'Slow Motion' and 'Dislocation' - almost a full stop on the first part of the Ultravox! story - Notice the 'Krautrock' inspired exclamation mark at the end of their name; quietly dropped after the second album!!(!) (or should that be -!)
Near the beginning of their story (there is an earlier history; 'Tiger Liley' - not to be explored here) on their first album sleeve - squint at the band standing underneath that name in lurid neon pink, the exclamation mark present in all its camp glory, tilted to the right just above Billy Currie's bequifed head., - the band, looking camper - L to R; Stevie Shears - mullet, too tight sleevless black T, drainpipes and white sox - goth soul boy; Chris Cross, a vision in black leather, bouffant hair do and duck egg blue boots, Nosferatu hands, his expression matches a comic void; John Foxx - see through rain mack and pink plastic choker - echoing the Soho sleaze of the logo above his head, connecting him to it like a queezy, pornographic umbelical chord!(!). Foxx's faun boots' shade match his alter ego name; Warren Cann, looking like a glam rock racing driver put through a Bowie filter - watching eye badge, black gloves - tilted back against the grey bricks, the toes of his white boots point up at us, an anodyne manakin, and last but not least, the afformentioned B.Curry, channeling an alien version of Elvis, his high-waisted jeans and sickly complexion a perfect metaphor for early Ultravox! Queezy, sleazy, baffling and un-categorizable - a band who's influences were obvious (Roxy Music, David Bowie, Kraftwerk, glam and punk) but the sum of their parts means that there is always something in their music (even the worst of it, and there's a fair bit of that!) that brings you back again, to listen again, to swim in the glimmer of a summer of that fading outro to one of their masterpieces - 'Dislocation'
I Want To Be A Machine ( from the album 'Ultravox'!)
This futuristic ballad draws on the legend of Atlantis and H.G.Wells ('I stole a cathode face from newscasts, and a crumbling fugue of songs') - Bowie-esque strumming precedes the chorus, which drops in with a lovely lumpen bass line and a scorching sub ska guitar rasp. Lyrically, it is self-conscious but Foxx warbles some great imagery as he pulls us through the song to the mad Billy Currie violin wig out at the end! A curious beast, this song - part Bewlay Brothers (Bowie), part gothic folk song, part rock stomper - when I first heard this as a snotty and precocious teenager ('oh, I prefer Ultravox's early stuff'), I loved it's strange undersea futurism - Foxx's fascination with machines and robots manifested itself fully on his first ultra futuristic solo album 'Metamatic', and legend has it, that he 'experimented' with 'living like a machine' around the time Ultravox recorded their first album, driving the other band members nuts by 'denying his human side'. (This sounds like a great way to behave like an asshole - 'I'm a machine, I have no feelings') - Nevertheless, a standout from the punky, Roxy, Bowie of their first album along with the twinkly, 'My Sex', b-side of the single from the album, odd reggae/ska bopper, 'Dangerous Rhythm')
I WANT TO BE A MACHINE
Here, in the photo used for the back cover of the neon pink Ultravox! debut album, Foxx borrows punk stylings via the ripped suit and burnt shirt cuffs and collars : on bended knees he looks like a hostage - the hint at the 'society of the spectacle' with the multiple TV screens behind him, points to the punky futurism of Ultravox's first album - despite the punk/glam stylings - the debut is a fairly straightforward, bog standard rock album - Island records drafted in wonderkid Brian Eno to produce (cynical sales ploy - he actually did very little according to Ultravox drummer, Warren Cann, and what he did do was not used on the final cut. If you want to get the standouts from this Roxy rocker 'Slipaway' is probably the best song on the album, with an opening line that belies its shock value by being sung sweetly! ('Enter me gently I break in the light......') The rocker opener ' Saturday Night in The City of The Dead' is fast and fun, with a blues harmonica motif, while sister songs 'I Want To Be A Machine' and 'My Sex' offer the pre-cursor to the Futurist synths of Gary Numan (Numan greatly admired Foxx, who equally gave credit to Numan for popularising synthesiser music- Foxx was the real innovator though, and did it first - the last Ultravox album he sang on is a new/wave Futurist classic 'Systems of Romance')
