Roxette (1977) / Producer: John McManus
"Extract from a student documentary profiling young Roxy Music fans. In the full film fans talk about the band and the music, are seen out and about in Manchester and getting ready for a concert at the Opera House. Includes footage of a tribute band, who due to a lack of musical instruments use household appliances to make music."
An article about the film I found somewhere or other. By Robin Clark.
You can read the article easier at Robin Clark's site. Where there is also a dissertation about Rock Follies (another Roxy connection via Andy Mackay's songs)
Roxette the short film not to be confused with
Or indeed with
That's a fascinating piece. I remember someone saying that the first British punks, as a scene, were all Bowie fans moving on to the next thing. Were the New Romantics all Roxy fans in the same way?
ReplyDeleteAlso, a colossal eyeroll at David Hepworth and Mark Ellen claiming the most interesting thing about the Feelgoods was the way they dressed.
DeleteWell, yes, although the way they dressed - Brilleaux mainly - was interesting.
DeleteTrue. And to be fair, "they looked as if they'd come together in some unsavory section of the army" is a great line. There is something about the Hepworth / Ellen hegemony that always raises my hackles, though.
DeleteDr. Feelgood always remind me of the coppers in G.F. Newman's Law And Order:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7wJu2ve4h4
Can easily imagine them fitting somebody up.
Haha yes! I thought about The Sweeney as another sartorial reference point.
DeleteThe thing I find touching about Roxette is that the glam-aspiring girl has clearly never touched a bottle of champagne before in her life, is really struggling. It's that shortfall between fantasy and reality that contains the pathos.
ReplyDeleteThey really do look like New Romantics 4 years too early. I suspect the ultimate conclusion to draw from this observation is that the New Romantics weren't especially original. Is there a music subculture with a greater disparity between the prominence received in historical surveys and the slightness and lack of consequence that subculture actually had?
ReplyDeleteWell, it spawned a bunch of stars - big international stars like Culture Club, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran (they were from the Brummie contingent of New Romantics based around the club Barbarella's). So regardless of what you think of the music, it can't have been completely without consequence. And some good music did come out of it - Adam Ant (if not New Romantic then closely aligned to the fancy-dress-up, historical costumes, heroic imagery thing). As were my faves for about a year Bow Wow Wow (who briefly had Boy George in them, at least on stage - back when he was called Lieutenant Lush). But even Visage made some good records.
DeleteMy opinion on New Romanticism (this is a theme of an upcoming post in fact) is that the clothes have aged far worse than the music. The clothes and hair and make-up, when you look back, mostly look tatty and garish and the whole ensemble in most cases has a jerry-rigged quality - a very shaky artifice. But some of the tunes still sound good.
Much the same applies to glam, I think. This is the point of the upcoming post - image-wise Bowie and Roxy rather often look a frightful mess, but the best of the music is imperishable.
Weren't Visage, the Human League and Depeche Mode (New Romantic-aligned, if perhaps not at the heart of the movement) big influences on Detroit techno? Hard to think of a more consequential legacy than that.
DeleteVisage definitely were - they were kind of the house band of the Blitz / Billy's silly, what with Steve Strange being the door man and other members like Rusty Egan being part of the scene.
DeleteI think The Human League and Depeche were more like fellow travelers - the League were Roxy fans and obviously were into image and odd haircuts. But they preexisted New Rom and had a bit of geeky techy aspect. There was this parallel thing to New Rom that overlapped, people talked about Futurists - Stevo of Some Bizzarre used to do a dj chart of Futurist music that he spun, and he put Depeche on the first Some Bizarre comp. But I think they were a little on the periphery of the supercool in-crowd New Rom think. I don't think anyone at that time imagined they'd be major players or have such a long, interesting career.
Another fellow traveler would be Gary Numan - glam fan, Bowie obsessed, sci-fi, all about image and theatrics. Influenced by Ultravox, the John Foxx era. But he already was a huge pop smash figure before New Rom really coalesced.
It depends if you want to take New Rom as standing for all image-obsessed, neo-glam of that era. But things like ABC seem to be something different. Eurhythmics are music biz lags who adjust to the new Geist but they were never part of the core New Rom scene.
Sorry, I missed your point about Detroit Techno. Yes, absolutely. Cybotron, Juan Atkins first group, were basically a Black take on British synthy New Wave. Even the vocals have a British quality.
DeleteHi Simon, thanks for sharing my article. It was written for the inaugural newspaper of the Subcultures Interest Group at University of the Arts London, published last year, but is a passion project I've been hoping to do a more in-depth study of for years (finances/time pertaining....). Can send a PDF of the full paper if you're interested.
ReplyDeleteI'm fascinated by the through line from glam to punk to new romantics (and all the bits in between). I don't know if you'll remember but I was at the launch of Shock and Awe in Camden in 2016 and I asked in the Q&A if Rock Follies was mentioned - I was writing my BA dissertation all about it, and your segment in the book proved very helpful. (Retromania was also key as I mentioned a lot about retro culture in the context of glam rock etc)
Happy to also pass this on if you're interested in reading, but it can also be viewed on my website - https://www.robinclarkart.co.uk/
All the best!
PS I got most of my source info for this article from John McManus himself - he was incredibly generous in giving me a multiple page document of his recollections of the times, the friends, the clothes, and his career since - interestingly, he worked in music video for many years following his graduation from Manchester Poly.
ReplyDeletehi Robin, nice one - would love to see the full paper. My email is near the top of this blog on the right hand side. Re. Rock Follies - did you get to speak with Howard Schuman? He's a good interview. I'll check it out on your website.
ReplyDelete