Sticking To The Limits

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

Sticking To The Limits

by

Simon Frith

My favourite single at the moment is "Heads Down No Nonsense Mindless Boogie" by Albertos Y Lost Trios Paranoias. The Albertos are an intellectual comedy group, showmen who build their theatricals round rock parodies. They're generally dumber than their victims but they've got funnier since punk gave them an easy target and simple music. "Mindless Boogie" is a tribute to Status Quo and, more especially, to Status Quo fans. "I've got no mind to speak of," the songs starts,

"In fact I'm pretty thick . . .

I've got no time for intellectual music,

e.g. Hergest Ridge,

But give me a riff that swings, Like a can of cold beans,.

And I can boogie like a bitch!"

It's a boogie anthem and the best bit is the chorus: "Bang your 'ead on the wall!"

I don't know what my friend Carl thinks of this but he's a heavy music man and I think he'd take it, er, heavily. He came to live in Coventry last year and he was worried after two days. All the discos that weren't disco had gone punk and he felt twitchy. His leather jacket was too stiff, his hair too long, his taste too earnest. He didn't wear an earring but studs on his back; "The Sabs" was picked out on his spine. "Aren't there any heavy scenes?" he asked me disconsolately. "I only want a place where I can bang my head against a wall."

There is a place. The Climax. A pub with a heavy metal dj and bands who stare at their feet. The only place in Coventry to pay prompt and proper tribute to Keith Moon when he died, devoting an evening to Who records. The early ones, the Keith Moon ones, with the bass turned up and the same songs played over and over. The audience banged their heads on the walls.

A heavy metal fan explained to Sounds the other day that head banging is based on scientific principle. The music is so loud and it is so necessary to put your head near the speakers that ear drum damage is inevitable unless YOU THUMP YOUR HEAD REPEATEDLY AND DIFFUSE THE SOUND THEREIN, (memo to Brian Wilson and Pete Townshend)

Every autumn the heavy metal men come out. It's tour time. New releases. The Status Quo album. The Status Quo single. This year it's called "Again and Again." The Quo are the most precise auteurs in the business and if self-conscious formalism'is a mark of progressive art (as the structuralists claim) then Status Quo are certainly the most avant-garde musicians presently performing. Johnny Rotten's Public Image Ltd. still have a lot to learn.

Black Sabbath, though, are having some trouble with the modern world. Coloured vinyl is this year's plastic pleasure and in the Sab's office someone had a bright idea: "Hey man, why don't you press your record on black vinyl?" Too subtle for the Sabs so their record came out in deep purple. Too confusing for me so I hung it on the wall.

The. new HM tip for the top is Motorhead, a traditional trio made up of Lemmy, Hawkwind's old bassist, Fast Eddie Clarke and Philthy Animal Taylor. A Sixties sound with a Seventies sensibility. A 1973 sound with a 1978 sensibility. They look like bikers, play like corn belters and think like punks. Noisy simplicity, knowing innocence. Watch them sell.

I never did like heavy metal music much. Or, rather, I've never had to take much notice of it. I like Status Quo, but they're quite light, a boogie band who jump up and down like the Ramones. But someone like Ted Nugent—I can't say I've ever heard one of his records or ever wanted to.

Which may be why I admire heavy metal fans so much: they live simple lives, they're all men (it goes without saying), they don't speak much and they don't age at all. 1 knew how they feel when I read in Rolling Stone that Linda Ronstadt likes Elvis Costello, man—my opinion of her didn't go up at all, my opinion of him went quite a lot down.

Real rock fans are possessive and quick to jealousy. My favourite album at the moment is Johnny Thunders' So Alone. The old New York punk lays surly claim to the white teenage trash culture that was his before the English appropriated it. "Great Big Kiss", he does, and "Daddy Rolling Stone" and his own songs in a faltering voice, vocals by numbers, the Cook/Jones rhythm section and a cult sensibility even odder than HM.

In the years to come there'll still be work for Johnny Thunders, cold back rooms where people gather to listen to the music of 1977/8. Meanwhile, the Northern Irish groups I've been waiting for have arrived—the Undertones, Stiff Little Fingers, The Fall—and so has the new Clash LP, just this minute, as I type. Give 'Em Enough Rope and CBS have and for all the suspicion here the Clash haven't hung themselves Oust their manager) but still sound as noisy as any HM band and as eager to please and angrier and much more interesting. I'm still working out what the cover means.