Roy Wood and his band Wizzard had a Number One hit in the UK in 1973 with “See My Baby Jive”.
Roy Wood had previously been a founding member of Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) and was a particularly experimental musician, combining a range of genres in his music, such as classical and big band sounds.
This is evident in the clip here of “See My Baby Jive”, featuring orchestral instruments such as a cello and various horns as well as two drummers:
Gotta love the bass player on roller skates with angel wings and cricket pads on his legs (Rick Price), and the madly waving guy on keyboards – Bill Hunt, who apparently had a propensity to smash pianos…
The late Seventies were the years of punk rock, and although not the first punk rock band, The Sex Pistols were the epitome of the movement, with songs like “Anarchy In The UK”, “God Save The Queen”, “Pretty Vacant” and “Holidays In The Sun”.
I didn’t actually get a (taped) copy of their only album, “Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols” (1977), until a few years later, when I lived in Germany.
Or maybe I did get it before leaving New Zealand, I just remember playing it in the car of a band I wrote some stuff with in Germany, shortly after I met them in December 1980. The bass player and singer of the ZZ Top/Lynrd Skynyrd type band didn’t like The Beatles, so I played him The Sex Pistols…
This is the studio version of “Anarchy In The UK”:
“God Save The Queen”, also the studio version:
Sex Pistols classic “Pretty Vacant”:
“Holidays In The Sun”:
Having experienced the Berlin Wall on numerous occasions while living in Germany – from both sides – the lines in this song about it took on particular significance for me at least in the 1980s.
Now the Wall is gone and so are The Sex Pistols, though the Berlin Wall actually lasted longer…
Nevertheless, the “cultural” legacy of The Sex Pistols lingered on well after the actual demise of the band.
Whatever one may think of their music, they were a catalyst for many great acts that followed.
Mi-Sex was a top New Zealand band that went to Australia in the late Seventies and had a lot of success there, culminating in their first album “Graffitti Crimes”, featuring the title track as well as songs like the Australian No. 1 single “Computer Games” and their recent other single from 1979, “But You Don’t Care”.
I remember their predecessor band Father Thyme playing at dances in the “Old Woolroom” at Massey University in about 1977 or 1978.
I distinctly remember they played “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” by Pink Floyd – or maybe it was “Welcome To The Machine” from the same album (not so distinct after all…), and I also remember chatting to the bass player, Don Martin, in the breaks.
Mi-Sex, however, played quite a different style, quite New Wave, and when I was planning the 1980 Massey University Student Orientation (two weeks in February-March when term started in New Zealand after the summer vacation), I tried to hire them for a festival we were running – for NZ$10,000, a lot more than Father Thyme had commanded.
Unfortunately they were already booked for that time, so it didn’t happen, and I had to be content with buying their album, which I think I bought in Germany, having gone there a couple of weeks after Orientation ended to write my M.A. thesis.
As I said, the album, released in July 1979, was called “Graffitti Crimes”, here’s the title track:
One of my favourites is the 1979 single “But You Don’t Care”:
And finally the hit “Computer Games”, which wasn’t on all versions of the album:
Mi-Sex disbanded in 1984, and unfortunately lead singer Steve Gilpin died after a car accident on his way home from a gig in 1991.
