"What would you do if you got to him?"

I had just returned from a night out at the BFI Mediathque. I meet Glynne there from time to time and we generally watch a lot of 1970s television together. Weird stuff mostly, some puzzling game shows, some awkward children's television. We had recently been preoccupied with a show called London Bridge. It was a Saturday morning TV show, designed for teenagers, made between 1974 and 1975. It's hilarious and stilted, quite often, featuring a cavalcade of stars and heartthrobs that would have made the average 70s teenager wheeze.

Calm thyself...

The distinction between adult and teenager becomes increasingly apparent when watching this show. Every segment is a kind of heavy-handed suggestion of something kids can "do" with their lives, whether that's journalism, nursing, veterinary science or acrobatics. They have a team of teenagers, sitting on the set, politely waiting their turn to ask their carefully-crafted question in a soft cockney whisper. Occasionally they are forced to step up and volunteer themselves for garish haircuts and/or makeovers by overbearing adults, often pushing weird or problematic agendas.

The sacred clapperboard

One specific episode struck me and I promptly made notes about it as soon as I came home. It was an episode where the Bay City Rollers were guests in the studio. The girls on set were especially jittery, their cheeks glowed a purplish red as they pawed nervously at their tartan scarves. They were, after all, sitting thigh by thigh with their favourite pop stars. You would have thought it would have been like any other interview, but then the bodyguards of the Bay City Rollers were introduced to the show.

The host cut to clips of the Bay City Rollers stepping out onto the tarmac, being greeted by legions of hysterical fans, just as if it were ten years before with John, Paul, George and Ringo (or maybe six months before with Freddie, Brian, Roger and John?). You couldn't help but cackle at the sheer scale of it. No offence to any Bay City Rollers fans but the hysteria seemed disproportionate to the actual handsomeness of the musicians concerned, but then, I am especially shallow and hard to please.

Rubbish

Instead of asking any questions to the fans or the group, the host looked to the band's bodyguards, questioning them about how you become a bodyguard and what it is like to travel from city to city, protecting pop musicians. The discussion turned to the rabid behaviour of the fans, throwing themselves onto cars and crying. One of the bodyguards turned to one of the girls and said, "What would you do if you got to him?" She stuttered, almost tearfully, "I don't know, I just love him..."

It was a diabolical scenario, what maniac thought this up? What would it have been like to be seated with your favourite musicians, only to be confronted by thuggish henchmen? How could you possibly account for the rabid behaviour of other teenage fans, when you're containing your lust so calmly? "What would you do if you got to him?". I wouldn't dignify that question with a response, after all, such a prompt is worthy of scrutiny only among the closest of friends, lying in the darkness on the floor of a sleepover.

Such discussions would no doubt involve detailed scenarios, dreams of what it'd be like to be face to face, hip to hip, cheek to cheek. Such admissions featured in Fred Vermorel's sociological study, Starlust: The Secret Lives of Fans. Published in 1985, the anonymity of the admissions revealed the depth, the meaning and the clarity of those daydreams. Usually, but not always, that fangirlism provided solace against the backdrop of terrible grief and loneliness.

If I could go back and advise those girls on London Bridge, I would tell them not to be rattled by those bodyguards, not to fazed by their bullish interrogation tactics. I would give them permission to obliterate their calmness and scream, scream their lungs out, just like the girls on the tarmac. They had just met their favourite band! They had just sat alongside them! Knees touching knees! Feet touching feet! This will be a day they'll remember forever. 

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Baroque Pop Podcast #72
Jethro Tull - Bourée
Amazing Blondel - Highwayman
Cat Stevens - Moonstone
Carpenters - Mr Guder
Paul McCartney - Dear Boy
Andrew Bird - Roma Fade
Vashti Bunyan - Come Wind Come Rain
Enya - Caribbean Blue
Lindisfarne - Lady Eleanor
Jacqueline Taieb - Ce Soir Je M'en Vais

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Explore C&CM Podcasts 1-71 here

Whenever I queue up the YouTube of Oingo Boingo, live at the Ritz in 1985, I'm typically met with a familiar feeling that I shouldn't be doing this, not again. Yet, whatever sense of dread I feel is aligned with the doom-laden humour of Oingo Boingo Struggle Tweets 2. Incredible awe is met with inevitable dread. I carcrash my passions. I overindulge and reach a saturation point with my listening practices.

