“AND LATER on, I’ll be trying my hand at something called paragliding.”
Get Set For Summer/The Get Set Picture Show/The Saturday Morning Picture Show
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Glenn Aylett
March 6, 2021 at 5:03 pm
I’m sure Get Set For Summer featured The Buzzcocks in the last gasp of their career in 1981, playing to a bunch of bored kids who were either too young for punk, or who had moved on, and who were expecting someone like Madness to turn up. Still fair play to the BBC for giving airtime to the band instead of a more kid friendly pop group.
Droogie
March 6, 2021 at 6:18 pm
Are you sure it wasn’t The Buzzcocks on The Fun Factory instead ? I remember seeing this clip of them performing one of their last songs Are Everything on this show on a video compilation years back. A moustached Pete Shelley looks like a trainee bank manager on his day off here.
https://youtu.be/DpVyGbjR94M
Glenn Aylett
March 7, 2021 at 10:31 am
The Buzzcocks were on some kids show, which I’m sure was Get Set For Summer, or maybe it could have been Fun Factory. Either way, by 1981, punk was almost dead and people had moved on.
Richardpd
March 7, 2021 at 1:40 pm
The music scene seemed to change fast in the early 1980s, with New Romantics on the ascension and the Mod and Ska revivals starting to fade away on the heels of disco.
Punk acts either had to change their style or else slip into the niche environment magazines like Punk’s Not Dead tried to keep going.
Glenn Aylett
March 7, 2021 at 6:52 pm
@ Richardpd, we used to have a sad little gang of punks in town in 1981 that were considered a joke and were muttering Punk’s Not Dead to their critics and trying to see if Smiths had the latest Anti Nowhere League single in stock. Meanwhile the latest one by the Human League was flying off the shelves as the smart money was on synth pop,
Droogie
March 7, 2021 at 11:08 pm
I love Punk, but wasn’t a fan of the 3rd wave bands that came later in the early 80’s. Whilst the Clash were recording a brilliant album like London Calling, you had the unimaginative idiots like the UK Subs, Anti-Nowhere League, Exploited etc still wearing the leather jackets and spiky hair and playing 1-2-3-4 Ramones riffs with dumb lyrics about being unhappy about their lot.
Glenn Aylett
March 13, 2021 at 11:23 am
The last generation of punk bands were dismal and embarrassing and mostly overlooked as people like John Lydon had reinvented themselves and trends had moved on. I think the savviest figure from the punk scene was Adam Ant, who hadn’t achieved much in the late seventies, but rather than prat around with spiky hair and make songs about how much he hated life, reinvented himself for the New Romantic era and became massive. Also some of the punk sound is apparent on singles like Ant Music, but his image had changed to a dandy highwayman or a pirate depending on his mood.
Richardpd
March 8, 2021 at 10:49 pm
Luckily some of the savvier punk acts leant to evolve musically.
UK Subs bassist Alvin Gibbs later became a journalist & has written some good books about the punk scene.
Droogie
March 13, 2021 at 12:24 pm
I remember one music journalist brilliantly describing the less imaginative wave of punk bands that came along in the early 80’s as Gumby Punk, after the grunting idiots in Python. Looking back, the charts around 1982 were a golden peak for British pop. You had lots of bands inspired by punk but with a pop sensibility like The Human League, ABC, Altered Images, OMD, Soft Cell, Dexys etc. The charts soon declined with the arrival of synth acts with no substance, like Kajagoogoo, Thompson Twins, Howard Jones etc.
Richardpd
March 13, 2021 at 10:45 pm
Adam Ant had some deserved success but the big hits seemed to dry up after 1983, though he clung on until about 1986.
The Thompson Twins were probably better than the other two acts, don’t seem to gain the retrospective kudos of many acts from the era. It didn’t help the quality of their music slipped after about 1985 & their chart performances accordingly fell.
Droogie
March 14, 2021 at 9:55 am
I think Live Aid may have hastened the decline of a few artists that performed there by showing their shortcomings as a live act. Adam Ant famously had a rotten set, and the Thompson Twins performance isn’t great. They do a horrible cover of Revolution by The Beatles (with Madonna doing backing vocals!) and Tom Bailey’s vocals are woefully flat. More established acts like Queen and Phil Collins etc. rebooted their careers with their superior stagecraft that day.
Glenn Aylett
March 14, 2021 at 12:27 pm
The Thompson Twins, like Duran Duran after 1984, began to see themselves as some serious act with artistic pretensions, just like the prog acts from ten years earlier they professed to dislike. I do recall The Thompson Twins starting off as a decent pop act with likeable songs, but the Revolution cover was dreadful and their own material was pretentious drivel by then, and their career nosedived. Also Duran Duran, again a great act a few years earlier, jumped the shark with Le Bon’s arty, pretentious side project, Arcadia, that most people ignored.
As Droogie points out, Live Aid saw a huge surge in interest in the more radio friendly rock acts like Queen and Genesis, who put out some great sets that day as the pop boys floundered( I can recall Howard Jones or Nick Kershaw having a dreadful set), Also Dire Straits soared into superstardom after Live Aid and U2 saw a huge surge in popularity.
Droogie
March 14, 2021 at 1:21 pm
I think I recall Nik Kershaw tripping up as he entered the stage. Simon Le Bon also had a toe curling moment during Duran’s set when he attempts a high note on A View to A Kill and makes a sound like a wounded donkey.
Richardpd
March 14, 2021 at 11:02 pm
Duran Duran had an odd phase in the mid 1980s, briefly splitting into two groups (Arcadia and The Power Station) before coming back together, but never really got the momentum back to produce much of the quality of the 1981-4 golden age.
The Thompson Twins had a similar downward projection of musical quality especially after Joe Leeway left.
It did seem like many of the MTV generation acts seemed to sacrifice playing live over making videos.
Droogie
March 15, 2021 at 1:57 am
@Richardpd. I loathed the Durans as a kid. It was only years later with their fab 1993 hit Ordinary World that I began warming to them. Their songbook has definitely aged better than rivals Spandau Ballet’s has. ( I must admit that A Flock Of Seagulls are a guilty pleasure of mine though. They encapsulate the MTV model you mention of video over live performance, but I still think I Ran and Wishing I Had A Photograph are cracking pop songs. )
Richardpd
March 15, 2021 at 10:36 pm
A Flock Of Seagulls was one 1980s band that passed me by at the time, but I’ve made up for that over the years. VH1’s Pop Up Video had a very good profile for the video for I Ran. I don’t think they figured too much in the Top of the Pops repeats though.
After a few years struggling Duran Duran seemed to have a bit of a return to form in the early 1990s.
Spandau Ballet were closely matched with them for a year or two, but their musical output seemed to evolve quite a bit while they were a recording act before emploding.