Het blijft bijzonder goed, Life on Mars. Ik snap wasco hoegenaamd niet: noch traag, noch obvious, opbouw is mij wél duidelijk; ik zit aan aflevering vier, ik heb de eerste drie na elkaar gezien, en ik zal de rest van het eerste seizoen denk ik ook allemaal op rij zien.

En de muziek… The Sweet!

Ik ben te jong om me Glamrock in het echt te herinneren, maar miljààr zo wijs.

Blockbuster was THE SONG. Blockbuster should have been adopted as the national anthem. (The idea of The Queen turning to the camera, pouting ‘We just haven’t got a clue what to do’ – it’s too delicious for words.)

Blockbuster was like… Every generation has its song. Rock Around The Clock, Anarchy In The UK, Fool’s Gold, Blockbuster. Honest, it was that good! Really, and I don’t mean any disrespect here, but The Sweet should have died in a plane crash after Blockbuster. 

If they’d taken the smart career move, the musical would never have left the West End. Listen, they can make a musical out of Buddy, some geek in glasses, think of what they could have done with The Sweet.  

The thing with Blockbuster was that it was the zeitgeist. It was exactly the right song at exactly the right time. Bolan’s Ride A White Swan might have been more iconoclastic, Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust  might have been more dramatic, Roxy’s Virginia Plain might have been the best debut single ever (before or since) but Blockbuster . . . It was like you need a pint of milk so you go to a pint of milk shop and buy a pint of milk. We needed Blockbuster and, right on time, there she was.

[…]

The Sweet started life as a comical bubblegum group doing comical pop songs and ended life as a bunch of old bickering sadsters, but for a brief, glorious period they burned brighter than bright and were the starriest star in the sky. That should be enough for anyone. 

Fittingly, when they blew up, they blew up big time and the whole thing ended in bitter acrimony – alcohol, arguments and early death (not the sort of thing we need go into here – You want to know about all that, go find a Sweet biography). Later, Steve Priest said: “We were drinking too much and taking too many drugs – which seemed to be a good idea at the time”. I’m sure it did Steve. But it wasn’t.

Remember them this way; It’s 1973 and The Sweet are on Top Of The Pops performing Blockbuster. The camera closes in on Steve Priest, who’s wearing so much make-up that Boots had to create a new range just for him, he turns and mouths the classic Glam aside – “We just haven’t got a clue what to do”.  

It was so camp you could have put it in a field and slept in it.  Perfect.   [Nostalgia Central]

Ik zie nu al dat ik vele mensen ga herontdekken. Roger Whittaker!

Mainstream, zeker dat. Maar wohow!