LETTER FROM BRITAIN

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

THE SOFT PARADE

by Cynthia Rose

At last! A time to speak of happy events—and I don’t mean the debut of miniscule Prince Harry. Nope; I mean that in this deeply embattled land (Miners: everyone’s support/Media blackout on miner’s strike: everyone’s scorn) suddenly inspirational music is emerging as if by magic. Magic because—at last!—it’s a music of hope, of .heart, of human stature arid human sound.

So who’s hard at work, you wonder? NOT the people you probably see on MTV’s requisite “British” spots. NOT David “Bombast” Bowie, who’s shockirig excuse for a new LP is notable, as ever, for the same old marketing ploy: play for BOTH his diehard Ziggy fans and those lowbrows who so wholeheartedly share his conceits of “culture.” No need to rabbit on about that— his 20 minute “Jazzin’ For Blue Jean” vid slaps it all upfront on the screen.

To please the glammo groupies there’s Bowie tarted up as “Screamin’ Lord Byron” complete with curly-toed slippers. And to insinuate he’s just a humble star with a sense of humor (ha) there’s the opposite, heightof-gaucherle character The Wimp—fake Cockney accent and all. Cringemaking result: an absolute dead ringer for the worst of British beer ads and the only video I’ve ever seen which truly is insulting/belittling to women. The LP sleeve, interestingly enough, is a ripoff of old-hat gay (and fascist) “Living Artist” duo Gilbert and George’s 1984 project. G&G’s depictions of tough trade enshrined against stained glass have been on show in London all year at a snooty Bond St. Gallery. And you know good old David Jories; drop a “meaningful” name or address and presto! He thinks it’s A-R-T worth pilfering.

Gilbert and George may be politically noxious, but they do more-or-less hail from that truly inexhaustible British thing of the music hall tradition (similar, but much more ingrained, than America’s vaudeville past). And, from its peculiar soul, which savors the anarchy of comedy because it so truly fears the anarchy of s-e-x, some of the bravest new ventures are surfacing.

Best-knowri of course is the one-time soldier, one-time goatherd, one-man band Billy Bragg. Billy has no accompanying musicians (it’s just him and his amp), no costume, no gimmick, no video and no drug habits. In many ways he’s just the sort of “small, intelligent, mobile unit” Robert Fripp once predicted would be the record iridustry’s very last chance. Life’s A Riot, his debut disc, spent 12 rough-edged weeks at No. 1 in our indie charts and now—after gigs introducing the Clash, Paul Weller, Dave Gilmour, Richard Thompson, Sade, Costello and the Smiths—we’ve got Brewing Up With Bi//y Bragg, the result of a major-label distribution deal for Billy’s sponS°u’ u°' ^'scs^ lacks that little something which made the opioriated slant of his first UK for such an abrasive artist. But Bragg the man (vet of many a self-generated miner’s benefit) is someone you have to respect, simple-minded as his single-mindedness can often sound.

Not so simple Five Go Down To The Sea, who share in much sparer terms the rogue mentality I love to run across in Le Brits. Cosmic jug-band humor is clearly the heart and soul of their absolutely unpredictable sets, and of a new EP, The Glee Club. (It can be got from Knot-A-Fish Records on 35 Kempe Road, London NW6, UK). Actually, these lads create an aural comic-strip the like of which cannot help but win you over even though it’s so bare you often feel they might be playing their own knuckles. Nice touches abound here, there and everywhere. A sudden wash of guitar leads into heavier humors, there’s a gallop off into the sunset via loping country twang and there are interpolations of other songs which range from “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” to “Yesterday.” This is social commentary of that right-here-on-the-Stage sort ever favored by vaudeville. And the only place I’ve noticed its equal lately came in the pages of a wonderful, self-started series of comics put out by two pals from Merseyside. Their Trash-Can costs only 25 pence plus a large stamped, self-addressed envelope, from proprietors Frank Martin and John Bagnal, 33 Windsor Rd., Huyton, Merseyside, L36 4NQ, UK—and it’s the best fun I’ve had since Gary Panter’s Jimbo strode through New Wave out on America’s West Coast.

