SECRET AFFAIR: Mods As Sods?

Skinny ties and short hair, melodies and sportcoat-parades trooping fashion and fun like a traveling funeral, like a gross non-sequitur. Like allofasudden some new edicts trumpeting cleancut choices, clearcut changes, fuckin’ limeys bouncing up and down with stupid smiles and youth-culture socio-shit.

Always thought the “rockers” were the hep tribe in Quadrophenid; sublife ratlife dross salivating malevolent ill-will and pronouncement on the tidy, succinct fun-rituals of non-leatherbound pleasureseeking teen-wimp throngs. Now suddenly this neo-mod revival of sorts, its dubious cultural ramifications (ha ha ha) and bogus political relevance for chrissake.

“No way,” resounds Ian Page, tireless mouthpiece of mod limers and Secret Affair—the first and most prominent band to emerge outta the whole thing. “People are crying out for something new to happen,” he continues. “Ever since the war ended in England there has been a need for young people to come up front and make their opinions known, their voices heard. To claim their own identity before society wipes it out. ‘Mod’—it’s just a label. I don’t think the word is particularly relevant. I think the need is the important thing. And the need is there, man.

“Secret Affair’s a dance band rooted in 60’s music, the glorious soul music of Motown/Tamla/Stax which was of course the original mod music. We want change and we demand change, that’s the function of youth, to bring about change. To change laws made by old men that old men would never break.”

The words seem to gush effortlessly out in a laxative free-for-all. “Gogo not pogo” is a mainstay of Secret Affair and the mod-world, a veritable, yep, punk-backlash that has Page frothing to disown any Sex Pistols “legacy” trouncing punk-rock as an almost evil counterpoint cultural force to be reckoned with and eradicated!

“I don’t know how much the Sex Pistols actually did, they said a lot, but what did they actually do? That music has nothing in touch with us. If they had something to say to people, then the majority of those people were left unfulfilled. We fulfill the need that these people have felt for change and newness and progression and creation...”

The Cockney Rejects?

Page jumps on it: “We hate them.”

You hate them?

“They are a bunch of thugs. There’s no music in what they do—there may be some value—but there’s no music. They’re a bunch of really hard guys that can’t, play their instruments, who needs that man? So* punk broke down all the barriers, so we’re told, we’ve heard all that shit a hundred times over, right? It presented the opportunity for unknown musicians to get up onstage and make a noise. But it’s for the most part negative energy. A destructive force with a destructive message. We’re a positive force urging positive change. That’s the difference...”

The tinge of self-righteous indignation, affirmation with which the 20-year-old Mr. Page so zealously articulates, exudes a born-again type manifesto of right-andwrong that parallels the better moments of the late Kathryn Kuhlman. - - ' ...

Wrong?

“I hate rock ’n’ roll more than anything I can think of. I mean passionately. I think it is horribly wrong. It’s a disposable artifact. If you equate how many artists for how long it’s been going and how much good has come of it—it makes me want to break down and" cry because there’s so much wrongness about it. Which includes probably more than anything the English music press.”

Wrong?

“They are the worst thing in the world* I mean, I do a lot of things in my spare time, I like reading a lot—Tolkien,4 Lovecraft,” equivocates Page tirelessly. “But I don’t listen to rock ’n’ roll. I’m not a fan of rock ’n’ roll or the really terrible press it receives. The English music press is just the most repugnant thing in the world I can think of. Like something really dirty, like a toad giving head to a frog.

Ihate rock ’n’roll more than anything lean think of. --Ian Page

British press strangely enuff became the sounding board of Page and the mods in the incipient process of Secret Affair’s rise to sub-mammoth popularity. Started back with Page at age 16 beginning with guitarist Dave Cairns in a “pop group” called the New Hearts in ’77. The NH’sxsigned to CBS and two singles later (“Another Teenage Anthem” and “Plain Jane”) were out bn their collars looking for tricks.

“Right in the new wave explosion Dave and I were with CBS and had a hard time with them. The band split up, it all fell to pieces.”

“Like the Specials and their 2-Tone label,” explains S. Affair’s Sire bio, “Secret Affair started their own I-Spy label marketed and distributed by Arista UK.” This is true, and in fact ska heroes (?) Laurel Aitken and Prince Buster are among the roster of other Artists signed.

In September of '78, bassist Dennis Smith from Advertising joined Cairns and Page. Later on, Seb Shelton from the fabulous Young Bucks and Dave Winthrop, ex of Chicken Shack and Supertramp consummated the present lineup—the first performance of Secret Affair dating why back to 1/79 with the Jam at Reading University. Since, tunes have charted the top 20 in England (“Glory Boys” the mod anthem of sorts) and a newly released piece of Sire domestic product has set the stage for SA’s attempt to conquer the States.

“I think the secret of music is in the dance. If you can reach people’s bodies, move their bodies, then they’ll think about it afterwards.” Page’s mouth undulates a continuous exposition of muzik-speak: “That’s the way to succeed in a band. We’re tried to move bodies and tried to add a heavy guitar sound—which is a throwback to new wave and that kinda stuff.”

And on a throwback level: “We’ve always wanted to incorporate the Motown/ Stax/Tamla sound, and use it to reach kids normally unreached by this kind of music. The 60’s Atlantic, Motown sound we all feel was the kind of music that a) wasn’t listened to enough and b) promises more clout from a small stage and communicates to people more directly.

“I would say that we are doing more musically them any other band just in the fact that there is more music happening in what we do. We have extended the three-piece frontier and have added the second front. For instance, we have a kind of heavy-rock texture, a heavy-rock framework. Bass, drums, guitar—and we’ve somehow managed to take a superb sax player, put him on top of it and make him fit in. I don’t know of any band that has done that. Who? Who? Name me one!”

