Jon Savage

BBC Radio 4 - Artworks, What Happened to Counter-Culture? Stewart Lee explores the story and ideas of counter-culture and its importance today.

Had forgotten about this: on BBC4 talking about Counter Culture www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

No

Bought OTD in 1972: found a dress cover later. This made a big impact - for the opening Width of A Circle through the quieter songs about supermen and madness. Bit of lumpy rock on side 2 but the Bolan warble on Black Country Rock is brilliant. After All, All the Madmen and the title track 🔥🔥🔥

Instagram post about lost artist Laurie Rae Chamberlain and his image of me and Peter York I would guess summer 1977.

Nice quote. Where from?

No must go

Not sure

Derek Jarman’s hand painted designs for the original 1991 edition of England’s Dreaming. Three of them, never used. The book will be republished next year, anniversaries obvs

Pretty much all of them I think - UK + Europe singles plus 1965 EP

Missed an opportunity with no full new UK album in 1965

Bought OTD in 1970: hyperactive blueswailing with authentic teenage nervous spasms (rave-ups) - the best document of the first stage, big favourite group then and now. The first three tracks absolutely rip

Bought OTD in 1972; efficient singles comp of late sixties pop favourites - Fire Brigade, Beatiful Daughter, Flowers In the Rain. No Decca and late period heaviness, but great deep cuts: Curly, Omnibus with its wah wah outro jam

Great story

OTD in 1969 I was given this album by friends of my grandparents. Before it became canonic it was fresh and right for the times. Some of it is hard to listen to now but Suite, Long Time Gone and 49 Bye-byes still sound great

Bought OTD in 1971: famous for the fake ‘live’ studio tracks (Too Long, Teller) but most of the rest is pretty great - amphetamined versions with Far Eastern overtones and a blizzard of screams. Proper 60s pop document, right down the fakery. The Last Time, Lady Jane 🔥🔥

One of their few really great songs

Yes absolutely- I like the 1972 remix as well

Bought OTD in 1970: Byrds fixation continues. Gene’s songs with the group were a highlight and this is a near perfect: psych/ country/ mod pop x-over. Dig the Paperback Writer style Elevator Operator, the orchestration on the title track and - my favourite - the slow reveal hurt of The Same One

Bought OTD in 1972: a game changer this one - not so much for the sound, still half way in singer songwriter mode, but for the language and the countdown to apocalypse in 1977. Oh, and the sexiness: Soul Love, Hang On To Yourself and Suffragette City: tigers on Vaseline indeed

46 years ago today, @jonsavage.bsky.social reviewed Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures" for the Melody Maker (21 July 1979).
#JoyDivision @robertrotifer.bsky.social

‘The hot tar splashed everywhere’: remembering the dark magic of Derek Jarman In 1989, the artist was living on the Kentish coast when he created a series of mysterious paintings with a bonfire and tar. A new exhibition brings these so-called Black Paintings to life – and shows...

Nice piece about Derek Jarman in the Guardian www.theguardian.com/film/2025/ju...

Bought OTD in 1970: crate digging SF. This belated and only album by scene originators is an odd mix of prewar good time, psych and country. Doesn’t always work but the cover of Van Dyke Parks’ High Coin and the group forte number, the nearly seven minute, Alabama Bound are still great to listen to

Bought OTD in 1970: a gimmick laden lp that was - along with John Barleycorn - the record of that summer for me. Definitely s/s rather than psych, very 1970 with its admonitions about paying dues, but some great tunes in a post Traffic vein and some outrageous wah wah guitar on Shouldn’t Have Took

Bought OTD in 1969: a couple of fillers and a couple of nasties - Stupid Girl! - but then you get Mothers Little Helper, Lady Jane, Doncha Bother Me, Think and one of the great underrated Stones songs, I Am Waiting. A real achievement, let down a bit by thin sound and a certain meanness of spirit

An article on Generation X by Jon Savage and Pic by Ray Stevenson in Sounds 16th, July 1977.
@jonsavage.bsky.social

Colourised

Bought OTD in 1970: just over a quid, the early 70s were a great time to find psych albums cheap. This is a foundational album for me: 13 tracks, not one duffer. Great songs by all five, but standouts are Fall On You, Someday and Skip Spence’s Omaha and Indifference. Chrissie Hynde agrees

👊👊👊

Bought OTD in 1972: the US stereo version with the three UK hits. The Track mono is great of course but I don’t really miss Remember or May This (but Red House is a loss). The 3 singles are wonderful and 3rd Stone and I Don’t Live epic. But I really love AYE for the psychedelic bells and whistles

Thx!