Have you unexpectedly encountered the bands of your youth on MTV and thought "Fuck me, they were a bit strange"? Here are some of the freakiest:
Adam and the Ants
Hugely popular from playgrounds to punk clubs, but a band powered by African beats and oddly fascinated by well-dressed highwaymen and fairy tales. Strange even by the standards of the New Wave 80s, when men wore make-up and women had asymmetric haircuts.
The Sisters of Mercy
And most Goth bands, to be fair. What was most puzzling was the appetite among Britain’s youth for pseudo-vampire pomp-rock with historical overtones and a focus on being dead. It’s the equivalent of a whole musical movement springing up around Bigfoot.
Michael Jackson
Yeah he was a wrong ‘un, but even before that his actual act was deeply strange. Did those weird yelps improve his songs? How many of them were cheesy rubbish? Why did the spindly popster pretend to be a Bad gang-leader or a Smooth Criminal? Why didn’t anyone say something earlier?
The Smiths
A band who were highly talented, different and, thanks to Stephen Morrissey, had a uniquely bleak and depressing view of everything in Britain from sex to nightclubs. He’s now gone UKIP, but at least he didn’t end up writing songs about the agony of self-service checkouts.
The Shamen
Some great tunes, but catapulting a couple of blokes from traveller parties to the top of the charts is always going to be problematic. What the bloody hell were they on about with their ‘cosmic consciousness’ nonsense? If you like drugs, just say so. Don’t pen lyrics like ‘Space time, a fusion of the concepts/Of space and time’.
The Spice Girls
Apart from their relentless bullshit about girl power, each Spice Girl had a simple, clearly defined personality, like a My Little Pony. Presumably their tweenie audience liked this, but it’s still odd, like calling the members of Led Zeppelin ‘Satany Zep’, ’Drinky Zep’ ‘Shagger Zep’ and ‘Bassist’.
Of course.
And here, for your delectation, one of those freaks:
Lene Lovich, she wrote Supernature and covered I Think We're Alone Now a song made famous by Tiffany, but what makes her strange is that she came from America to live in Hull, you only live there if you have gone into hiding or on a witness protection scheme or an oddity.
ReplyDeleteThey don't come much odder than Lene Lovich, it's true. According to Wikipedia she "attended several art schools, busked around the London Underground and appeared in cabaret clubs as an "Oriental" dancer. She also travelled to Spain, where she visited Salvador Dalí at his home. She played acoustic rock music around London, sang in the mass choir of a show called Quintessence at the Royal Albert Hall, played a soldier in Arthur Brown's show, worked as a go-go dancer with the Radio One Roadshow, toured Italy with a West Indian soul band and played saxophone for Bob Flag's Balloon and Banana Band and for an all-girl cabaret trio called the Sensations. She recorded screams for horror films, wrote lyrics for French disco star Cerrone (including the sci-fi dance smash Supernature) and worked with various fringe theatre groups. She was also one of thousands of audience members invited to sing along at the 1972 Lanchester Arts Festival at the Locarno Ballroom in Coventry when Chuck Berry recorded My Ding-a-Ling..."
DeleteI think the Hull connection was that her mother was born there, and moved back when Lene was a child. You'll note she left as a teenager, and never went back there! Jx
I really liked Lovich, that odd, kind of yodeling she would drop into on most songs. I had not one, but two of her albums. I saw a video of her singing with some random band while wearing a Stevie Nicks wig on top of her own hair, like a hat.
DeleteI loved her, too - and even at 72, she's still performing! She was due to be at something called "W-Fest" in Belgium this month but, like several other acts, has pulled out - but she's scheduled to be on stage in Madrid next February... Jx
DeleteIt wasn't until I got to the Spice Girls that I recognised the layout/format and realised that this was from The Daily Mash - it seemed far to "real" up until that point!
ReplyDeleteI liked Adam and the Ants, but only because I had a(n unknown/unrealised at the time) crush on Adam, and that Diana Dors was in the "Prince Charming" video!
P.S. Fab music choice! I love "How Soon Is Now" - mainly because it doesn't sound as dismal as a lot of The Smith's other stuff (I don't really listen to the lyrics...).
As if I would mock dear Mr Ant - as you know, I too had a massive crush on him [see here, here and here], and even went as far as buying a proper guardsman waistcoat which I wore with pride! Jx
DeletePS The Smiths used to annoy the hell out of me until I first heard How Soon is Now? - it's that brilliant "wowing" guitar sound, courtesy of Johnny Marr, that really makes it...
PPS Morrissey's still a cunt, though.
Like Mr Device, I got all the way to Spice Girls before I realised it was The Mash!
ReplyDeleteI'll make my cocoa and go away now...limps off, with walking stick and hot water bottle..
The Daily Mash can be very plausible on occasions... Jx
DeleteI liked 'What Difference Does it Make?' by The Smiths, and that was that, it was downhill after.
ReplyDeleteI'll hold my hand up to having a crush on Adam Ant as well!
Sx
Nah. Most of Smiths' stuff leaves me cold, apart from this one and perhaps This Charming Man.
DeleteI think everyone had a "thing" for Adam Ant in his heyday... Jx
I always thoughts he was singing "stand in the river.
ReplyDeleteOh dear... Jx
DeleteLove the idea of cross pollinating Led Zep with the Spice Girls... or shoudl that be Splice Girls? I thought Adam Ant and The Ants were amazing... very daring. As were many from the whole New Romantic phase. That Smith song? Amazing, still... though Morrisey is a bit of a plug, if you ask me. I though Siouxsie and The Banshees were rather out there. Well, popular music has never suffered from a lack of style... talent, on the other hand... hmmm?
ReplyDeleteSiouxsie and the Banshees were one of my favourite bands of all time - uncategorisable (not truly Punk, and too early for Goth; a genre that owes a great debt to the band nonetheless) and singularly brilliant! Siouxsie herself is still going as a solo artist. Beneath the makeup and the scary attitude on stage, she's actually a very level-headed person, by all accounts.
DeleteI may be a bit biased, but I don't believe there is any discernible genre of music around at the moment that has an iota of the style and innovation of most of the acts of the early 1980s... Jx