Interesting reflections on the Robert Elms book Blitz: The Club That Created the 80s over at Michaelangelo Matos's substack Beat Connection
Although he takes a poke or several at the Elmscentricity of the Bob universe ("has no problem tooting his horn") and he firmly sides with the ravers against the nightclubbers ("I.... have no patience for anybody’s door policy"), Matos is more generous to this kind of "I'm-in-with-the-In-crowd-ism" than I am.
Perhaps geographical distance, and not having to live through it in real-time, accounts for it!
He satisfyingly skewers the Elms assertion that Rusty Egan invented modern deejaying (drily pointing out that Egan used just one turntable).
Also satisfyingly skewered is the strained Elms argument that New Romanticism was not in ideological lockstep with Thatcherism. Regardless of who they actually individually voted for in 1979 or 1983, the whole slant was escapism combined with make-it-at-all-costs (with a strong vein of fake-it-till-you-make-it in there too).
Matos mentions and highly recommends a doc I have never heard of: Soul Boys of the Western World:
"It it goes over the sun with the Blitz footage. This club took place in a Soho dive bar, and when the camera sails through it in this film, the walls pulse. It’s the most alluring thing I’ve ever seen in above-board filmmaking. I wanted to enter it and not leave. Within seconds, everything I’d ever read, or written, about the place came suddenly to life."
While I shudder at the idea that this is an entire documentary devoted to Spandau Ballet, I might have to steel myself and watch it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The book's subtitle should be amended to The Club That Created The Early 80's. Or The Club That Created 1981-1983.
ReplyDeleteYes by 1986 there's not to anything much to seen anywhere of New Romanticism - unless we count Pete Burns being a pop star.
DeleteThe dominant strain in UK chartpop in the second half of the Eighties is soulful, wholesome, and if not dressed down, then certainly not geometric make-up on the face. "Plastic" but in much more humdrum, shopping mall sort of way (I just watched a whole compendium of Top of the Pops in 1987 - god it was awful). Tacky yet restrained.
To be totally accurate, the subtitle ought to be The Club That Created Some Elements of the Early Eighties,
although it's not as snappy or a publisher-appealing.
At any given time, there are always multiple things going on - contrary directions and flavours.
These were the years that Goth emerged for instance (although there is a little bit of a conjoined twins severed syndrome going on with New Romanticism and Goth - didn't Boy George share a squat with Kirk Brandon and Andi Sex Gang? Shared glam DNA but taken in different directions - Goth kept the rock in "glam rock". )
But more to the point, the beginnings of indie were also germinating then...
Of course the real claim of the subtitle is that none of these other things count, because they involved students, or people from the North.
Kirk Brandon was Boy George's boyfriend! A fact he tried desperately to cover up.
DeleteRobert Elms always reminds me of Malcolm McLaren, like they are the same person in two slightly different guises. The same sense of their own centrality, a certain steely aloofness, that sweeping, dismissive air. They are both witty without being humorous.
That is a great point about the overwhelming ordinariness of pop in the second half of the 80s. Must have been a dialectical reaction to the elitism and glamour of the New Romantics, just as the roots revival of the late 60s and early 70s was a reaction to psychedelia. It was that democratising trend that gave us Rick Astley, as well as the Wedding Present and Unique 3.
ReplyDeleteStock Aitken and Waterman were the shock troops of that revolution. Their (fantastic) fake Rare Groove track Roadblock felt like it killed off that whole strain of club culture altogether.
Yes they bestride the Zeitgeist, SAW - did their hegemony begin with "You Spin Me Right Round"? It's not completely worthless, as svengali-producer hegemons go - Mel & Kim were fun. But most of it is a sharp fall from the early '80s New Pop on all measurable axes. A version of electronic pop that is shoddy and flimsy.
DeleteAnd the worst thing is probably their influence - like I feel like they are responsible for Bros and lots of other things. I think they showed that you could be super-successful and get away with a lot - be a pop star with no personality or quirks, just a decent voice and a bouncy track behind you. In that sense they imposed a lowest-common-denominator pressure on the whole of UK pop. Like the Daily Star of music maybe.
"The dominant strain in UK chartpop in the second half of the Eighties is soulful, wholesome, and if not dressed down, then certainly not geometric make-up on the face."
ReplyDeleteOf course, Robert Elms had a hand in this too, because his 'Hard Times' article set the style agenda for the next phase of London club culture. It tells people to abandon New Romanticism and move on. I recently read interviews with people who were in the Rare Groove scene: several people cited 'Hard Times' as an influence.
I have soft spot for him because he is one of the few unashamed London-partisans left and will actually lay out the case, live on the BBC why the Beatles/ Smiths/ Northern Soul are rubbish.
What, Hard Times led to Wet Wet Wet and The Christians?
DeleteAlso, within a couple of years Elmsy did a sequel, titled something like Good Times, about casuals and their expensive sweaters, and noted that “money is in”. Although it had far less impact, the piece probably more accurately reflected the music climate of the second half of Eighties.
What *is* the case against Beatles /Smiths / Northern Soul?
Although a Londoner myself, I find Elms London chauvinism even more embarrassing than the Manc’s own jingoism….