And, you know what? It was Valentine's Day in 1979 as well. Who would have thought that Love and Romance were around so long ago?
Clearly, the mood of Love was in the air, back then, because we got the signing of the Saint Valentine's Day Concordat between the Trades Union Congress and British Government, which ended The Winter of Discontent and meant the nation could look forward, at last, to getting its full quota of Marvel comics.
But, only days earlier, on February 12th, over a thousand schools had closed due to a heating oil shortage caused by the lorry drivers' strike. I remember that strike very well and felt it was a thing they should have made a regular event.
Someone else with something to crow about that week was Trevor Francis who became Britain's first ever £1 million footballer, as Nottingham Forest "bought" him from Birmingham City for that sum.
Actually, if I remember right, Forest signed him for £999,999, as they didn't want him to bear the burden of being Britain's first £1 million footballer. Needless to say, everyone ignored that £1 difference and burdened him with the tag anyway.
On this night of that year, BBC Two was showing Tigris: The Sumerian Voyage of Thor Heyerdahl which seems to have involved the legendary adventurer sailing down the Tigris and arguing that reed boats were the technology which allowed civilisation to spread across the world.
Around the same time, BBC One was broadcasting an edition of The Risk Business which detailed Clarks' move away from making sensible shoes and into producing experimental shoes.
What experimental shoes are, I have no idea but I do, of course, remember Clarks shoes fondly, from my childhood, as they were the company who famously put compasses in the heels of their shoes so we could find our way home if we were ever lost in one of Britain's many vast rainforests - and also included small replicas of animal footprints in their soles so we could identify the tracks of any mystery species we might encounter.
As genuinely wonderful as this was, I must confess that, in all my life on this planet, I have never had need for either of those shoe modifications.
Thanks to Clarks' shoes, we all knew where we were going. And someone else who blatantly knew where they were going were Blondie who were Number One on the UK singles chart and the album chart, with Heart of Glass and Parallel Lines respectively.
But, when it came to that first chart, for how long could they hold off the threat of ABBA's Chiquitita which was lurking menacingly at Number Two?
The album chart was looking quite New Wavey. Not only were Blondie at Number One but Elvis Costello was at Number Four with Armed Forces, while Ian Dury's New Boots and Panties was at Six. Granted, something called Action Replay by Various Artists was at Number Two and the Bee Gees' Spirits Having Flown was at Number Three, while Don't Walk - Boogie by Various Artists was at Five.
I'm assuming, from their titles, that both those Various Artists albums were Disco compilations.
But that's enough waffling about side issues. All that matters is Marvel - of the UK kind - and, with all that strike action finally over, no doubt there'll be plenty of Marvel UK goodness for us to look forward to.
No there isn't.
Clearly, it's going to take some time for the Winter of Discontent to be made glorious summer by that son of Skinn because Star Wars Weekly is the only comic Marvel UK has to offer us this week.
And I don't have a clue what happens in it. I can't even determine which issue of the US mag is being reprinted here.
I would assume that Warlock and the Micronauts are still present. Based on previous form, I also suspect there'll be a Tales of the Watcher type story, as well.
Beyond that, all is mystery.
But, then, what is Valentine's Day without a little mystery?
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42 comments:
Not much to talk about with the comics this week, is there?
So I'll come up with a Valentines day comment. Is it more or less risky these days send a card to your office crush? Could be riskier, with it potentially counting as sexual harassment. Or could be less risky in the days of email where nobody has a clue what anybody's handwriting looks like.
Its political correctness gone mad, dangermash.
While its true that the Concordat technically marked the end of the Winter of Discontent comrade Steve, unofficial wildcat actions continued for a while.
Especially against the relaunched weeklies, as Dez Skinn didn't make any concessions to the workers.
Presumably Star Wars was allowed across picket lines because it still had glossy covers and unabridged reprints and wasn't part of Skinn's new direction; but the class struggle against Marvel Comic and Spider-Man Comic wasn't over just yet...
-sean
I recently read that Star Wars Weekly got its comeuppance for breaking the picket lines and was off the shelves for several weeks as the other weeklies got back on track. Scabs and splitters were dealt with harshly back in the 70s.
Usually when I see the Star Wars cover I get a flash of recognition but this week nothing. Complete blank.
Pretty sure it's back to the main Star Wars comic series after the Pizzazz reprints.
I never really got into the Wedlock story. As a kid I remember it being confusing. All I remember is something about clowns :/
Wedlock? Stupid Autocorrect
My parents were married on Valentine's Day ( doing the "right thing" because mom was pregnant with me).
Now that my father is dead, it just makes me feel weird and sad.
I've never come across cards that say "HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! And Happy Anniversary, even though your husband's DEAD!!" LOL!