'MY SEX' - the 'sister song' of 'I Want To Be A Machine'. Both of these songs are drenched in Ballardian imagery and have a strange Orwellian 'double speak' running through the 'retro-futurist' lyrics. Foxx quotes 20th Centry modernism, film and television/video being the main points of reference, but sets these references at some point in the (near) future whilst to 21st Century ears, these references now appear as vestigial elements of 'the old technology' - analogue, broadcast, 'one to many' - In 1977, these lyrics would have been taken as part of the 'zeitgeist', with video, in particular, making headway as a mass populist format, but also as a promotional tool for musicians. Now, both of these songs sound, literally, as if they are from another world - 'My Sex', in particular, is a sad, touching, twilight hologram from the 20th Century - 'my sex'is sexual desire/sexuality and sex - listened to as a virgin (which in my case I definetly was when I first heard it!), the lyrics and music combined to form a powerful mystique around the romance of the sexual act ('of all the bodies I knew, and those I want to know') but also challenged the macho shag machines of rock and proto- metal, as well as the 'certain certainties' of the womanisers of Blues ('SHE is mine'/SHE left me') and black pop (HE's so fine/'SHE is hot'). In 'My Sex', Ultravox play with the nuances of sexual desire and sexuality by removing gender references - ambiguity is the key, stark imagery sung in a blank, sexless way - like a machine would sing - sex and sexuality is conflated with poetic imagery - the mongrel on the leash (libido), an image lost in faded films (old age), modernity - 'neon outline', 'highrise overspill'. Ballard overload! The city becomes a metaphor for sex - buy sex, sell sex, sex and death ('Crash'). This is delivered in the most deadpan, 'unsexual' manner - like a replicant from Blade Runner expressing romantic love. A conundrum, a metaphor, a contradiction - a small modern masterpiece - try not to be seduced by those luscious string synths that build the main part of the melody! Lah, dah dah - Dah dah dah, darah dah dah! The tinkly piano adds the beauty to the flat Foxx voice - a song about feeling and desire, sung by one who can't feel anything - perhaps 'My Sex' is more relevant now than it was over a quarter of a century ago when it was recorded.
Tuesday 5 April 2016
Pete (L) and me (R) at his house c August 1982
TIME BLOCK !
The 'Vox, Foxx and assorted shennanigans
Two lads walking to school, morning, Lancashire around the time of The Falklands War - they are 15 or 16 - they are obssessed by 1 music 2 girls 3 music 4 swearing - because they are terrified of girls, they are full of bravado, but would never ever even risk actually engaging in meaningful conversation with one. They worship them from afar, as they worship the twin muisical beacons of their early teenagerdom - Ultravox and John Foxx - they are aware of and approve of the Midge Ure Ultravox, but of course, these two
'Conesseiurs' of sound much prefer the early stuff - there is a slightly superior knowingness about the fact that 90% of Balshaws (their school) know 'Vienna' but only the elite few (nerds and weirdos) know 'RockWrock' - an early Ultravox blast of saxophone honking, sweary chorus, punky (but not quite 'punk', whatever that was s'posed to be in 1982) 'rock on Tommy' dafteness. The clique, the circle , the chosen few - who would cast despairing eyes cloudwards at the sheer ignorance of the masses - pre-internet, early video age, you had to hunt for this shit, and I mean, go on a mission - and you got the knowledge from older brothers (scary) or friends' older brothers (cool) and the NME or Sounds and............PEEL - the mighty John Peel - whose radio show was....The Holy Grail. The form that this idol worship took was a mixture of extreme swearing and fantasy scenarios where John Foxx would call round our respective houses, wanting to borrow something or be friends with us and/or generally be a fucking dead weight in our cool lives. We found this infinitely amusing as we trudged to school - a factory for fodder as far as we were concerned. The walk to Balshaws High School, captured, recorded by Google Maps - engrained in those suburban pavements ('When I am dead and gone, my vibrations will live on') are the echoes of the curse drenched walk to school - the sheer joy of very rude cussing and cursing peppered with daft 'Pete and Dud' (another reference point) style fantasies (Sophia Loren) of snubbing the coolest pop star on earth.
They sounded something like........this
P (lancashire accent) 'You'll never guess who had the fucking cheek to knock on my door last night'?
S - (lancashire accent via birmingham and home counties) 'What mate, last night when you were busy'?
P - 'Well, I'd just put the kettle on and I was getting on with reparing me bike in the kitchen..'
S - 'Don't tell me......'
P - 'Yeh, well there's a knock at t'door, just as I'm doin' the fiddly bit, well I've had to put me forks down and get the door'
S - 'Tsk'
P - ' And I've opened the door....and d'you know who it fookin' well was Steve?'
