OVER-HEATED, OVER-HYPED, AND OVER HERE

OVER-HEATED, OVER-HYPED, AND OVER HERE

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

Cynthia Rose

Hi there, wish you were here instead of me—we’re in the middle of a heatwave so humid it might get the Vandellas to back up Mary Wilson in that American advert about “the supreme ice cream.” The real news seems to be slogging (the Beat will reemerge as General Public but uh, “can’t tell you about that until Friday,” so you’ll know all about it by the time this sees print) —but rumors dart around like crazy. (They always call this “the silly season” here and pretend nothing happens, in order to skive off work and sit in the sun.) Lesley Au Pair seems to have made off to Morocco with most of the band’s money—have they broken up? (Did she take Adele Bertei? Have they broken up?)

Kajagoogoo—who look just like their name—did; they announced it last night and it got them a front page picture in the Dailt,; Star that takes up half the space. They even beat out Mrs. Thatcher’s eye operation (itself considerably overblown as, basically, she’s having a speck of grit removed rather than some tortuous potential loss-of-eye maneuver). Kajagoogoo, proteges of radio jock Paul Gambaccini, have been together a mere year anyway; they’re sort of watered down Duran Duran—i.e. they don’t make statements about how “their success should stand as an example to Britain’s unemployed youth,” etc.

Now lead singer Limahl (a “close friend of Gambaccini’s”) intends to spin their record of two hit singles into a solo career as pre-teen idol. I’m sure he’ll get plenty of exposure on Radio One: PG’s place of daily travail.

Anyway, this is the hottest summer in 300 years, “since the days of Nell Gwynne.” And I’ve just moved from lodgings in the north of town—heavily seeded with art school Students—to a tiny shared flat south of the river. I mention this only because, perched atop a weird sort of tower over a bait-andtackle-shop located on a traffic island, I’ve got an ace spot for judging how the locals like to hear their heatwave.

Down here in the combat zone, the “style wars” of the pure white north fail to materialize, but there’s plenty of all-night streetlife—not, for a change, all police or pub-sponsored. The educated white kids persist with their pretty-boy pop (descended from Orange Juice down to the Durans, whose fan club card even Royal aesthete P. Diana had the sense to return after hearing their Royal Command show). But those slavish “tribal affiliations” which grow SO cumbersome as kids respond to the media deluge by actually considering themselves either “Cappuccino cats,” “Herberts,” “Gothick punks,” “Psychobillies,” “Gucci boys,” “Soul Boys,” “Bolshie-rockers,” “Weetabix skinheads,” or “Garage trashies” ad infinitum hardly exist. After a surfeit of this sociological Survivalism (the art students pack in these modes as if the right accessories insured them against the v a ypse; it really is a major preoccupah j.s ® relief. 1 can laugh when, during s..,®! °* ph college degree shows—mostly Jbitmg the graduating class’s self-portraits as rock stars of sleeve designs for LPs—the newly posted London Editor for one foreign art mag whispers, “Forget the paintings— °o* at these clothes, they’re just SCREAMING at you!”

A sweaty (these days) swim through the summer Nightclubbing scene, however, reveals that it still exists, and that the to-bephotographed-is-to-exist attitude it fosters continues to spin off into rock and rock promotion.

There are now 312,000 under-25s unemployed and, if you believe any of the increasingly desperate-for-event media and TV, you’ll think they’ve all got their heads held high—partly to apply the rouge and makeup which serves as their evening armor in each night’s assault on the club of their choice. Here in the capital, this would still mean Flying Cow or Blue Bomber cocktails at Steve Strange’s Palace, DJ Nick Thornton’s dancing-in-dry-ice act at the tiny Replicant club, black liquid eyeliner and fishnets for the Son of Batcave or child porn Brideshead-style at the Titantic: a green and gilt-ceilinged, red plush dungeon two floors down under in Mayfair. (That’s London’s priciest residential district, but most of those who can still afford to “reside” there are embassies and offices.)

Ironically,, the Titanic spins hip-hop and rap records almost exclusively. I checked out my jaded impressions of this tactic on two Manhattanites who ought to know when a nighclub is a nightclub, and who enjoy ’em:

Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith’s former flatmate and the man who shot the cover pics for both Horses and Wave was here promoting his exhibit of portraits of body-builder Lisa Lion (and the book of same, Lady). He confided that he’d been to Titanic the eve before: “I couldn’t believe the way people just get so drunk right away. They get so drunk, they do so many crummy drugs; it’s really boring. It’s impossible to talk and I would think it’s impossible to pick anyone up either.”

