words, if you do something that repulses parents, well, that's the stamp of approval for teenagers.
I think there's an argument that Kiss' image overpowered the music but I don't think the look is a bad one- not comparable to the stereotypical 80s hair/glam metal type.
As far as 70s rock goes, it was Marc Bolan and David Bowie who really pioneered this look.
Yeah Chris, that's pretty much it. I get annoyed by hearing the booming monolithic bass coming from the beattoshit vehicle driven by some kid but that's kind of the point. It's supposed to annoy me, and please him. KISS wasn't aimed at the twenty-somethings. Gene and Paul's vision was pretty precise.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
^True. I was actually repulsed by the glam look back then. It just seemed like a gimmick. My loss. I missed out. I was listening to "serious" rock in those days. Eventually I got out of the rock loop for about 20 years.
The problem I had with most of the early Sid and Marty shows was all the awful songs. Every damn show had to be "musical theater" thing. And Rogers & Hammerstein this wasn't.
Actually, looking at the list of Sid and Marty shows on Wikipedia, I think the only one I really liked, was Land Of The Lost. We used to watch the Barbara Mandrell show when I was a kid, I remember liking the puppet band on that show, and also those rare occasions where Barbara would break out her guitar and demonstrate she was much more than just your average middle of the road country pop singer.
Much later on, in the late 80's, they had a show called DC Follies, which had a bit more "mature" feel to it. The show hinged on a bar in Washington DC (Fred Willard played the bartender) which was frequented by puppet caricatures of various celebrities (mostly politicians, but also other figures, such as Geraldo Riveria). I suppose it was sort of like an Americanized version of Spitting Image, but i remember it being pretty funny. Mind you, I haven't seen in it over 25 (!) years.
According to Wikipedia, Phil Collins auditioned for The Bugaloos (I guess this being shortly before he before he auditioned for "the band", as Steve Hackett once euphemistically called them). So I guess that's your prog link right there. Was there ever an explanation for why The Bugaloos were British?
Well, rock music in general isn't aimed at 20 somethings, anyway. At least, it wasn't originally. The whole idea was that you were entertaining kids who didn't want to listen to the same stuff their parents liked. It was only when The Beatles, Brian Wilson, etc started writing and recording "more sophisticated" music that it went beyond being "for the kids".
I'm not sure what Gene and Paul's initial vision was supposed to be. I know the idea was to do something "visual", but when I look at what Alice Cooper or even Genesis were doing at the time, the Kiss routine seemed a bit like a stepped down version of that.
Musically, Gene even admitted in interviews in the 70's that their music didn't require a great deal of insight or knowledge about music to enjoy (as compared to certain other bands, where you almost have to understand why you "can't tap your foot to it" to enjoy listening to it). Presumably, that was to give Kiss as much commercial appeal as possible, though I don't think that was necessarily a bad thing.
I think deliberately marketing the band to kids, in terms of all the merchandise, might have come a little bit later. I think once someone said "Let's do a comic book", which probably sounded like a good idea at the time, that was the first step down what turned out to be a slippery slope. I mean, if it had been just the comic book and the pinball machine, it would have been fine. But things got out of hand real quick with that stuff. And the less said about Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park, the better. Please.
The funny thing was, when they were interviewed about in the 80's and early 90's, Gene and Paul even admitted they got carried away with the merchandise and everything. I remember Paul even saying that rock n roll didn't necessarily go hand in hand with "family entertainment", and yet, that's where they found themselves in the late 70's. But then, as soon as the makeup went back on with the reunion tour, guess what happened. Suddenly, there was a new line of toys, though I think this time they were more selling it more to "collectors" (ie adults who buy that dren, and leave it in the original box, in hopes they can sell it for big bucks later) than "the kids". Or maybe they were selling to both. Who knows?! Who cares?! All I know is, I still say Hotter Than Hell, Dressed To Kill and Unmasked still rock pretty hard.
I played guitar and mellotron in a original Glam Rock oriented band in 1976. Bowie was into Soul music around that time...but the Glam Rock scene was booming and lingered on through the late 70's when Punk Rock was circulating.It was still very huge in theatres and Rock clubs and specifically on the east coast of the U.S. I was asked to join the band when I was 18 years old. I had been ....prior to that..playing with Progressive Rock bands in colleges. The band had management, ( two managers), road crew , a demo, bookings, and promotion. We started playing Rock clubs and this one particular manager set us up with an article in a popular Entertainment magazine which included pictures of us that were taken by a photographer named John Kelly....( name maybe wrong)..but anyway he had some credentials as he had previously worked on the Humble Pie Rock On album.
People started to notice us and we became important. Our music was not actually of a Glam Rock style. It crossed between cheap Stadium Rock and Progressive Rock. Warner Brothers heard our demo and offered to fly us out to L.A. to re-record the demo ....making an album....and putting us on a tour to open for major Rock acts of the 70's. The aforementioned manager landed these deals. He was a journalist that reviewed Prog in magazines and newspapers. .The other manager revolted against him and persuaded everyone else in the band to agree on sacking him. So the deal never went through. The opportunity was there but because of selfishness it was sadly lost.
To wrap this road story up.....allow me to tell you about the scene in '76. When you're seated in the dressing room night after night....about 2 hours before Showtime and this trippy esoteric beauty queen is observing the fact that you're a 19 year old and treats you like a God.??? Well....That freaked me out until I figured out the business. Many, many girls were in the audience and they wore glitter on their faces ..just like David Bowie did. This entire experience was utterly ridiculous and to the extreme of everything in life it involved. This for me was on a vast level,,and girls were interested in "Pop Star" types who were cute but played Glam Rock instead of Pop. They would just grab me when I got off stage even with the bodyguard next to me and tackle me to the ground. The bodyguard would pull them off and , grab my arm and bring me to the dressing room. I would get into the dressing room and say...."What the hell is that?"
This message to the inbox here was also a dark vibe to that scene. For example.....Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on stage performing in a club in the "Wings Of Desire" movie. The Glam Rock clubs up and down the east coast created that scene in that film quite often. But it would transform from that into a environment completely out of control that persuaded everyone to act the same. Which was hundreds of girls chasing boys that fit a role in Glam Rock. When I hit the '76 Glam Rock scene.,...(or what was left of it), I resented my decision to not play Progressive Rock. I left that scene and played in Prog bands for the rest of the late 70's. A lot of kids in the audience acknowledged that Marc Bolan......David Bowie....and Lou Reed...had brought damage to themselves and they wanted to do the same. Everyone was into the first Tubes album and "White Punks On Dope" contained a message for everybody.
Last edited by Enid; 08-14-2016 at 08:01 PM.
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