I hope the Bay City Rollers become huge number one American biggest teeny sellers of all time, because it'll make everyone in England so cross. The spirit of '76 is mean, the sound of '76 is a carping disharmony, the movement of '76 is keeping up with Mr. Jones. Something is happening, we don't know what it is, but we do know what we don't like: Bruce Springsteen — "competent pastiche of West Side Story," Patti Smith — "pretentious bitch, Rimbaud,.. .fuckl," the Rollers — "puerile, badly dressed."

They're the most hated pop group I can remember. No amused affection for the looniness of Roller fans, rather a contempt for their tawdriness and cheap trousers and blank white cheeks. The British pop industry has been hyping teenagers efficiently enough for twenty odd years, ever since it discovered what brylcreem and an echo chamber did for both ersatz Elvis and real Fabian, and the Bay City Rollers campaign strategy wasn't exactly new. But no one laughs anymore. I can't think of anything much funnier than the Rollers, without a musical doubt the feeblest group ever, capping 1975 with a US number one, but other people lie on the floor and bang their heels up and down and listen to the new Joni Mitchell album.

It may be the effect of tartan. The Scots have never been very nice and now they're taking our oil and the most unwanted man is Rod Stewart, who's as British as Bob Hope and visits his relations as often. So he's quit the Faces, so good riddance. We never thought he was good enough for them anyway. Now the Small Faces were a group (and may be once again) and in their day Britain was great and ruled the airwaves and our stars didn't become super (i.e. American) and live in Hollywood and get written about in grown-up gossip columns and generally behave like they were Michael Caine

or somebody. They made music and money and paid their taxes like men Women were ladies then, not Patti Smith, and did the dishes at home which was a cottage in the countryside (well maybe a mansion in Surrey) and certainly not a canyon or a beach or in Jersey or Ireland or Bermuda. Nowadays stars call themselves tax exiles like they were some sort of political martyrs and carefully forget who gave them the money in the first place and won't for much longer because we've got less now than we had then even if they've got more.

We celebrated the new year with a three day British Surly Music Festival, a deliberate tribute to the groups who haven't fled and not a foreigner (i.e. American) to be heard. I wasn't convinced. At the bottom of the bill were groups who don't make enough money to pay taxes anyway (Steve Gibbons

P°?£r,So?f Madn?ss> J°n Miles, Charlie,?????) and at the top was Bad Company who were visiting for Christmas. Most of the groups in the middle were either British because of American failure (Procol Harum, Pretty Things) or because they haven t really got their earning capacity going yet (Steve Marriott's All Stars, Be-Bop Delux) .I'd only rate three of the bands as really, ideologically, British — Thin Lizzy, who come from Ireland like Rory Gallagher, Ronnie Lane's Slim Chance, who'd miss the pubs, and Status Quo, whom no one else would understand, because they're the British equivalent of ZZ Top and just as peculiarly loved and got down to.

Everyone else wants out and the most pathetic tax exiles of all are Slade, who make no sense (or songs) without youth clubs and football and who deserted their roots just when they were in a position to grow up with them. It s not as if the Bay City Rollers nad any opposition when it came to it,

TURN TO PAGE 70

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 28.

and it's not as if they don't want out now too. The most dire effect of their success (besides its deadly results for old ladies and young girls, which must awe even Mick Jagger) is on what comes next, when the Rollers are moved cosily in with Ehon John in Malibu. Record companies are fast filling up with groups of shrill young boys who stare eagerly at the camera and don't just look like but are the boy next door.

It may be democracy but it won't be art and British rock is suffering a great dearth of imagination and wit at the moment. If the sixties were a time of optimism and wages getting better and risks which made the music good, the seventies are a time of pessimism and wages getting worse and playing safe and the same thing over and over. Not desperately enough for rock, but resentfully, and edgily nostalgic. The plain fact is that most enthralling music today is American (or West Indian) and we haven't had to listen to that situation for years and years and years. And so we shan't, and we won't.

Those of us who are moved by Patti Smith, say, or Springsteen (or even by the Band) are moved guiltily and furtively and unbritishly. Traitors! Fifth columnists! Fools! Filth! What we need, and soon, is a look, a face, so we can walk through the streets together like Roller fans, proud and pale and cockily degenerate. ||&