Steppingstones (Part 3)

Here's a third set of Steppingstones.  This series is a companion to Nuggetized (punk covers of Lenny Kaye's seminal collection of garage rock and psychedelic artyfacts), and a stepchild of the ongoing Punks Got Soul cover song series.  There's overlap among the three series -- but whatcha gonna do about it?

The inspiration for Steppingstones was a disastrous press conference where a drunk and boorish John Lydon claimed that the Sex Pistols never played cover songs.  Marc Bell (aka Marky Ramone) immediately responded, "Stepping Stone!"  Henry Rollins was there too; he kept quiet, but he knew from his SOA days that "Stepping Stone" was adopted as an anthem of the DC hardcore scene by kids who had learned it from the Great R&R Swindle soundtrack.  

Steppingstones #3 digs a bit further into the bubblegum and glam rock years, as well as landmark early 70's records from Alice Cooper, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Brian Eno and the Modern Lovers that inspired the first decade of UK punk.  Stretching across the British Empire this time to include The Scientists (from Down Under) and The Forgotten Rebels (from Canada).  

I hope that you can forgive the presence of Paul Francis Gadd (his prison name) and separate the undeniable art from the irredeemable artist.  His appeal for release was denied in 2025, and rightly so. 

As with previous volumes, the original songs (on vol. 3.1) are generally longer than the punk versions (on vol. 3.2).  So there's a bonus track on 3.2 of T. Rex jamming with The Damned on a live version of "Bang A Gong".  The original recording bangs on for over 12 minutes, so I made a few crude edits in Audacity to reduce the length without sacrificing Rat Scabies' glorious drum solo.  

Speaking of The Damned, they have recently released Not Like Everybody Else, a covers album which serves as a tribute both to the late Brian James and to the music that inspired the band.  Rat Scabies, Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible and Paul Gray are touring this year to promote the record.  I saw them in concert last spring, and they've still got it!  Dave is in great voice, and the Captain is still an idiot savant, firing off brilliant solos while bouncing around as loony as ever.  Paul is a master of that Rickenbacker tone (like Lemmy and Bruce Foxton before him), and Professor Scabies beats his drumkit until it begs for mercy.  (SPOILER: no mercy granted.)  The tour is no "filthy lucre" cash grab, it's a celebration of fifty fuckin' years of mindless, directionless energy paired with magnificent showmanship.

Steppingstones (Garage Rock Meets Punk)

A fine old English gentleman asked me to repost my Steppingstones compilation, which featured cover versions by first wave UK punk bands of garage rock songs originally released between 1964 and 1967.  

I had long intended to follow it up with a second set of Steppingstones, which would continue from the psychedelia of 1967 through early 70's glam.  I also found some songs that should have made the original compilation, so I've made some adjustments to the tracklist of the first Steppingstones.  Vol 1.1 contains the original garage rock songs, and 1.2 compiles the punk and pub rock covers of the same 29 songs in the same running order.   Same for Steppingstones 2.1 and 2.2 -- 26 songs from 1967 to 1974 on Vol. 2.1, with the corresponding punk covers on 2.2.

The point of the whole thing (aside from refuting John Lydon's ridiculous claim that the Sex Pistols didn't do cover songs) was to highlight the influence of garage rock, psych and glam on punk rock.  This isn't an original observation -- Lenny Kaye knew it when he compiled Nuggets.  And despite what has been said about "Year Zero", punk didn't make a complete break from the music that preceded it.  

Thanks, Nobby!

Not all of the punk versions are great, but most or all of them are performed with sincere affection for the originals, rather than those punk parodies that simply sped up old songs (which The Dickies did brilliantly) or spat them out with exaggerated disdain (e.g., Sid Vicious' "My Way").

Part of the appeal of garage rock and glam was of course that anyone could do it.  It was worlds away from prog rock.  Garage rock was appealingly simple (and aggressive) but it wasn't "style over substance".  Psychedelia required a bit more musical skill.  As far as glam, maybe its style was its substance.

