Pan’s People were a dance troupe that Top of the Pops used to trot out when a pop single absolutely had to be played and the band that recorded it was too stoned or had 10 percent too much dignity to show up and lip-sync it. And you had to play T. Rex in 1971.
T. Rex was Marc Bolan and a loose gaggle of other blokes. A lot of rock critics point to Bolan as the milepost that marks the birth of Glam Rock, even though there were plenty of art-school fops like Bryan Ferry straddling the Liberace/TeddyBoy divide visually and musically just then. Bolan was dead in a car crash before the decade ended, even though he was so afraid of dying in a car crash that he never got a driver’s license. Life is like that sometimes.
Everyone would point to Bang a Gong as their big hit, but Jeepster is the really kewl thing you’d put in a seventies movie soundtrack if you knew what you were doing.
I’m getting old. The contemporary emcee’s joke at the beginning about David Cameron falls flat for me. I know David Cameron was only five when that video was made — but I was almost old enough to take a run at those sherbert-colored qiana-clad hip-hugger and halter-topped pre-boob-job-buxom bell-bottomed babes after the show. I would have invited them to play army man with me, but still.
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T Rex's bass player (and as a bass player yourself you might like this) was for a time Herbie Flowers. Played with everyone at some point (Bowie on the Diamond Dogs tour, Lou Reed on Transformer, Sky with John Williams etc) and is now professor of bowing at the Royal School of Music.
From the English point of view T Rex's biggest hit was Get it On even though it was never number 1. Kept off the top spot by a Herbie Flowers penned song (he'd left the group at this point I think) called "Grandad". Absolutely howlingly, awful piece of syrupy slop featuring kids and a grandad.
Urgghh.
But a story I still like for some reason.
Come on, Sip, we gotta get to work here!
Sippican, you've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: A human is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
Pans people brightened up many a dull winters thursday night for a teenage me back in the 70's.
I watched this after I had watched the Cookie Monster sing.
*slaps self in head*
You always surprise me with your randomness, but then, maybe it's all intentional.
*shrugs*
You know, Sipp, there's left field, the left field bleachers, and then there' somewhere out beyond the last lamppost in the parking lot. You do the "way, way out there" shtick really, really well.
Why I keep coming back!
I wonder if these ladies are now in the queue at the NHS for hip replacement surgery.
Hi Thud- Me and the eight-year-old watched Hard Days Night today and I thought of you.
Hi Harriet- Thanks for reading and commenting and smiling at us.
Hi Sam- Thanks much.
Hi John- One of the original dancers, who transitioned to choreographing them later, is old enough to be dead.
I watched this with the volume off, and all that I could think was that these women are all geezers, now. And there's one Debbie Downer in that orgy of histrionic maids who has no sense of rhythm at all. She looked like she was asking herself, "Why did I even show up?"
I watched this with the volume off…
Why, oh why would you do this? Don't you want Marc Bolan to be a jeepster for your love? Do you already have a jeepster for your love? Spare jeepsters for your love? Are you that stocked up on jeepsters for your love that you just discard them, unused, willie-nillie?
Forget everything else. Next time you're in SoCal I'm buying you a beer just for using the word qiana. You've accomplished much and created at a very high level, but that may be the pinnacle of your career to date.
Qiana. Brilliant.