'We sang shang a lang and we ran with the gang...'
Another quite unnecessary and lengthy series but I'm always up for a challenge. Plus I'm making my way properly through Simon Reynold's excellent but enormous tome Shock & Awe, Glam Rock & Its Legacy so this should keep it company.
So, fifty days of Glam. Another countdown. An imaginary, purely subjective chart. That essentially limits us from 1970 to 1976. All of the usual suspects will be here. One song for each. Two for the main players. All singles. Which disqualifies Iggy & the Stooges, who would have made it otherwise, to describe properly the movement's dark underbelly. But no proper singles were released from Raw Power so they're out.
So what do you get with Glam? Plenty of good songs for sure, some a bit camp, many rather silly. Generally a good tune that could get played on the radio. Sometimes something a lot better than that. Particularly when we get to the Top Twenty. Mostly blokes. Mostly white, British blokes.
The other criteria for this rundown is that I will like the song. This isn't a favourite but it's good enough for # 50. So we start with The Bay City Rollers. It was this or Bye Bye Baby. They're both fine as songs.
Full of yearning for the Fifties. Gangs, jukeboxes, heartbreak though of course it's all really just candy floss for teen magazines. Simon Reynolds doesn't mention the Rollers once in his book about Glam. But then he's a rather serious fellow. Not sure they can be written out completely.
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