Music nostalgia

This is deep music nostalgia - positively subterranean. I'd completely forgotten about this band until I heard them on the radio recently. They're a hard rock outfit called UFO. In retrospect it's an unfortunate name for them because today on Google and YouTube rankings they have to compete with people looking for shit about alien autopsies.

Quite a few bloggers who are around the same age as me talk about how they used to like punk - saying it as if this was cool or something. It really isn't. You do realise you're keeping company with Michael Gove, don't you?

"But the righteous anger she displayed, denouncing McLaren for his cynicism in ripping off young record-buyers, ripping into the Pistols for their lack of musicianship, only reminded me what it was that I liked about punk."

The ripping off record-buyers and the lack of musicianship? Well he is a Tory... I used to like punk - until I was about thirteen. Then I realised it was a big pile of cack - at least as commercial and pretentious as anything it imagined it was reacting against. So I made a backward progression that ended up in the blues - but stopped off with a little hard rock. Forgotten how good this crew were. Saw them live in 1981, I think - at the Glasgow Apollo.



This song in particular has more of a punky edge than I realised at the time. How the Clash might have sounded if they'd ever learned to play their instruments properly. "Ah but punk wasn't about musicianship", says the ex-punk. I know. That's why it was shit. A triumph of style over substance every bit as much as the Flock of Seagulls.