From those crazy New Pop days when everyone was competing for the most startling transvaluation...
But you know what?
Dave McC (and Ross Middleton of the godawful Leisure Process) are right
The intro to "Too Shy" is gorgeous... And I thought that at the time.
(Both are way off in their counting, though - Ross says it's "the first ten seconds", Dave says it's fifteen - it's actually 45 seconds of delicious elasticated suspense).
There's an equally wonderful patch of airy-aqueous Level 42-aspiring fusion-cloaked-as-pop in the middle of "Too Shy", at around 2.16 minutes - misty curls of sustained guitar floating across the mix that could almost be John Martyn.
The song itself is promising: a subtle shimmy-shimmer through the verse, and even that odd "hey girl move a little closer" pre-chorus is enjoyably New Wave weird. But then all fizzles out with that rabbit-punch-feeble-chorus.
"Ooh To Be Ah" as pop James Joyce? A dare too far for me, but you have to salute the provocation
Lovely to see the former champion of Postcard turn against Orange Juice and Aztec Camera for their drift towards rockist orthodoxy...
Critics moved so fast those days, nothing stood in their way - values were provisional, metrics unstable, stances susceptible to reversal... whether through a major rethink or a skittish impetuous whim
So if Kajagoogoo, and new pop/new romanticism in general, latched on particularly to Bowie's sartorial and tonsorial experimentation, isn't that fuel for your argument that Bowie's look, and the look of glam in general, is the aspect that has aged most poorly? There's no avoiding the fact that they look like a right bunch of big girls' blouses whilst actually wearing big girls' blouses.
ReplyDeleteI dunno - judging by those two videos I posted, Kajagoogoo are relatively restrained by the standards of the time - they're mostly wearing T-shirts (including some cut-off T-s) and shirts and jackets. Brightly colored, but you know, this is pop music. The hair is fairly conventional for its time. Certainly compared to Steve Strange in Visage or A Flock of Seagulls or Boy George, they're not selling themselves on a bizarre look.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah generally New Romanticism confirms that theory of mine about glam and its successor waves: that the look is less enduring than the music (which is saying something when so much New Romantic is sonically flimsy). In fact, seeing some documentary or old footage from TV of the New Romantics was one of the things that led me to the idea.
Whenever I see footage of that Blitz / Billy's scene, I'm always struck by how clumsy and cobbled together most of it seems. Like they've been down to the fancy dress shop.
Too Shy has a great sinuous funk undercarriage and a memorable vocal hook, but I always resented the way Kajagoogoo looked and I ruined the music somewhat, although saying that I don't really know any of their other songs. I think, in my mind, Imagination suffered from the same problem with image versus sound, although they were accidentally funny.
ReplyDeleteKajagoogoo sound better in hindsight than they should because Nick Beggs was a GREAT bass player - better than anybody Bowie employed.
ReplyDeleteAlthough The Kaj weren't the most extreme, their look was somehow considered definitive because one of the junior clerks in an office I worked in during the mid-90's had the piss taken out of him remorselessly because he looked "a bit Kajagoogoo".
Listening to "Ooh To Be Ah" again, I realised Dave McC was right - a great weirdpop single.
ReplyDeleteFinally listened to the album White Feathers (somehow slipped my mind during Rip It Up research) and there's nothing else quite as good as "Ooh To Be Ah" and the Good Parts of "Too Shy".
Beggsy is a really good bassist... Mark King must have been looking over his shoulder a bit.
Like a lot of the New Pop outfits, they started out as post-punk-funksters - went by the name Art Nouveau. Then Nick Rhodes spotted their talent and guided them.
Along with the look, it's probably the godawful name Kajagoogoo that has counted against them. What were they thinking? Art Nouveau would have done them fine.
SIMON! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? KAJAGOOGOO IN RIP IT UP AND START AGAIN?
ReplyDeleteHave you genuinely lost your mind? What the fuck are you talking about? it's fucking Kajagoogoo! It deserves naught but mockery! What the fuck is going on in your head?
The biggest mistake you made in one of your books is not praising the Mondays fullthroatedly in Energy Flash. And the quote about Tony Wilson cashing in on Ian Curtis' death is malign bollocks.
Let's summarise it so: my undervalued band is the Mondays. Is your undervalued band Kajafuckingoogooffandtastetherootsofmycrevice?
Other than that, I was making myself some boiled eggs and toast whilst boozy, and stumbled upon this passage from Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human, which might be tantalising to you:
ReplyDeleteArt as conjuror of the dead.— Art also
fulfils the task of preservation and even of
brightening up extinguished and faded memories;
when it accomplishes this task it weaves a rope
round the ages and causes their spirits to return.
It is, certainly, only a phantom-life that results
therefrom, as out of graves, or like the return
in dreams of our beloved dead, but for some
moments, at least, the old sensation lives again
and the heart beats to an almost forgotten time.
Hence, for the sake of the general usefulness
of art, the artist himself must be excused if he
does not stand in the front rank of the enlightenment and progressive civilisation of humanity;
all his life long he has remained a child or a
youth, and has stood still at the point where he
was overcome by his artistic impulse; the feelings
of the first years of life, however, are acknowledged to be nearer to those of earlier
times than to those of the present century.
Unconsciously it becomes his mission to make
mankind more childlike; this is his glory and
his limitation.
(Not the translation I initially stumbled upon, but such if life).
Like it. That's going in Thinkige Cru.
DeleteEvery now and then I realise I haven't yet read every word Nietzsche wrote and I kick myself. I think I've read three or four books - plus all the anti-Wagner stuff - and the odd essay, e.g. On the Use and Abuse of History For Life, or does that count as a book?
The bassline from the intro to Too Shy is naggingly familiar and puts me in mind of the b-line (best heard at 4:00) to this great record that was a UK hit at the very beginning of 1983:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcmfjqzJVQ0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcmfjqzJVQ0
Well this fellow seems to know what he's talking about and reckons the B-line in "Too Shy" is the business. It's an extremely thorough breakdown of Beggsy's technique.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/XuXax5-pWzI?si=VLkMilVvpyaYkVkJ
"The dude was 21 years old!!!"