GLAMAZIL! (Pan-American Glam part 2)

 

The fabulous Edy Star

Was glam popular south of the US border?  It's harder to find glam music there than in Canada (and it doesn't help that I can't read Spanish or Portuguese).  There were political factors at play, as well as cultural and religious conservatism. Mexico outlawed performances by rock bands during the years that glam peaked, and other governments in Central and South America were under military dictatorship and severe censorship in the 70's and 80's. 

Tropicália was a musical movement in Brazil at the end of the 60's which protested against government repression and the complicity of the Brazilian bourgeoisie.  Some of the Tropicália artists were arrested and tortured, and some fled or were exiled to other countries.  But the quantity and quality of post-Tropicália music in the 1970's suggests that some Brazilian performers were undeterred. I found glam in Brazil, but almost none in other Latin American countries.  (This cover version of "All The Young Dudes" was released in Argentina in 1972, but I couldn't find an mp3 of it.)

Secos & Mohaldos (note Ney's nails!)

Secos & Molhados formed in 1971. The band name translates to "dry and wet". The group employed wild costumes and makeup as well as the "sexually ambiguous theatricality" and extraordinarily high-pitched voice of Ney Matogrosso.  Check out this 1974 TV performance and the article from Dangerous Minds.

Edy Star (pictured above) was a member of the psychedelic Society Of The Great Kavernist Order, and was known to mimic other singers.  At the end of "Claustrofobia" (from his 1974 self-titled album), Edy breaks into falsetto to sing a bit of Secos & Molhados' song "O Vira". And on Edy's single "Baiock" (the title represents a fusion between Baião and rock music), he incorporates the "na na na" refrain from "Land Of A Thousand Dances".

Edy's image was more glam than his music. He played Frank N. Furter in the 1975 Brazilian stage production of Rocky Horror, and he is credited as the first Brazilian celebrity to openly acknowledge his homosexuality. This was risky anywhere in the 1970's, but especially under a dictatorship.  Edy made a comeback in 2017 with a second album which featured Ney Matogrosso.  

Rita Lee, crowned A Rainha do Rock (Queen of Rock)

Rita Lee was a founding member of Os Mutantes. She was dismissed from the group, and later refused to join their 2006 reunion, calling them "old men trying to raise money to pay the geriatrician."  In the 70's Rita teamed up with a band called Tutti Frutti to make several glam-influenced rock albums. She has become one of Brazil's most successful performers, earning more than $60 million worldwide. Living well really is the best revenge!

Arnaldo Baptista (who allegedly kicked Rita out of Os Mutantes) camped it up on his 1974 solo debut, Loki?  He poses bare-chested with leather pants and a bullet belt on the album cover, and he sings about Alice Cooper and "sinking in lingerie" (if Google Translate can be trusted).   

Arnaldo Baptista (and his shoulders)

The wild and wide-ranging music of Raul Seixas can't be limited to stylistic labels like glam. He was known in Brazil as "Maluco Beleza" (the Mad Beauty). He co-produced and cowrote the Society Of The Great Kavernist Order's 1971 album. Raul and lyricist Paulo Coelho tried to create an "Alternative Society" based on the Thelemic principles of Aleister Crowley, but they were tortured and exiled by the Brazilian dictatorship. Paulo Coelho later became a novelist of international reknown.  Read more about their "Alternative Society" here.  

Raul Seixas (the Roy Wood of Brazil?)

 

Seixas' 1974 album Gita was so popular that Brazil's government was forced to allow him to return. Speaking of Alice Cooper, the original band played its final show on April 8, 1974 in Rio de Janeiro -- so the censors must have allowed some "decadent" artists from abroad.

The Sao Paolo band Made In Brazil represents the evolution from glam to glam metal, while maintaining the provocative and androgynous imagery associated with the first wave of glam. Their original vocalist was Cornelius Lucifer (pictured below), but he was replaced by Percy Weiss for the albums Jack, O Estripador (1976) and Massacre (recorded in 1977 but banned by Brazilian censors).  The group was known to incite riots among audiences. The track "Jack O Estripador" (Jack The Ripper) reminds me of Spinal Tap's "Saucy Jack", but it sounds like the Stones or the Dolls.  Made In Brazil still exists, and holds the Guinness record for most band members (126 -- just a few more than The Fall!)

