Hauteur Theory (1 + 2)

Hauteur Theory #1: Unfamiliarity breeds Contempt   

 

I thought I had heard everything - but  the munificence of all the vintage Top of the Pops episodes on YouTube supplied surprise

Here, in 1977, savagely behind the times, a group I never even heard of: a late glam / artpop outfit called Contempt.

I suspect the influence palette includes Queen, Sparks, Roxy, possibly 10cc, possibly Cockney Rebel, possibly Bebop Deluxe, maybe even Sailor

Cynical and snooty wordliness meets a clean frilly guitar sound and a dapper and genteel non-rock image.... and a bit of pomo too (the song is essentially "Money Makes The World Go Around" from Cabaret merged with  "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend"

"Never even heard of" .... that might be because they only ever released a single single

Here's a funny thing, though - look closely, and this was produced by Martin Rushent. At roughly the same time he would have been producing The Stranglers and then a little later, Buzzcocks and 999. 

The name of the productions company is funny: Atit. 

As in "at it". Or "a tit".

Hauteur Theory #2: Declensions of Duncan 

Another late-glam group with a snooty sophisticate image.... like Contempt, caught out by New Wave, and rendered therefore untimely: Metro, whose core was Peter Godwin and Duncan Browne.

I think these adverts were printed in this sequence, teased out over three weeks.... 

Or maybe it was within a single issue, on successive pages. 

Top of the Fops!

Metro described their sound as “English rock music, but influenced by a hundred years of European culture… Baudelaire and Kurt Weill”

One of their songs was later covered by David Bowie - "Criminal World" (on Let's Dance)

You never told me of your other faces

You were the widow of the wildcat

And now I know about your special kisses

And I know you know where that's at

I'm not the queen so there's no need to bow

I think I see beneath your make-up

I'll take your dress and we can truck on out

This is no ordinary, this is no ordinary

Oh, what a criminal world

The boys are like baby-faced girls

What a criminal girl

She'll show you where to shoot your gun

What a typical mother's son

The only thing that she enjoys

Is a criminal world

Where the girls are like baby-faced boys

You've got a very heavy reputation

But no-one knows about your low-life

I know a way to find a situation

And hold a candle to your high-life disguise

I saw you kneeling at my brother's door

That was no ordinary stick-up

I'm well aware just what you're looking for

I am no ordinary, I am no ordinary

Oh, what a criminal world

The boys are like baby-faced girls

What a criminal girl

She'll show you where to shoot your gun

What a typical mother's son

The only thing that she enjoys

Is a criminal world

Where the girls are like baby-faced boys

Ooh look, a year before Bowie, Hot Gossip covered it 

Duncan Browne was one of those figures who just cropped up again and again, slightly style-adjusted, in different phases of the rock dialectic

Donovan-ish in the Sixties 

(lovely song I think)

Pioneering rock critic Richard Goldstein described this album as "Pre-Raphaelite Rock"

Then folk-tinged singer-songwriter (Murray Head on the moors)

                           His one hit, produced by Mickie Most (former Donovan producer turned glamglitterpop producer)

Then glammy-aristo in the Seventies, with Metro

Lotta nostril energy in this band portrait 

Then there's a later phase where it's yacht rock, more or less.... or in alignment with post-reformation Roxy slickness / Bryan Ferry solo

This cover is like a Roxy Music cover combined with an early Bryan Ferry solo album cover

I do enjoy this thing where artists keep moving with the times, adjusting their basic thing according to the new style - whether through desperation to finally score a hit, or simply their taste changing in alignment with everybody else. 

And why not? Fans do it, critics do it too.

Still Duncan B had the integrity* at least not to go "New Wave" - he couldn't move that far from his basic debonair mode. 

Greil M on DB

Unlike Bryan Ferry (but like Kevin Ayers), Browne was the genuine poshboy-in-pop article: 

Duncan Browne was born on March 25, 1947. The only child of Air Commodore and Mrs. C.D.A. Browne, Duncan initially intended to follow his father into the Royal Air Force. He was turned down on health grounds while still at the Workshop College, where he was a promising schoolboy actor and clarinetist.

A classical guitarist, he attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art for three years, where he studied Composition and Harmony with the legendary Anthony Bowles, who encouraged him towards a career in music

* (Actually Metro did go "New Wave" but without Browne's involvement)

* Actually I am wrong here  - Metro, with Browne involved still, did a very short-lived alter-ego as Public Zone, with Stewart Copeland on drums, and it's totally New Wave. 

Detailed bio of Duncan Browne's involved career. 

Godwin carried on being None More New Wave