Like chalk and cheese...and a lack of culinary taste...

January 31st – Who is it that picks the support act? I mean…does whoever it is that does it do it out of a sense of revenge, or spite, or just a complete misreading of the whole musical genre of that night’s headline act? Mind you there’s often not a lot of love lost between the bands on any particular show bill. I can well remember on many occasions of being the support act, of instances of our band’s carefully-mixed levels for sound, painstakingly fixed during what little sound-check time we had (the lion’s share being put aside for the headline band) being spiked by the headline band’s sound engineer without our knowledge and us sounding like a crock of shit for the first three numbers whilst our guy re-set levels; ‘twas a regular game we played. They twiddled with our sound settings; we fiddled with theirs…but then we also pissed into the backs of their amps for good measure…so…

I remember going to see ‘Camel’ in Oxford and they had Richard Digance as support…? Now, I thought that pairing a whimsical folk-singer with a classically-based, electronic supergroup – see yesterday’s post – who were touring on the back of a full length album release, ‘The Snow Goose’ (beautiful piece of work – have a listen) was less than inspired; the audience who inhabited the venue while Mr. Digance was on seemed to back that up, all twenty of them plus me. I watch the support acts at every gig I go to, partly out of good manners and partly because I’m a cheapskate and want my money’s worth…and you can make some excellent discoveries too…sorry, off on a tangent again… Right, planning the support act.

With that in mind, I’d like to meet the guy who thought;

“Now, who can we pair with The Monkees for their upcoming U.S. tour…? I know, Jimi Hendrix! That’ll work!”

Yup, just like putting a dog-turd atop the crème brulee would.

Does anyone in this branch of band management and promotions actually do any research into the likelihood that 2 or 3 thousand bed-wetting, screaming pre-pubiscites would be enthralled by the sight of a black guitar-shagger like Hendrix singing about drugs, sex and shooting women who are unfaithful…? I mean, really?

When Buddy Holly toured the U.K. (or Great Britain as it was back then, none of this trendy street talk acronym stuff coined by your local politician so as to appear hep…like ‘Brit Pop’ and ‘Brit Art’; all Brit-bollocks promulgated by an out of touch political/upper class society that wants to introduce a level of the same verbal trouser-rolling they use to uncover outsiders to their world of privilege. What they can’t commandeer they subvert, a sort of crypto dumbing-down of the populace; reduce everything of importance down to Red Top parlance for the masses, ready-soaked and reared on a diet of ‘Eastenders’ and Celebrity Big Tosser…)… Sorry everyone, it doesn't take much to get me started, you ought to know that by now. I’ll try again. Planning the support act.

When Buddy Holly toured the U.K. his people decided that, yes, it would be a good idea to put Jimmy Edwards (of ‘Whacko!’ Fame? Surely not…I mean what did his act consist of, spanking some schoolchildren…can I say that nowadays…? Too late now) and, ON THE SAME BILL, Des O’Connor (do you remember him? ‘Dik-a-Dum-Dum…’? Oh, perlease…) to play support for Mr. Holly and the Everly Brothers. Publicists: The perfect example of power without knowledge.

So, after that little lot it seems hardly surprising that, when the Clash: -

“…London calling, now don't look to us, 

Phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust

 London calling see we ain't got no swing,

 'Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing…”

first toured the U.S., the publicists and agents thought it would a good idea to partner them with Bo Diddley:

“…Just buy his baby a diamond ring,

If that diamond ring don’t shine,

He gonna take it to private eye,

If that private eye can’t see,

He’d better not take that ring from me…”

because, let’s face it, what better partnership can you have but four young white Londoners singing about smashing the system, built on the support act of a fifty year old black man singing about getting money and spending it, of self observation, of women and of acquisitions? Or maybe we've maligned them, these hollow men of the back-room. Maybe they saw the irony in such a pairing on tour, the juxtaposition of white working class with black working class, how the cultures, the values and the desires were different yet alike; mirror-images of opposites? Nah, can’t be, strike that last, what they did was just the ill-informed work of a bunch of illiterate wage-wankers…tour-tossers…money masturbators…