"Live from the Ritz, Oingo Boingo..."

Unsurprisingly, I first came across Oingo Boingo at a Halloween party years ago. I shazammed Dead Man's Party not once, but twice, and it seemed that my fascination with that one song sustained me for a long time. I still haven't tired of its bombastic horns and the snide Frakenstein-cries: "Don't run away! It's only me!" I make it my business to shoehorn it into every FOTW Halloween Listening Party x C&CM show.

Saying that, I fell in with Boingo slowly, mostly finding one-off tracks and listening to them on solitary walks around Hampstead Heath. Grey Matter, Only a Lad and Just Another Day became so apart of that rona-ritual of walking, thinking and keeping the hell away from other people. When Spotify Wrapped comes round with ever-increasing frequency, I tend to foreshadow it with the obvious, "I mean, surely it's just all Oingo Boingo?"

Nowadays, I make it a habit to listen to the Oingo Boingo Secret Appreciation Society, a podcast which dives deep into its recurring lyrical themes and connections, and it's a humbling thing to be at the beginning of my Boingo fandom. The episode of Not My Slave especially had this fascinating analysis about relationship dynamics. I love how they cooed over the poetics of the line: "With deafening sound, whisper, "I love you"..."

I like to listen, not to be an expert, but to figure out where these songs sit within myself. Finding whatever aspects that resonate, holding them to the light and thinking about why that is. It's much like walking on the Heath and pursuing whatever paths I want to take. I present interesting Boingo bits I find to my friend, Bec at Mild Scribbling. She also watches that performance of Oingo Boingo, live at the Ritz in 1985.

We talk about the gestures and Danny's maniacal expressions, how maddeningly raucous it is. I feel grateful that despite my predilection to carcrash everything, I can share my thoughts with my very own Boingo friend.

Oingo Boingo at the Ritz by Bec 

(mildscribbling.com)

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Disco Podcast #70
Vivien Vee - Alright
Patrick Cowley - Tech-No-Logical World
Miquel Brown - So Many Men, So Little Time
Michael Zager Band - Let's All Chant
Tim Curry - Paradise Garage
Bucks Fizz - Shine On
Village People - Magic Night
PFO Pilgrim Fathers Orchestra - Touch Me Don't Stop (12" Extended Mix)

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Explore C&CM Podcasts 1-69 here

It was something that Stephen Fry said in a half-hour heart-warming ramble, that a generation has grown up with the internet. He went on to talk about the implications it had on the ease of gathering knowledge, but for me, it was a simple fact that led me to think about the young and musically isolated. Is it still possible to feel culturally disconnected, when it's so easy to find those who share your passion online?

I often find myself disenchanted at the thought that it is no longer rare to find a musical connection. Where at 15, I would have done anything to indulge in a lengthy discussion about Black Celebration, I now have ongoing access to those who "get it": passionate friends from Melbourne (and others far beyond) who reach out to gush and discuss the minutiae of musical culture. It's a shared obsession that is never dismissed with such negative terms as "geekery". It's just life as we live it.

My Tumblr, Avowals and Denials has given me this odd insight into what it could have been like, had I been born a little later. It is gratifying to see the same type of insatiable interest live on, presumably due to the education and influence of parents who loved classic rock in their youth. There is that familiar lament: If only I had lived then! Le sigh! Where others at school don't understand, there is a never ending feed of reblogged images and animated gifs which denote a reinforced sense of commonality.

Perhaps online fandom has really changed nothing. Perhaps the contrast of alienation against the phantom prospect of a connection is central to the idea of being an adolescent. I want to make a return to a place where a musical discussion still thrills and warms my heart, but perhaps that is all over for now. It might just be that connection is the norm. It comforts me to know this is the time I had always wished for and I am now among those I had always wanted.

