Joan Armatrading, Tom Robinson and the great music meltdown of Summer ‘76
7/3/202640 min
The blistering heat of 1976 burnt various things onto the memory – standpipes, strikes, Entebbe, ‘Confessions’ movies, Jeremy Thorpe – but most of all the records that became its soundtrack, some of them revolutionary, others begging for extinction. John L Williams captures the moment in ‘Heatwave: the Summer of 1976, Britain at Boiling Point’ and a paints of picture of a country on the brink of a vast pop-cultural shift. We talk to him here about …
… violence at gigs and football and on Derek & Clive albums
… dumb people pretending to be clever (prog rock) and clever people pretending to be dumb (Ramones)
… the rise of Joan Armatrading in the days before ‘identity’ marketing
… how ‘funny’ t-shirts were the memes of their day
… when Tom Robinson saw the future in Scarborough
… “mainstream culture gave you things to both love and hate”
... how Rock Follies featured an imaginary Blitz Club where people danced in military uniforms
… Andy Summers (with Kevin Ayers) and Stewart Copeland (Curved Air) on the same bill a year before the Police
… why anyone with a Sensational Alex Harvey Band scarf got a wide berth
… Time Out’s headline: "It's the Buzz, Cock!"
… Tom Waits, aged 25, unconvincing hobo-hipster
… and Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Emmanuelle and the lowest point of the Radio One Roadshow.
Order copies of ‘Heatwave’ here: https://tinyurl.com/2kudc6xr
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsDavid Hepworth· Host0:01
[guitar music] Now look, Word In Your Ear comes to you at least once a week in the form of a podcast, a videocast, or a thing so new it has no name, and it's free. All we ask is that you subscribe, like, and wherever possible, leave a comment. And if you feel like getting further involved, you can become a Patreon supporter, which could mean you're inviting us to rifle through your record collection, our inviting you to join us for our very special Friday night quiz, and all of us feeling the sum of human happiness has been increased. Details at Patreon.com/WordInYourEar. And now, on with the show.
Mark Ellen· Host0:44
[guitar music] You're listening to a podcast from The Word. Welcome to this. Now, for anyone old enough, the recent British heat has brought back the blistering summer of 1976, which was standpipes, and it was strikes, and it was Concorde, and it was Jeremy Thorpe, and, uh, and the music, uh, that was baked into the memory, too. And this terrific book suggests that the country was at a moment of, uh, enormous cultural change. It's called Heat Wave: The Summer of 1976, Britain at Boiling Point, and it's the work of John L. Williams.