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Wake Up Dreaming With Television's "Little Johnny Jewel" | The Spindle
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Television's first 7-inch seemed designed not to be a hit: a 7-minute song stretched across two sides, released on a brand new label with no distribution. On this edition of The Spindle, John and Marc delve into the history behind "Little Johnny Jewel," which didn't dent the charts but set this New York quartet up for its legendary debut album, Marquee Moon.
Hello everybody. It's the Spindle Podcast with Mark and John.
SPEAKER_01Hi, and welcome to the Spindle, a podcast about seven-inch records. I'm Mark. I'm John. And in each episode, we talk about one seven-inch record, hopefully give you some insight into it that you haven't heard before. We both got into music in the 80s and 90s when 7 inches were super important, especially on indie labels. So that's where the hero we mostly draw from. But we sometimes pick some stuff earlier or later than that, too. Either way, we try to keep it short and to the point, just like seven inches do. So this time around, we're going to talk about television's debut 7-inch, Little Johnny Jewel, parts 1 and 2, spread across two sides. Released in September 1975 on Orc Records. Recorded in August of that year. Song written by Tom Verlaine. Recorded on a four-track, actually, at this management place they had signed up with it, which was Patty Smith's manager. I guess they had offices in Manhattan that they could record at, like a rehearsal space. Lineup being Tom Verlaine guitar vocals, organ piano, Richard Lloyd guitar, Fred Smith bass, and Billy Ficka drums. So this is yeah, this is the very first television thing, which is interesting because they had gone in at that session. This place is called Wartok Concern, was the name of the business of a management company that Patty Smith was using and television using. Right. And they gone in there and recorded a bunch of songs on this four-track that was owned by JD Daughtery Daughtery, which is JD Daugherty, yeah. Yeah, who's drummer for Patty Smith drummer.
SPEAKER_02Yep, yep. Yeah, and uh and eventually, and eventually Tom Verlaine's drummer um on a lot of his solo stuff, and the drummer for the church.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. Wow, that's crazy. Um so they recorded a bunch of songs that would end up in new versions on Marky Moon, the album everybody knows, but they picked this, which couldn't fit on a side. It's like you know, so they they it's a two-sided one-song thing. Verlaine even said we thought of it more as an album than a single, but apparently Richard Lloyd said he was gonna quit the band. In fact, he did briefly quit the band because they pick decided to put this single out because he thought it was.
SPEAKER_02Instead of like Amiamore, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And uh, I guess Peter Lofner was actually technically his replacement for a while, but they didn't that didn't last very long. Uh uh Richard Lloyd came back. Um, but I mean the kind of history here is like so television had started like a year earlier with Richard Hell playing bass, and and Verlaine and Hell were like buddies from school and had known each other growing up and had had a trio with Ficca, and then Richard Lloyd joined eventually, and then I guess Neon Boys, right? The Neon Boys trio.
SPEAKER_02And then Well, I mean, we should stop there and say the Neon Boys. When people talk about, say, Richard Hell or Tom Verlaine being influential on punk or being punk, a lot of people misunderstand. They think maybe it's television. I mean, maybe the early days of television, it's really what was going on in the Neon Boys, and around the time of the Neon Boys is when Malcolm McLaren came to New York and was managing the New York dolls and did see dolls fans, Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine, floating around. And Richard Hell specifically said at that time he was into this like Bowery Boys kind of like ragamuffin kind of thing. And uh he the the but there's the T the legendary Please Kill Me t-shirt, right? Right, and in Hell's book, doesn't he write that everybody says he wore it, but he actually didn't wear it. He talked Richard Lloyd into wearing it. Is that that's yep, yep, that in the book? I haven't haven't read the book in a minute. So, like when people talk about television being punk or coming from punk or that kind of thing, that really is what they're talking about. And Richard Hell, although I would Malcolm McLaren deserves, as we've talked about in other other things, tons of credit for his genius. Uh, I mean, the genius is seeing some rando like Richard Hell before he's a star. Like Richard Hell isn't anybody when McLaren sees him. He's a dude who writes poetry chap books under an assumed name and plays in a band called the Neon Boys, you know, and goes to see the dolls. And so somehow he kind of saw that. Maybe television had just started too. And that shows a lot of intelligence to spot that too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there was a point where he tried to convince them I need to manage you instead of Terry Orc.