On to something very different: the delicate, dedicated development of Love Songs For Today. NOT a lot of stacked-up adjectives backed by Top Shop-clad tootsie and a synth...But loving-crafted, lingered-over wrestling with passion and the wreckage—or religious lift—it can create. Foremost in accomplishing this is teenage singer-songwriter Roddy Frame. He’s the man behind Scotland’s Aztec Camera— whose second album Knife betters Costello with frank compassion and a surprising lyric sophistication. Produced by Local Hero Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits and Infidels fame, Frame’s sentiments work well with pure country phrasing on something like Frame’s “Backwards And Forwards” or meld into classic English pop construction for “The Birth Of The True,” almost a Beatle song.

Touring with Roddy later this month will be the second Great Contenders...Londonbased Aussies the Go-Betweens, who have just released 10 new songs on their debut for Sire, entitled Spring Hill Fair. Since the GBs have one of the most fanatical live followings in the country, any vinyl is guaranteed sales—but it took a while to win me over. And it is different: unpretentious but hardly unadventurous, its themes run towards the scarcely-trendy tussles of making Romance work in Real Life. “Don’t believe what you heard/Faithful’s not a bad word” warble the male and female singing team of “Bachelor Kisses”...“The world of men doesn’t mean a thing/Wheri all they give you is a diamond ring.” Lyricists Grant McLennan and Robert Forster say they want to wrestle with what Springsteen might call the real heroics of life (or the hard heroics of real life). For the Go-Betweens, these are long-term fidelity, thankless decisions taken for the right reasons, the fact that any action has a consequence—as well as how these realities get blurred amid the bustle of contemporary life, with its particular, highly promoted temptations. Nothing as great as poetry here—but an album which deserves the interest it’s sure to get.

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Another accomplishment via tenacity and devotion is the re-emergence of a new Impossible Dreamers. Shrunk from seven-piece down to a foursome, their new single “This House Built On Sand” is lovely, relaxed and romantic. It also features, in authoress Carolyn Radcliffe, a newlyassured frontwoman (formerly in charge of harmonies) who puts her cool confession that the bust-up was “all for the love of crime” slinkily to the fore.

Another deliciously strong woman’s voice fronts Brilliant: currently my favorite London dance band, with (at last) a disc now out through major label WEA. Excitable and funk-based. Brilliant also boast a Hendrix-loving guitar player and two permanent “guest” side-persons. (Four in the presspic, the band is actually now a core of five—which brings their performance total to seven.) But my kick—other than those RANKXEROX cartoons which enliven their single sleeve and T-shirts— come from that strong and shimmering female voice which bosses the bounce. Perfectly able too, I’d bet, to ride out the rigors of a South Bronx dancefloor. You’ll believe in this funkensteinian love lab when its mistress slides in a line like “Headlights and footsteps/Follow me everywhere I go” right down the part of your spine which longs to get down and shiver.

Such new sounds offer a welcome flip to the Fairlight, Goth-glam or pomp-pop only dilemmas which felt like they were gonna go on forever. Now we can really say Frankie get fucked, Wham go cram it and God-will-somebody-please-giveGeorge-O’Dowd-his-own-chat-show-before-wewaste-another-natural-resourpe.. .without having to CARE. Music is live once more—and if the crowds in attendance where it counts are less palably united than once they were in the heyday of punk, well, what the heck. To each hope its own kind of party. Last night Tom Verlaine began his Euro-tour in the Electric Ballroom and saw to it he was supported by the Room, a Red Flame indie outfit whose new record he produced. Can’t say they came over as wondrous, but Verlaine’s band handed passion back to the crowd along with their own brand of humour (a sturm un delicate drang “Psychotic Reaction” with “Wild Thing” for an encore).