GHOST TOWN JUJU

GHOST TOWN JUJU

LWTTER FROM BRITAIN

by

Penny Valentine

When you think your toys have gone berserk/It's an illusion you cannot shirk/ hear laughter cracking through the walls/It sends you spinning/You have no choice.

—Spellbound"

Siouxsie Sue, no longer a punk but not fitting quite comfortably into neo-Romanticism either, has returned with Ju Ju, two new Banshees, and the sound of tribal, drumming courtesy of Budgie (devastatingly bleached blond, quiffed and more art school, than Springsteen t-shirted).

Siouxsie prowls the stage sphinx-eyed and white-lipped, now owing more to the 60's bohemianism of Juliette Greco, still obsessed by cold marble slabs and inner torment. In her absence have come Toyah Wilcox and Hazel O'Gonnor, the former a post-punkette/actress with a carelessly under-acute sense of outrage with no substance; the latter a pre-fabricated sub-Bowie, extending her Breaking Glass role, and yet, beneath it all, sounding a rather, well, nice girl. In this arena Siouxsie has always seemed more powerful and more dangerous, even when on Ju Ju— her surreal nod to horror movies, paperback spine-chillers and Roman Polanski film scripts—the second-hand images work. Her songs are romantic in the true Gothic tradition. She is less desolate and more threatening than the ill-fated Joy Division, but the result is no more comforting.

Although she seems to have become a singer in the more conventional sense and constructs her songs within the tradition (melody line, repeating chorus), she has retained a post-punk signature of vowel flattening—entrarnst" prurrs" and swate for entranced" prayers" and sweet." So eventually Ju Ju does make the connection back into her history. Why then is Ju Ju worrying? Although it eventually owes more to Edgar Allan Poe than Sanders Of The River, the title alone hints at tribal witchcraft, and a track like Voodoo Doll," whatever its purpose, harks back to a British white colonialist attitude of portraying Africa as an intrinsically evil place, full of godless people and threatening |raditions, to be saved by the missionary ancl the colonizer alike, who would then transport the population into the realm of cultural degeneration.

At times such as this Ju Ju has its risky elements.

The youth of Eglington/Won't put down their Remingtons/The youth of Brixton/They leave their .45 Smith and Wesson pistol,-pistol.

Michael Rose's song for Black Uhuru, like many of the band's numbers, has always been ambivalent. It's a call to Jah, away from insurrection: They want you to fight the good fight/But save your strength for strength is life..."

Two weeks into the burning of Britain,. Uhuru came to the streets of London with Youth of Eglington" suddenly divested.of its confusion. Onstage the vivid red figure drove forward like a front-line army. With its title changed to become more localized, the song became in itself revolutionized by events. In the Rainbow—pressed up so close it was impossible for us to move, where we could count the white faces around us without moving our heads— Trenchtown has relocated. Images of Bob Marley seemed almost gentle by comparison. Oppression has moved along apace in the months since he died; more importantly, so has reaction to it. The Black Uhuru concert became a powerful expression of black identity and controlled anger.

Out on the streets in Liverpool, the Toxteth riots brought young white and black together against the police. Two white youths were mowed down by police Land Rovers; one died, one had his back broken. Another was attacked by a cop with a machete. Yet despite white unemployed rising angry with the black youth, there is a hint of growing polarization. As Britain smolders, shaky on its ruined streets, the lull feels only temporary. Rock On The Right has just been published, a report that points out what some of us have know since punk's earliest days; that right-wing organizations like the National Front and British Movement have launched a fight for the control of the hearts and minds of British youth" on the rock circuit. Madness and Bad Manners, both groups with a large skinhead following, have had right-wing organizations infiltrating their concerts. Five years ago Jimmy Pursey and Sham 69 had the same problem. Faced with losing their audience and taking a stand, Pursey tried to balance on the middle ground. It gave way beneath his feet and the group disbanded. It is no, longer possible to be a bystander.

The Specials have had to come to terms with that. Once their politics, they said, were understood simply because they had a multi-racial line-up. A year on, they're playing free concerts in the riot zones and denouncing racism clearly from the stage. Maybe it's not surprising, then, that their biggest British hit is the recent vGhost Town" which, with its peculiar musical mixture of rhumba, reggae and a smattering of the Coasters' Little Egypt," should have been seen as prophetic, rising and staying at the top of the charts right through the weeks of rioting:

This town is like a ghost town/All the clubs are being closed down/Bands won't play no more/People fighting on the dance floor/No job to be found in this country/ Can't go on no more/People getting angry."