Apropos of nothing in the news, honest!
This is the maxi-version of this earlier mega-post at Shock and Awe on Romo as the Re-Renaissance of Glam
I remember Romo fondly as the last blast of the old-style weekly music press - a scene willed into being, semi-fictionalized, born aloft on the rhetorical efflorescence of its champions
The product of hype in its purest sense - the job we music journos do for the sheer sport of it
The original Romanifesto, penned by Simon Price and Taylor Parkes, is a classic of the genre
Wilde at heart!
Nothingelseon, heroic scanner and tweeter of the UK weeklies, has recently gone through that period and what has surprised me with each weekly deposit is the extent to which Melody Maker continued to throw its weight behind the movement through late '95 and deep into the following year
There was a MM-associated tour of the UK with the leading lights
There was a cassette, Fiddling While Romo Burns...
The big groups on the scene got double-page spread interviews
Also what surprised me is the controversy - the letter page Backlash was full of, well, backlash... romophobia ran rampant... the debate raged right through into the spring of '96
Here, below - because I am little insane - is pretty much the entire run of this twilight-of-the-inkies phenom - from the earliest twinkly inklings, through the Special Issue, and on to the continued coverage .... Singles of the Week.... letters pages fizzing with disapproval, Parkes and Pricey taking turns to fight back ... the big features... a report on the tour from Simon P.... and then finally a backlash, in the form of the Yob Rock issue and subsequent acrimony.
I was in America and missed almost the entire thing, although I do remember on a visit to UK going to a concert at which three of the most touted groups played... I think it was Dexter and Orlando and maybe one other... one group seemed rather Duran Duran circa Rio... overall I wasn't swayed as much as I'd have liked./ I do remember being quite taken with Minty and picking up one of their singles or EPs...
But it hardly mattered if the music substantiated the hype, really... the point was to put the ideas out there, shove them into the mix... and make that grand gesture against the laggardly ligging laddishness of post-peak but still dominant Britpop
A bit of context:
The things that Romo defined itself against, rebuked, flashed garish against the dowdy flock included aforementioned Britpop (now in its Bluetones / Cast / Shed Seven / Northern Uproar / Sleeper phase).... there was also still grunge around... bands like Garbage, superficially brighter and poppier but essentially Viggist... Bis... Skunk Anansie... and there was the faceless brainfood or footfood of drum & bass, post-rock, IDM, Mille Plateaux...
But there were fellow travelers with the Romos in terms of a move towards sharpness and image: Pulp (in their ascendancy)... Moloko.... the EZ listening initiative (the Ratpack-homaging Combustible Edison + Mike Flowers in the charts, travestying "Wonderwall")... the modder faction within Britpop: Gene, Menswear.... neo-glam (70s rather than 80s) flickers from Denim and Earl Brutus... neo-mod suit-wearing from Ian Svenonious's new groop The Makeup.... old glam gods lurching back into action (David Bowie, Boy George, Mark Almond, Human League) and then right there in middle of pop, accidentally aligned with Romo, there was Babylon Zoo... and poking through towards the end of this phase, Placebo
So some kind of gathering rejection of post-grunge and post-Britpop ordinariness was being disparately mounted
ROMO - THE BUILD UP
The first mention of Romo I could find is from June 1995 in this Pricey review which makes Sexus single of the week.
ROMO - THE MELODY MAKER FRONT COVER
x
ROMO RAGES ON (AND ON)
Tips for 1996
By June '96, Romo has pretty much petered out - making for a year of livening up the pages of the paper, since it was June '95 that Pricey's made Sexus's "Edenites" Single of the Week
A few diehards don't want to turn the page
August 31 1996
And Simon Price still flies the flag now and then
That's September 1996
But it won't be until electroclash circa 2002 that Romo-ish ideas get back in the ascendant (and even then they don't go mainstream)
The mainstreaming would come with the re-re-renaissance - and it would be female-led - Gaga, La Roux, etc
Aptly enough, Simon Price had a article published today on the Guardian website, denouncing Oasis and their reunion: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/28/stop-the-celebrations-oasis-are-the-most-damaging-pop-cultural-force-in-recent-british-history
ReplyDeleteWith this barrage on his failed attempt to make Romo a thing, it's hard not to read this article without the taste of a sour grape or two settling on the tongue. I'm not having a go, but, for instance, pointing out the inadequacies of Oasis' lyrics really seems a deliberate attempt to miss the point.