S- (exasperated - rolling eyes to heavens) 'Who'?
P - 'FOXX'!
S - 'Nooooo - fookin' cheeky bastard'
P - 'Yep - stood there with a daft grin ' (Affecting stong Chorely accent) Oh hiya Pete, I just popped round t'see if you wanted a hand with yer bike'
S - 'Fuckin'; Foxx again'!
P - 'Cheeky bastard'
S- 'Fookin' cheek - told him to piss off I hope?
P - 'Well Steve, I tried, but he started cryin' like a right jessy, so I had to let him in'
S - 'Fookin' ell Pete yer too soft - Bowie 'll be round next, you watch'
P ' Already in't living room'
S 'Cheeky set of shits'
TIME BLOCK !
My Conversation
A northern teenager's bedroom - early 80's. Two teenagers (who
will be referred to here as Numaniod SP and Numanoid SR) peel posters
off walls to be refreshed, updated - out with the old in with the new.
'The old' - Boomtown Rats (not cool enough), any guitar band (other than
Bunnymen/Teardrops) Heavy Metal (apart from Motorhead but this is never
admitted publicly, privately or mentally) - 'The new' - Numan,
Foxx/Ultravox, The Cure, The Passions, Throbbing Gristle, The Fall, Fad
Gadget, The Human League - these are the 'headliners' - countless other
smaller league bands and artists jostle. Not that Numanoid SP ever had
any heavy metal posters up - this would have been social suicide. I
mean c'mon - Iron Maiden? Peeerleaze - give us some credit
for....taste....intelligence......refined and nuanced
appreciation....sophistication.........in a word POSEURS!
Numan, though, was GOD to us during our school years and just afterwards - Gary Numan was transgressive
in every way in the late 70's and early 80's. A 'pop star' who looked
about as alien as possible in the testosterone driven, aggressive and
macho world of music and the wider UK culture - constantly accused of
ripping off Bowie (God rest his soul) Numan actually offered something
that was far more nuanced and 'British' than Bowie's broad canvas of
expression. Gentleness and introversion, paranioa and fear, anger and
alienation - perfect for teenagers! Gary presented his fairly narrow and
specific reference points (Burroughs, Philip K Dick, Science
Fiction/Futurism, Artificial Intelligence and machine culture, dystopia
and human suffering, broken hearts and mental illness along with
metaphors for human experience couched in Ballardian materials - glass,
steel, metal.) in such an imaginative, bold and theatrical way, that he
became a huge global star in his early twenties - but most of the music
he put out between 79 and 82 still sounds fresh and current.
We are not Gods We are not Men We are not making claims....... We're only boys
Back
to the poster peeling teenagers: Numan's metalic classic, The Pleasure
Principle is playing on the turntable, as My Conversation starts, the
two lads hum and sway in time to the long, dense pulsing synthesiser
track - a sort of futuristic Pinteresque slice of British sang-froid,
'uptightness' and an veiled treatise on the hideous hack journalists
who berated and viciously attacked Numan at every turn. But with a
genius sleight of hand, Numan was also singing a cold rejection letter
to his fans in 'My Conversation' (US - an we loved it!) - we were only
'viewers' , he couldn't possibly love us, we were strangers (a key
figure in Numan's lexicon of imagery) and Numan had inverted the pop
star code to show affection and love to his adoring fans. He later
softened with bitter sweet songs of love and loss to his fans ('Please
Push No More') but in 1979 he may as well have had a giant FUCK OFF
flashing constantly in enormous red letters in the fabric of the
fantastic light shows his gigs contained. None of this mattered to us -
we just liked the tune and the way Numan sang it - we liked the words
because they were odd and interesting - non of that I love you/you love
me pap that we hated at the time. And we loved the sythesisers' deep
powerful sound - something from the future distilled into a hum, a
noise, that melded in with the solid bass and drums:
Numaniod SR - oh this is ace, I love this one
Numanoid SP - you know it mutha fucka!
Numaniod SR - (singing along)
Oh it's so easy
When parts take over
My conversation
Is nothing more than lies
(both
singing now - also, possibly some air drums and a bit of air synth
miming going on- maybe even a specialist bit of air bass that Numaniod
SP was good at - some Numan stares and head jerks would definetly be
thrown in, sometimes at each other, sometimes at inanimate objects like
tea cups and school bags))
You're just the viewer
So cold and distant
I've no intentions
Of saying "I love you"
My conversation
We are not gods
We are not men
We are not making claims
We are only boys
You are not strong
You are not force
You are not regular
You are just wrong
There are no faces
This is my complex
You are my picture
I call you 'mirrors'
These are not my tears
Not my reflection
Am I a photo?
