Saturday, June 03, 2017

Cockney Rebel - Mirror Freak

Is there one track that you think of (maybe "Tomorrow Never Knows"?) that seems soooo far ahead of its time that you feel completely dislocated (distempered?) when you find out when it was actually released/recorded? (A list of those songs would undoubtedly also include any song from the Modern Lovers debut ["She Cracked" anyone?], anything by Kraftwerk, 1970s Eno, Tangerine Dream, Doctors of Madness, stuff from Revolver and the White Album, James Brown, Death [not the metal band], and yes, the Velvets entire goddamn canon).

But here, my friends is the final track on Side One of Cockney Rebel's album The Glass Menagerie. From 1973! Yes, yes, they were a sub-second-rate glam outfit overshadowed by Bowie, Roxy, Slade, etc. But as Simon Reynolds notes, weren't the second raters really pumping the reddest most bloody blood into the heart of glam?

You hear this song (and indeed the album) and you wonder if young John Lydon wasn't internalizing some vocal affectations that would come in handy later....

And so sexy.


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