SPEAKER_02Right. Well, he wanted right, didn't he want Hell to sing for the Sex Pistols, basically? Bring him over. Right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. And uh Orc had been this guy who was like uh I think he was more sort of a more of a movie guy. He was kind of a cinephile. Like he worked at a cinema store that Richard Hill worked at, and that's how they hooked up, and that's how eventually he got hooked up with television and decided he wanted to make a label and manage the band. And and this is the first thing on Orc Records. There's this amazing box set of all the singles that ended up coming out of the label around for like five years, I think only like 13 releases or something. Um but uh all awesome. It's a numeric group box, and the and the book in there is incredible too.
SPEAKER_02It's absolute power pop gold mine that both that box. Like I mean, every great power pop thing you can think of might have come from the orc, uh early early feelings. Uh, but did this you know, little Johnny Jewell's interesting because like if you listen to the neon boys stuff, it's pretty raw, you know, and deliberately so, and not just because Richard Hell isn't maybe never as dexterous a bassist as Fred Smith. I mean, I'd say he's more just as once Fred Smith's kind of tidier sonically. Like, I think Richard Hell's a fine bassist, and actually, some of the stuff on the voidoids is pretty complicated. Like, oh, very much like I like, for instance, I love the chameleons, right? The singer of the chameleons, that guy just plays like doo-doo doo doo doo doo doo doo because he's busy singing, you know. Uh, whereas Richard Hell is playing real bass lines, do he's playing that walking bass line and um, you know, blank generation and stuff. So he could actually kind of play, but he's also like just a meteor kind of guy, and he definitely doesn't sound like he's into jamming, like he's not gonna sit there and just go boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop while you play. Whereas Fred Smith's more than happy to do that, um, and is good at it, and so uh it kind of made that bust up a little inevitable in some ways. Yeah, it's like the yeah, I mean, I I pop jamming, you know. Right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I guess the explanations at the time were that Verlane didn't think hell was as committed to it as he should be, and Verlane was also gotten to the point where he wanted to be recording his own songs and stuff. But I I also think just in general, even if it wasn't like conscious of them, they they were sort of both together too big for one band and two, you know. I mean, because that first void void record is amazing too, and totally different from Marky Moon and Little Johnny Jewel and stuff.
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, but in a perfect world, they're in there, these are two men in their mid-20s, and you you sort of like, I'm not trying to be critical here, I'm just sort of like re-reimagining. Imagine if they did sort of take a longer view and we're like, huh, we're both songwriters. Like, we can create a thing that works here between the two of us, where we could probably make a lot of records because between the two of us, we have a lot of songs. There's like four television records if they keep Richard Hell in the band and everybody shakes hands and move forward. You know, there's no he played on Marky Moon, he played that song all the fucking time. He played little Johnny Jewel. So, you know, it it's it's kind of interesting, but on the other hand, it is hard to argue. Like you sort of say, well, that would that would be the professional thing to do, right?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02That would be the professional thing, is like to realize, no, let's take a step back, guys. We can mend meld these two sounds and we'll be huge, you know. The women will want to fuck Richard Hell, everybody will be in awe of Tom Verlane's guitar playing. You got catchy songs like Blank Generation and you know, Venus Damilo and stuff, and I don't know. It just but but on the other hand, you're right, you wouldn't get those two visions represented out in the world the way they were, which also was highly influential and really cool.
SPEAKER_01Right, right.
SPEAKER_02And we got the heartbreakers, we got the heartbreakers out of it too.
SPEAKER_01That's true, that's true. So yeah, yeah, it's not a bad deal overall, but um uh and I and I mean the band was great with Smith in it too.
SPEAKER_02So oh no, I that wasn't that was just sort of like an alternate history, like where you right. I didn't think you were saying that. Yeah, yeah. Well, how would other people think of that situation, you know, where you have these two strong personalities? Uh, you know, you can like it reminds me there in the 60s bands in particular, there were dudes who would just be like, you know, they'd been in the biggest band in the world for about three years, and they're like, you know what? I'm bored, I'm out. Like Pete Quave. Uh-huh. Like, what? Like, would you even most people would never think to do that? But they're like, I accomplished what I set out to do, and now I want to go make cabinets, you know? Yeah. It's it's as interesting to me. And it just kind of takes that different kind of personality to bust through. Whereas, yeah, maybe you wouldn't get the same output if you didn't have two such strong people. Like, if they were both sanding off their edges in order to make it work together, maybe it wouldn't work. Like, maybe the the whole would be just a little bit less than the combo, you know, or the separate thing. I don't know. The dilute, they would dilute each other.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because they're it's part of part what's partially interesting about thinking about that is they were a band of such sort of like how why weird things happened with them in terms of their trajectory. Like, I mean, they were probably the the hottest like band in New York for a time before they had a record out, and then they recorded demos with Eno, but they weren't happy with how those went. Then I think at one point one of the major labels paid for them to make a bunch more demos, and nobody nobody liked those, you know, and then they finally did this and they decide to do it independently in a way that doesn't even have distribution. You can only mail order from them or or buy it at CBG's, right? But it still gets around, you know. But by the time they have a record out, they're sort of behind everybody else who had been their peers who had gotten their deals quicker.
