Couldn’t let all those requests go to waste, could I? So here’s a second batch. Hmm, I wonder whether there’ll be a third batch next week…
Item 101. New Look Baby – Dolly Mixture (1980)
When you’re seventeen, and people you know are in a band, and performing proper gigs in front of real punters, and giving interviews to fanzines, and even getting booked for a John Peel session…then, phew gosh, it’s really jolly exciting. Because you can then start to claim a kind of kinship, however tenuous that kinship might actually be. And so it was with the Cambridge band Dolly Mixture: Debsey Wykes, Hesther Smith and Rachel Bor.
The previous year, I had acted in a few school plays with Debsey and Hesther, and had also played Debsey’s boyfriend in a rather lame revue sketch (in which I bashfully presented her with a vaguely phallic present made out of pink papier-mache and chicken wire). Real live GURLS were something of a rare commodity in our all male boarding school, and drama was one of the very few ways of coming into contact with them. Even then, many of us (myself included) were largely incapable of relating to them as fellow human beings. Instead, we would lock up with a self-conscious awkwardness in their presence, keeping to our own safe little same-sex clumps during rehearsals.
I was worse than most, mind you. For a variety of reasons, the nobody-understands-me, everybody-scares-me Neurotic Adolescent Blues had hit me particularly hard. I found it difficult enough to maintain anything approaching normal social relations with the other boys. Girls were way, way beyond my reach; they were still an exotic alien species to me. I had no idea where to even begin. The creeping, profoundly unsettling, increasingly terrifying realisation that I wasn’t physically attracted to them didn’t help matters, either. Pretending to be Debsey’s boyfriend was, therefore, almost more than I could manage. Luckily, the characterisation called for me to exaggerate my nervous, blushing awkwardness to comic effect, so at least I could hide behind that. It was a rich seam to mine, resulting in a rather effective stage debut which surprised quite a lot of people. However, rehearsals were sheer torture.
Debsey was already a star in the making. Loud, funny, confident, in-your-face, cool-as-f**k, with that slight pretentiousness which teenagers can get away with for a while, as they experiment with their identity. She was actually in the process of re-inventing her image during the rehearsal period, quickly and suddenly replacing the sensible blouses and page-boy bob with a scraggy, individualistic neo-punkette Oxfam chic. As an NME-devouring armchair punk, still hiding in anonymous brown sweaters and last year’s flares, not daring to draw attention to myself by appropriating the look for myself, Debsey’s new look struck me as the height of glamour. I was dazzled by it, and by her, as she casually mentioned the bands she had seen at the Corn Exchange – bands I longed to see for myself. I envied her relative freedom, and started mentally projecting some of my rock-and-roll fantasies onto her. Which was easier than actually trying to get to know her as a real person.
I could tell she thought I was weird. She even said as much a couple of times, in exasperation or bafflement or scorn, or simply as part of the general run of casual teenage cruelties. It stung. I had wanted to impress, even though I had no idea where to even start.
I saw Dolly Mixture maybe four or five times, first in Cambridge and then down at the Hope And Anchor in Islington. They started out as a kitschy, new-wavey take on the classic girl group sound, with covers of The Locomotion, Dizzy, some Phil Spector tunes, and even the Velvet Underground’s Femme Fatale. However, they soon started adding their own material: songs like Honky Honda, He’s So Frisky, Miss Candy Twist…and this one, the delightfully endearing New Look Baby, which ended up on the B-side of their debut single (a disappointing cover of Baby It’s You which wasn’t even part of their live set, produced by Eric Faulkner from the Bay City Rollers, recorded on record company instructions, and issued in a really rather dodgy sleeve.)
Dolly Mixture later provided the debut release (Been Teen) on Paul Weller’s new vanity label, Respond, following it up with the much stronger Everything And More. Their own songs were gradually moving away from out-and-out kitsch, and towards a more mature style which pre-dated a lot of the so-called “twee”/”cutie” indie music of the mid-to-late 80s and beyond. They achieved their moment of fame in 1982, backing Captain Sensible on his Number One hit Happy Talk and its follow-up, the big-all-over-Europe hit Wot. Debsey Wykes went on to provide backing vocals for Saint Etienne (you can hear her unmistakable voice on their cover of Who Do You Think You Are), before forming Birdie. I’ve no idea what happened to Hesther Smith or Rachel Bor. They were a great little group who deserved wider recognition, and this is a seriously groovy little track which deserves to be rediscovered.
Item 102. Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely – Husker Du (1986)
Way ahead of its time, and a clear influence on the Pixies, Nirvana, and all who followed in their slipstream. Good lyrics, as well.
Item 103. Saturday Night Beneath The Plastic Palm Trees – Leyton Buzzards (1979)
Their second single, which was released as the prize for winning a Best New Band contest on Radio One. Who would have guessed that just two years later, the band would have turned into Modern Romance? And who would have guessed that singer and lyricist Geoff Deane would eventually be responsible for scripting the dire ITV sitcom Babes In The Wood? But let’s forget all that for now. This was their finest hour – a tale of bittersweet nostalgia for a “bit shit but we love it really” East London disco.
Item 104. T.V.O.D. – The Normal (1978)
The first ever release on the Mute label, which Daniel Miller (a.k.a. The Normal) single-handedly founded with the express purpose of releasing this slice of futuristic DIY electronica, which he recorded in his bedroom for peanuts.
I’m going to have to say it again, aren’t I? Waaay ahead of its time. The B-side was the equally groundbreaking and influential Warm Leatherette (later famously covered by Grace Jones).
T.V.O.D. links in with that whole mood of Imminent Apocalyptic Technological Dystopia which was so prevalent in arty circles at that time (see also David Cronenberg’s Videodrome). As such, it’s truly excellent for throwing shapes to. Never mind the old “hairbrush in front of the mirror” cliche – why not try a bit of Interpretive Performance Art instead?
Update: Sorry – you weren’t quick enough. These MP3s are no longer on my server. I generally make them available for a week or so (sometimes less) before substituting them for new ones. Better luck next time!
