LETTER FROM BRITAIN

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

POLLS, ROSES and ROLES

Cynthia Rose

Now that even the NME's publishing house plans to muscle in on the teenietrendie circulation success of Smash Hits with its own lyrics/pinups/gossip glossy weekly, image-mongering may well become Britain’s next nationalized industry. This embryonic mag for yer fadmad little br.o and sis is to be aimed at advertisers serving a 12-19 year-old market. An^it’s already been dubbed Number 1: a reflection of its publishers’ concern that “the action remain chart-orientated.”

Where is the action? Well--in a country so small that two spins of a platter by Someone at Radio One ensures said disc a spot up in the top two-thirds of our Hot Hundred, the real action’s often a scratchmy-back-I’ll-scratch-yours. This is our new act: cover it! This is our new club: plug the address! These are our new clothes: here are the pix! It’s a great little record: take my word for it!

A sixth rock style weekly (we’ve had The Face, Smash Hits, New Sounds, New Styles, Flexipop and Blitz) scrambling to second-guess its public fills those pages but empties the heart. Whole movements are being typeset into reality—and whole realities held at bay by miles of hyperventilating lineage. And, traditionally, the only absolute intersection the two are guaranteed to enjoy is provided by those sacred barometers of public opinion, the charts and the Reader’s Poll.

In the NME (and on most high streets, actually), Paul Weller and his now bustedup band continue to dominate such devices, as People the Entire History of Rock Would Currently Most Seem Unthinkable Without. Weller is Best-Dressed and BestCoiffed, as well as author of the year’s fave LP and rave single—he’s the Most Wonderful Human Being almost every vote-scribbler has been able to call to mind for the past four years. Bearing in mind the effects similar deification hath wrought on others, what’s Weller* actually up to now that the Jam are merely an endless series of memorial clips on TV? Quite a lot, actually. His romantic and personable single as part of The Style Council (“Speak Like a Child”) looks headed straight for mega-success and meanwhile he’s also signed a few new ac’ts to his-Respond label: ex-hairdresser Vaughan Toulouse (of Department S fame), chanteuse Tracy and warm new soul set The Question.

He’s even taken a tentative set as entrepreneur within London’s club circuit—attempting a Sunday afternoon youth venue at Action Space in Chenies Street, central London (a well-meaningly militant site which has hosted a myriad of activities, none particularly trendy). Weller’s first Sundays (a big success) lacked any liquor license—so the headiest intoxicant available was Bananarama, guesting in support with a special scratch mix of their robotically hypnotic Top 20, “Na Na Hey Hey.”

Without ever Appearing desperate to sing-and-be-seen (a la Belle Stars), Bananarama are likely to turn out better stayers than even a putative supergroup combining the throats and torsos of poll-toppers like Alf, Tracey Thorn and Carmel. Why? All you need to do is scan the crowds in any boutique, at any gig, in almost any city. That clean-cut bushy blondeness abounds as an influence. Fashion spreads, favorite-food time, stars at home? The B-3 girls are there every time, with a large slice of the nation’s womanhood close behindhumming “Na Na” and ticking them off in polls as “Best Dressed.” (Two up, as it happens, from Princess Di, who also favours skirts, smiles and pastels over heavy puhk or le tough chic.) This sort of shift—towards the “fresh,” streamlined, uncomplicated and clearly saleable—is personified best by the Top Ten success of the transmogrified Thompson Twins. On the eve of their inevitable trip to New York, there are two poles of opinion about the tactics that got “Love On Your Side” into the charts. One (record buyer): “1 went through a real sort of Thompson Twins stage; used to see ’em everytime they played. I’d been reading about them and thinking what a stupid name and then they came to Exeter where I was living then and the concert they gave that night was just amazing. But I saw them on telly the other day and it was really awful—they’ve just lost all their warmth and humor.”

The flip side can be had from a record “critic”: “From fringe to forefront, their rise has been too typical.for words, but I make no excuse for preferring their new, clean lines to the ‘radical’ cacaphony of yore.”

A lot of ex-Thompsonites cite the departure of dismissed sax player Jane Shorter for the wider musical embrace of Orcestra Jazira as the origin of their disillusionment. And indeed, ignore the merchandising for the music, and the Twins’ sets soon pale beside real comers such as The" Style Council or Roman Holliday—a beat band who transmuted one gig for a Soho niterie into a promising EP (Stand By on Jive). Now dispensing their natty, John Peelplugged sound—a snappy swing which owes more than a tip of the hat to Louis Jourdan’s ’40s—from a fortnightly residency at the Whisky Jive in Wardour St., Roman Holliday have added credibility as well as solid support to dates by the Clash, Culture Club and Mari Wilson.

