Giovanni Dadomo: the Snivelling Shit

Giovanni Dadomo giving a superior and slightly sideways look 

to Messrs. Rotten & McLaren on Nationwide 

(BBC TV 12 Nov 1976)

 

 

I.

 

Sometimes, it can take almost fifty years before your brain makes the necessary connection and you finally realise something you really ought to have known at the time.

 

For example, it was only very recently that I twigged that the founder and frontman of the Snivelling Shits was the same Giovanni Dadomo who, in his guise as a respected music journalist, appeared on an episode of the BBC current affairs show Nationwide featuring the Sex Pistols [1]. 

 

According to Dadomo, whilst their music was a bit derivative, the group's aggressive nihilism was more of a concern, as it not only had regrettable real-world consequences, but soon became boring:

 

"Destruction for its own sake is dull, ultimately ... it doesn't offer any hope ..." [2]

 

 

II.

 

Of course, any worries Dadomo may or may not have had, didn't stop him from abandoning his flares and two-tone platform shoes and forming his own punk band the following year. 

 

However, it now seems clear to me - in a way that it wasn't back in 1977 - that the Snivelling Shits were essentially an attempt to parody the movement spearheaded by the Sex Pistols. Disconcerted by the threatening nature of the band (and, one suspects, envious of their success), Dadomo attempted to expose their crassness and musical worthlessness, as he perceived it. 

 

If the New York Dolls were, as Bob Harris famously described them, nothing more than a mock rock band, then the Snivelling Shits were similarly a mock punk band.  

 

Ironically, however, their single 'Terminal Stupid' [3] was an instant favourite (not least with John Peel, who played the track endlessly on his late night radio show) and it is now firmly established as a classic of the punk genre. 

 

He may have come across as a twat on Nationwide when confronted by Messrs. Rotten and McLaren in all their flame-haired glory, but, to be fair, Dadomo was obviously a talented and witty lyricist, as recognised by members of the Damned who asked him to co-write a couple of songs with them [4]. 

Sadly, Dadomo died in 1997. It's been suggested by some that he was the poor man's Nick Kent, but that seems unfair and a little unkind.

 

In a memorial post on a Facebook page dedicated to the Snivelling Shits, he is described (presumably by one who knew him) as a "beautiful human being; literate, musical and hilarious" as well as sensitive and highly intelligent [5].

I'm sure all of that - and more - is true. But he wasn't a Sex Pistol ...  

 

Notes

 

[1] The Sex Pistols and their manager Malcolm McLaren appeared on the BBC TV show Nationwide on 12 November, 1976. As well as being interviewed by an irritated Maggie ('I don't have a safety pin through my nose') Norden on the punk phenomenon, the band were shown performing 'Anarchy in the UK' (recorded at the BBC studios the day before). 

      Click here to view the exchange between Norden, McLaren, Rotten, and Dadomo on the BBC Archive (on Youtube).

 

[2] As can heard in the above exchange linked to, Malcolm - perhaps rather predictably - countered this by declaring: "You have to destroy in order to create, you know that. You have to break it down and build it up again in a different form." 

[3] The single 'Terminal Stupid' was released in late 1977 on the independent label Ghetto Rockers. It was later included on the album I Can't Come (Damaged Goods, 1989), described by one reviewer, Dave Thompson, as punk "at its most pristinely putrid". Click here to read Thompson's review on AllMusic. And click here to play the magnificent 'Terminal Stupid'.    

 

[4] Dadomo co-wrote 'I Just Can't Be Happy Today' with Captain Sensible - released as a single from the album Machine Gun Etiquette (Chiswick Records, 1979) - and 'There Ain't No Sanity Clause' with Rat Scabies, Captain Sensible, and Dave Vanian, released as a single in November 1980 (Chiswick). Those who wish to hear the version of this latter track recorded by the Snivelling Shits (and included on the album I Can't Come (1989)), should click here. 