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Mod Podcast #59
The Great Scots - Don't Want Your Love
The Starfires - There's Still Time
The Seeds - Pushin' Too Hard
Max Frost & The Troopers - Shape of Things to Come
The Booze - California Blonde
Real List - Pick Up The Marbles
Strawberry Alarm Clock - Incense and Peppermints
Allah-Las - Tell Me (What's On Your Mind)
Death by Unga Bunga - I Wanna Go Wild
The Bermudas - Chu Sen Ling
Bobby Darin - Dream Lover
The Bards - The Owl and the Pussycat

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I've always struggled with the concept of artistic fulfilment, I could never figure out what it was or how to get it. You could imagine that I was surprised when I came across a recipe for how to attain creative satisfaction from one of the panellists of Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time. The ingredients are really quite simple: all you need is creative control, remuneration and recognition. It's a nice thought but there are so many questions that follow this premise, all the questions involving quantity, ego and expectation. It reminds me of those local musicians who never managed to "cross over" and "make it" in other cities or countries.

To be honest with you, I have a real fascination with those musicians who were never promoted here. I am in love with those songs that I was never meant to hear. My friend Dimitri offers me this insight into what it was like to be a French child of the 1980s. He shares rare music videos, songs that many French people cannot even recall. He accompanies each song with this extraordinary understanding of its social context and critical reception. At the same time, he manages to describe the personal legacy of these songs: every song has an association.

 Muriel Moreno of Niagara

In exchange, I offer up my Australian childhood songs, awkwardly conscious of the fact that my exposure to local musical culture peaked when I was a child. I developed a liking for Ratcat, The Screaming Jets, Southern Sons and Diesel from watching Video Smash Hits. However, my exposure to local music ultimately ended when I quickly fell in love with English pop music. Throughout my twenties, there has been enormous pressure to support local music and as the pressure has intensified, my curiosity has dwindled and died out. I now live with this thought that I have purposefully ignored so much of what has been happening around me, just to indulge in this dream of living in another place, in another time.

I recall one of our last conversations, it was a cold night on Lygon Street and we were sipping these extravagant iced mochas. You were telling me of the intimate going's-on of Melbourne's 2002 Garage Rock movement. It was akin to my appreciation of London in 1977, Bristol in 1981, Milan in 1983 or Leningrad in 1984. There's this core group of tirelessly cool musicians who manage to create a community, unified by this distinctive sound and attitude. With the right sources, you can daydream about what it must have been like to be in that club, what it meant to be among the few people who understood the significance of actually being present.

"That's a good quality to have." I said, in between sips. "To be able to deconstruct an emerging scene, to recognise and define the consequence of the present. I think that's pretty special..."

Perhaps, it's not about the breadth of the acclaim, it's not about whether you're huge in Melbourne, Milan or even Mexico. When it comes to the recognition component of that artistic fulfilment recipe, I think it's about creating some kind of legacy. Whether that's in the form of a personal or cultural legacy, I think every artist has that desire to have their work placed within some sort of a context. Maybe it's up to us to create those histories, not only for our own understanding of how it all went down, but for the artist, too. We should let them know that we care, we should let them know that we've committed them to memory...

Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: French Pop Podcast #57
April March - Brainwash Part II
BB Brunes - Houna
Mai Lan - Schumacher
Exsonvaldes - L'aérotrain
Aline - Elle m'oubliera
Les Calamités - Vélomoteur
Yelle - A Cause Des Garçons
Corynne Charby - Boule de Flipper
Images - Love Emotion
Soko - I'll Kill Her

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I tend to think of Adam Ant as being more dashing than articulate, but I believe he said it best in an interview with Smash Hits in June 1981: And I maintain that the audience is the most important consideration... tonight, tomorrow, next year, next century. And once you think you're "above" your audience, then I think that's the time to seriously reconsider your career. It was an idealistic proposition and one that made me overlook Mr Ant's tendency to kick in chairs and knock down tables in a restaurant in a West End town. It touched upon this nebulous idea of artist-fan requitedness: although they're singing to millions, they are humbled by the fact that you actually care.

