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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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Why I prefer Van Halen to Radiohead
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GeeZa
GeeZa
137 posts

Re: NWOBHM
May 06, 2008, 17:30
IanB wrote:
[NWOBHM was just as much a genuine national grass roots movement as Punk or "New Wave". Probably more so and just as revolutionary in the cutting of HM away from the Blues and Prog roots. Punk was much more of a media construct. The young metal bands got very little coverage until it was nearly all over and Sounds got on the bandwagon.

Absolutely. There was/is a very good set of gig reviews from a guy who followed very early Maiden around in the 70s and witnessed the birth of NWOBHM and in parallel punk. It was interesting how the reality of this movement was very "Bad News" in that it was battered transit vans full of hairy motherfuckers unloading Marshalls into grim pubs around the arsehole ends of the East End, usually playing to five drunks and a dog. Ever been to Maryland at the bottom of Leytonstone High Road? It's a dive now so I bet the gigging pubs around those areas weren't much better back then.

Punk was seen as a "West" thing in London, all the media attention and links with fashion and politics inflated this sense of something not everyone could identify with. NWOBHM on the other hand was just plain heads-down working-class music, with a work-and-music ethic and fan relationship that punk didn't really have for the most part. When Maiden disappeared for a year or so in the 70s people assumed they were fucked, but they stubbornly came back with Di'Anno and the rest is history. Like most metal, it's (ongoing) influence is generally ignored out of embarrassment.
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