I have a few questions that will follow!
1) Is the banter about Star Wars actually being allowed across the picket line serious or just you guys jesting. I honestly don't know. I mean, I come from a land where reality is way stranger than fiction.
Next question:
On Talksport some guests have taken to calling each other "chaps," rather than "mates" lately. Are they equivalent?
Next question:
"And someone else who blatantly knew where they were going were Blondie who were Number One" is quoted from Steve above.
Yet, here in the USA, we would write "was Blondie" not "were Blondie." Steve, I call on your skills to explain "why!" You are a writer and thus must be a reader and thus must have read some stuff from the USA like Huck Finn (as I recall) so... Help me out! I never learned English grammar until I started learning French.
We would also write "was Number One."
So in the UK you would write:
"And someone else who blatantly knew where they were going were Blondie who were Number One" i
And in the USA we would write:
"And someone else who blatantly knew where they were going was Blondie who was Number One."
Were vs. was. Third-person plural vs. third-person singular?
Dangermash... Ahhh you reminded me of when my childhood-crush Audrey Appleseece gave me a Valentine that showed to peas, in a pod, with the girl saying to the boy pea, "Please be my podner!" I kept that thing for years...
I think you could pass out innocent cards like that, like the kids still do, and get away with it!
KD - speaking of chaps and valentine's day, you don't suppose Rick Jones had a set, do you? I mean somewhere between Hulk, Cap, the Avengers, Cpt. Marvel, it seems possible, no?
I got raked-over-the coals by my buddies for liking Blondie. I loved the
"Plastic Letters" album.
When I saw Debbie Harry perform on SNL in a skin-tight green plastic jumpsuit, I fell in love.
It was just like when Heart performed on Don Kirschner's Rock Concert and Ann Wilson (so lithe and sexy then) was dressed in a black lace dress. She was so hot!
Wow, Charlie-
Envisioning Rick Jones in chaps?
Are we talking the flappy cowboy kind, or the tighter black leather biker kind?
I don't remember Rick wearing either. I've ridden motorcycles for years and never owned a pair (tho In wintertime they would've been handy).
Every time I'd see bikers come into a bar with them on,I'd yell-sing "YMCA!"
Rob Halford of Judas Priest is a big fan of them also. Priest still rules,tho.
Charlie, the workers in the UK were much more organized in the 70s, and picket lines were taken more seriously than they are now (and people in this country wonder why they don't get decent pay rises anymore).
Kd, it amazes me that anyone was surprised when that geezer from Judas Priest came out. They were the Village People of metal.
-sean
I was being a little facetious about the picket lines, Star Wars Weekly just suffered a 3 or 4 week gap in distribution that wasn't explained at the time. It was a harrowing period to be collecting Marvel UK comics.
Dangermash, I can shed no light on the acceptability of sending mysterious Valentines cards in the current age.
Sean, thanks for the Concordat info.
Aggy, I loved the Warlock clowns story at the time, although now, knowing its not so subtle subtext, I feel quite uncomfortable about it.
Charlie, the claims about Star Wars Weekly being allowed through the picket lines are almost certainly not true.
I have never encountered anyone in the real world who calls people chaps and mates. It seems like an attempt by those involved to sound, "interesting."
As far as I can remember, technically, a group of people should be referred to as a singular entity, so it should be, "Blondie was Number One." However, it jars horribly, bearing in mind that Blondie was made up of a number of individuals, so I refuse to do it. I do refer to Marvel and DC in the singular because they were proper businesses, so it feels more acceptable to do it.
KD, wasn't there an issue of Captain Marvel, featuring The Stranger, that was set in a Wild West style town in space, with robot horses? I'd be amazed if Rick didn't get his chaps on in that one.
I missed that issue. That explains their robot mule.
I kind of figured Rick needed chaps in case he found himself teamed up with the Dukes of Hazard and had to go sliding across the hoods of cars!
I mean, where else had he left to visit besides Kid Colt or Rawhide Kid or those dudes.
And Daisy Duke smoked the Heart girls. I don't know what Daisy looks like now but I have to assume she could fit into the pant leg of one of the Hearts, no?
STeve - I figured your English english was correct for the UK and "Blondie were" is correct for the UK.
You guys do that a lot too when I listed on the radio or telly and you are talking about sports teams. You'll say "West Ham/ City/Chelsea were superior today" whereas we'd say, "... was superior today."
I was wondering if you knew why that was?
So the Winter Of Discontent was over but the appalling damage done by the unions ensured Labour's defeat in the general election three months later. And Margaret Thatcher was gifted a perfect justification for crushing the unions in the following years. Tory propaganda about the Winter Of Discontent (unburied dead blah, blah) continued until their electoral defeat in 1997 when they realised there was no more mileage in the subject.