I can see now that it would easier for the establishing artist to convey that sense of gratitude. That shock, seeing fans with placards wait at Narita Airport. That thrill, being invited to play Glastonbury for the first time. Interviews are unrehearsed, running more like therapy sessions than press conferences. Even if the establishing artist is completely convinced of their talent, there's still this unforced humility which makes you feel as if anyone can do it, if they really tried. There is always that paradox in supporting those establishing bands from the start. You so wish for their ground-breaking popularity, but your sense of ownership becomes damaged by all these other people who never seemed to care before.

We know that when an artist becomes established, a great divide is created. Although few would openly admit it, I believe we yearn for the established artist to share that nubile sense of gratitude. We know it more than anyone else, we know that commercial success is ultimately guaranteed, yet for some reason, it's vital that the artist appears to appreciate the full extent of their power and privilege. The artist can do it in an interview, like Mr Ant or even in a Grammy acceptance speech, but I find the search for artist-fan requitedness almost always comes down to the live show. It's a crafted demonstration of effort and so often, it comes down to a simple token gesture, a guitarist handing out a misshapen Dunlop Tortex plectrum to a hysterical girl in the front row. It's like they get this is a big deal...

The irony is that the sense of artist-fan requitedness would never extend to fans sympathising with the exhaustion associated with touring. We could hardly care less if the artist is playing a show every night or every other night, we could hardly care less if the artist is sick to death of playing that song. We demand that fantasy, that the performance of that song in this city is special to them, because it is special to us. In that regard, this nebulous idea of artist-fan requitedness seems to be a bit like a mutually insincere agreement to act sincere. It's important to keep up that façade, it's important to act as if everyone really cares.


Fighting over a piece of Morrissey's heart/shirt
Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: Danish Pop Podcast #55
The Raveonettes - Sleepwalking
Bodebrixen - My Name is Carl (Live)
Fallulah - Use It For Good
Northern Portrait - That's When My Headache Begins
Our Broken Garden - Garden Grow
Trentemøller - ... Even Though You're With Another Girl
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour - Around the Bend
Laban - Caught by Surprise

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It occurred to me today, as our bus frantically sped through the tight, narrow roads of the Wiltshire countryside. I was listening to a song by The Cure on my ever-faithful iRiver (Mark II). I was listening to High, a song I'd heard a countless number of times before. I had always described it as my very favourite song from their 1992 album, Wish, along with A Letter To Elise. However, it was today that I listened to High and I realised that it was probably the happiest song I'd ever heard, along with Friday, I'm In Love.

I suddenly became preoccupied with this idea of the polarities of popular perception. While a casual listener of The Cure can describe their music as dark and gothic, a fan can identify something far more glowing and optimistic. Similarly, fans of The Smiths have the tendency to obsessively dismiss the popular "miserablism" tag which is frequently associated with the band. Fans will insist that Morrissey's lyricism possesses great wit and pathos. To that, you will hear the classical retort: "But they have a song called Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now!"

I'm reluctant to suggest that the perception of the casual listener is invalid, indeed, it's a perception that has been cultivated by a multitude of sources, from print publications to high-powered marketing executives. Almost every successful group possesses this cohesive and convenient descriptor. The point is that music fans and casual listeners alike can have this intrinsic understanding of where a group fits in the grand scheme of things. Even without hearing a group's music, we have some idea of how to identify their style, purpose and audience.

I don't believe that it's quite as straightforward as, "the noobs think it's sad, the fans think it's happy". In my experience, many fans are keen to see beyond the flimsy, cohesive and convenient. In their appreciation for a group, they tend to develop a personal, complex understanding which is both multi-faceted and authoritative. When a flippant casual listener engages with a passionate fan, the fan's tendency to assert their authority ultimately results in that polarity. In matters regarding musical snobbery, it tends to come down to that demonstration: "I know and you don't."


Cassettes & Chocolate Milk: New Romantic Podcast #47
David Bowie - Ashes to Ashes
Spandau Ballet - To Cut a Long Story Short
Adam & The Ants - Ant Music
The Human League - Love Action (I Believe In Love)
ABC - The Look of Love
Simple Minds - Speed Your Love To Me
Duran Duran - Union of the Snake
Mark Ronson & The Business Intl - Somebody To Love Me (feat. Boy George)

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