SPEAKER_02Well, I you know, it reminds me a little bit of like uh maybe he didn't want to be part of that wave. Like maybe he was like, you know what, I'd rather just be a little outside of that anyway, because I uh he see just everything I've seen and heard from him punk for the most part seems to have offended Tom Berlane. Like he was like, that shit's gross. Like, why don't you I mean, like, I want to be different too, but why don't you want to why do you want to spit at people or you know, that kind of thing? You know, hey got it but didn't like it. I think the Parubu guys were a little bit like that too, you know. And um aside from hearing great songs or whatever, but you know what I'm saying in general.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_02And so I could see him sort of being like, while there's a fad, you also might think if you hold out and let the fad go by and let the band sign quick, if you're holding out, you might get a better kind of deal. You know, you might have a little more leverage. Uh there they must be making more than enough money to live on just gigging around New York. He doesn't, you know, he seems like a pretty frugal guy, you know. And uh so that gives you a lot of leverage if you aren't after the money. Like if you don't give a fuck about I gotta get signed and I gotta make a bunch of records, then you have you're the one with the leverage. And when they did wait and put out the record, it had a massive impact, you know. I mean, certainly the first, I mean, I'd say the first New Wave bands I heard about, it would be like Ramones, Patty Smith, television, boom, you know, like they were the earliest kind of names, and so they must have been doing something right in that regard for 10, 11 year olds to hear about them, you know. Yeah, yeah. And again, we talk about obscurity, you know, but it's all relative.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, totally. And and going back a little bit to the th to the idea of picking this as a single, which is kind of kind of awesome in that sense, too, because uh, I mean, the you you I I kind of love to imagine being back there, then buying the single, thinking, oh, this band has a seven-minute song, is the first song I'm gonna hear from them where they kind of go off a little bit and stuff. And then you get Marky Moon, and you got Ceno Evil Friction and Venus right right away, which are really tight, tighter songs. But then again, it then eventually it goes into stuff that's like little Johnny Jewel with the Marky Moon and things like that. But I I I kind of love that dichotomy of them, not only the fact that they were they had those two sides, but the fact that they decided to present themselves with the longer side first.
SPEAKER_02Well, that was what Richard Hell was mad about. I mean, Richard uh Lloyd was mad about that. Richard Lloyd, yeah. Yeah, Richard Lloyd was mad about that. I you know, it's interesting because they probably had enough major label stuff that he's thinking, well, I should uh maybe I'll hang on to those songs for when I have somebody who could truly promote it. Like that makes sense. You know, that's see no evil and stuff like you that you might imagine a world where it gets on the radio. In fact, you listened, I listen to it now, and I'm like, why wasn't this stuff on FM radio? So, like if we're listening to you know, any of those deep purple songs, or they would play these great elaborate things like Billy Thorpe's Children of the Sun and uh like these long, oh you stairway to heaven. There's no reason Marky Moon wouldn't have fit right in there, nobody would have noticed Cowgirl on the Sand. It's it belongs there. Where it kind of is there now, but it's kind of it shows the resistance that radio played in keeping punk and new wave from really that was the key thing. The labels were kind of all in on New Wave. Like every major label signed a lot of New Wave bands for those first couple years there, but radio just wouldn't play, they would not play the Stranglers, they would not play television, they wouldn't play really play the talking heads until they switched up and became more pop in the mid-80s. They they did not play the Ramones, they you know, and so that was kind of what killed it. And but I could see, like, yeah, you know, you know you're gonna be on a major eventually, so this is more a chance for you to show what you could do as a band with good sound. You know, you just cut it in half, it sounds pretty good. It's so dry, like it's so dry sounding, it's crazy. Yeah, like I think I like I have another recording that I think, as you were saying, there's two demo sets, and I think I have a demo that sounds a little more like through the amps kind of sounding, like a more of a band recording. Whereas this one definitely it sounds like at least one of the guitars is just straight in, no amp, no nothing.