This was also the week of my 13th birthday (17th Feb to be exact). On the night before my birthday I accidentally dropped a bottle of pop (glass bottles in those days) so on my first morning as a teenager I and my sister went down to the local pub to buy a replacement bottle of pop (it was a Saturday so we weren't bunking off school).
Killdumpster, my parents were married on New Year's Day (1954) but they waited another 12 years before having a baby (me). My mother was very prudish so sex before marriage was absolutely out of the question :D
Colin-
I think the abundance of drive-inn theaters in my country, at the time, was condusive to my conception.
Charlie-
Daisy over Ann or Nancy back in the day? NO WAY!!!
With rock bands, I would probably use a plural verb if the name sounds plural (Beatles, Rolling Stones, Ramones, Bangles, etc.), and singular if the name sounds like a single thing (Heart, Scandal, Fleetwood Mac, Berlin).
e.g., "The Beatles were a very popular rock group in the 1960s," and "Blondie was a punk rock band in the late 1970s, and Berlin was a New Wave band in the 1980s."
Ann Wilson has been struggling with a weight problem for years, resorting to starvation diets and even surgery. At the 2018 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, she definitely was not svelte, but at least she was not morbidly obese.
Nancy still looks pretty good. Which is why the later Heart videos seemed to focus more on her than on Ann.
Back in the old days, Debbie Harry was the sexy one, Stevie Nicks was the cute one, and Ann Wilson was the one who could sing.
Ann was hot up to and including the Bebe Le Strange album.
I've now come up with my own personal rule as regards plural/singular terms. If the entity can be referred to as, "it," I shall refer to it as a singular entity. If it can't, I'll view it as being plural.
For example, I'd happily say, "Disney has released its new film Widow Twanky and the Lonely Octopus." Therefore, I would refer to Disney as a single entity. On the other hand, I wouldn't happily say, "Blondie is Number One with its new single." Therefore I would refer to the band in the plural. So, basically, in that example, Disney is an, "it," and Blondie is a, "they."
Sean-
I saw Priest during the Point Of Entry tour (the band freely admits a lot of their titles and lyrics were in-jokes concerning Rob's preference).
One of the best shows I saw in my life! Opening act was Iron Maiden (Killers tour) with the original vocalist Paul D'Ano. ROCK-N-FREAKIN' ROLL!!! We screamed and yelled for them so much they did SIX ENCORES!!!
The middle act was Whitesnake, when they were still in their early pseudo-Deep Purple stage. Way too many ballads. Nobody wanted to hear Hammond organ solos. We booed and screamed "YOU GUYS ARE TOO F***IN' MELLOW!! Then guys in the balconies started throwing M-80 FIRECRACKERS AT THE STAGE!! Those are quarter-sticks of DYNAMITE!!! Whitesnake's set might have maybe lasted 20 minutes.
It must've took the roadies by suprise, because it took over an hour till Priest went on stage. During that time heavy metal/ hard rock was pumping over the PA system, while we filled the air with frisbee and more exploding M-80s.
When Priest finally appeared, KK Downing & Glen Tipton arose from inside the drum riser on platforms, looking at each other and laughing their asses off. Rob came out and was in top form, starting "The Ripper" before walking on stage. The Stanley Theater erupted like a volcano!!!!
During the whole show there was a short, fat, old German lady dancing in the aisles. All us metal-heads dug her. A Guy brought in a giant reproduction of the razor blade from the cover of the British Steel album, gave it to her, and she danced with it. Security guards let her into the orchestra pit (where I was) at our insistence. She placed it on the edge of the stage.
Towards the end of the show, Rob rode the Harley onto the stage. He laid down on it, humping the seat & licking the gas tank , mouthing "I love you" during a guitar solo.
I can't remember how many ENCORES they did, but the final one KK Downing picked up the giant faux razor blade and waved it at us, I guess signaling that was the end.
Fragging incredible. I couldn't hear or speak for a week! Lol!
KD - I figured you (oops - I mean Rick) would need those chaps for a session with Chrissie Hynde "in the middle of the road" LOL!
And it sounds like your parents found "paradise by the dashboard light!"
And, the closest I got to anything "metal" was the Ramones which, I would simply think of more as a high powered garage band. Given I saw them in a space as big as a 1st grade classroom the speakers went to the ceiling, well I didn't hear much for the next 48 hours! It was pretty funny to watch Joey Ramone whip my brother with the chord to his mike b/c he was grabbing on to something or another on stage, lol. They all died young in that band, like around 50 as I recall.
I still buy Clark's shoes. I bought a new pair last October but they don't have compasses in the heels :)
Tomorrow is my birthday, yay!!!
Charlie-
I saw the Ramones 2 years before Joey died.
