We Talked to the Authors of Wired Up!

As any genius with meat on his bones and a lack of facial hair will tell you, behind every musical giant is several smaller beings that are infinitely more interesting. Any jagoff can go to the local pharmacy, buy a ‘Best of’ collection of Bowie or Dylan and claim to be their numero one fan. But it takes a rare breed of lunatic to profess a love for someone like John Howard or Mike Hart. I mean, why listen to Jefferson Airplane when we all know the Spirits & Worm LP on A&M is way more aesthetically pleasing. Why play a fucking Exploited 45 when you gotta copy of Attak’s Today’s Generation at hand? I’m sure you get my jist.

Two people who certainly know where I’m coming from in this half-assed frame of thought is Jeremy Thompson and Mary Blount. They have just assembled a book entitled Wired Up! a three hundred plus paged book documenting most of the lesser known artists from that time of platform boots and bogus bi-sexuality, the Glam Rock 70’s.

We recently sat down with Jeremy and Mary to talk nerd talk on picture sleeves, Glam Rockers’ porn careers, and other such crap. And you will sit there and read it.

VICE: How did the obsession with the junk shop side of Glam start?

Jeremy Thompson: My interest in all of this started when I got into Robin Will's Purepop blog. He was posting records every few days that I had never heard, and I really fell in love with it. It's still the best place to find out about this stuff. Also, as someone who collects records, it was nice to be able to find these 45's for relatively cheap unlike a lot of the 70's punk/powerpop records that I was trying to find.

Mary Blount: I listened to a lot of punk/power pop when I was younger and picked up a compilation at a record store called Glitterbest It had a couple of bands on it that I really liked, so I thought I'd give it a listen. The comp introduced me to bands like Milk ‘N' Cookies, Jet and American Jam Band. I was hooked from then on and bought more glam comps, soon after that I was collecting glam records.

Are there any 45’s featured in the book that have a great cover, but horrible music? How about vice versa?

JT: None, in my opinion, have horrible music. But most of these 45's are focused on the A side. Several are killer two siders, but there are a lot of throwaway B sides on these records. As with lots of 45's from the 60’s and 70’s, there was an intentional move on the part of the record labels to get DJ's to play the A side.

So, I'm gonna change the question a little and tell you ones that have both great picture sleeves and great music, plus some that have great music with picture sleeves that were obviously cranked out by the record labels art department with little or no attention paid to the type of music on the record.

Cool band photo sleeves with killer tunes

 1. Good Time Joe - Slipstream

2. Corporation - Wild Time

3. Third World War - A Little Bit of Urban Rock

4. Gang - Run, Run, Run

5. Hammersmith Gorillas - You Really Got Me

Sleeves with killer tunes with art thrown together by the labels art department

1. Stud Leather - Cut Loose

2. Glo Macari - Lookin For Love

3. Darren Burn - Quick Joey Small

4. Black Fire - Do It

5.Crackers - Judy Judy Judy

MB: This is tough, I have too many favorites! I have to say that the sleeves all pretty great in their own way - from the band's outrageous (but amazing) homemade outfits to the quirky fun illustrations. They are colorful, bright, jarring - there's so much inspiration I get from these record sleeves when designing. Some of my favorite sleeves are 32nd Turnoff, Skin, Bombadil, Zipper, and Amanda Lear.

So where do you think the bands who released some of these singles independently fall into the pre-punk landscape of 70's Britain? Do you think they were sorta screwed by being early by a few years? To me, a band like Jookcan be considered pre-punk but their timing was sorta off. If they stuck it out for a year or so, I think they could have been sort of like The Jam on the punk scene. What are your thoughts? 
JT: This is all speculative on my part, I'm 33 years old, obviously I wasn't there or anything but the Jook is a perfect example because they were guys from John's Children who went on to form Jook, which turned into Jet and when punk hit turned into Radio Stars. From what I can tell, it seemed like these guys were just trying to make hit records and trying to keep up with the times.

If you had to play someone one song to get them turned onto the images in the book, what would it be?

JT: The record that really sold me on me on to the genre was the Hector 45 Wired Up. It's a perfect single and totally captures the best qualities of this music. I thought it would be cool to have some sort of an audio accompaniment to the book so we got permission from Hector to re-press the 45 to be included free with the first 500 copies of the book. I think it'll turn a lot of people on to the music.

I noticed you have an interview with Brett Smiley in the book. Did you ever see the pornographic version of Cinderella he starred in?
JT: Yes, I've only seen parts though. I couldn't make it through the whole thing! I actually went over to Brett's place in Carol Gardens to get photos for his interview and he had all sorts of still from the movie in a box in his room. He also played me these demo tracks that he did in LA with Del Shannon producing and the Robbs playing the backing tracks. The tunes were so great, he's a really nice guy and still plays around NYC.

Order Wired Up!  here.

The release part for Wired Up! will be held at Zebulon in Brooklyn on August 25th. Milk ‘N Cookies are playing, and copies of the book will be for sale.