SPEAKER_01He did that exactly. That's funny that you said because I did read that he did do that. He plugged right into the four-track machine, no, no amp, no, no pedals or anything. He just played right in there. I mean, there was some sort of like management company had an office where you could jam, but they were all they were managed to set up in different rooms, all four of them. But he was plugged directly in, and you can definitely feel that. And the and the lyrics are though, I mean the vocals are kind of like that too, right? They're kind of just sort of like you feel like he's standing next to you talking out these vocals.
SPEAKER_02I'm assuming they recorded the instrumental, jump, you know, uh bounced all that down and then did vocals over the top. I'm guessing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think vocals and and a little bit of extra guitar were overdubbed.
SPEAKER_02Um it sounded actually it's it's funny because it's that's a very good four track because that's a lot of it's actually a really good sounding record. You got a lot of um, it's not lo-fi in any way, shape, or form. It's extremely clear and present. Um, you know, I guess the drums could have a little more bass, you know, maybe it was a quarter-inch tape where you don't get as much bass response. Uh, but they there's the fidelity's incredible for a you know self-released punk single. Like it's it's like Andy Johns produced the LP and he produced a lot of Stones records. Like he literally, Andy Johns, who did Marky Moon, went from producing Black and Blue by the Stones to producing Marky Moon. And so it actually has more of that like rock 70s rock sound, but also they were like um trying to get him to dry it out too. They were like they would get angry at him, Tom Verlaine in particular, if he put any reverb on anything, because I was reading an interview with him. If they put any reverb on anything, they'd be like, knock it off, you know.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. Um, and the and the song itself is kind of, I mean, I I the reading I've done, everybody has different theories about exactly what he's talking about. I mean, he said it was supposed to be sort of like this guy who lived hundreds of years ago when things were simpler and and there wasn't as much decisions to make about how to live your life. But I I mean, I'm not really sure that that even comes completely across in the lyrics. They're just sort of they just sound like this sort of stoned character who's wandering around watching planes fly over his head.
SPEAKER_02I thought it was kind of like I always there's a noir-ish feel to it, which I always latched on to that it's like an incomplete part of a detective story or something like that. Oh, yeah. I could I can't say I've sat there and read through the lyrics and been like, oh, what does that mean? But that's kind of how the vibe I've always gotten from it. And he likes writing from that fake, hard-boiled perspective.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02So that's that's I always it seems to fit right in with those kind of things. It's it is, yeah, it's like you sort of think it would be a character study, but it's kind of not, right?
SPEAKER_01Right. It just is sort of just on the edge of vague enough that there's not a ton that you can take from it to know specifically what this guy's doing or who he's supposed to be. But there's definitely a lot of hints of hints of it, so that you can and like you, your your feeling of it being noir ish works, and and the feeling of it just also sort of being like this guy that is inscrutable and kind of all over the place kind of works too, and and uh, you know, um it's kind of it in a way, it's kind of sort of it's almost like the music, it's not like the music's more important than the lyrics, but I feel like the the the message sort of is we're gonna tell you a little bit about this guy, and then when you listen to his jamming, you can imagine sort of the rest.
