Search & Destroy: Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel

The Human Menagerie and The Psychomodo are big favourites of mine, the latter in particular an easy all-time favourite. Spent the last few days playing his 70s stuff endlessly. Even though I still think the dissolution of the original band was a really big loss - as SH&CR his excels at individual songs on somewhat patchy albums, rather than excellent albums where my favourites always change.

Me and a friend were actually talking about all the unexpected future connections you can draw. Vampire Weekend in "Singular Band" and "Judy Teen", say, with the nimble off-centre rhythms, hearty indie-pop melodies and depth of space. Steel drums (and lyrics) aside I do hear later day Beautiful South in "Muriel the Actor" (that's not meant to put anyone off!) (The first time I heard the 'oh I'm a reminder' part in LCD Soundsystem's "Tonite" it made me think of the message flashing in the sky bit in "Sling It!", which is so trivial even by this message's standards I've had to stick it in parentheses). Plus there's the more typical Magazine, Adam and the Ants etc. comparisons to be made.

Good post!

Thanks! I also think of Japan's "Nightporter" as sharing some of its impressionistic DNA with "Sebastian".

have always heard a bit of Harley's snarled "destroyed" (in fantastic OTT Dylan mode) in Psychodromo in Rotten's "destroy" at the end of Anarchy