i like zeppelin more than the small faces, but marriott was definitely the best vocalist/performer of the two bands.
Neither of them do much for me, I like a good nutter who cuts loose with the full on passionate performance onstage, Axl, Morrison, Hendrix, Iggy...I recall in Iggy's autobio he said when he was going out with Nico she gave him this piece of advice 'Jimmee...no-van vants to see thee persun when you go onstage, they vant to see zee performancer...'
and she's right, those guys went on thier trip onstage, reaching right into themselves and brought out the subconcious.
as Jon Savage said in his book 'England's Dreaming', the doors were rock music's first journey into the subconcious...and Iggy picked up on that, going right into himself and acting on pure instinct, getting right into his primal nature...Lou Reed was doing great things bringing some literature to rock, but he was a terrible frontman, he was very jealous of Iggy in that regard(as noted by Nick Kent in his article on Lou when he interviewed him in the early 70s, Lou even trying to copy Iggy onstage during his 'rock and roll animal' live shows when he stopped playing the guitar live and tried dancing and stuff, dying his hair blonde, to embaressing effect)....and then you had Bowie come in, who absorbed both the VU's writing, and Iggy's performing and writing, (Jean Jenie being about Iggy, Bowie said as much in his interview on Dancing in the street, the bbc doc, but quickly tried to backtrack as soon as he said it, saying , 'It's about Iggy, ...well, an Iggy type ...') as well as adopting the make-up worn by Syd Barrett onstage, and acting in other personas(much like Nico's advice to Iggy)before bringing in a stage production theatricality to rock, Bowie was an actor though, he watched those nutters and took stuff from their primal performances to work with in his act....then you had Johnny Rotten, who did the opposite of going into those type of subconcious performances of Morrison and Iggy, who would instead do the most ordinary everyday things onstage like stand and count his bus fare home, totally breaking down the barrier between performer and spectator....eh, those are the guys i like as frontmen, Morrison, Iggy, Hendrix, Lydon, Axl, I love the VU/Lou Reed and Bowie, but don't really think of them as frontmen types i like to watch necesarily in that way.
man, i forgot about James Brown, that guy could frickin dance, haha, Mick Jagger used to go watch James Brown do his thing, he got a lot from him for his performing, Jagger is very good too, quite camp and funny at times, so he had his own thing going on in that way, as well as the James Brown dancing influence.
sorry, kind of went on there, thoughts occuring as i was typing haha, i haven't had a good talk about bands in ages, i used to sit and talk about this stuff with my friends all the time.