SPEAKER_02Um it's like well, it's a vibe thing. Like he's trying to, it's like giving you uh certain kind of it's a very, you know, New York-y. Well, I don't know, you know, when you say noir, you kind of think LA too. Like, but it's like an urban, definitely an urban kind of vibe. Uh it's interesting how restrained it is for being one of their longer songs. Um, it's not necessarily like Marquis Moo with its big spiraling guitar stuff, it's a little more uh tense and sort of coiled. Um, and even the live versions don't quite spin out the same, like they definitely are a little bit more like hell, like there's a deliberate kind of uh holding back on the reins of that song a bit.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah, the solos are pretty simple generally, the kind of Lou Reedish kind of one or two note solos during this, as opposed to Marking. I mean, but it seems like just the that three-note bass riff is sort of the whole thing, and they're just gonna go off of that. It's got a to me, actually, I didn't think of it before, but it actually has sort of a fall feeling to it that way. Is it just one thing, one repetitive bass line, and they're gonna do stuff over top of it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but well, the first, I mean, definitely a lot of people, and and I would like if you listen to say the first few fall records and the first LP, there's a lot of television in that Richard Hell in that for sure. That sound. Oh, yeah. Spindly get well, think of how spindly the guitar sound is. Yeah, yeah. And um, so it definitely was an influence on them as far as it goes. I it's um yeah, the clackety kind of chica chica sort of sound to it is is interesting in a time when a lot of people were doing a lot of overdrive um in the underground. Like it's you know, not so much like distortion, like Boston did distortion, but they made it like boring. Like it was just this smear. You know what I mean? Like it's like they use it's it, it they found the comfy pillow version of distortion. Um whereas most garage stuff, leaving the Ramones out of it, but most garage stuff is just you're just turning a fender up and hitting the strings real hard, that kind of distortion. And uh this one though, the drying it out and not really letting the strings fly at any point, it's all very damped down. Um yeah, very curious.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's almost like it's almost like it's it's almost like it's minimalist, which is weird because it's a seven-minute song, but there is sort of a a minimalist in a way. He kind of he kind of plays guitar like David Byrne on here a little bit, I think. Yeah, which is yeah, that kind of scratch and little chink, kind of chink, chink, chink.
SPEAKER_02Um yeah, David Byrne, underrated lead guitarist, because he those first three records, well, I mean, I guess he didn't lose on on um a little bit on Remain in Light, is he? Maybe not. Um a lot of that's that's all David Byrne. Like um Jerry Harrison didn't play those leads, he tended to play rhythm and keyboards. So all those wild fucking guitar solos, uh, David Byrne. Yeah, and and television live were more uh definitely a louder, sort of meatier proposition than this record. So it is kind of interesting that he's like, no, I'm just gonna make a thing that almost bears, I mean, not that much relation to us. Right, right, you know. The other thing is we've talked a lot about seven inchers. Normally people do seven-inch because they think it's especially during the 70s, you want to try and get it on the radio. Right. And there's no getting it on the radio, this. And it's not even cut up in a way where it's like, oh, here's the like say um Fleetwood Mac's oh well parts one and two. Uh, one part of it is this kind of dreamy sort of jam, the other part is that so they split it part one and two, the one part gets played on the radio, you know, and the other parts just you just listen to it on its own. This is not like that, though, because the two sides you could they're kind of similar, like you could really just play either side and get the same feel. So it's an interesting choice from that regard. It's a non-commercial record, which is why I was thinking maybe it's almost like a demo showing labels. We're not some punk band. We're not a punk band, we're something different. You know, we're we're not like that. And we're not like the Sex Pistols, we're not like the Ramones, we're not even like Patty Smith, right? And it kind of illustrates that in one record. Whereas up to that point, most people would have assumed they were, you know, loud, noisy punk band. Unheard.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Is that I mean I mean, like see no evil and friction as a as an A-B would have been like super pop, first perfect pop single. And they decide not to go with that, which is kind of cool.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I can't imagine. Well, I mean, then what did they that session? They didn't they record something like Hard on Love also and stuff like that. They had some other songs like that. Um, yeah, I didn't, you know, I'm sure Terry Orc, what a patient guy, he probably was tearing his hair out, like going, No, you have all these songs I love, and you're picking this one. But that was part of what made, I guess, him a little bit of a genius as he put it out there. I mean, like he can't have made any money on it. Like, I can't, yeah. It's not like it was in print forever or something like that. Like it's they sold out of it, it was gone, and they signed to Electra, and that was the end of it.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02For a long time, the only way you could hear it was I recall like a Roar cassette uh that had it on there with some of like I think Patty Smith's Piss Factory 7-inch and some really seven-inchers like that. Um that's cool. I can't recall what that was called, like New York Seven-inch. I don't know. Uh, but that was the only place I could hear it for a long time. Live versions.
SPEAKER_01Uh oh, yeah. I mean, I didn't hear this song for years after I'd heard Marky Moon. I'd heard Marky Moon a hundred times before I heard this song. But and that's another interesting decision, is they didn't go forward with this song on any other album, which I would have you know would have thought was probably tempting, but they had more than enough to fill an album without this.
