UK Psychedelia Discussion Forum
Regal Zonophone 2
Hi Phil,
It's not a straight forward 'best of' glam rock comp. It sets out to explore or trace the roots of glam and its influence beyond its own time frame, covering all the different aspects of it. I think for instance Noel Coward gets included because he represents the origins of a gay or camp musical aspect, as do the Kinks with 'Lola' (cross-dressing, bi-sexual ambiguity etc. a la Bowie as 'Ziggy Stardust').
Really all you needed for that was to start with Jobriath, his two albums (73-74) are great and there was no abiguity about him, he was the first opnely gay rock / pop musician / singer. I don't have this comp, but my brother does. It contextualises or explains the inclusion of each track in the book that comes with it.
It threw a lot of glam fans at first for the same reasons as you Phil! It is though actually an intelligent attempt to analyse and contextualise all the strands of glam and make a genre family tree of inlfuences, causes and effects out of it. It dos though, rightly in my view, omit Gary Glitter but does include the Glitter Band instead.
If this was done as a BBC4 rock-doc on a Friday night, it would be very interesting. The set comes as a hard bound book format with the CDs clipped in the inside of each cover and the book itself in the middle. I didn't bother with it as I have 90% of the tunes on other comps or as original vinyl, but it's an interesting way to explore glam if you're just curious about it.
PM