The Sweet, Action: The Sweet Anthology

The division between the two discs seems to be random, as the break is right in the middle of the Sweet Fanny Adams album. The first disc starts at the shortening of the name from “The Sweetshop” to “The Sweet” and the start of their cooperation with Chin and Chapman, and ends with the first single they’d written themselves, “Fox On The Run.” The most interesting aspect about the period covered by this disc, is the fact that a lot of the songs on the disc have never actually been released in an album format. The strange thing about The Sweet is that their biggest contribution to music, their Glam Rock singles, were only available as singles. It doesn’t make these songs the best material for a comprehensive collection like this, though it is the reason they had such freedom to switch genres and to release a range of music far more extensive and experimental—though maybe not in its common usage—than most bands.

Image from 45and12 Blog

The concept album, though a very suitable form for glam, is not the only format Glam Rock comes in and it’s important to realize this when most people’s knowledge of it comes from Velvet Goldmine and Mick Rock photo books. Especially with all of the Chinnichap singles lined up like this, it’s easier to see where the glam concept album came from. Like Chicory Tip, and, for that matter, T.Rex and Bowie, the early Sweet albums are about invention and reinvention. That they were not the agents of this invention doesn’t really matter because of the results, even if they were deleterious to both the image and their self-image. It really all sounds very rock messiah, very Wizard of Oz when you put it like this. And it is.

Browsing through the early singles, there are many staple ingredients of later Glam Rock. There is jolly cultural appropriation (“Wig Wam Bam,” “Poppa Joe,” “Co-Co”), obscure sexual innuendo (“Little Willy,” “Block Buster,” well. . . everything), pre-punk (“Turn it down,” “AC/DC”), goth-glam (“Hell Raiser,” what else?) and the kind of skinhead-fetishist-glam-metal stuff that comes straight out of a 60s juvenile delinquents film.

The collection is sorted chronologically, which is the only logical option. The bubblegum singles sound only slightly more sane next to each other than they would next to “Love Is Like Oxygen.” Still, they sound frankly bizarre in modern days, and why not? Who plays faux-calypso pop with nonsense lyrics now? Nobody, that’s who, so it’s probably a good thing this is being reissued.

Disc One starts with their first single as The Sweet, the Spinal Tap-parodied “Funny Funny,” which sounds suspiciously like Tommy and the Shondells. “You’re Not Wrong For Loving Me” is sappy to modern tastes, but a solid teeny ballad. “Co-Co” is wonderful, novelty calypso perversion, separated from their other novelty calypso hit, “Poppa Joe” by Alexander Graham Bell. At this point I’m starting to wonder whether Boney M stole all their themes or whether there really was such a massive fashion for both narrative songs about historical characters and novelty calypso throughout the 70s.

Glam really kicks in with “Little Willy,” a subject of much hilarity among young music lovers today, who cannot believe actual musicians sang a song about small penises. And performed it on national TV. “Wig Wam Bam” is very wrong, of course, but I cannot help loving it. It must have hit Adam Ant between the eyes back in the day, and in the UK it is still a staple song for children’s discos. The big glam singles are up next—”Blockbuster,” “Hell Raiser,” “Ballroom Blitz,” “Teenage Rampage,” “The Sixteens”—and they really show how amazingly good The Sweet were as a Glam Rock band.

Image from Records Around The World

These songs, like all the early singles, are just really fun, and really funny. Steve Priest and Brian Conolly’s diction are what makes them distinguishable immediately, quite apart from the Chinnichap sound. They may have felt like they were denied creativity but on the other hand, it was this lack of creativity which made Steve Priest dress up like a Nazi on Top of the Pops at Christmas, starting a whole new and dubious fashion, which then went on to become a staple of punk. It was also this that made them mix the slightly more metal sound with the Chinnichap style in these big singles, making them sound more distinctive than ever.

They never really lost this touch but in later years, when they didn’t have to resort to switching genres and looks and music styles as often, it also made them more predictably rock and, paradoxically, less unique. This becomes apparent when we get to the Sweet Fanny Adams album at the end of the first disc. The songs are more verbal, less melodic, and more basically rock. “Turn It Down” is interesting for its punky youth rebellion touch, and “AC/DC” is breathtakingly brazen for a mainstream pop song, especially now at a time when “I Kissed A Girl” is the great representation of bisexuality.

“Fox On The Run” though, is just pure Sweet and perfect in its sleek pop-metal, and shows that the band always had the right touch. Though The Sweet might not have been where they were and are without Chin and Chapman, Chin and Chapman would not have been much without The Sweet.

Go to Christian Lipski’s review of Disc Two.

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