SPEAKER_02But you know, I think the first official release of it would have been that Rorka Set the Blow Up, where there's a version of it on that. And that would have been the first official kind of non-seven-inch release of it, which is a great version. Um, and uh yeah, it was definitely one of those seven inches you read about more than you could see or hear or touch or taste. Again, the 70s. There's no like I there's getting into punk, particularly in the mid to late 70s, was I read about stuff for a year before I even laid eyes on it.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02Could even see it. And I lived here in DC, which was like a lot of very new wavy town, but still anything more obscure than a major label new wave record was was tough to lay hands on, and import prices were real, it was twice almost twice as much sometimes for LPs. Like I looked longingly at Joy Division albums forever before I could get the money together to buy, you know. I mean, I guess back then you're like a ten dollar LP. Oh why do that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I I think it's pretty likely this never hit any stores except for maybe a few in New York. Yeah, I can't imagine. And it only had a white paper sleeve with a hole in it, it didn't have a picture sleeve or anything. So yeah, I mean it would have been pretty cool to walk into CB's and just buy one there. But I mean, how many people even know to go do that?
SPEAKER_02You know well, they sold them at shows, right? Didn't they?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. But still, um yeah, speaking of the funniest story that this is totally unrel hardly related to what we're talking about, but the funniest story I read in that orc book is uh so at one point when they were still fishing around uh to figure out what what the full band was gonna be, they uh they auditioned some guitars before they found Richard Lloyd. And Didi Ramon was one of the guys that auditioned. And uh Verlaine said, Okay, I want you to start with this, play this. It starts with a C chord, and so Didi hits like five chords and finally hits a C. And they go, See, I told you I knew how to play a C chord. Which is awesome, which is funny too, because I mean I like the people love to he has this kind of clown, but he was a great songwriter too and a great player.
SPEAKER_02But he well, I think that's what Richard Hell says something along the that they I mean. I think he and Verlaine were just like, well, he's not obviously a television member, but they were like really they one of the reasons I think they entertained it is his songwriting. Like the guy could obviously had away with a hook, and yeah, he really crazy. Uh you know, the two he and Joey both like those are some crazy songs. Television had to change one of their song titles because of um I don't care because they had a song called I Don't Care Too. The Ramones put theirs out first, and so they had to change care I don't care to careful. Oh, right, and in fact, they didn't put it on the first album, I think, because of that, because the Ramones put it on their first album, right? I don't care, right?
SPEAKER_01Right, yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, I mean, those times were just like it's just amazing seeing what it must have been like to be there through all that stuff and all these bands that we think of as classic bands, but also like television and the Ramones, just they're so different, and yet they were all hanging out together and all playing the same shows. And anyway, everybody knows everybody who knows about punk knows that.
SPEAKER_02But we well, no, but they don't like people they tend to retroactively apply things. So when those bands started, there wasn't punk, there just wasn't. There were a bunch of new bands who all were bored with what they heard on the radio, they liked pop music, they wanted to be popular, they thought that most music in the 70s was boring, so they tried to be exciting and different. They thought that the music from the mid-60s had a sort of a novelty to it that had been lost, so they tried to reincorporate that in. They were obviously influenced by performance art. It was a whole, but then people called that punk. Actually, at first, people mostly called it new wave, right? And then people called it retroactively, called a particular style of music that was associated with it punk, and that's become punk. I I'm probably gonna say this in every episode, right? And so people took the sex pistols clash style of music that existed at that time, which is different from the buzzcocks, which is different from the damned, which is different from wire, which is different from subway sect, which is different from the slits, the raincoats, uh, the adverts, you know, like Eddie and the hot rods, and so uh the stranglers, and they just anything that has those weird Chuck Berry riffs, that become punk. Right, right. And now when I say punk, like that's what it means. Whereas in 1978, you would have you would have been like, well, the talking heads are punk, Blondie's punk, new wave, punk, pretenders new wave, whatever, punk, Elvis Costello, the jam. So none of those bands really would be considered punk now because it's been retroactively changed to Green Day.
SPEAKER_01Right, right, right. I mean, one of the one of the kind of funny things about television that I always hear from people is like, Well, when I first heard them, I'm like, that's not punk. I'm like, well, yeah, because at the time that didn't exist.
