winding up Sweet appreciation week...

here's something I prepared earlier...

reversing a bit my reservations about auteurisation, it strikes me there's a monograph, if not quite a book, to be written about Chinn & Chapman, connecting what they did with Sweet, Quatro et al with the later Blondie/Knack phase plus stray things like the post-McLaren Bow Wow Wow, Toni Basil, Pat Benatar... Interviewing someone recently who'd been briefly connected with them, I also learned for the first time about Chinnichap's unsuccessful attempt to start their own record label called Dreamland in Los Angeles. (Founded 1979; folded 1981).

Their work with Sweet is a supreme example of this thing I'm moderately obsessed with, "radio rock" you could call it--music that has all the force and friction of the rock aesthetic as defined by Carducci but merges that heaviness and live drive with the pop aesthetic's structural focus (the use of arrangement and space to make the 3 minute single a mini-drama somehow capable of withstanding endlessly repetition without diminishment) along with its hi-gloss finish and love of a good cheap gimmick. There's loads of examples, here's a few exemplars: Cheap Trick's "Dream Police", Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good", Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper", Def Leppard "Pour Some Sugar On Me," Thin Lizzy circa Jailbreak...

Talking of which, Halvard Halvorsen suggests that in terms of 70s hard rock male singers--if one expanded the scope from UK to British Isles--then Phil Lynnott would be a serious challenger to Connolly... I agree, although the song material is more erratic I think... The adjective that always springs to mind for Lynott's voice is "low slung" for some reason...