#06 - The Lysergic Suede - Uruguay (1981)

I’ll say it now - I’m not cool. Especially when it comes to Rock ‘n’ Roll. I’ve never understood what exactly it is that makes people respond to rock god posturing with awe and envy, because the whole Michael Hutchence / Bono / Jim Morrison thing just doesn’t do anything for me. I mean, Hoboes piss in their clothes as well, but do you see gangs of teenage girls squeal-chasing them down the street?

Even now, I only have two real perceptions of ‘cool’ as filtered through music. One is the Beatles on the back of the ‘Revolver’ sleeve. Look how confident they are in that picture, so nonchalant about dropping of the most creative and varied albums of all time in your lap, and they’re off for a smoke whilst you listen to it, because they aren’t remotely insecure that you won’t be impressed. Plus, you know you’d dress like that if you could get away with it.

The second? Ray Davies, *all the time*.

Teenage girls, however, have a very different idea of cool, and it never seems to change. You either have your squeaky-clean, sexually-non-threatening pin up boys, whom they can get together with their friends and have endless discussions about which of them would marry whom; or you have the ‘Bad Boys’, who supposedly ooze sex and drugs, but usually just look very peaked and smelly, to the extent you wonder if you should toss their velveteen rabbit onto the fire.

Richard Maiden was one of the latter, the Pete Doherty of his day. Girls were obsessed. One minute it seemed the girls at school were all squealing over David Essex and Rick Springfield, the next, he was unceremoniously dropped as every girl was clutching a pin-up of Richard from that month’s issue of ‘Dolly’, (Australia’s preeminent teenage girl magazine, full of in-depth and exhaustive three paragraph articles about Periods ‘n’ Shit, framed by explosions of squiggley lines in every shade of pastel, which girls loved it because it talked to them ‘on their own level’, which to my eyes just seemed to mean writing, say, ‘ver. brill’ instead of ‘very brilliant’, and displaying an almost pathological hatred / obsession with a town called Budgewoi, wherever the hell that was. Girls *still* are a mystery to me).

I came home to find my sister and the Twins From Next Door lying in a semi-circle on the lounge room floor around a copy of ‘Smash Hits’, taking turns to read aloud all the ‘fun facts’ about Richard’s band, ‘The Lysergic Suede’.

It’s was Catherine’s turn. “According to Richard,” she said, with all the serious pomposity of a Catholic High Mass, “Mick has the hairiest legs in the band”.

Merrideth looked puzzled. “Which one is Mick?”

My sister dragged her copy of Dolly closer and looked. “He’s the drummer”.

They took this in for a second, then chorused “Ewwwww”. Looking now, I can see his Excessive New Romantic makeup did him the least favours out of all of them. He looked like what you’d get if you took a cricket bat to Split Enz for a couple of hours, and I doubt that even if was only for the combined lengths of ‘I Got You’ and ‘I See Red’ matters wouldn’t have been improved much.

“My turn,” Merrideth said, pulling the magazine closer. She paused, then said “Oh wow,” and was dumbstruck, clutching the magazine to her chest.

I was puzzled. What on earth had she read? Had one of them died? Luckily someone eventually had the sense to ask her what was wrong, and it snapped her out of it long enough for her to deliver a hyperventilated explanation.

“It says Danny writes in his diary every day! I write in my diary every day as well! It’s meant to be! We’re soulmatessssssss”. I was surprised she had enough air to drag the last word out, but she managed.

I expect the other two to say “get real”, (as was the style at the time), but no, the three of them just squealed again.

“What do they sound like?” I asked, not realising that this was of lesser import to girls than what the bass player’s favourite colour was.

“They don’t have a record out yet,” Catherine said, with that particular undertone-that-isn’t of ‘don’t-you-know-anything’ that kids specialise in delivering to someone three years younger than them.

My sister rolled her eyes theatrically, then filled me in, desperate to prove that despite the fact she didn’t know they existed until that morning, she was the one true fan in the room, not like these Johnny-Come-This-Afternoonlys. “Their first single comes out in three weeks”.