The Pep Boys auto center near me has a big banner of Dee Dee Ramone buying car parts. I wanted it, but the guy at the counter wanted 50 bucks for it.
Why was Dee Dee buying car parts? As part of an ad campaign? Or he just liked to fix his own ride? I can't see him having time... weren't they perpetually on the road?
And I just discovered that they took the Ramon name from Paul McCartney's "stage name" when he was with the "silver Beatles." Wow... everywhere you look in music there is a Beatles connection somehow, no?
Charlie, weren't you going on a while back about how punk passed you by in the US, and you didn't know anything about it? So how come you saw the Ramones?
Personally, I'm a Beatles-sceptic and think they're overrated.
-sean
Sean - when I think Punk I think razor blades, spitting, blood, foul language, screaming unintelligibly in the mic, etc. lol. The Ramones were just a garage band. Black jackets, white tshirts...
The most foul thing I saw was Joey hitting my brother over the head with the cord to the mic. But that was motivated by my brother holding on to the front speaker (or teleprompter.. whatever the small black box was) so as not to be moved away from the stage by the crowd. IT wasn't part of Joey's shtick, lol.
I have to think they are the most unknown "great band" ever?
As I sit here, I truly can not remember why we saw them in 1983. I mean, they had no huge hits but I was familiar with "I want to be sedated" and they were playing about 30 minutes away in this smaller place so it was like... let's see the Ramones.
It was a blast. And since then I've worn ear plugs at every loud event I go to, LOL.
Well Charlie, to me "just a garage band" sums up the difference between the punk of the late 70s, and the hardcore, thrash and whatnot of the 80s and later.
You could say the same thing about, say, the Clash, the Buzzcocks and even the Sex Pistols.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramones#Spearheading_punk:_1976-1977
(See - the wiki says they're punk so it must be true)
-sean
Happy birthday, Colin. :)
Bah! Ramones are not in the same category as those famous bands. Find someone under 30 (40?) whose heard of any of them though, at this point in time...
Truly I don't know if, in 1983, I could have found 1 in 10 who ever heard a Ramones' song, though the name was sort of known and eventually frequently mixed up with the Romantics! LOL!
But! I cannot argue with WIKI! If it's in print it must be true, LOL!
Charlie-
That was a "monitor", for the musicians to hear themselves.
THere you go KD! So imagine how small this joint was if my brother could be chest high to the stage and grab the monitor and Joey is like all of 5 feet away whacking him in the head with the cord, LOL. I mean the drummer was only like 10 feet max feet behind Joey.
At one point my bro said he had enough and was going to grab Joey and whack him one. I'm glad he didn't cause I am sure we would have come in 2nd best in that one!
Actually, the worst thing I did was see Ramones Friday night, and then head for the Indy 500 the next morning in a old VW Beetle which was loud as heck, and then listen to that 500 mile long race with the engines screaming like jet turbines... My ears were in pain come Sunday night!
Thanks, Steve - I'm gonna party like it's 2999....(not really, just a sad old git drinking Scotch and listening to Desert Island Discs is more like it).
But I downloaded the recent BBC2 documentary about the pre-fame David Bowie's search for success so that's something to look forward to :)
Is that Five Years, or is that something else I'm thinking of?
When it comes to the Ramones, I can't speak for America but they were pretty well known in Britain. They had four Top 40 hits, including one Top 10 hit and they did manage one Top 20 album.
Well, the "problem" with the USA is that a band could (still can?) be huge in one part of the country and remain relatively unknown in the other. I recall getting to the University (in the middle of Indiana) and the east coast kids raving about various bands that us mid-westerners and the west coast kids never heard of...
And something like the Beatles or Stones... huge in metropolitan areas like Chicago where I grew up, it seemed, but no so in the rural areas like Pinhook Indiana, as I saw at the university.
I wonder if it was the same with the Ramones here?
But hell, we are talking 40 -50 years ago now and with the internet and movement of peoples...
Steve, I think Colin -happy birthday Colin - is on about the First Five Years doc that was on the other week, which covered the early years when Bowie tried to become famous making embarrassing records like the Laughing Gnome and being a terrible mime.
Its not the same as the Beeb doc from a while back called - confusingly - Five Years, which covered the period just after that, when he made his best records in the 70s and regularly re-invented himself.
Bowie would do a tour and album as the sexually ambiguous alien Ziggy Stardust, then become the completely different sexually ambiguous alien Aladdin Sane, and after that play a sexually ambiguous alien in The Man Who Fell To Earth. Amazing - how did he do it?
-sean
Bowie was amazing.
The Ramones are, in my opinion, punk rock legends.
Happy Belated-Birthday, Colin.
Thanks for the Bowie documentary info, Sean.
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