PRUNING THE FLOWERMEN

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

PRUNING THE FLOWERMEN

Cynthia Rose

Recently at NME I received a batch of unsolicited 'poetic portraits' from a young, Londoner named Stephen Andrews. They were six: 'Punk,' 'Skinhead,' 'Hippie,' 'Trendy,' 'Rockstar' and 'Rasta.' Part of Andrews's 'Portrait...Punk' ('I'm the quiet type, I'm shy/Although I like blokes/One in particular/By name of Gary Stokes/Punk is just another/Phase I'm passing through/Kids always rebel awhile...Didn't you?/NME says Punk has lost/The power to outrage/And anyway I've got to consider/My age/What I really want to do is start/A family/And settle down into a life/Of calm conformity'). They reminded me of several things.

One was Gary Panter's Jimbo, exclaiming back in '79, 'We're not violent people! We're by and large monogamous and make it home in time to watch Lou Grant!' The other was many of those conversations I'd overheard in the Ladies' since my last letter—at venues stretching from the Wag Club through the Dirtbox to the Lyceum, during gigs by bands ranging from the Inca Babies, Icons of Filth, Nick Cave and his Cavemen to Linton Kwesi Johnson and Chalice. Even at Hagar And The Womb (a recommendable girl-group mutation enjoying an up-and-down pub-circuit rep built up at lowly haunts like London's Hope & Anchor) , topix of concern followed a discernible order: Clothes, sex, men, marriage, steadies, men, sex, clothes, makeup, music, scene-making and clothes.

Outside these precincts of confidence, however, an orgy of aural insensitivity unleashed by Neubauten's celebrity and success (as opposed to purposes and sound) continues, headed by SPK, Severed Heads, Test Department, Burial, Christian Death Cult, and their ilk. Sounds wild, man, but it's as predictable in fact as DOA weren't— they made a conquering sweep of the would-be hardcore scene with one London gig and the U.K. release of Bloodied But Unbowed—or Nick Cave's Cavemen were (Lydia Lunch, Foetus/Thirlwell, Neubauten's Blixa Bargeld).

Even the Grateful Dead's signature skull has made a big comeback, adorning denims, ear-lobes, and LP sleeves from Blood On The Saddle (our hottest rockabilly-esque import and often upon my own turntable) to Hip-Hop-Bommi-Bop wherein Fab 5 Freddy Braithwaite meets ultra-punkers Toten Hosen (Dead Trousers). This parody rap 12-inch has to betoken the UK's status as site-of-culturalcollision better than anything out this week.

And those Gothic hordes are really out there, too: having attended the initial LAMF Heartbreakers gig On Oct. 22, 1977 at London's now-defunct Rainbow, I was amazed at the extent to which this ersatz group's 'reunion' concert packed out the Lyceum. (Average age at the original gig, site of much sustained Grievous Bodily Harm, has been approximately three to five years older than at the second landmark occasion; a bemused Thunder's first words as he scanned the crowds were "Jesus, isn't anybody out there old enough to get a hard-on?") The capacity house was rewarded— as you may be too seeing as how crews were busily taping and filming—with chainsaw guitar duels a-plenty from Walter Lure and JT. Lure sported his original LAMF sleeve-shot tie for the occasion, Johnny his usual Bret Maverick-inminiature gear. Every number was a sevenyear-old chestnut, but this riotously enthusiastic audience had obviously learned them off the actual vinyl rather than in situ the first time 'round.

Their vocational fervor was also suprisingly well-mannered—unlike the masses of '77, this house did not reflect Lure and Thunders's obvious antipathy for one another. ('Lookit him,' drawled Walt, leaning against an amp during one of Johnny's clumsier moments with the mike and chotd, 'Ain't he just the picture of health?')

The Lyceum audience, of course, is but a pale reflection of the Dentyne-clean Other End of the spectrum. Ultimate Blonde Boy Howie Jones with his 'Human Lib' is a typical exponent, with his progress (somehow appropriate) from a Moog Prodigy through a Lowrey Heritage, a Roland 808, Moog Opus, and a Yamaha CP80 ('a real beast!'), to his latest Simmons SDS6, 'which plays all the modules.' If you think Howard's Drummulator reveries a little dry, he'd remind you that there are two sides to the Pro-One Sequencer ('One and Two'). What he thinks is 'crude' is that point onstage where he still has to manually switch from One to the Other! '

Now Howie's the first to admit that the keyboard's 'sort of a non-sexual instrument' and he admits with some shame that when he started all this he was 'sitting down— yes! It was a real non-event.' But boys with flowers, whether it's Morrissey wearing beads and weaving his tulips against a Byrdsy backdrop or Jones and a vase on the kitchen synth, are BIG right now. Neat and replete with suits fit to relegate Bowie back to the diamond doghouse, each is merchandizing his own brand of teen despair. Or in the words of Stephen Andrews's 'Trendy': 'To tell you the truth/I'm really quite breathless/I thought the evening would never never end/What did you say? Don't call me a liar!/No, don't go yet...You know I'm so lonely/Won't you be my friend/Please be my friend.'

