Nobody's Charts
Sweet and Slade and T. Rex were the first division. What's here is everybody else — the session players working under rented names, the regional bands who pressed five hundred copies and disappeared, the Scottish kids who recorded "Jet" before McCartney did and got buried for it. Ten tracks from the second tier of British glam. Platforms, stomp, gone.
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01
Ricky Wilde — "I Am An Astronaut"
Marty Wilde's son, Kim Wilde's brother, twelve years old and on Mickie Most's RAK Records, making a T. Rex impression so accurate it almost hurts. He'd clearly absorbed the whole Bolan aesthetic — the glam stomp, the space imagery, the delivery — and played it back with complete conviction from inside a bedroom. The hook is enormous. The kid had it.
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02
Hector — "Wired Up"
Portsmouth-area glam on Dick James's label, and a sound that crackles like something electrical going badly wrong. Martin Rushent produced it, which means the sonics are sharper than a budget single had any right to be. The vocalist means every word. They put out several singles — "Wired Up" is the one that sounds like it's about to catch fire — and nobody outside Hampshire paid attention. Criminal negligence.
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03
Spiv — "Oh You Beautiful Child"
Almost certainly session players under a name nobody would use twice. Pye in 1973 was pressing everything that fit in a box, and Spiv fit neatly in the one labeled "glam cruncher." Compressed handclaps, cutting lead guitar, hook that arrives exactly on schedule, then stops. The B-side is called "Little Girl," which tells you how deep the creative resources ran. Doesn't matter. The A-side is the thing.
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04
The Jook — "Bish Bash Bosh"
The Jook are the cult band of junkshop glam — four singles on RCA, all of them should have been hits, none of them were. "Bish Bash Bosh" is the best one: percussive stomp, great riff, full commitment to the sound. They had more aggression than the pop glam acts and more pop instinct than the pub rock scene. Neither side wanted them. Both sides were wrong.
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05
Geordie — "All Because of You"
The one that actually charted — number six UK in 1973. Which means Brian Johnson, four years before he'd audition for AC/DC, was screaming his face off on Top of the Pops with Newcastle's glam contenders. The voice is completely unmistakable even here: raw, huge, delivered like the building is on fire. Everything that came after started somewhere, and this is somewhere.
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06
Iron Virgin — "Rebels Rule"
Their first single was a cover of "Jet" — recorded in late 1973, getting airplay, going somewhere — until Paul McCartney released his own version and crushed them completely. So Iron Virgin came back with "Rebels Rule" on Deram and played it like they had something to prove. Finger-snap aggro-glam, heavy stomp, chorus you can't unhear. It shows up on every junkshop comp because nobody can explain why it wasn't enormous. There's no good explanation.
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07
Beano — "Rock And Roll"
Deram was the Decca subsidiary that put out Moody Blues concept albums and also whatever this is. "Rock And Roll" by Beano is title-as-mission-statement: glam rock and roll, made competently, absolutely anonymous, and completely wonderful for exactly those reasons. Origin unknown. Career: one single. Nobody named Beano was ever found.
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08
Brett Smiley — "Va Va Va Voom"
Andrew Loog Oldham found him in New York City, brought him to London, dressed him in glitter, put him on Russell Harty's chat show. "Va Va Va Voom" is Bowie filtered through a teenage American kid who'd absorbed everything and turned it into something slightly unhinged. One single. Oldham moved on. Smiley recorded an album's worth of material that didn't surface until 2003 — "Breathlessly Brett" — by which point it was too late for it to matter the way it should have.
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09
Trevor White — "Crazy Kids"
He was the guitarist in the UK lineup of Sparks — the one that made "Kimono My House" and "Propaganda." When the Maels replaced the band with session players, White went solo and assembled this: Martin Gordon on bass (also ex-Sparks, also the reason those records sound the way they do), Chris Townson on drums (ex-John's Children, Marc Bolan's pre-T. Rex outfit). That lineup, on Island, in 1976, going absolutely nowhere. It's glam punk that knows the moment is ending and plays harder for it.
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10
Flintlock — "Dawn"
A band of young actors who appeared on the Arrows' TV show — the Arrows being another junkshop glam act, the ones who wrote "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" before Joan Jett did. Flintlock put out "Dawn" on Bradley's in 1976 and hit number thirty. The timing is everything: glam was past it, punk was two months away from changing the terms entirely. "Dawn" snuck into the charts anyway. Nobody admitted to buying it. You can hear the era ending in real time.
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