Roman Holliday stand out partly because so many Great Pretenders abound in the media-stoked stakes to locate “the” top dancefloor funksters favored by white nightclubbing types. Just now the prime candidates for such dubious honors are Allez Allez, the “new” Pigbag (they’ve added a singer, Angela Jaeger, as showcased on their .Y LP Lend An Ear), and Animal Nightlife. It’s more than coincidence that female frontwomen feature in each of these outfits;media darlings they may have made Animal Nightlife and Allez Allez, but neither has dpne very well at promoting actual stage panache. The best thing I ever overheard about the Nightlife lineup in full pout and prance was an outraged teen complaining that, in the flesh, his idols behaved “like the kids from Fame!”.

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A similar surprise occurs whenever the Beehive Jive of Miss Mari Wilson surfaces onstage, as opposed to within the suburban sleeve-fantasy world she presents in periodicals. Her much televised, video-ed and promo-ed cover version of Julie London’s torchy ‘‘Cry Me A River” caused national outrage among London’s large cult following. (If you remember Julie L. as the singing vision in 1956’s rock-flick The Girl Can’t Help It, you realize it’s the real star of that film, Jayne Mansfield, with whom the less than talented but very nice Mari has something more concrete in common). Compact Records mentor Tot Taylor may have cooked up a hoot at the expense of sentimental housewives everywhere, but too many people (the adenoidal Mari included) are now taking it all absolutely seriously...Critics speak of Wilson’s “sexual sophistication” and “torch touch.”

Mari herself (who lives in Neasden with her parents) is less highfalutin’. She likes “those songs” because “they have a beginning, a middle and an end.” She’s “very into style and class; you’ve either got a ‘new romantic’ thing or a punky scruffy look where you bung ribbons in and wear your hair any old how and I don’t think that’s particularly feminine. I mean, I don’t wear a bra, but that’s not my biggest statement!”

What about sexual sophistication, though? “Well, my whole character up on stage is “she’s a survivor.” A real woman, but a survivor too. I took a drop in salary to do this y’know—I worked for a firm as sales co-ordinator, where I worked with six men, and what you realize is men are much bitchier than women. Women, however, are dirties.”

What’s the flip side of all this new coin? Well—according to the polls, what Weller’s represented as a British man these past four years, Siouxsie Sioux (ever the JK Huysmans of anti-harmony in the U.K.) has meant as woman. She retains Budgie —there’s a new Creatures EP in the works as I write this. But the continued infatuation of Britain’s youth with her well-architected pose (the Klimt-style sleeve of A Kiss In The Dreamhouse was a careful collaboration between noted image-sealer Michael Kostiff and exuberantly talented design team Rocking Russian, old pals from the Sex Pistols era) is a press officer’s dream. And all when her latest LP proves beyond any lingering doubt that Siouxsie’s vocal “talents” boil down to a flatly declarative chutzpah fixated on overblown, interminably meaningless images of gloom ad ole scent-style. Thank God for Budgie’s drumming, even if it does expose Sioux’s naked lack of response to rhythm of any sort (just check out ‘Cocoon’).

Best-Dressed, Best-Tressed Sioux, the “Neo-Gothick-Goddess,” has always been an imagemonger’s wet dream. Lately, though, her quarry (those who like to look on the darker side) have been poking their ears even further Down Under: to hear Surgical Penis Klinik, the Birthday Party, or Hunters and Collectors. Three Aussie bands—a new movement already in media circles! Actually, they’re all different (however derivative), and it’s the Birthday Party who flew in from adopted burg Berlin last week to find their The Bad Seed #2 in the indie charts. Legions of would-be plunkies and junkies have been lining up in leather and studs to procure tickets for their forthcoming dates, and Partyman Nick Cave has in girlfriend Lydia Lunch an Ice Goddess whose virtuosity (she writes novels and poetry as well as songs: dirty dramas they co-author for any stage which will perform ’em) easily matches Siouxsie for high media quotient.

Birthday Party punters wear roughly the same gear that’s selling on the cover of heroin heroine Patti Palladin’s 12” “Siamese Lovers”: black stiletto boots with chainlinked spurs. In the way of such things, this former half of feted female punk duo Snatch recorded this disc in 1979, but released it last week.

Thank heaven for the human sentiments of Aztec Camera, whose current single reiterates the necessity of loyalty, humor and lightheartedness in life as well as love. “They call us lonely when we’re just alone,” they warble tenaciously in “Oblivious.” And, in the indie charts at least, guess what? They ARE Number 1.