music friday: one chord wonders
Friday, November 04, 2022
(An excerpt from something I wrote for the anthology New Punk Cinema.)
The band in "One Chord Wonders" takes the stage, only to find the audience is unappreciative of the Adverts' technical skills ("Come back when you've learnt to play"). Unconcerned, the band plays on, only to find the audience has left. All of this takes barely more than half of the song's brief running time. The second half features the repetitive chorus, the lead singer working his way through variations of "we don't give a damn" while the rest of the band chants ominously, "THE WONDERS DON'T CARE!" and the drums pound simply and mercilessly.
I wonder what we´ll play for you tonight
Something heavy or something light
Something to set your soul alight
I wonder how we´ll answer when you say
"We don´t like you - go away,
Come back when you´ve learnt to play"I wonder what we´ll do when things go wrong
When we´re half-way through
Our favourite song
We look up and the audience has gone
Will we feel a little bit obscure
Think "we´re not needed here,
We must be new wave,
They´ll like us next year"THE WONDERS DON'T CARE!
We don´t give a damn
"Live" in 1977 (not sure about the audio, which doesn't quite match the video):
And TV Smith with a different band, sometime later:
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