When I first started getting into music, this chap was all over evening Radio 1. Particularly Peel, but all the homework-shift deejays.
His gimmick, which doubled as shoot-your-own-career-in-the-foot gambit, is that each year he would change the group's name to a new variant involving the word "Spizz"
Spizzenergi, Athletico Spizz 80, Spizzles, Spizzoil, I'm probably missing one or two.
Spizz being his own personal alter-ego.
(Jim Thirlwell did the same thing with all the Foetus-based aliases, but it didn't seem to undermine his rise to renown to the same extent).
What makes All That Spizz so archetypally New Wave - alongside the daft name + various musical attributes (choppy damped-strings rhythm guitar in some songs; the not-conventionally-good-voice-but-high-energy singing), is this thing where the song-subject or song-scenario is absurd / inane / kitsch, but the urgency of the vocal delivery lends a certain intensity. Thinking of B-52s songs like "Planet Claire" or "Rock Lobster"... Lene Lovich...
Moments in "Where's Captain Kirk?" remind me of Tenpole Tudor, another singer who threw himself into the rousing idiocy of his song-scenarios with a fanatical commitment.
Perhaps Adam and the Ants in both pre-pop and smash hits phases fits here too.
A not-bad-at-all stab at "Virginia Plain" finds the proto-punk in the original.
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