Cornelius Lucifer (Made In Brazil's first frontman)

Another band from Sao Paolo was Joelho De Porco, formed in 1972.  Their first album was released in 1976, and they are considered precursors to punk in Brazil. Joelho de Porco (which translates as ham hock) broke up after their 1978 album, but reunited in the 80's.

For those with an academic bent (geddit?), an article is included with today's download from a journal of cultural studies about how David Bowie "amounted to nothing in the 1970's" in Latin America, "even in the glam rock gay scene in Brazil". Among both fascists and Leftists, "Bowie was regarded as a degenerate peddling regressive influences," rather than an agent provocateur.  

(dude on the right looks like Bob Odenkirk undercover at a Misfits gig!)

This post is by no means the definitive word on Latin American glam (and it may contain historical inaccuracies, as I am no expert in these subjects).  As with GLAMADA, some of today's music is glam-influenced or glam-adjacent. Rita Lee's albums with Tutti Frutti are probably closest to what glam sounded like in the UK and US, but the visual and sonic signifiers (and more importantly, the transgressive spirit) of glam are evident among all of these artists.  To hear more amazing Brazilian music (folk, jazz, prog, psychedelia, and hip hop), check out this blog. I hope you enjoy GLAMAZIL, the Pan-Am Glam companion to GLAMADA. Feliz Ano Novo! 

GLAMADA! (Pan-American Glam, part 1)

While wondering why glam wasn't as big in the US as it was in Europe, it occurred to me to look into whether other countries on this side of the Atlantic "got" glam better than we Yanks did.  

I'm no expert on glam, or on the music of our neighbor to the north.  But I've been a fan of "S'cool Days" (Stanley Frank's 1976 single) and "Backstreet Noize" (the b-side of Nick Gilder's 1978 hit, "Hot Child In The City") since my teens.  There had to be more Canadian glam.

In a recent piece about Canadian band Max Webster at The Major's Hole (which any major dude will tell you is a major music blog), I wrote about accidentally finding Max Webster's music while looking for something else. I was searching for Canadian glam, and was led astray by the cover photo of High Class In Borrowed Shoes, with band members in heels, makeup, flares and sashes.  The music inside that unfortunate sleeve isn't glam -- but it's great stuff.

The history of Canadian glam is yet to be told, but you can help this guy write it by supporting his Patreon! The Museum of Canadian Music and Canadianbands.com were helpful in my own investigations, as was Robin Wills' Purepop blog (Barracudas member and avid record collector).

Many of the artists on today's compilation aren't really glam.  For some, the trappings of glam (such as its androgyny and theatricality) helped to get press and sell tickets.  This may have been true for Justin Paige and Lewis Furey, who took a walk on the wild side with kinky tales of queens, hustlers, and leather daddies.

Other artists (such as Thundermug and Wenzday) were pressured to sound glam by record companies that wanted hits.  Some may have been casting about for a new sound, and others borrowed the visual and sonic signifiers of glam as a tribute to their inspirations.

Today's share isn't a history of glam in Canada, or a "junkshop glam" comp.  It's just a collection of songs from various artists during the glam era (which peaked between 1972 and 1976) that seemed to be glam-influenced in one way or another (at least to my ears).

Pictured are a detail from the front cover of the Justin Paige album; the pyjamarama that poor Thundermug was convinced to wear for their third LP; a b&w Brutus photoshoot (or perhaps a scene from their annual Halloween costume party); and the fabulous inner gatefold of that Justin Paige album.  The inner sleeve slid in and out of a pair of low cut studded briefs!  

The Justin Paige song "Rough Trade" features Dick Wagner and a young Rik Emmett on guitars, plus bassist Prakash John (who played with Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, and P-Funk!)

Today's set ends with Bob Segarini (of The Wackers and The Dudes) covering a Slade song, and a version of "Science Fiction Double Feature" by Ontario punks The Forgotten Rebels (whose website lists their primary influences as Bowie, The Sweet, T.Rex, and Gary Glitter).