Blondie - Eat to the Beat

At the end of the 1980s, Rolling Stone famously awarded the Clash's London Calling with the accolade of best album of the decade, ignoring the fact that it was released in 1979. If Rolling Stone were looking for a blueprint to pop music and culture in the 1980s then they could have picked another record released in 1979, Eat to the Beat by Blondie.

Parallel Lines is generally heralded as the essential Blondie purchase. However, this rather ignores the aural delights of its follow up, Eat to the Beat.

Whereas early Blondie releases such as their self titled debut and Plastic Letters often harked back to US 50s nostalgia, Eat to the Beat brings with it a sheer diversity of styles underlining how far popular music had come, and where it could go in the future.

From the pop reggae of Die Young Stay Pretty, the dramatic punk fusion of Victor and the title track, the theatrical lullaby of Sound-a-Sleep and the Motown influenced Slow Motion, Eat to the Beat sets the tone for the collision of styles that made the 1980s what it was.

Eat to the Beat's melting pot of ideas also advances the pure pop template that might be used to describe Parallel Lines greatest moments.

Blondie's dystopian disco anthem Atomic is Eat to the Beat's most well known song yet the albums more tender pop moments like the ethereal Shayla and the twin mini epics of Dreaming and Union City Blue are where the record really shows its heart.

Eat to the Beat is really the first time that the concept of the art of the music video was fully consumed by a major recording artist. A separate Eat to the Beat video album was released by the group which included promotional films for all 12 songs on the album.

The promotional videos produced for the Bowie-esque The Hardest Part and the aforementioned Atomic are amongst the most iconic of the era. Despite being performance led and with production values that would be seen as limited by today's standards, both conjure up convincing nightmare visions as the world moved closer to the Orwellian prophecies of 1984.

The use of cameos by band associates such as hip hop guru Fab Five Freddy and the first bona fide supermodel Gia Carangi in a lot of their promotional material also opens out the sense of Blondie being part of something much wider. For this brief moment in time they were the biggest band on the planet, with an entourage of hipsters who they were able to make famous too. It seems somewhat apt that The Hardest Part uses David Bowie's Fashion as a musical template.

Eat to the Beat is yet further proof of Rolling Stones accidental assumption that the 1980s, despite being the most futuristic and forward looking of times, started before the decade had even begun.

The Filth and the Fury - A Sex Pistols Film

The story of the Sex Pistols is one of the most well known in the history of rock. There is probably very little that has not been said before, yet do not let this deter you from taking an opportunity to enjoy Julien Temple's the Filth and the Fury.

As someone who was a witness to events and took the opportunity to catalogue the Pistols rise and fall on film during this period, Temple is ideally placed to produce this retrospective.

Similar in style to his recent Dr. Feelgood documentary Oil City Confidential, Temple uses a combination of contemporary interviews and archive material from the 1970s to place the Pistols within their social context. It is sometimes said that the initial punk explosion happened so quickly and affected just a handful of people that it was over before it had properly begun.

Temple's use of Bay City Rollers Top of the Pops performances, Tommy Cooper and Michael Fish weather broadcasts interspersed with a narrative attempting to tell the story of the Sex Pistols sympathise with this blink and you miss it view of the punk revolution.

This is refreshing as too many other Pistols rockumentaries overegg their impact on mainstream British culture at the end of the 70s. Ultimately, the Sex Pistols were a moral panic and cult phenomenon whose existence and essence sparked inspiration in the world of music, film, art and fashion. Mr and Mrs Smith in Croydon did not change their consumer choices, even if their offspring did.

The Filth and the Fury is very much the members of the Pistols opportunity to tell their side of the story. Temple's previous work with the group, the Great Rock and Roll Swindle, was criticised for being Malcolm McLaren's version of events.

The contemporary interviews film the Pistols in shadow silhouette, creating the impression that Messrs Lydon et al. are former SAS servicemen, forbidden from having their true identity revealed due to their past operations and service.

The McLaren point of view is that the Pistols were essentially his play things and that the group were just as manufactured as the Bay City Rollers. The Pistols themselves, and John Lydon in particular, take a contrary view. What is clear is that one could not have happened without the other.

The Lydon/McLaren relationship is key to understanding the Pistols. Both had a strong combination of intelligence, articulacy and daring which made the Pistols appear that they were the most important band in the world.

The film is strongest when it uncovers Lydon's motivations behind the Pistols and the Johnny Rotten persona. Lydon explains that the Pistols genesis was born out of the frustration of successive Labour government failures to help the working class. The ability of the Conservative party to make inroads into the southern working class vote in most General Elections since punk up to 1997 backs up Lydon's point.

Lydon is the outsider within his own group. He didn't have the strong bond that existed between Cook and Jones who ultimately sided with McLaren. Lydon does not disguise his contempt for Matlock and McLaren. His one positive relationship was with Sid Vicious which eventually deteriorated due to Sid becoming more and more of a drug addict, his relationship with Nancy Spungen and Sid attempts to ape the Rotten persona. Lydon expresses regret for not explaining to him more about what to expect before he joined the group and is shown to still be visually affected but Vicious's death to this day.

Whether the Filth and the Fury is the definitive account of the Pistols is debatable. That accolade is probably best reserved Jon Savage's book England's Dreaming. However, in the Filth and the Fury, Julien Temple has produced an extremley stimulating and visual take on one of the greatest stories in the history of popular music.