I really must post SOMETHING rather than let the diary go into silence for days. If only to pass on a few YouTube links I’m currently enjoying. What have I been up to? Reading, writing, lurking. Commuting to the London Library whenever I can, browsing obscure works, stumbling on new authors. Getting electric shocks from the ancient stacks.
Plan B Magazine have charged me with reviewing the excellent new Dresden Dolls compilation, ‘No, Virginia.’ It’s made me muse on singer Amanda Palmer’s vocal style: a kind of mannered, surly growl. More European – after Marlene Dietrich – than American. She doesn’t always use it, sometimes slipping into her Bostonian burr for her ‘uh-oh-oh’ refrains. As Kim Deal (of the Pixies and Breeders) proved, you really have to use a Boston accent to properly sing ‘uh-oh-oh’.
But thoughts of the ‘Dietrichian bitterness’ style made me revisit some 80s pop hits of a similar vocal hue. Not least Hazel O’Connor and Toyah Willcox. Lene Lovich too, who was more eccentric than grumpy, but I’d argue her tonsils were cut from the same dark cloth. I saw Ms Lovich onstage with the Dresden Dolls at their Roundhouse gig in 2006, and wondered how many younger Dolls fans were familiar with the hits of such sulky sirens from a time outworn.
So behold! Hazel O’Connor singing ‘Will You’. Excellent hair plus a very 80s white tunic thingmy:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3UbHXSsiUnE
Here’s Ms O’Connor again, with ‘Eighth Day’, the other big hit from ‘Breaking Glass’. It’s the kind of ‘Crazy Robot Woman From The Future’ style ripe for pastiche (Pamela Stephenson MUST have had a go on ‘Not The Nine O’Clock News’). But how else can it be sung? Regardless, it’s still a fabulous song:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4gJKgXq4u78
Here’s Toyah doing ‘I Want To Be Free’. An instant anthem for every sulky schoolgirl at the time. Take that, baffling piles of plastic cutlery! Favourite lyric: ‘So what if I dye my hair? / I’ve still got a brain up there.’ I say those words to myself daily. Again, it all helped to make the Top 40 a rather fun world:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bCHEO477u44
All of which seems positively shy and retiring next to Lene Lovich and her goggle-eyed yet groovy ‘Lucky Number’:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1nu2QX3GU-U
Back to 2008, and here’s one of my favourite songs on the new Dresden Dolls release, as played in concert. It’s ‘Night Reconnaissance’, about unconventional children – the ones who at school are labelled everything from thieves to deviants – taking revenge at the homes of bullying rich kids. Rather recalls the film ‘Heathers’. The melody manages to hint at Madness’ ‘It Must Be Love’ AND Roxy Music’s ‘More Than This’ (in the chorus section). Brilliant chorus lyrics, too:
‘And we hide from the c****s / On a night reconnaissance / Steal flamingos and gnomes / From the dark side of the lawn’
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CjefxkO7eg4
In this case, it’s the USA usage of the C-word, of course. As used against ultra-bitchy girls, rather than ultra-unpleasant boys. Funny how some elements of American slang find their way over to the UK easily (like, yeah?), while others never quite make it past Slang Customs. Maybe we just like our Derek and Clive albums too much.
There’s an underrated TV drama from a few years ago, ‘The Book Group’, set in Edinburgh (EDIT – It was in the West End of Glasgow, not Edinburgh. Though writer Annie Griffin did go on to set her similarly-toned film ‘Festival’ in Edinburgh. Because it’s about the Edinburgh Festival. Hence the name). A globe-trotting young Englishman (played by James Lance) uses the C-word in the American sense – against women, unkindly – and it’s clearly meant to indicate his pretentiousness. He desires to be ahead of the game, the first on his trendy block, even when it comes to swear words. To which one can only say… go figure. Dude. Whatever. Meh.
