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Interesting modern music history

spacehummingbird:

“It’s hard to imagine today, but the mere presence of keyboards seemed controversial in the immediate aftermath of punk - the instrument, still associated with prog rock, seemed decadent in its decorative excess… By the spring of 1982, electronic pop was so dominant that the Musicians’ Union made an attempt to limit the use of synthesisers. “They seriously proposed the idea of rationing synthesisers, restricting them to certain recommended studios where they could be used to duplicate certain string parts,” says Ian Craig Marsh. “Which sounds ludicrous, almost Stalin-esque. But they wanted to protect the jobs of orchestras.” Synthpop was treated with equal suspicion in certain quarters of the rock scene… In America, attitudes to synths were even more polarised. For many metal fans, keyboards were innately queer, their presence immediately signifying the ruination of “real” metal. For other Americans, being into “English haircut bands” and “art-fag” music served as an empowering act of cultural treason. If you grew up feeling different in a US high school during the eighties, surrounded by Motley Crue fans, and with the only home-grown alternative consisting of hardcore punk muscularity, the sole alternative was to look towards England - to become a fan of groups like Depeche Mode. Since Bowie, if not earlier, there’s a real sense in which England has connoted “gay” in the American rock imagination. Which explains both Anglophobia and Anglophilia: for those alienated from the overbearing heterosexism of mainstream American rock, “England” beckons as an imaginary haven… In the early eighties, gay or sexually ambiguous boys, plus a good number of smart girls, were attracted to British electropop - not least because the bands were generally full of pretty boys wearing make-up… Japan could have been the ultimate Anglo art-fag nightmare as far as heartland rockers were concerned. Yet far from living in some paradise for dandy aesthetes and members of the third gender, Japan were rebelling against the mundane realities of urban Britain, which is just as hostile to the artistically minded androgynous as any blue-collar town in America… Japan developed an arresting post-Roxy sound built around exotic synth textures and Mick Karn’s languid fretless bass. Their records sounded as exquisite as Sylvian and his band looked. In performance, the singer mesmerised listeners with his excessive poise and composure - a statuesque quality that carried through to his ultra-stylised vocals (almost a frieze of emotion) and the immaculately made-up blank-white facade of his face. Simon Frith could have been talking about Sylvian when he wrote about Bowie’s “art of posing”: he “wasn’t sexy like most pop idols. His voice and body were aesthetic not sensual objects; he expressed semi-detached bedroom fantasies, boys’ arty dreams, an individual grace that showed up everyone else as clods.” … Deutsche-Amerikanische Freundschaft came from a similar place, sonically and spiritually, to Soft Cell: art-school boys with a kinky, homoerotic image and a post-Moroder pulse-disco sound… Gabi Delgado exalted disco as “body music” and rejected rock rhythms as “too boring and static”. DAF’s cult of muscularity strayed into that ambiguous zone where fascist-leaning Futurism and communist-leaning Constructivism collide - the aestheticisation of physical perfection and physical force… Far from being fascists, though, DAF were erotic renegades in the tradition of Genet, De Sade and Bataille. They flirted with forbidden imagery only because they refused to recognise any taboos. Delgado was fascinated with sadomasochism and other forms of fetishistic sexuality deemed “perverse” because unconnected to reproduction. “Lust is always non-productive,” he declared. “If you go over the top in lovemaking it gets too much and you are no more able to work. And criminals are obviously anti-social… I’m really interested in these things that are not fulfilling economic functions.” … Explicit gayness was one of pop’s few remaining taboos. Boy George opened the closet door but only by the tiniest crack: ultimately, he was too cuddly, coyly masking his sexuality with statements like his famous declaration that he’d rather have a cup of tea than sex. Pop was long overdue something that was fully “out”, that carried the scent of spunk and the harsh tang of amyl nitrate. Frankie Goes To Hollywood led the way, closely followed by fellow Liverpudlian Pete Burns of Dead Or Alive, and Bronski Beat. The latter, whom rumour had it had turned down ZTT Records’ advances, represented the responsible side of gay pride - the struggle for dignity in the face of bigotry. Frankie, by contrast, were rampantly pleasure-principled, and far more threatening than Bronski, whose singer Jimmy Somerville - dapper but basically ordinary-looking - communicated the idea that “we’re just like everybody else, except in bed.” Holly Johnson and especially Paul Rutherford, with his clone moustache, transmitted something more confrontational: “No, we are not like you… we inhabit a strange underworld where anything goes in the quest for kicks and cocks.”… Crucially, Frankie were the disco Pistols - what punk would have sounded like if modelled on Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” rather than The Stooges’ “No Fun”.”

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Simon Reynolds, Rip It Up And Start Again: Post-Punk 1978-1984