1980-09-23
| Stewart watches several concerts | |
|---|---|
| Date: | 1980-09-23 |
| Location: | London, England, UK - Dingwalls, Music Machine and Blitz Club |
| Attendees: | Stewart Copeland, Jools Holland, Sonja Kristina, Miles Copeland |
As a reporter for Record Mirror Stewart watched a few gigs by "unknown" bands. The band he saw at Dingwalls was "UK Decay". The Music Machine's line-up featured Music School, Gamma, Diagram Brothers (seemingly all from Manchester). The reviews were printed in the 1980-10-04 Record Mirror issue. It's presented here with Stewart Copeland's approval.
TUESDAY NIGHT, London
Blitz
By Stewart (I'll see everything if you want me to) Copeland
I WENT out on the town last Tuesday with a gang of chums with the best intentions. I was going to see some bands I had never heard of before and write nothing but good stuff about them. Big bands can take duff reviews but fledgling groups need all the help they can get. It really hurts when you spend a day scrabbling with equipent and trucks, sound checking, getting nervous, and slogging through an hour of creative self abuse in return for some reluctant applause, £50 and one beer per member of the group, only to be slagged off by the press where all your friends can see it.
So I was going to seek out everything positive about these efforts by my fellow Musos and write something good for a change.
I shouldn't have got my hopes up like that, going for pot luck on a Tuesday. I won't mention any names but I saw two groups and they were both terrible. Awful.
At Dingwalls, the band was a common or garden four piece, bass / drums / guitar / singer and when I arrived the singer was screaming "KILL, KILL, KILL KILL KILL" with (hopefully) fake enthusiasm into the PA.
"Witty lyrics", remarked Jools Holland, in whose 1952 Buick I had arrived. The singer must have had some kind of rapport with the crowd who were respectably numerous and punkably attired, because at that moment they were pogoing in the classic strangle-thy-neighbour style.
Sonja Kristina, known not only for her great beauty but also for her good taste in musos, (having discovered me), was able to maintain her comradly supportive positivity for about two and half numbers, which must have been about 20 minutes, before her lovely, almond shaped eyes glazed over.
The band were sporting the Old Etonian / Hitler youth look and had song titles like ' The Black Cat ', ' Crashing and Smashing ' and ' Dresden '. I think the song titles were important because some of them, like ' Rising From The Dead ', were announced twice at the beginning of the song for ominous effect; shouted repetitively during the song with very little supportive verbal detail in between; and intoned again at the end in case you had lost his thread.
I was able to stand it for about 40 minutes before giving up and heading for the bar. I was in a mental struggle, still trying to rationalise something, anything, positive about this group of idiots, when I ran into brother Miles, who seemed to be prepared to face reality.
"This group IS terrible". Miles had a pair of floozies in tow and they both said, in unison, "Loud".
The Music Machine was empty, about 20 people or so and from the street it at least sounded musical. But as soon as we got in the bass player, who had a handle bar mustache, tight blue jeans, cowboy boots and who picks his guitar with his fingers, launched into a bass solo. He went "Twanka Twanka Blurta Blurta".
Sonja looked at me, I looked at Miles, he looked at Jools who had been eyeing up the two floozies and we all made a spontaneous and unanimous lurch for the door.
It was approaching one o'clock and one thing that Tuesday nights in London are known for is the closet hip Blitz Club. So cool it's a secret, or at least was until it made its media debut in Time Magazine.
The rumours about this place mentioned outlandish threads and Studio 54 style outdoor queue selection.
When I arrived, no one was culling the herd outside, in fact, there was no herd. We breezed in straight in without problem and were able to get a table near the dance floor. In most London clubs the audience is more interesting than the band, but this place has dispensed with bands all together. The Blitz crew really IS weird.
Very little consistency of style except for a general ambiance of Bowie (who bores me rigid). The pose of the place is to NOT fit in; to DIVERGE from the crowd. And this is a pretty divergent crowd.
Sitting nearby was an outlandishly dressed gentleman of the oriental persuasion and I was convinced that it was a member of the Yellow Magic Orchestra. I was knocked out. This was a place where rock stars hang out, just like regular guys!
Miles mustered up the courage to ask the guy if it was indeed he and I was just overcoming my disappointment about the reply when a floor show sprang out of nowhere. It was a troupe of pantomime artists called SHOCK.
It started with two very sexy female androids, dancing under electronic instructions from an offstage computer via large ill-concealed antennas attached to their necks. After an intense few moments of their suggestive electronic jerking, Dracula (or at least someone heavily influenced by him) leaped on to the floor to sing (well, mime) a quick song with a Marily Monroe lookalike. I think it was about having a REAL good time.
By this time there was so much fake smoke around that it was hard to follow the plot but it turned out that the androids, with the help of a few more uglies, had strapped Dracula to an operating table where some kind of metamorphosis began to take place. After an agony of lurching and bumping under the medical swathing, Dracula leaped off the table, diabolically transformed into a talented mime artist without Dracula make-up. A lot of other stuff happened too, much of it involving two more dancers; a girl with purple hair and a bloke with red and black hair. They were both great.
I'm a muso and music is supposed to be my thing but some nights it can't be found, even in London.
At least on Tuesdays, (and on Thursdays and Saturday at HELL) when the band-on-stage-at-a-club experience has been too boring; at least there is a place to go and recover.
See also
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External links
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References
source: 1980-10-04 Record Mirror, Dingwalls flyer, Music Machine ad