This confused me even more. “Then how do you know they’re any good?”

“You’re sooo dumb. They had heaps of record companies fighting over them.”

“Just tell him to go away,” added Merrideth. “He’s too much of a baby to understand”.

Being obsessed with a band you haven’t heard seemed really strange to me, but Richard Maiden had either a very big mouth, or an even bigger talent for self-promotion, depending on the source. I think Rock stars understood the ‘sound bite’ concept a good 20 years before the mainstream media latched onto it. “Love me or hate me, you’re going to remember me,” he’d say, predating the ‘Haters Gonna Hate’ meme by a good 29 years. Of course, I’d argue it’s only sad bastards like me who do still remember him.

He claimed to have been signed by Arista for a million pounds, after an intense bidding war between most of the major labels, but there were suspicions it was just a hugely inflated figure purely to fuel the hype machine. A photographer who wanted to remain anonymous had done two photo sessions with the band with the month of the bidding war:

“They were fine at the first shoot and acting like stars at the second, and all that was happened was the hype. It got them believing they were far bigger than they were. In their eyes they went straight from being totally unknown to being famous, and wanted to be treated as such.”

Arista were keen to capitalise on said hype, and quickly threw the band into the studio with seasoned producer Rod Toddsten, which is where things started to get even worse.  Toddsten’s quotes about the band are taken from a very funny online interview.

He dismissed ‘The Lysergic Suede’ as being both ‘overpretentious and undertalented’, and that ‘they spent more time in the studio practising their posing than their playing’. A week’s studio time had been booked to complete both the A and B-side of their first single, but the band ‘would turn up hungover 7 hours late into a 10 hour recording block’.

It gets better. “Maiden called me an out-of-fashion Dinosaur, and said that he knew better what the kids wanted since he was what they all wanted. Then he turned around and unceremoniously sacked the drummer”.

I guess even the band thought he was unfuckable.

“Richard decided the future was the Roland 808 drum machine. He couldn’t be told anything. I remember scanning the lyric and asking him if he didn’t mean ‘observes the sad parade’, and the temperature dropped 10 degrees in the space of the second.”

‘I don’t make mistakes’ Richard said.

“He really was an insufferable twat, so when he came to do his vocals and started singing the chorus, I looked at Mike [the engineer] and asked if we should say something. Mike only thought for a second, and then said ‘No, he doesn’t make mistakes’”.

Which is how ‘Uruguay’ b/w ‘Uruguay (instrumental)’ ended up in the hands of a very-disappointed Arista, whom faced with an already-set imminent release date and an consumer base of undiscerning teenaged girls and older paedophiles, threw up their hands in defeat and put it out there anyway.

Rod’s finishing line, “It came out the same week as ‘Planet Earth’ by Duran Duran. They were over before they began.” Indeed, my sister seemed to have instantly forgotten them, since things move very fast in the pop world for teenage girls, and instead was obsessed with John Taylor. (In her defense, at least her allegiance to ‘Duran Duran’ lasted through the initial run of singles and albums, through side projects, disappearing members, unexpected comebacks, outright derision, and original line-up reformation).

As for the Suedes, they supposedly recorded two, (much cheaper), follow-up singles: ‘Earthbound Memories’ and ‘Pin Up Video Girlz’ before splitting up. Both went absolutely nowhere, and are seemingly impossible to find.

As a footnote, ‘Uruguay’ lived on in my memory in two ways. I think of your standard new wave song as being about countries, since Kim Wilde’s ‘Cambodia’ and Flock Of Seagulls ‘I Ran’ were roughly contemporaneous, even if that childhood misunderstanding proves I never actually listened to the later song.

The second way? For about a year or so, when the older boys would beat up the younger ones on the playground, they’d often sing ‘U R Gayyyyy U R Gay...’.