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21

The Soniqs.

“Who’s heard of ’em, man?”

Roxy Music notwithstanding, Secret Affair’s pastiche of Yankee Negro soul with jive pop twists of melody-fragments and white-boy beat anchors root already firmly entrenched in solid ground. I.e. , there’s this textbook-styled meticulousness, a fabricated sort of stuffiness imbued in arrangement and performance. It’s awright as an exercise in academic eclecticism (B-) but shoddy and imminently pretentious for the sake of the real thing. Against the grain of all the hype and party line, the aspect to consider here is substance. Very little of which this band flaunts (has) when it comes down to delivering the goods of what’s espoused in press and the like.

The itinerant baseline (not bassline), foundations for transmitting the crazy, Visceral KO sensibility—the heart pdnch, are conspicuously absent. Not to be found, jack. Nothin’ secret about this affair, very standard stuff.

☆ ☆ ☆

“It’s all a matter of outlook. Of outlook and perspectives, life and change, living through it,” Page insists. “Feeling and craziness and the actuality of conveying those feelings are what counts. We’re promoting new changes and radically new steps in this context.”

A chilly San Francisco FRI nite has ’em standing in mixed anticipation for the arrival onstage of modsters SA—this particular evening, the opening act for Pat Benatar (?) at the Old Waldorf. The band finally makes its way up and on and into the opening selections of (what seems) an hour-long show. Right off the bat, you can segregate plausible aspects from the mundane you’ve-seen-it-a-thousand-times -before kinda stuff. Saxmain Dave Winthrop’s the caged animal here; he’s got this unleashed type of go-get-em angst and aggressive stride that mixes real heavy shit with tongue-in-cheek hijinx. Wrap-around shades can’t hide the animal eyes; Winthrop’s all over the fuckin’ place— twisting and shaking and blowing ana wailing. This cat’s for real, like Maniac John Tolos! And six-string representative Dave Gairns checks out equally bizarre. Like he’s uh, possibly s-c-a-r-e-d of playing in front of a lotta pepple—frightened one moment, then incensed the next, and all the white pummeling out some hepcat tirades swathed in honest-t’god chunks of psyche delic resonance!! Tremelo’d minor chords. Metallic note choices—all x-ecuted w/th’ necessary flair and feeling even. Mod? More like crazy by way of “unhappy” and “defensive.”

“He’s a very intense person,” splains Page of Cairns. “He feels threatened by an audience, but more than anything else he feels—and 1 think rightly—that he’s better than anyone out there. That he has lots to offer and they don’t. He’s angry when he goes out there—he’s an angry man.”

UNFORTUNATELY, Secret Affair’s material and overall live animation fail to deliver * this promise of angry (whatta concept, huh?)—there’s not a spark of malevolence or vitriol to match tagteam champeens Gjairns-Winthrop. The hienergy pretext of these two falls flat on its face vis-a-vis the rest of the group. Lead-singer Ian’s a better publicity-monger than vocalist ^-better relegated to the ranks of PR than frontman; a frontrunner with arguable personality, he prances, paces back and forth', back and forth off-mike, on-vocal, back and forth with no apparent congruity. It’s this disjunct presence of Page (uncalled for smiles and live reconnaissance w/other members that’s above all sick sick sick) and an annoying transparent rhythm section that goes nowhere fast. Like, here’s this mod-apostle talkin’ “new”' and “qhange” and “1 hate rock ’n’ roll” onesecond and the next instance he’s regurgitating the requisite arena-rock cliches that every aficianado of Kirshner and Midnight Special in Kansas and Little Rock, AR’s got down pat. D-U-M-B boogoid moves, handclapping encouragement to egg on more frenetic moments of a solo. Wait a minute.. .solp? Mods subscribe to non-mod technology?? They must, so it seems, cos one break near the end had all the visual charisma of Ozzy Osbourne’s peace-sign gesticulations goating (sic) Iommi into the expectant contrapuntal forays.

Moreover, the transpiring stage personalities (cumulatively speaking) succumb to the dreaded rock-star disease. Spotlights cue not-unexpected instrumental breaks, tunel arrangements subscribe to worn-out ineffectual turns of mindrot redundancy. Verse-chorus-bridge, verse-bridge-chorus ontop of the typical Stomach-hold lightweight pop maneuvers, saxophone motion the only aggressive stripe to cite.

Pathetic more than the facelessy gray, music itself [at its peak, a confused hodgepodge of previously accounted for MotownStax licks—“Get Ready”' version a better moment of the set—-and readymade popcliches; ’n fact, this band really offers little more than the flipside of American (native Frisco) pop-rockers the Readymades— Page perhaps a limey incarnation of x-RM Jonathan Postal (illegitimate son of Bill Graham, brother of Jeff Olender)] are the costumes each must wear for the sake of' “the cause.” This shit’s the absolute pits. Heck, the driveling swill playin’' the Madame Wongs circuit here in LA’s got more on the ball than these clowns in their skinny-tie sportsuits suitable for Bozo or Mr. Wizard. Winthrop w/hjs shades and greasy rattlesnake vest and threads checks out all reet—th’rest, strictly geeksville. Yuk and double-yuk.

“The Clash are an important band of this era,” offers Page. “We like them very very much. That first album they made is one of the mOst important albums of the past 20 years. It’s extremely vital. If there was a time capsule and you had to understand young society, that would be an album you’d want to include. When they came out with this last album, the double record, it was geared towards the American market. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but y’know now in England they’ve been totally put down as ‘sell-out.’ What the fuck is this ‘selling-out’ crap? What is selling-out? You’re an artist, you’re a musician—you’re trying to sell. I don’t understand whaf selling-out is.”

Tell it to the Cockney Rejects.