Kathy Acker, the punk-porn-poetessnovelist whose unique, tough writing is about to launch an entire new imprint here (her Blood And Guts In Highschool will be part of an 800-pager) is finalizing the artwork for her book, and everyone has been trying to take her “everywhere, but particularly to rock stuff. I love rock stuff, but I don’t believe how the way you dress means so MUCH here.” Kathy’s metal front tooth flashes when she smiles. “It’s probably just this packaging deal but we get this picture of kids, crazy kids running wild in the streets here. People really do have to dress to show who they are here, there’s no real choice. And the nightclub scene is a joke—it’s all the same people all the time. If you’re “famous,” OK; then, they’re glad to see ya.”

One art student who has been successful in a rock band seconded her sentiments. “Actually, that’s true. Before I was on the cover of a music paper, I felt I wanted to go out and do all the stuff I read about— but no one was friendly in those places. It was one big freeze-out. There’s an in-crowd in each one, and that’s it.” He echoed the feelings of most kids I talk to: clubs are great for “when you’ve got money and clothes and you’re out of your head.” No one expects to talk or meet anyone there—unless it’s a drug connection. “I used to like the Batcave,” one diehard Cramps fan confided, “but it got so grotty with people jacking up, I finally thought screw this—I can save the money and buy more records.”

More or less the same discontents were spilled out to me about Tony Wilson (the exFactory supremo) and his state-of-the-art establishment, the Hacienda in Manchester; its chief rival, Berlin; and a more unique club called Quando—which opens every two weeks to coincide with the delivery of dole queue cheques! (The Hacienda’s pretentious electro-funk palais is hidden away in the heart of Manchester, but you People Express visitors can check it out by looking under “FAC 51” in the phone book for the address.) The toughest and most ingenious dive seems to be the “Ultratheque” in Glasgow; formerly a snooker hall, it is tremendous and lavish and calls to the turntables names that might well be new to you: Bone Orchard, the March Violets, Slave Drive, Stockholm Monsters, the Wolfgang Press, Flowers Of Evil, PreFab Sprout, the Adorables, Animal Nightlife (if this single doesn’t sell I think their deal expires), Gene Loves Jezebel, Play Dead and Black.

Black are Northern examples of the fetish for post-Wham! duos (even drippy Greek brothers Alex and Constantine Veis with their baklava-sugary “If She Doesn’t Smile (It’ll Rain)” are symptomatic). Though they began as a quartet, then worked as a trio, it’s the paring down to just Colin Vearcombe and Dave “Dix” Dickie which shot them from indie Eternal Records—who pressed their clean-as-a-whistle-and-just-as-hollow “More Than The Sun”—to a major label arrangement with Warners.

That has yet to bear fruit but, speaking of that, female duo Strawberry Switchblade have re-emerged after their long lapse back into their off-the-air role as mere Sweethearts of Scotland. The moniker is apt in the case of their updated, sticky-sweet and over-costumed psychedelia, plus their slim product: one single called “Trees And Flowers” issued by the indie with my favorite title, 92 Happy Customers.

The casual air is affectation, however; this single is underwritten by the rhythm section of none other than Madness, produced by noted Northerner Dave Balfe, features reed arrangements by the Funboy Three’s Nicky Holland, and Aztec Camera’s Roddy Frame is audible on guitar. Eat your heart out, Kim Wilde, it’s a regular little Record Plant bed of incest over here!

The nutty boys of Madness have in fact been rather busy. During the hot spell they’ve taken to baseball (that’s right; good old mitt-to-mitt catch is right up there with roller-skating as a street sport in a lot of London neighborhoods) and they’re founding a new label.

As I write this, they’ve been told they can’t register the original title of their choice (Camden Records), as there already is one. But they have firmly inked a first signing: a 5-piece from London’s East End who trade under the name of Bonsai Forest hail from the same inner London pub and dive circuit on which Madness had to subsist for so long before their signing to Stiff, so both nostalgia and altruism are involved. Bassist Mark Bedford will try his hand at producing—again, with the aid of busy Funboy Holland and sidekick Ingrid Schroader.

Journalist Paul Morley and producer Trevor Horn created less than the stir they wanted for their new label ZTT’s first releases, from artists Art Of Noise (Liverpool) and “bondage band” Frankie Goes To Hollywood—who dragged their cuffs and chains rather ineffectively onstage at last week’s broadcast of Switch. But fellow Gothic fashion-follower Siouxsie Sioux remains unfettered in her enthusiasm for her new label Wonderland.

