Emergency distress signal: Help. We are running out of off-the-wall geniuses and-or who-what-wherekiller bands. Over.

Yeah, sure - so are you. With your George Harrison tours and your John Lennons in residence, not to mention all that dough. (I asked you not to mention all that dough. - Elton John.)

America can function, rock-wise at least, through periods of drought, deprivation, and Disco Tex with the greatest of ease, simply by eating up all the music Britain constantly exports in her direction - and it’s precisely this consciousness of its position as a small private factory producing hand-made rock ‘n’ roll artifacts for foreign consumption that’s responsible for the notso-sudden dearth of New Wonders from this not-so-United Kingdom.

I mean, to be perfectly brutal, dears, where are the true ’70s acts? Practically all the Big Names Of Now in Britain were around for some considerable time in the ’60s and merely got bigger. Gary Glitter? A freak of pop nature. Mike Oldfield? Nothing to do with anything much beyond himself. Slade? Give you that. But gi&nts, I want giants.