Paul Oldfield, Melody Maker, October 10, 1987
And here Paul reviews some more BIFF! product, Melody Maker March 19 1988
The BIFF! label seems to have petered out almost immediately after this press coverage!
There was a slight stab at a glam resurgence in '87, in the form of Scarlet Fantastic (which is where the "starchildren" reference here comes from) and various other things (Sigue Sigue Splatdud, Boys Wonder, Transvision Vom, Act, Westworld, Das Psych-oh Rangers, the Bolshoi... )
(Better than any of these squibs was Last Few Days, an industrial band who underwent a total reinvention. Via Product Inc, an advance tape would arrive at some point in '88, containing tantalising but tragically ultimately never released revisions of glam 'n' glitter).
But Scarlet Fantastic were the most explicitly glam-aligned and they had something of a head of music paper support brewing up behind them.
Here's Paul O's review of Scarlet Fantastic's "No Memory' from three weeks earlier.
Here's Paul's chagrined review of Scarlet Fantastic from the following year, when it's clear the groop are not going to happen, the starchildren did not pick up their signal ...
One thing I've become increasingly fascinated by - and find endearing, in an odd way - is the lack of integrity of musicians, their flexibility. The way that artists and bands will keep going through a series of make-overs, at times involving a total transformation of sound and look. Either to keep up with fashions and musical style shifts, or in attempts (more often than not unsuccessful, misdirected, a fumbled gamble) to anticipate what the Next Thing will be.
Which is the case with Scarlet Fantastic - they are taking a punt on what the punters could be into soon, as a reaction against the deep-and-well-meaningfulness of adult-oriented mid-80s pop with its caring concern. Like, time for some shallow post-Warhol glittery trash!
But only a few years earlier, Scarlet Fantastic, or some of the group, were doing something completely different, under the name Swans Way. Torn from the gut soul, timeless elegance etc etc
It points to the extent to which artists are not internally driven but buffeted along by the Discourse, the episteme of any given micro-era. Or, whatever they have to say from internally, they express through the Sound and Look of the moment.
Still going, amazingly -
'whatever they have to say from internally, they express through the Sound and Look of the moment.' Yes, with the quintessential examples being Bowie and Bolan themselves, whose core artistic preoccupations and eccentricities changed very little as they went from being the stragglers of one scene to being the forerunners of another - Bowie cropped his hair and dyed it orange but kept the twelve-string acoustic, and Bolan was not about to give up his cryptic fantasias just because he had a feather boa on
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