TURN TO PAGE 64

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 45

Wonderland’s initial release was the Creatures’ “Miss The Girl,” and they will probably press the next Banshees LP as well as a project-in-store from new Banshee guitarist Robert Smith and old hand Steve Severin—who together also comprise yet another new combo, called Glove. Smith is better known as a founding member of the Cure (he’s performing with them down in steamy Cornwall this week, to plug “The Walk”); and Siouxsie too seems to have broadened her base, moving from mixing board to board-room.

She says she’s mostly pleased with Wonderland “because it represents a demand we made from Polydor. We re-signed because they offered us more. Not just more money—more things, like a viable percentage.” Sound a mite removed from her rebel roots? “Well,” she moves on hastily, “1 felt that it was important to have something to show which marked our progress within the company—which showed that we haven’t been swallowed up by it.”

A tune-in to the indie charts show that they’re where the Banshees’ shtick has been “swallowed up”—and swallowed whole, too. It’s particularly hard to believe that the humorlessness and hup-hop-hop Teutonic militarism of her pique Gothique heirs & Sex Gang Children, Southern Death Cujt and the Death Cult, the Sisters Of Mercy, etc.) is actually a happening thing in this humidity, but it is. X-Mal Deutschland’s blond vocalist Anja Huwe might even be Siouxsie on her Euro-cult incantation “Incubus Succubus”—part of the Hamburg-based outfit’s Fetisch EP, currently a big drag, er— sorry...bit hit. X-Mal were “discovered” by the 4AD label’s maestro, Ivo. Like Illuminated Records, home of Sex Gang Children and our own Velvets copy band, Sudeten Creche, 4AD is a hipster label— they were the stamp on Birthday Party sleeves before the latter broke up.

There is an alternative opinion, however. Sitting on the bus going home, 1 was perusing a paper with a large pic of Siouxsie and Budgie posing a la jungle creatures in the bamboo grove of Kew Gardens, a West London tourist attraction that cost 15 pence. Sharing my seat was a reverberating, singing-under-his breath little black kid whose head may have reached my shoulders if that. /\bout 20 minutes into the ride, he interrupted his non-stop conversation with two buddies in the seat behind to lean over and point at the page. “I gotta say it,” he exclaimed, shaking his diminutive head. “Theta is wankers, mon!”

Coming home, music begins to waft into the air just as we cross the river—at night my windows are like a jukebox: playing and re-playing me selections from the cars at the intersection stoplights or the choices of the all-night minicab service just below, who seem to own an inexhaustible stock of tapes.

Anyway, last night as I lay sweltering (“It was like Malaysia!” says everyone in the NME office the next day—The Year Qf Living Dangerously just opened here) the Manhattans’ “Crazy” cropped up twice— from stoplights on different sides of the street. And I also recognized Freddie McGregor’s soulsmitten version of Horace Andy’s “Strange Things” and Gregory Isaacs’s “Secretary.” I don’t like “Secretary” as much as “Night Nurse,” but I’ve given up on looking for one black lady of any age who’ll agree with me, and none of my whitegirl acquaintances can discern a preference. The girl who really gave me a dressingdown, when I said I thought Isaacs might be over-marketing certain aspects of his sex appeal to the point of slick, had also made it to Picketts Lock to see the famous Yellowman, king of the macho toasters. And she said he was incredible. ” So, I keep asking those who’ve testified with their eyes rather than relying on print. Personally, I sort of prefer Katie Kissoon’s UK record “You’re The One (You’re My Number One)” as smooch music.

In the heat, actual sock-hopping is a drain—but the best bops of the summer have come from homegrown Latinooriented specialty bands like Tres, Combo Passe, Cayenne and Valdez. 1982’s visits from King Sunny Ade and Prince Nico Mbarga also boded well for London’s stock of African pop—but both imported Latin grooves and Nigerian platters are expensive: 12 to 16 dollars a go. Purists hang out around Jumbo and Mary Vanrenen’s Earthworks store (also a label, which handled the Chantage single after Viv Goldman wrote so expansively of the Parisian rage for chic Afrique, as well as Jazira’s 12” and “Mokoroto—that’s “Congratulations”—by Zimbabwe’s Four Brothers.) Earthworks runs a mail-order service if you’d like to try them; the address is 162, Oxford Gardens, London W10 England. And Stern’s, the recently re-housed and re-located centre for African aficionados—says they also handle orders (from 116 Whitfield St., London Wl).