#05 - Melantha P - 2Gether 4Ever (1986)

Today's post is possibly NFSW, due to embarrassing descriptions of teenage record-sleeve self-abuse.  Oh, come on.  Don't look at me like that.  Like you never once felt a bit frisky with a Roxy Music album.

Despite the myth that dance music is only the domain of teenage girls and gay boys who dance with their arms above their head, I have an unhealthy knowledge of relatively-interchangeable eighties electronic bimbo singers entirely because of my heterosexual friends.

Originally the teenage schoolyard determination of who was best was entirely pitched between Madonna and Cyndi Lauper.  The girls all picked Cyndi, because she’d be a fun friend to have, where Madonna was denounced as ‘Obviously A Slut’, with all that particular kind of haughtiness that can only be displayed by girls who haven’t yet experienced any remote interest from boys, let alone actually had sex.

Of course, this is why all the normal boys loved Madonna.  She looked like a low-impact aerobics instructor for very undisciplined women to my eyes, and couldn’t sing worth a damn, but the boys didn’t care.  There were whispers of pictures spotted in Older Brothers’ ‘Penthouses’, (where her bush was bigger than ‘one of those Gonks you’d win on the clowns at the show’), and having starred in what Molly Meldrum described on Countdown as being a ‘pornographic movie’, thereby dooming a generation of horny Australian boys to a hard life lesson in extreme disappointment.

A tidal wave of First-Name-Only Female Singers doing video aerobics in a succession of different outfits-picked-by-stylists followed, all possessing what can only be charitably described as ‘chirpy’ voices, which were always buried under a blanket of increasingly-desperate recording effects to give the effect of Being Able To Sing.  More often than not, they sounded like Marilyn Monroe having an asthma attack, to the extent that I assumed the Seven Year Itch was something to do with hayfever.

I was getting into my Teenage Indie phase at the time, so with the resulting feeling of smug superiority as my shield, I managed to avoid hearing most of these Madonna Wannabe records, (obviously oblivious to the fact that the people I was judging as inferior for listening to such rubbish were judging their taste as superior to mine for doing exactly that).

Still, with friends trading Smash Hits pin-ups to put on their wall, I quickly learnt what the girls looked like.  I first encountered former Page 3 pin-up model turned singer ‘Melantha P’ after being shut into a friend’s bedroom to ‘wait until he gets home’ by his scary Dutch mother, which, admittedly, was preferable to sitting with her as she snort-laughed her way through 'Gilligan's Island'.

With nothing else to do, I grabbed a foolscap school book by the side of bed to read and was confronted with page after page of glued-in pictures of girls cut out of 'Smash Hits', as well as K-Mart Catalogue Bra Models, which seemed rather strange to my eyes.

Cluelessly, I flicked the pages, until I came to a page that wouldn’t quite open all the way.  I only managed to make out a Toreador Hat on top of an enormous mess of crimped hair, before it finally peeled apart with a loud rip, which, as an adult, makes me realise my friend probably ran out of Clag Glue and added his own home blend.  Of course, this was the moment my horrified friend Eric chose to appear in the doorway.

“You ripped Melantha!”  Eric was obviously upset.  He snatched the book from my hand, and started trying to smooth the edges of her picture back down.

My friend Steve was behind him, and ran his finger down his index finger towards me.  “Shame, shame on you.  You don’t touch someone’s Wank Book”

“What the hell is a Wank Book?” I asked.

Steve rolled his eyes.   “It’s where you keep all your sexy pictures, you dork”.

This was news to me.  I’ve always had much older friends.  They were two years above me in high school, which, in those days, might as well be twenty.  Still, I felt like this was unfair.  “How was I supposed to know?”

Eric had managed to push the picture back into place.  “Don’t lie.  Everyone’s got one!”

I was horrified.  “But I don’t!”

“Come off it,” Steve said.  “I’ve got one too”.

This was news to me.  “Does your Brother?”

“Don’t be a dickhead, he has a subscription to Penthouse”.   Obviously, this was something guys do before they can buy Proper Porn.

