OUT OF THE BAG
It’s February 19, 1981. Early Thursday evening. You’ve just had your tea, and are now slumped in front of the TV to catch Top Of The Pops. This, by the way, is the now infamous week that Australian Joe Dolce and his mock Italian single Shaddup You Face deny Ultravox’s Vienna the No.1 spot, and a pop-quiz staple was born. Also on the show that week were Rainbow’s promo video for I Surrender (No.4), Motörhead and Girlschool with the old Johnny Kidd & The Pirates shanty Please Don’t Touch (No.15), and Toyah with her fingernails-down-a-blackboard screech It’s A Mystery (No.42).
Next up, the camera pans around to three feral-looking louts called the Stray Cats. Guitar picker and frontman Brian Setzer, bassist Lee Rocker, and drummer Slim Jim Phantom are just kids. They wear heavy make-up and, frankly, look like they could do with a good meal. The song they play on the show is their second single, rockabilly masterpiece Rock This Town.
To a British audience more accustomed to the end-of-the-pier rock’n’roll pastiche of Showaddywaddy, Mud and the like, the Stray Cats look genuinely menacing. Lest we forget, pop tribalism is at its peak in the early 80s. Skins. Mods. New Romantics. Each to their own. In the case of the rockers, birds of a feather – or more accurately, leather – gather together.
“Me and Lemmy were drinking whisky at the BBC bar afterwards,” Brian Setzer recalls. “The crazy rockabilly dude… and Lemmy. The New