Currently Best Friends to the nation are Euro And World champion 'Ice dancers' Torvill and Dean. The Charles and Di of '84, their wins—Empire redux!—have enshrined them in the hearts of the populace, as well as placing Ravel's 'Bolero' in the pop charts (it's their signature tune). Pretty amusing, since T&D are all about 'perfection' and 'Bolero' was previously associated with Blake Edwards's 10. About half the punters I cornered in front of an in-stove videodisplay of T&D performing to Ravel on Top Of The Pops credited the duo with authoring as well as embellishing the ditty. And I wouldn't put it past the likes of Nik Kershaw ('win two tickets to the 1984 Olympics' reads the sticker on his MCA cassette of Human Racing) to endorse one of the latest fads: Torvill & Dean wedding cakes. That's right—recipe: take one ballerina and place atop customary wedding cake opposite traditional groom-figure whose sleeves you've expanded with net.

So how far has sound Fallen? Right back to Marc Riley, whose Manchester-based Creepers recall his former affiliations. (Infrequent giggers, the drums/bass/guitar/and manager-keyboardist aggregation was established last July; Riley left the Fall in December of '82.) A rash of releases on Marc's own In Tape label includes the solo 45 'Jumper Clown,' a lively EP called Creeping At Maida Vale—originally a John Peel radio session—and a compilation LP, Cull. The Creepers' shtick will sound familiar to Fall fans: much reconstituted spleen smoothed out somewhat via familiar Velveteen of the Reed variety.

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Which means once more cacaphony with stabs at the parodic lurking among the scuzz and sarcasms ('Raw' on Cull, and a cowpunk effort entitled 'Railroad' which illustrates that the Rank & Files and Blood On The Saddles do have their effect—not to mention 'Gross,' the aural equivalent of mooning at a fraternity bash).

More sound creeping up from Down Under, too: both Severed Heads and the Moodists have joined U.K. names-to-notice in the music press lately, and the Blowmonkeys landed a coveted support when X headlined London's Venue. More psychedelic Aussies are the crazy, postCrass ranters Flowers In The Dustbin: specialists in voodoo histrionics. Like many other aspiring indie outfits, they are the proud parents of only a single single (in this case the club-oriented 'Freaks Run Wild in • the Disco'). And the scrambled-brain fashion with which they attack is familiar from more idealistic hippie daze. Still, at least they're talking. Julian Cope, long the New Psychedelia's would-be Norman Bates, recently took his personal paisley crusade into the rather pathetic territory of sub-Stooge stomach laceration. Stephen Andrews has him pegged, too: 'What time is it? The twentieth century?/Hey man, read one of mine! Poems I mean/All about love and peace/Flowers and infinity.'

Stretch that cat-gut back towards the capital city and you get the Dominion Theatre's 'Guitar Spectacular': Rory Gallagher, star-of-the-evening-asit-turned-out, Richard Thompson, Juan Martin and David Lindley—another death-tripper aided in his obsession by sidekicks Kaleidoscope, to all appearances still on acid.

Or those men it really does seem nothing can stop: Chatham's redoubtable Milkshakes, who currently have not one but FOUR LPs in circulation. One's on their own label; another's entitled 20 Rock And Roll Hits (a batch of covers, it's their weakest release ever) on Big Beat; and then there's The Milkshakes In Germany on Wall City and one called Showcase complied by US indie Brain Eater. In Germany contains 12 new originals; the one you'll get in the bins, Showcase, includes their bumptious hit 'Please Don't Tell Me Baby.' For a self-motivated band out in the sticks, eight albums ih two years is heavy rotation indeed—and proof that folks can still, should they choose, tiptoe through whatever tulips without major-label chaperonage.

And let us not forget the Women No One Can Stop: Carol Kenyon, Helen Terry, Sandie Shaw (who's just re-issued a re-interpetation of the Smiths' 'Hand In Glove' which fits her hippie pretensions like same), and new-names chanteuse Jeanette—the late-night successor to a more controversial Carmel, whose live work has proven sporadic in the extreme. Shaw may be backed by hubby/video magnate Nik Powell and Tracie may be Paul Weller's pet but Terry owes BG nada (in fact, George graciously stresses the opposite: 'She's my favorite singer since Mama Cass, that's why I worship Helen'). Jeanette and Carmel are also Singers Alone, regardless of their sex. And late-blooming flowers often prove the sweetest of all.