LETTER FROM BRITAIN

LETTER FROM BRITAIN

OF CHAIN REACTION & INFESTATION

Cynthia Rose

Remember that scene in Miami Vice where Sonny watches a two-bit foe depart, grimaces in resignation and growls, “the antidote to civilization”? It popped into my mind just moments ago, as I crouched in front of my two-bar electric fire, watching Wham! replay 1983’s “Club Tropicana” on TV by the dim twilight of winter tea time. Let me take you to the place/Where membership’s a smiling face. If Wham! could spell Club Med, I’m sure they’d buy it...literally purchase the whole chain. And probably think they were buying into civilization as we know it.

For Wham! think they’re selling some psychological vacation to their fans. Never mind the snow outside! trills the candyfloss they spin. Never mind the bitter, squalid, sad end of the miners’ battle .or a future. Never mind that subway fares went up 10 pence last week, while the pound continued to flounder, that teen suicide’s making Peop/e-style inroads in British life. Never mind that AIDS eruption in the prison system.

Whami’s mindless warbling is like some coke-induced babble. ’Cause if you stop minding all of the above, just what is left to constitute “civilization”? Sade— like Madonna—says an influential boyfriend and a certain “look”...a Smooth Operation. Jerry Hall, like Mrs. Prince Charles, claims that to be the hand which rocks the cradle is sufficient. Elvis Costello (currently helming a new LP for the Pogues) has long been saying civilization’s extinct anyway. And Scot James King, of Lone Wolves fame, agrees with gay muse Morrissey that you can enlarge on Costello’s premise by starting your hatreds at home. Turn that natural resentment inwards!

Don’t fancy hating yourself but aren’t quite up to hollow poptism a la Wham!? Can’t financially pop for the latest change in couture (two coats—one long and one short—worn over a frock or skirt?). Concerned, bemused, confused about what kind of civilization is able to flog fluff like Wham!?

Many a British punter is confused since the monolith of MTV is able to unsettle both our economy and artistry while remaining unseen in the U.K. Acts like General Public, Sade—even Tears For Fears—re-tailor themselves explicitly for the Teen Dreamstakes in the States while giving out to the home press that nothing can alter their “basic” aims. Meanwhile, a more straightforward chap such as Phil Collins (who’s packed the MOR Royal Albert Hall all week) is slammed on ipso facto charges of chicanery. Collins’s show, which proved at least that Stateside success need not actually deenergize a performer, may have been mostly pleasant E-Z listening. But it was plenty more professional than any of the ludicrous stage miming Wham! have managed on the home turf...And that ineludes their “miner’s benefit” turn.

But then Phil’s still on the porky side while Whami’s low-rent, retail-rack, shtick has always been tailored specifically to the needs of best-selling glossies like The Face, Smash Hits, and Oh Boy. The tailor in question is minder Simon NapierBell—a somewhat sordid Svengali formerly associated with the Yardbirds (mid-’60s) and with “shaping the careers” of David Sylvian and Japan.

As bitchy, blunt and superficial as Joan Collins, Napier-Bell has nothing good to say about U.K. acts who don’t tithe him a percentage. He’s especially down on Boy George (“talentless”) and Frankie (“faceless”). But how does he see his pair of protegees? As lovers, actually. “Straight boys,” he hastens to add. “But straight boys who love each other more than they care about the girls.”

Sounds not unlike the current pronouncements of Little Richard—who burst screaming into our living rooms last week via TV’s South Bank program. Aiming to hawk his share of The Life And Times Of Little Richard (which he co-wrote with British chiropodist Charles White), the Reverend Penniman fully consented to shuck and jive as only he can for the benefit of director David Hinton’s visibly stunned all-honky crew. ”l created rock ’n’ roll,” he confided casually over a meal in L.A....“and didn’t even know what I was doin’.” Religion? A beatific smile. ”l woulda got up offa an orgy and pick up my Bible. In fact, sometimes I had my Bible right in there with me!”

