Quote of the day

"It was a middle class idea with working class actors".

Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp with a surprisingly insightful and incisive observation about punk in the second installment of BBC2's documentary series 'Girls And Boys - Sex And British Pop'. Presumably brother Martin was too busy flogging sofas for SCS to comment...

As I'd anticipated, the programme, focussed on the 70s, touched on much of what forms the subject matter for one of my two current reads, Jon Savage's 'England's Dreaming', in setting punk into its social and historical context (albeit in a much swifter and less sophisticated fashion). David Bowie it was, however, who emerged as the real star, his chameleon-like appearance celebrated as of enormous significance in pushing the boundaries of what pop music could do. Perhaps equally unsurprising was the fact that Rick Wakeman came across as a curmudgeonly up-himself arsehole.