SPEAKER_02Well, punk was an approach, punk was a mentality, punk was like looking at turning the rock over. It isn't it's just not just looking at the rock or saying, well, that's not a rock, I want my rock to look like that rock. It's like what's under the rock, what's beside the rock, what's around the rock, how does the rock exist? Why does the rock exist? Why am I even looking at this fucking rock? And that's the punk process, you know, when I could be making my own fucking rock. And the if you're if your idea of punk is you walk up to a rock with punk painted on it, and you're like, I'm doing that, and you're not a fucking punk. Right, right. I'm sorry to be harsh about it, but no, it's true. It's the truth, and so I but that's true of any art movement. It would be true. I mean, like, I fucking love Dada, I love Fluxus and shit. It would be the stupidest shit in the world for me to be like, I'm a fluxus artist. Like, right, so like, why? Like, I I want to create my own, you know, like I want to make my own art, and that to me is what was punk. Like, they heard what was there, they were dissatisfied with it, and they wanted to create something that satisfied them and was interesting intellectually, visually, otherwise. So it had a lot of content in it, whereas pop music from the 70s had no content, and so early punk and new wave is stuffed full of content, like Elvis Costello, all those fucking words, all of that fashion, all of those colors, all the fucking lettering, like it's like boom, it's like so different from you know, black and white, brown, you know, sepia tone blue, denim, all of that shit that was happening up to that point. And it's but it can only work that one time. You can't keep pushing that button, then it's just fashion. It's not anymore. And at the time, people gave a lot of credit to hip-hop. They said hip hop is not just music, hip-hop is a culture, hip-hop is dance, hip-hop is is vision, hip-hop is writing, hip-hop is rap, hip-hop is the music that we select to influence us, hip-hop is how we move in the street. And at the time, I think people pretty quickly winnowed punk down to music. Whereas in reality, the original punk in particular, if you look at all these different scenes, LA, New York, London, um, any of those original punk scenes, they were about way more than music. Like that wasn't just the music was just one expression of what was going on. Like in London, you have Jamie Reed, you have Vivin Westwood, you have Malcolm McLaren, you have Don Letz, you have filmmakers, you have it's all tied, all those people are hanging out together. Fashion, all this stuff was one thing. And same thing in New York, and same thing in LA. Fine art and all of those places, absolutely enmeshed with this street punk scene. And you can't replicate, you can't make that happen. Like you can't just produce it. And if you're trying to, you're gonna fail. And you know, you either accept, well, I want to be a professional music playing musician playing a genre of music, and this is the genre I choose because I could be a professional musician playing this, or you choose a different route where you may or may not strike economic gold and you just strike out on your own because you're trying to find the thing that you haven't heard, and maybe people like to hear that too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's right. You just gave us a full history of the whole thing works. I hope so. No, really. No, I agree with all that. That's true. I mean, I do think people, like you say, punk got whittled down to the music pretty quickly, and then, of course, generations after it, that's all that's kind of all they know about it. But when you go back and read about a lot of these things, there was so much happening beyond just and and and so little of these bands being like, let's all sound the same.
SPEAKER_02That just never all of the original bands changed their sound within a year, like every single one of them. Like, none of them kept playing punk. The only people that kept playing punk were the people that came out under them, like the fucking exploited and crongen and any of those dumb punk bands like that, or the hardcore boys here in the US. But the damn, the Sex Pistols, Susie and the Banshees, Wire, the Buzzcocks, all of those people were like bored of punk in two seconds. They were like, it was fun to play fast for a second, and then they're like, Well, now everybody can do that, so I want to do something different. And they became completely different kinds of they were obviously you know doing different stuff. And I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, it's true. Awesome. Well, uh, if you haven't, if you only know Marky Moon, go find this single, go get the orc box. I think Numero keeps everything in print, and that box is just vital.
SPEAKER_02So oh god, yeah, that box, and it's it's especially it's it's kind of bang for your buck. There's a lot of classic music on there that's hard to find anyplace else. Yeah, and the book pay that much. A whole bunch of Alex Chilton, uh Alex Chilton stuff on there. There's also an entire side. They were eventually they were orc was gonna do uh a Stones Covers LP. And so all of the luminaries of the scene, including Richard Hell and Chris Damie, and all these people uh doing stones covers, Alex Chilton. So there's one whole side of Stones covers by people like Richard Lloyd and Alex Chilton and feelies and stuff like that. So really good. That's awesome. Uh yeah, the feelies are on there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So good.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's great. It's great. Awesome. Well, thanks everyone for listening this time, and we'll see you next time on The Spindle. All right, Jake. The Spindle is produced by John Howard and me, Mark Masters. I'm also the audio editor. Our theme song is by the great band Honey Radar. Our podcast is brought to you by WaystOids, audio and video from Hello Mercury. Find more podcasts and videos at wastedoids.com. And please leave a rating and a review of our podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.