Hello (is it them you're looking for?)

 

but this is the Hall of Fame-r

Let's have it again (with an "Alternative Mix" no less)

where it began

 

By which I mean the jumble sale 7-inches starting with the Iggy and Geordie singles.. not Dino Lee and definitely not Flying Burrito Bros, an album I have not played since the months after taping (early '85?), when I was quite enamored of it... 

The glam 'n' glitter singles were a shared enthusiasm at the Monitor "office" - particularly the Hello and Glitter tunes. 

At one point there was going to be a whole issue dedicated to glam rock and the mid-70s, but all that came out of it was this piece.  (I did make some notes on The Sweet, Alice Cooper, Gary Glitter etc,  which I found in an old folder recently. These thoughts had later reconstituted themselves quite independently in my brain, often almost word for word, when getting down to S+A three whole decades later).

But who the hell was Dino Lee? 

I think it was among the very first promos we got sent at Monitor.... I believe Paul Oldfield even reviewed it.   The front three tunes are a bit sub-JB or Joe 'King' Carrasco-y. But "Testing For Love", the fourth track, is worth a listen - really quite peculiar, an 11 minute-long dirgey stomper. Like "Spirit in the Sky" if recorded at the sessions for The Idiot. 

Ah! Here it is, PO on Dino Lee, from Monitor #4 - the same issue as his Gary Glitter epic

Update: actually it "started" quite a bit earlier - the spring of '83 is when I first rediscovered Gary Glitter, going by this letter listing my listening faves of the moment: 

Hello, again / "for all starchildren"

 

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 -