You’re gonna have to take a little nationalist fervour here. We’ve just spent a week trying to put the Great back into Britain. It only happens every 25 years and a tatty affair it was. It rained all the time and the union jacks were made of dripping plastic. Still and all the Queen did enough to keep the Sex Pistols out of the papers. They had a good week otherwise. Their own jubilee number, “God Save The Queen,” is number two in the chads and their own jubilee party, in a boat on the Thames, was heavied over by the cops. Malcolm McLaren got arrested.

The other thing we got was invaded by New Yorkers. One day in Birmingham we had the Ramones and Talking Heads, a couple of days later we had Television and Blondie. In between I went to see Dolly Parton. Looking back, I’m not at all sure that it wasn’t Dolly Parton who was singing with Blondie. She was certainly the same sort of age as “Debbie Harry” and from the fortieth row back they looked much the same-the blonde sheen, the clumsy schmaltz, the twelve-year-old appeal. I liked both of them in an oldfashioned sort of way but they confirmed that there ain’t much of a place for women in the conventions of punk.

Television were cold, cutting end about as punky as Peter Frampton, not that it seemed to faze the biggest gathering yet of Midlands Clash lookalikes and their girls with green hair shaped by topiarists into whirls and peaks and bumps of sexlessness that were oddly appropriate for the insect figure of Tom Verlaine, white faced robot of the guitar. Metal machine music and Television refused to appear on The Old Grey Whistle Test. I don’t blame them—when we switched off our sets they might have disappeared for real.

Anyway, in the end, the battle of the new waves was down to the Ramones and, b^ck to nationalism, I’m glad to say they lost. 1 still like British beat better.

Aside: one of the nice things about not living in London is not going to prestige gigs. Birmingham is just another stop along the road. No rock critics at Barbarella’s or the Odeon, nothing to prove to that week’s music press; we get to see what all these media idols look like when they’re being routine. When we’re being routine come to that. The Ramones were just another Tuesday night, like the Clash a few weeks betore and the Jam a few weeks later. Down here nothing much stirs, not even curiousity. The band comes on, everybody shouts, and the band goes off again. Drinking is the more serious matter and the evening’s musical lift came from the Pistols on record. In this respect Malcolm McLaren’s hype and bluster have worked—curiosity about his boys has effectively countered the group’s almost blanket banning from radio and “God Save The Queen” ’s success is the first real sign that the new wave may have routine rock appeal,

may tickle more than metropolitan fancies.

The Ramones didn’t give us much sign of anything except a certain sort of American twitchy charm. Their set mostly consisted of “Let’s Dance,” with variations played faster and faster as the night wore on. Speed was a nervous defense against the unknown crowd, which liked them well enough but didn’t get very excited. There was too much space between the Ramones and their music. I could hear why American critics rave and why the NME waxed eloquent about minimalism— the Ramones are definitely artists. Pop artists, New York style, of course, but still with an air of care and what I missed in comparison with the British new wave was the edginess, the tension, the squalour of poor musicians who aren’t at all sure of what they’re doing as they thrash around seeking success from sneers, riding the streets and the record companies in uneasy tandem. In concert, the Clash are shoddier than the Ramones and more desperate, but they’re also more angry, for whatever reasons, and their music has a lower boiling point.

Enough knocking. There’s also no doubt that the Ramones, as artists,, have been a model for British new wave bands and, in the end, the differences are less musical than social.

Visitors here, as long as they’re white, leave like Billy Altman with the impression that the English are polite if not a little soft in the head. But we’re only polite to foreigners (because we have to be) and we’re not friendly with anyone. The jubilee celebrations have been desperate in their jolliness. Street parties were obligatory and neighbours duly drank together for the only time in their lives. In the supermarket, a friend of mine was attacked by old ladies with rhubarb sticks for wearing a Stuff The Jubilee badge. The Pistols, meanwhile, were attacked by the police and two of the Clash spent the weekend in jail for stealing towels and keys from a Holiday Inn, something rock stars have been doing from time immemorial. The daily punk round is studded with petty harassment and, not surprisingly, British punk rock is often unpleasantly petulant in its response. In this context the most surprising thing about the Ramones (as about Patti Smith before them) was their kindliness. They weren’t louts.

And they were sure of themselves. They staked their place with the leather jacket tight jeaned look of the N.Y. punk while their British audience is still unsure what they’re supposed to look like—safety pins? ripped and torn? are they out already? The British new wave is in search of a compelling visual summary.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 36

Another aside: one day, when I’m less worried about libel laws, I’ll write a column about the recurrent pattern in the British music biz of the middle class gay manager of working class boy bands. Brian Epstein is dead so he can b« named but he’s far from the only example. What’s interesting about this is not any managerial improprieties but rather the way that at certain crucial moments—the leather looks of 50’s rock’n’rollers, the mod neatness of 60’s beat.;, the camp glitter of the 70’s—rock images have been inspired by sophisticated' gay fantasies about lower class boys. Fantasies which worked because they appealed to lower class girls, too.

This isn’t getting me anywhere at all. It’s just that I bet that the first punk act to make it a.s pop stars will be the queens of this silver squalour.