Thursday 19 December 2013

I always get chocolate stains on my pants

In 1977 you couldn't move for punk rockers. They'd taken over the country. They'd taken over our airwaves and they'd taken over our TV screens. It was wall to wall Clash, Sex Pistols and The Damned. It was Anarchy.

Maybe in a parallel universe the punks really did take over. In reality, apart from the aforementioned stalwarts, the UK punk and new wave scene was essentially John Peel's nocturnal Top Gear radio show and Billy Idol curling his top lip and miming on Top of the Pops. And Sounds on the newsstand every Thursday, of course.

Which is why, despite numerous attempts to rewrite music history (1976 - Ground Zero anyone?), much of the old guard carried on with business as usual. Not least Thin Lizzy. Their leader, Phil Lynott, like Pete Townshend, befriended many of the young upstarts and actually found a lot of common ground. Lynott would go on to front The Greedies with Steve Jones and Paul Cook from the rudderless Sex Pistols and play both Lizzy and Pistols favourites; you couldn't slide a cigarette paper between them.

In 1977, whilst the music industry was allegedly knee deep in gob, Thin Lizzy released Bad Reputation - one of their most commercial albums. And on it was one of the catchiest tunes put out as a single all year. It has finger clicking. It has a sax break. It positively sashays off the turntable; I swear Brian Downey, Lizzy's drummer, is using brushes. Dancing in the Moonlight has it all.

1 comment:

  1. Great singer, great songwriter, great band, great album, great song!! Sax by John Helwell of Supertramp! Because? Scott Gorham is brother-in-law to their drummer he appeared on at least one album of theirs.

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