RE-FLEX: HIT 'EM WITH A HAMMER!

RE-FLEX: HIT 'EM WITH A HAMMER!

Features

by

David Keeps

On first inspection, Re-Flex inspire a critical knee-jerk amounting to a giant “so what?”; but appearances, as we all know, are often quite deceiving. Sure, they’ve got a fistful of melodic, danceable synthesizer ditties that pay homage to the mechanics of Pop Music—like “Praying To The Beat” and “Hitline”—as well as taking a bow(ie) to the master himself by quoting “station to station” in their smasheroo “The Politics Of Dancing.” That, in itself, is enough to raise a suspicious eyebrow. But the fact of the matter is that Re-Flex are much more than the latest British electrobop wheezebags, but also a genuine laugh riot.

You gotta have a sense of humor to sit for eight hours with enough wax on your face to make you look like Fassbinder’s ugly brother—and then actually put it all down on video, like Re-Flex’s lead vocalist Baxter (or Mr. B. to all you Hazel fans). “It had such an effect on his face,” cracks drummer/computer programmer Roland Vaughn Kerridge, “that he now has difficulty facing the mirror in the morning without makeup.” In any case, it does help distinguish Baxter from Mr. Buggies, Trevor Horn, whom he greatly resembles in real life.

“The whole concept of the video was based oh pirate radio,” Roland explains. “In England there’s only national radio stations that play the equivalent of Top 40, and they made all these interesting pirate stations illegal. Radio is a lot better in America, you hardly get to hear album tracks here in England at all.”

“America and England are such different cultures,” notes keyboardist and chief composer Paul Fishman authoritatively, settling in for the interview after announcing himself with a fanfare at the piano. “The fact that we look vaguely the same except for gelledup hair and odd bits of clothes—but that’s our own personal perversion—doesn’t mean we don’t have difficulty communicating with people, and the humor is so different.”

No shit, Sherlock. A running Re-Flex joke centers on the dirtiness and/or lack of their underwear and socks. When they opened for the Police on 12 East Coast dates, they performed their first 45,000 people gig with “no warm-up dates, no soundcheck, but plenty of clean underwear.” As if that wasn’t quite graphic enough in describing their jitters, Paul inquires, “Have you ever heard the expression shitting a brick? Well we did the whole housing estate that night!” Are you in stitches yet? Well, check this out. “In England we have an expression for cigarettes,” Roland explains, “which is ‘fags.’ Someone asked the guy to get him 20 fags, to which the gofer replied, ‘Oh, you’ve got an appetite.’ ”

Bet they weren’t counting on the Police to share such a jolly good time attitude. But surprise, surprise. “The last night with them we went out with a bang,” Baxter recalls. About halfway through the third number all the lights go out in front of 18,000 people. So we think, ‘Right. Be professional and carry on.’ So I’m singing my little heart out in the darkness and all of a sudden the lights go on and the whole stage is covered with the Police crew and the Police having a bloody party. They’re passing sandwiches and champagne around, tying balloons to my guitar, laying pornography on the keyboards and jamming a whole banana into Roland’s mouth.

“Well, that totally threw us and the audience. We weren’t sure whether they even knew it was the Police. Sting came on in a painter’s jacket with a little mustache and Andy was in a big black coat looking like the Count Of Monte Cristo and Stewart was wobbling around somewhere. Well, how do you explain this joke to 18,000 people? Eventually we just finished the set, thinking, ‘Fine, thank you very much.’ ”

“Then we had to improvise,” Paul continues. “We only came prepared to thank the guys and have a bottle of champagne and tell them ‘it’s been a pressure.’ We had to think up something that would really throw them.”

“So we found some black plastic garbage bags,” Baxter says with a sly smile. “Cut some holes in them and took off all our clothes—except underwear, of course — and put them on like dresses. Then we made up mustaches and dreadlocks out of black gaffer tape and bounced onstage during the last tune with this bottle of champagne and three glasses. One of them gets poured immediately over Sting’s head, and the rest of the band couldn’t hold it together.

“Then there’s the retaliation. All of a sudden I see Stewart charging over the top of his kit and his roadie has taken over for him. He pushes me to the ground and rips my underpants off in front of all those people. I’m naked, with cameras aflash and I’m doing me flash bit as well. But I got roine back in the end. I sang backing vocals on ‘So Lonely’ deliberately out of tune.”

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RE-FLEX

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But it hasn’t been all fun and games. Since Re-Flex is one of the first bands to take computer technology—like the inimitable Linn-drum sounds you’ve been boogeying to since the Human League came along— out of the studio and onto the stage, there’s always plenty of rhythm traffic control crises to add a dash of drama.

“Computers crash a lot,” Roland explains, confirming every experience I’ve ever had trying to make a reservation-by-phone in a hurry. “So there’s a real sense of danger involved and often we have to just bluff when something goes wrong. But that helps retain a sense of spontaneity.”

And Re-Flex has been evolving with the same sense of spontaneity ever since Paul and Baxter were introduced by a mutual friend three years ago. “And it’s been downhill ever since,” Paul cracks. Re-Flex actually came together as a gigging entity just shy of two years ago, when Thomas Dolby introduced fellow former Bruce Wooley Camera Club member Nigel Ross-Scott to the try-anything trio and the computers they affectionately dubbed “The Boys” were added. The name was inspired by an innovative graffiti artist who signed himself Re: Fuse, a moniker they wisely rejected on the grounds that, due to varying pronunciation, “it was asking for trouble.”

But then Re-Flex seems to attract more than their fair share of bother without invitation. Underwear disasters notwithstanding, they remember their American invasion for the sheer “variety of diseases we’ve caught here. Baxter went down with a flu that sent him to the hospital,” Paul remembers. “I put my back out. Roland fainted before a gig and Nigel almost threw up behind an amplifier from the flu 1 But apart from that, it’s been great!” ¶§