It’s a good time for my cool glove
My mother was 10 when Bill Haley’s song Rock Around the Clock got to number 1 in the UK. When I was around the same age, there was a “25 years of rock n roll” programme on TV, which talked about teenagers ripping out cinema seats to the new soun’ that was goin’ aroun’.
“To this?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “Even I find it hard to believe now.” (As people who were married before the summer of love, I’ve always found my parents to be, musically, two generations behind me. So there you go.)
As part of my current, involuntary project to turn into my parents, I had a similar experience today, with (in a bit of synchronicity that’s almost too corny to note) another Bill. Mr Idol’s White Wedding was released when *I* was ten. If I’m honest, I don’t recall the first release at all, but the 1985 re-release that coincided with some horrible family holiday in (iirc) Cornwall, with me turning on the car radio and my father telling me to shut off the noise “or else” (I couldn’t imagine what he could do that was worse than a week in a grotty place we couldn’t really afford, pretending we actually liked each other, but again, there you go).
The odd thing about White Wedding is that it teetered on the edge of all sorts of interesting Gothic stuff, as I did then myself (“what have you done with your eye makeup, young lady?”), without actually sliding off into anything beyond middle of the road rock. I can’t imagine anyone ripping cinema seats out to it. Which is why I love the literal video so very, very much:
Tags: goth, music, random shit about my childhood
Brilliant vid – at times you can see his lips saying the mad words he is being given to say! LOL
and I wonder if your dad knew mine? I was sent upstairs to wash off my make up after I had spent literally HOURS painting my eyes to look like Jools Driscoll. ( http://prune.it/X6HW )
edit: just found this, poss even more like mine: http://prune.it/ChhC
I still think it looked amazing…
I would have been going more for this, Lynne. Never had the cheekbones for it tho.
Heh, heh…excellent video. Poor old Billy.
And yes, whatever else we may learn from history we can be sure that we are all doomed to turn into our parents.
Siouxie was very beautiful wasn’t she… and no I didn’t have all the beautiful attributes for Jools eyes either.
In fact, to add insult to injury (to her not me…) I wore quite thick black rimmed glasses at the time. sigh. I can imagine the overall effect was … maybe a bit over the top.
But, hey! What damage was it doing to the fathers? Why all the control stuff???
Have heard this song when I was quite young as well. The next, I found they played it in a horror flick – Chucky4. It has been that long. ^^
@wchingya
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