Of course none of Richard’s punchlines fall flat. (“As long as mother thought I was beautiful I didn’t care what anyone thought.”...“Prince —I hadda lavender Cadillac before you were BORN, HONEY!”). And some of the footage— particularly Richard warbling “As Time Goes By” on the Tom Jones Show as well as in-the-flesh testimony from buxom onetime “girlfriend” Lee Angel—was good value. But why make a show which shares rather than comments upon its subject’s fundamental incoherence?

The answer is partly because that incoherence has now come into its own here; it’s become a style like any other (from the painted Doc Marten footwear of Pride to Morrisey’s gladioli through Boy George’s down-on-Costello specs ’n’ crop). Take just two new, exotic sounding names: The Band Of Holy Joy or The Jesus And Mary Chain.

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The Band Of Holy Joy are one of several Test Department offshoots...which is funny when you consider that, to many Brits, Test Department themselves are still thought of as an offshoot of good old Einsturzende Neubauten. Anyways, the Band were formed by TD’s “visual specialist” (that’s slide collector to you or me). And lead singer Johnny favors a skinhead crop, with which he assaults his audience, contorting his body to a messy, brawling mass of noise. Where have the press caught sight and sound of the Band Of Holy Joy? On a video put out by Some Bizzare (best known as Soft Cell’s backers)—in which the new ensemble end up second banana to wild woman Diamanda Galas.

The Jesus And Mary Chain, by contrast, have one well-received single to their credit (as distributed for Blanco y Negro by WEA). It’s titled “Upside Down” and sounds a bit like four Velvet Underground enthusiasts stalking Captain Beefheart against a wall of howling feedback (flipside title: “Vegetable Man”). Where the JAMC really score, though, is with press relations. Their bio kicks off with this sentence: “The Jesus And Mary Chain do not want to participate in the writing of a biography. Instead, we present a writer’s impression.” And it finishes with this one, a quote from bassist Doug Hart: “We just do it for the music...and the kids. Fame and money mean nothing to us.”

Just as well, since so far their topline credits are the single single badly received 25-minute live appearance. What inspires the quartet of pals from East Kilbride? Well, you may cringe when you find them the 1,110th group in England to cite Iggy Pop. (Someday all these bands may meet, plug in and churn out one vast cover of “Raw Power,” imploding in an orgy of amateur aural atavism.) However, get this: the JAMC make sure all their PR also includes the message that they can boast “hunky good looks, able to challenge Wham! and Duran Duran for the heart of our nation’s teens.” If Iggy feels the need to hire a hitman he can relax. Not only does this trick (previously the province of bands such as The Cult) fall flat when the quartet are viewed in person . . Football-terrace-level fighting has already marred most of the band’s attempts at live gigging. And said sparring has been conducted against the Chain, with almost whatever weapons were to hand: beer glasses, cans of lager, even the group’s own cables and mikes.

Our real news this week, however, has been fleas. Yep, you read it right. Semi-arctic temperatures on top of ongoing economic strictures have yielded an unprecedented epidemic of BUGS on London’s downtown cinema circuit. Cast and crew of Terry (Monty Python) Gilliam’s new flick Brazil squirmed and scratched their way through the film’s Royal Premiere in a state of shocked embarrassment. (“I had this problem at Gandhi ” confided one Face to another. “But then I thought it was just the ambience of the movie. Got home and found I was covered in welts.”)

Few dare cast any stone at the foundering British cinema—thus info on which fleapits seem most ravenous circulates mostly by Careless Whisper (and mostly after Royal Premieres, celebrities being the chatty folks they are). But one legit house, London’s National Theatre, made a clean breast of their cleanup and boasted out loud of successful fumigating the midget devils. The fleas had fled—but mostly, it seems, to other seats and stages.

Speaking of new stages, CREEMsters, this will wrap up my Letters From Britain; I’m relocating back to the States. Removing my finger from the fickle, febrile pulse of Anglo progress may provide more than a modicum of culture shock. (After all, Britain lives with a myth of scarcity as much as America lives with a myth of plenty.) But you’ll be handed over to a trustworthy successor: my colleague Gavin Martin of the NME: From me it’s farewell to Datapost, and a constant deluge of waistcoatswith-songs-to-match. For you, there’s hot reporting to come, so make sure you stay tuned. And ride easy.