 

[5] This Snivelling Shits Facebook post was published on 4 July 2015: click here. It is reproduced on punk77.co.uk - click here.

 

What's in a Word: Punk

 'The cult is called punk; the music punk rock ...'

 

 

I. 

 

In a pre-Grundy television interview, Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten is asked by Maggie Norden:

 

"What about the word 'punk' - it means worthless, nasty - are you happy with this word?"

 

A crucial question to which he replies: 

 

"No, the press gave us it. It's their problem, not ours. We never called ourselves punk." [1]

 

It's a somewhat surprising response which every idiot who proclaims that they'll be a punk until they die might care to consider ...

 

 

II.  

 

When Rotten refers to the press, he was more than likely thinking of posho freelance journalist and photographer Caroline Coon, who, having risen to prominence as part of the British Underground scene in the 1960s, attached herself to the new youth movement spearheaded by the Sex Pistols in the mid-70s [2].

For it was Coon, writing for the influential music paper Melody Maker, who famously described this anarchic subculture held together with safety pins and bondage straps as punk - a name by which, for better or for worse, it has been known ever since (despite Rotten's disavowing of the term) [3].

 

Personally, I always think it a pity when something as beautifully fluid, ambiguous, and messed up as the scene that grew out of at 430 King's Road is identified and codified; to name is to know and to know is to kill. Calling the Sex Pistols a punk band was to suggest they were not something radically new or different; that they could, in fact, be compared with other groups and to prevailing rock trends.

 

That's undoubtedly true of the Clash - the band with whom Coon became most closely associated - but it's absolutely not true of the Sex Pistols as conceived by McLaren and Westwood. And not true either of Alan Jones, Jordan, and all those others who either worked at or hung around 430, King's Road. 

 

Assuming that a collective term of reference is at least provisionally needed, what should we call this assemblage of individuals ?   

 

Perhaps the best answer to this question was supplied by cultural critic Peter York, who, in October '76, referred to the "Sex shop people" and characterised them as the "extreme ideological wing of the Peculiars" [4]. 

 

That, I think, is spot on: and very much in line with how I think of the Sex Pistols and those closely associated with them - as more funny peculiar than punk; i.e., as unusual, strange, abnormal, deviant, perverse, extraordinary, singular, exceptional, outlandish ... 

 

The photo below perfectly captures just how queer things were before being named and tamed by the media and the music business and before an army of identikit punks emerged.         

 

The Sex shop people: (L-R) Steve Jones, Danielle, Alan Jones, 

Chrissie Hynde, Jordan, and Vivienne Westwood 

Photo by David Dagley (Forum, June 1976)

 

Notes

 

[1] The full six minute interview with McLaren and Rotten - including a pre-recorded performance of 'Anarchy in the UK' - was on the tea-time current affairs show Nationwide (BBC1 12 Nov 1976). It can be found in the BBC Archive on Facebook: click here. A shorter version - without the band's performance - can also be found on YouTube: click here.   

 

[2] Acting on the recommendation of Alan Jones, then working as an assistant alongside Jordan at McLaren and Westwood's shop on the King's Road, Coon attended an early Sex Pistols gig and, like many others, she was captivated by what she saw happening both on and off stage and immediately began to document this new scene.  

 

[3] See Coon's Melody Maker article entitled 'Punk Rock: Rebels Against the System' (7 August 1976).       

      Although the word punk had already been used fairly widely for several years in connection to rock music in the US - and, indeed, has a much longer and more complex history than that: click here - it was Coon's piece that played a crucial role in introducing a slightly revised version of the term to a British audience and helping to identify a novel (but not radically new) genre of music.

      Coon obviously had a gift for this kind of thing as, interestingly, she was also the person who named the hardcore group of friends who followed the Sex Pistols as the 'Bromley Contingent'.

 

[4] Peter York, quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329. York was writing in an article entitled 'Them', in Harpers & Queen (October, 1976).