“They are the first band not to shrug off their political stance as soon as they walk out of the recording studio. The first band with sufficient pure, undiluted unrepentant bottle to keep their crooning necks firmly on the uncompromising line of commitment when life would be infinitely easier — and no less of a commercial success — if they made their excuses and left before the riot.”
Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons
“The Boy Looked At Johnny” (1978)

It’s hard to overstate what a ballsy move it was for Tom Robinson to follow his catchy, radio-friendly Top 5 pop hit “2-4-6-8 Motorway” in 1977 with the strident anthem “Glad To Be Gay” but that was a time when lines were being drawn all across Britain and a lot of people felt they had to declare which side of the barricades they were on. These days it’s almost hip and trendy to be gay (an exaggeration I know) but it certainly wasn’t back then, being gay meant you were either a perverted kiddie fiddler or John Inman. My best mate at the time told me he threw away his copy of “Motorway” in disgust when he found out Robinson was “a bloody shirtlifter” — but he joined the Young Conservatives when he left school so I guess he had issues.

Their third single “Up Against The Wall” is one of the most blistering records to come out of punk, a riot of guitars and pulverizing drumming (the terrific Danny Kustow and Dolphin Taylor) that hits you like a boot in the groin — or a truncheon over the head. This led off their classic 1978 debut album “Power In The Darkness” which, along with the first Clash album, is the best snapshot of the tense, angry atmosphere in England at the time. Some of it seems like naive sloganeering now but back then it felt like life and death, you were either on Tom’s side or you were with the National Front and the SPG.

Download: Glad To Be Gay – Tom Robinson Band (mp3)
Download: Up Against The Wall – Tom Robinson Band (mp3)
Buy: “Power In The Darkness” (album)

(Posting has been a bit light this week as I’m recovering from a rather nasty stomach bug)

According to surveys one of the most common dreams that English people have is the Queen coming over to their house for tea while they’re in the rather mortifying position of being naked. What Dr. Freud would tell you is this shows that an English person’s greatest anxiety isn’t death or nuclear war but being embarrassed socially, as if we’d rather die than commit a social faux pas. Wrap this peculiar neurosis up in a bundle with the Queen and a nice cup of tea and you have a pretty clear picture of the English national subconscious. No wonder Morrissey writes the songs he does.

Like the great Moz, Pet Shop Boys are masters at mining Englishness in all it’s eccentric moods to make brilliant pop art. For “Dreaming of The Queen” they took this amusing little tidbit about having naked tea with the Queen and turned it into something quite beautiful. This is an elegant, haunting song about the death of love, not just from the perspective of the Queen and Lady Diana (she was still alive at the time) but it also becomes a personal and very moving song about losing a lover to AIDS.

I can’t say I’ve ever had that dream myself, mine usually involve scoring the winning goal for England in a World Cup Final while simultaneously snogging Elizabeth Hurley.

Download: Dreaming of The Queen – Pet Shop Boys (mp3)
Buy: “Very” (album)