I'd argue that Oasis are Exhibit A for the importance of lyrics in rock - I suspect Noel's penchant for wishes/dishes/fishes nonsense , Beatles-related empty signifiers and cliches ("Yer gotta find a way for what yer wanna say") is a large reason why the group's time at the top was so short and why they failed to really develop an identity a la The Smiths.
DeleteDespite Noel's undeniable melodic gifts, in Oasis's music one rarely finds joy or poignancy, humour or pain, rather just a swaggering lads-out-on-the-piss bonhomie. The lyrics are a large part of that.
As to the topic at hand - Romo is really the last gasp of the Maker. What was, imo, the best music publication of the 90s would start a depressing precipitous decline in the later half of 96.
Lyrics are an odd one in rock, because on the one hand, they aren't very important. T. Rex's lyrics are mostly sexy nonsense. They are many great songs where the words written out on the page are opaque or ridiculous, but work wonderfully in the midst of the music, e.g "Jet" by Wings. Early Psychedelic Furs. Etc
DeleteKey though is that the music has to be great. The hierarchy is like: best of all, great music / great lyrics; second-best great music / silly or insubstantial lyrics; worst shit music / shit lyrics.
I also think there's an art to sexy nonsense lyrics (or mysterious nonsense lyrics), some people can do it very well and others it's just clumsy. It's do with the delivery well and how integrated is with the flow of the music.
Oasis have some great lines, but much of it has a sort of insulting, "will this do", tossed-off quality. And combined with the often sluggish music, it's not a winning.
My favorite is "Champagne Supernova" - that captures something, that feeling that no one in the world is having as much fun as you are at that exact moment. The way people who've been on the piss and/or powders keep saying 'we're such legends'.
The chorus phrase in their best songs is often what seals the deal, like "Live Forever". The rest can be sub-par but they've nailed a feeling and that's all their audience needed.
I forgot one category which is almost as bad as shit music / shit lyrics. And that is the shit or nothingy music / good lyrics combo. That is useless. A category of no interest to any one with a feel for music. People who go for that kind of option should just go read a book. Unfortunately the "intelligent" end of rock (and rock criticism) is littered with examples of artists who are good with words but don't have any real musicality, let alone musical vision.
DeleteSo yeah that would suggest lyrics are some way down in the scale of importance from music.
I forgot also Television as an example of where it works in the marvellous music but as words on the page would probably be gauche and gibberishy.
1995? fuck all that flimsbrit shit off and get into sfs:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsgO6ylXOOQ
and shivers just 3 years to “law of ruins”!
ReplyDelete1995? fuck that flimsbrit shit off and get into sfs:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0OBlrx6qQw
messaging chaos…both me and wrong order obvs
ReplyDeletegimme gimmie spunky ultratight glammed-up chrome I would have been there
ReplyDeletespit in yr eye speedfreak bitchpunk o yeh
ReplyDeleteOne thing I have always wondered about Romo, but been too lazy to find out: is any of the music any good?
ReplyDeleteHas anyone made a Romo Nuggets playlist or album?
I listened to the free Melody Maker tape the other day and regrettably it’s pretty feeble stuff.
DeleteI remember liking Minty quite a bit and I think Orlando were the best of the rest.
But it’s a music paper movement where the rhetorical provocations far surpass the reality.
Yes,, Taylor and Pricey were and still are both great but their Romo players let them down! The ideas/ theory / manifesto etc behind it were all very admirable but the actual content was utter cack. I was still living in London for most of 1996 so actually went to the 'Club Skinny / Arcadia On The March - Fiddling While Romo Burns' tour in the Astoria 2. Still have the ticket -- Plastic Fantastic, Dex Dexter, Orlando, Hollywood, Viva made up the bill. What struck me first was that hardly anyone was there and it only got worse as the evening progressed. None of them could play or possessed anything in the way of popstar charisma!
ReplyDelete