The conversation eventually became about The Girl In Question, which is how I learnt ‘Melantha P’ had become famous for regularly showing her breasts in 'The Australian Post', a magazine aimed at that weird breed of old men who hang around the TAB, race greyhounds and find something funny about the wacky lo-jinks of 'The Ettamoogah Pub' crowd.

“What’s the ‘P’ stand for?”

“She’s Melantha, the Sex Panther,” Eric said in his best ‘don’t you know anything?’  I failed to see what was supposed to be sexy about the feline metaphor:  It wasn’t like his Wank Book contained ‘Garfield’ strips.  Still, every generation brings a new generation of Batman, and everyone goes crazy over the concept of 'Who Will Play Catwoman?', leading to skin-tight spandex and the sight of a grown woman pretending to purr every two seconds: which, in real life, would be completely retarded, but I guess as a Wank Fantasy must push some Universal Button in straight guys.  Is it the whole unsubtle 'licking cream' metaphor?

Steve complimented Eric on his taste.  “She’s bloody sexy, mate.  I got her record last week”.

I was curious.  “What does she sound like?”

He shrugged.  “I didn't buy it to listen to it.”

That wasn’t enough for Eric, whose face literally was bathed in a beatific glow, or possibly the embarrassed flush of anticipatory wanking.  “You have it?  Can I borrow it?”

“I already leant it to Andy,” Steve said.  “You’ll have to wait.”

Eric frowned.  Andy was far cooler than Eric, and hated Eric’s guts because he said all the girls couldn’t stand him, and he’d end up looking like a loser by association.  As cruel as it sounds, it’s good to know at least one of us actually had a clue about the opposite sex, because girls really loathed Eric.  He had anti-charisma.

Still, this wasn’t enough for Eric, who won Steve over with the lend of a couple of Commodore 64 games, a Bananarama record, and a Toto Coelo pin-up that he had ‘two of’, as long as we could go over and get it from Andy ‘right away’.

One ten minute walk over to Andy’s later and the three of us ran into his mother and sister as they were pulling out of the driveway.

“He’s inside,” his mother said, far more interested in reversing the car than talking to the three of us.  “Let yourself in the back door”.

“Hi Carrie!”  Eric waved at Andy’s older, completely-untouchable sister, who had never acknowledged his existence in any way whatsoever, since he was just a combination of pimples 'n' pubey stubble in grey-zip-up K-Mart shoes, and gave off the desperate stench of A Guy Who Spends A Lot Of Time With His Wank Book.  True to form, she suddenly looked very interested in the contents of her handbag until the car was out of sight.  I was struck once again with wonder at his magical power of repulsion.

As we walked around the back, Eric said Carrie had “Totally smiled at me”.  I often thought he operated on his own reality when it came to women.

“Then you don’t want the record anymore?” I asked.  I didn’t like Andy much either, and this expedition was so uninteresting to me by this stage that even watching ‘Simon Townsend’s Wonder World’ was looking good by comparison.

Steve stopped by the door.  “Just shut up, Eric, and I’ll get the record of him.”

I nodded at this.  “Just don’t say anything, because if he knows you want it he’ll keep it just to screw you over”.

Even Eric saw the logic here, and mimed buttoning his lip.

With our exaggerated mission of Being Quiet, it made perfect sense that we would open the door without being heard by Andy, which is how we discovered him squatted back on his haunches passing beyond the moment of no return, as he proceeded to give a facial to Steve’s copy of Melantha’s debut / only album, ‘Sexual Connexual’, and whilst he wasn't playing the record, his hand was surely moving at 45 rpm.

This was definitely something I did not wish to see, but I did note that at least it was still in the protective plastic sleeve.

Regardless, Steve was still horrified.  “Why the fuck are you doing that?”

I got the sense Andy was more angry at being interrupted, if anything.  “Well, what the fuck else would I be doing with it?”

Having bought and heard the single many years later for nostalgia’s sake, I understand his logic completely.