I can't remember
My conversation
And then IT happened - a psychic event on an unprescedented scale!
To
put this event in context, there needs to be a slight
diversion/tangent/reverie into the finer points of Numan fandom and the
general standards of pop music standards for refined young gents in the
early 1980's - we did not have a list of rules, but there were rules;
unspoken, tacit, understood but rarely mentioned, the rules, if
committed to paper would have looked something like this ( The 10
Commandments of Numan):
1 Thou shalt purchase the new Numan single on 7" and 12" vinyl on the day it is released
2 Thou shalt have all of Numan's back catalogue on LP
3
Thou shalt be familiar with all track listings/running order on all
albums and be able to demonstrate as such when called upon to do so
4
Thou shalt know all lyrics off by heartand know where instrumental
breaks are in all tracks - divergence from this knowledge is considered
blasphemy
5 Thou shalt attempt to look like Numan in at least one of his incarnations risking violent attack
6 Thou shalt have thine right ear pierced and risk the wrath and scorn of society at large
7
Thou shalt have at least 6 posters of Numan up, one being the 1979
Pleasure Principle Tour (even though none of us had seen it!)
8
Thou shalt even buy the dodgy first Tubeway Army album* and covet the
Blue Vinyl version, known amongst Numan fans as simply 'The Blue Album'
(it even had a different cover to the standard black vinyl version and
cost a small fortune amongst collectors)
9 Thou shalt seek, find and buy 'Are Friends Electric' on picture disc
10 Thou shalt attempt to see Numan take off in a plane from somewhere at least once
*
Numan's first LP, 'Tubeway Army' (1978) actually stands up fairly well
these days - I listened to it again in its entirety and there's hardly a
'duff' track on it!
Back to the psychic event on an unprescedented scale!
So
as we are gyrating and grooving to Numan, each in our semi- seperate
worlds but within the four walls of Numanoid SP's tiny bedroom, the
instrumental section rolls round again and we prepare for the synth lead
that takes the place of Numan's vocal line but perhaps an octave higher - we
both sing , at exactly the same time, in exactly the same place - 'My
Conversation' to the tune of the lead synth - an unprecedented event ,
as every self respecting Numanoid knows there are no lyrics in this
section! Aghast we turn to each other
Numanoid SP - Did you just sing 'My Conversation' then, during the instrumental bit?
Numaniod SR - Er yeh, you did as well didn't you?
Numanoid SP - Oh my God - yes! We're fucking psychic - we're tuned in baby
Numaniod SR - Fook!
(Both together) 'That's weird'
As
far as we were concerned, the chances of us both singing an unprompted
line in an instrumental section of a long song, at exactly the same
time, were about as likely as being able to nail a futurist blancmange
to a glass pyramid. From this moment on, we are musical brothers in
arms, psychic twins in the music maelstrom!
It is a link that still works!
A good old fashioned stomper! It's about going out and getting 'banjoed' - 1950's imagery meets city slicker sleaze - great bit of harmonica - an instrument rarely linked with Utravox! As Mr Zappa once said 'Blow your harmonica son!'
Sorry - couldn't resist the link! Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention - Trouble Comin' Every Day - 1965
More of Zappa later! This song was written in 1965 - most of it is very, very relevant NOW in the UK and America. If you can get past the 60's argot and 'hepcat' slang - this song is still vitally relevant. The 'owned' media, race hatred, inner city riots, television news - it's all there - the sobering thought is, a lot of the social problems Zappa is describing are still with us after half a century!
BLOW YOUR HARMONICA SON!
This brief diversion into Mr Zappa's back catalogue will serve as a nice contrast to the next part of our Ultravox (!) story - the second album, the 'punk' album, the uncomprimising, harder edged and rawer than the first - 'HA! HA! HA!'
An exclamation of amusement - a 'xerox' version of the Beatles' album cover 'Hard Day's Night', a Warhol print repeated 5 x 6 - multiples multiplied - Ultravox's 'punk' album - harder and more hard line than the eponymous debut - 'Ha Ha Ha' holds multiple contradictions - pre-cursor to Factory Records inpenetrable shells of sleeves - the album cover is the same front and back - no track list, no personnel list - Island Records Maoist statement inside the rock capital mainstream - funny peculiar? No funny ha ha (ha)
