MEMBERS OF PUNK-REGGAE WEDDING CLAIM NOT ALWAYS BRIDESMAIDS

MEMBERS OF PUNK-REGGAE WEDDING CLAIM NOT ALWAYS BRIDESMAIDS

FEATURES

by

Richard Riegel

We’re down in Bogart’s new dressing room, a concrete-block bunker beneath the stage, and as I retrieve a Budweiser from the tub on the amenities table, it seems that I’m surrounded by at least eighteen British eyeballs, observant if friendly. The Members are in Cincinnati tonight, to play the first U.S. tour stop in support of their new album, Uprhythm, Downbeat.

The Members have a self-contained horn section this time around, so that’s seven members of the Members right off, plus their road manager, plus their roadie, plus all the instrument-cases & dirty-laundry flotsam from anybody’s tour, and all in it’s very cozy in this compact dressing room. Periodically Simon Lloyd and Steve (Rudi) Thomson emit big fat squonks from their saxes, as the other Members trade affectionate Limey jive inspired by their two-day van ride down here from N.Y.C. They’ve had plenty of opportunities for collisions with the inescapable Amerikanpop culture of these shores already, as demonstrated by guitarist Nigel Bennett’s repeated yap, 4 ‘Gimme a doo//’ ” in perfect imitation of the happy-imbecile narrative style of a certain domestic commercial. Your working Yank repprter smiles indulgently.

Lead voke man Nicky Tesco is filling me in on the history of the Members. Tesco, a classic small-but-wiry guy, has a gold cross dangling from his left ear lobe, and has his fine dark hair cut in a part-shag, part-pompadour style, punk-choppy all over. Up close, Tesco may resemble Ian Dury somewhat, as I’ve read elsewhere, but I’m also picking up strong impressions of both Eric Burdon (tireless believer in Black Life) and Mighty Mouse (blackhaired, big-smiling defender of the downtrodden).

Can you Imagine some poor kid with * Angelic Upstarts9 tattooed on his forehead and then the styles change?

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Tesco’s mixed-media haircut is symbolic of the Members’ zigzagging fortunes over the years. The Members nave remained true to the punk-white reggae fusion of their 1977 founding throughout their career, but the larger pop scene keeps shifting crazily around them, and they haven’t found a success foothold worthy of their idealistic origins just yet. Singles like “Solitary Confinement” and “Sounds Of The Suburbs” put the Members on the U.K. charts way back when, but in the meantime, other British bands were able to take the same basic rock-reggae idea much futher to the bank, the Police by softening the sound to FM-acceptability levels, and the Specials and the Two Tone movement by tarting up the punk-ska fusion into a fashion statement that’d never quite occured to the Members. “We didn’t wear the right clothes,” says Tesco, more sarcastic than bitter. “You mean black & white & porkpie hats?” “Yeh, that’s it.”

Virgin Records lost interest in the Members after two well-received but modestly-selling albums, At The Chelsea Nightclub, and 1980— The Choice Is Yours, but even after Virgin dropped the band, the Members went on playing all the U.K. and European gigs they could get, supporting themselves and writing songs for their inevitable comeback. Which hit in 1982, as the Members were signed to Genetic, the new Arista-distributed label of producer Martin Rushent, of Human League, etc. fame.

So once again the Members have a major-label album, Uprhythm, Downbeat, available to the customers and even more important to the Members’ breakthrough into the schizo U.S. pop market, the video of their song “Working Girl” is in rotation on the omnipotent MTV. I notice several MTV Tand sweat-shirts among the Members’ luggage, and Tesco reports that the band met with the MTV promo poppers in New York,' just before the group’s drive down here. The Members were peptalked as to just how helpful & crucial MTV exposure could be to their success in the big ol’ U.S. of A., and were assured that “Working Girl” is beamed to the video masses four or five times a day. Like, uh, maybe 4:30 a.m. on a Tuesday? I’ve caught “Working Girl” only a couple times so far, even though I seem to have seen videos as wretched as Steel Breeze’s, so often I can detest them in my sleep.! Still, it’s a start.

Reportedly Nicky Tesco did four years of Joe Strummeresque poli-sci studies at Liverpool U., and this seems rather likely when he starts interviewing me about U.S. unemployment and other current events: “What’s it like living under Reagan?” “Well, we had Nixon for over five years, I’m used to this by now.” And Tesco muses on about trends and fads, the kind that could’ve made or broken the Members long before now. “Can you imagine some poor kid with ‘Angelic Upstarts’ tatooed on his forehead, and then the styles change?” (Sounds healthier to me, Nicky, than all the kids over here with “Ozzy Forever” carved into their brainpans.)

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But I’m meanwhile stealing glances at guitarist Jean-Marie “JC” Carroll, as he’s wearing his little bellhop cap and rolled-up trousers, a la the Uprhythm, Downbeat jacket photos. I suspect something along the lines of a Muslim conversion (I know how intense these white reggae guys can get about their religion), but I’m too polite to ask. Whatever his higher cosmology, J.C. doesn’t seem to have lost touch with his birthright Britpunk earthiness as he acts out some impossibly esoteric Limey scenario to the delight of his mates. I comment about J.C.’s fidelity to celebrating the concept of the groups’s name (same neighborhood) and Tesco sez, “You should hear him later in the tour!”

Onstage at Bogart’s, the Members aren’t overly flashy, not in the sense of the latesthypertrendy-band-off-the-bus-from-England! we’ve often confronted here, but their funky, pop-reggae sound has a very strong feel of disciplined dynamics. The spliffed-up Tesco whirls around and around the microphone stand, his shirttails flying like Mighty Mouse’s cape, as J.C. and Nigel Bennett and bassist Chris Payne rush in on him with their chunky-sound axes. Drummer Adrian Lillywhite (sibling of Steve L. the producer) pounds out the reggae-stutter beat, while Rudi Thomson and Simon Lloyd pummel out a twin-horn sound almost overwhelming in its skanky punch.

The Members do their own pop-leftist anthems like “We, The People” and “Chairman Of The Board,” which suggest the Clash’s huge-intentioned chants, but they also do change-of-attitude numbers like “Working Girl,” a male fantasy of woman-bankrolled laziness which may give certain equally good-liberal critics pause before assigning a letter grade to the album, and their brilliant, clattering-reggae reworking of Kraftwerk’s “The Model.”

Nicky Tesco punches out both his vocals and his hey-mon intersong raps in a warm growl suggestive of (the idea hits Teresa and me simultaneously) Eric Burdon’s in “San Francisco Nights.” Not an inappropriate comparison, as the snide stage patter Tesco tries out on Cincinnati indicates. Check these: “Our new album is fabulous—not having one would be as unfashionable these days as not having herpes—everybody has it!” Or: “Not only can we rock the arse of the world, but [gestures toward J.C.] Eddie Van Halen came onstage to play lead guitar for us!”

But Valerie VH. wouldn’t let him out of house in that organ-grinder’s assistant’s outfit, would she? (You should hear them later in the tour!)