LETTER FROM BRITAIN
Hi there, out there! You think you’re tired of bad George Orwell jokes? Well, you should be over here where Nineteen YouKnow-What first met the keys of a typewriter. Still, I can report that the rock Establishment’s first attempt to capitalize on the date—the Institute of Contemporary Art’s 1984 Week — managed to cause a very real riot.
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
MUSIC HALL TO MARK ‘84?
Cynthia Rose
by
Hi there, out there! You think you’re tired of bad George Orwell jokes? Well, you should be over here where Nineteen YouKnow-What first met the keys of a typewriter.
Still, I can report that the rock Establishment’s first attempt to capitalize on the date—the Institute of Contemporary Art’s 1984 Week — managed to cause a very real riot. That’s right; thinking to be trendy, the ICA booked in Teutonic guerilla gang Einsturzende Neubauten as headliners. (They even erected a gigantic Big Brother visage behind the stage, with headlight-style eyes designed to flash on between the acts).
Through their debut LP on Some Bizzare, Zeichnungen Des Patienten O.T. (“Portrait of Patient O.T.”), Neubauten have actually managed to violently polarize just about all
the listeners in the U.K.’s rock population towards either total espousal or heartfelt hatred. But their real status as a phenomenon still rests on that initial mondo-destructo one-off at London’s Lyceum last year; in which their customized industrial steel drumkit gave the British synthoscape a kick in the teeth it heartily deserved.