CHAPTER 33

 

 

#68: THE RAH BAND

"The Crunch"

from the seven-inch single "The Crunch"

Released: February 1977

 

 

On Saturday 11 June 1977 there was a large Silver Jubilee procession down Uddingston Main Street. Most people I knew from school participated in it, and their parents beamingly watched. It was a fine, sunny afternoon with decorated trucks, costumes and such. I declined to become involved and instead spent that Saturday afternoon in Uddingston Library, which at that point was situated about midway along the Main Street, across the road from where the Post Office used to be, carefully reading the Black Music anthology by the writer who was then still principally known as LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka). It was as angry and militant as any sixties polemic had a right to be, and certainly I would see deep flaws in it now, but I'm talking about then not now. This was in the context of the Sex Pistols thing, and I had zero ambition to mutate into a stalwart son of the parish.

This goofy instrumental was on the radio, grinding along like Chicory Tip experiencing nervous collapse. It was also on the television, advertising (I think) jeans. It came out on the anniversary of the Coronation but took its time becoming a hit and by the time it was we had Neil Innes glumly waving a Union Jack flag on Top Of The Pops, promoting a song which sold next to nothing, because there was no way they could book the Pistols (not for another month anyway). It sounded electronic even though there were no actual synthesisers on it, just heavily processed guitars and keyboards put through pedals. It sounded like the clarion call for an armed revolt is what it actually sounded like.

I had no real idea who the RAH Band were. On Top Of The Pops they were a bunch of oddballs in balaclavas who couldn't quite master the tune. Apparently the producer found them on Putney High Street. It's easy to find out their (or his, since it was basically one guy) history elsewhere because this isn't an encyclopaedia. But it was the placid processionals, and the people I knew would always, and gladly, settle for twelfth-best, which framed my cocooned Clyde puffer of revolt.