The Fixx
In Concert (King Biscuit)
by Jon Sarre
Have I done something wrong here? Have I offended someone? Jeez, if I have, I’m sorry. I profusely apologize. I repent. Really, I’m sorry. Don’t make me do this. This disc is nearly an hour long, for chrissakes! Fifty-nine minutes of horrible, smarmy, new wave Limey synth pop; a misshapen, disfigured artifact from a time when normal and (presumably) free-thinking, fresh-faced, pimply American teenagers shelled out their hard-earned cash to keep these huckster hack bands off the goddamn dole! What were they thinking? Why didn’t our big daddy prez, Mr. Ron Reagan, impose some kind of trade embargo to keep Haircut 100, Human League, A Flock of Seagulls, the Fixx, et. al. off the airwaves, MTV, and out of record stores?
Trying to figure out the whole deal could make a sane man crazy. Most people see the early ’80s as some kind of bizarre period when rock music kinda slipped on an aesthetic banana peel and landed flat on its leather jacketed back. As far as popular (i.e. commercial) music goes, that’s pretty true. God only knows how many Euro-trash, skinny tie-wearing con “artistes” clamored aboard the New Wave Express in order to move as much product as possible before retiring to the blissful oblivion of the Riviera. None of this, mind you, has a damn thing to do with music; rather, it was a “Revolution of Style” and who set the wheels in motion? MTV, natch.
MTV set out to be rock radio with pictures, at least that was the intention. The idea was to get the superstar bands in existence at the time, like the Rolling Stones and Toto, and have them make little movies. Remember the videos the Stones did for “Hang Fire” and “Start Me Up”? Remember how stupid they were? Remember how wasted and haggard they looked? They didn’t need MTV, and the contempt they had for the form shone right through. MTV found out pretty quickly that the Journeys, the Fleetwood Macs, and the rest of the jet-setting cocaine kings and queens of rock ‘n’ roll really weren’t all that interested. Sure, they all made videos and they got aired, but most of them were akin to performances on American Bandstand, a lip-synched concert clip (Journey took it one step further and “air-guitared” one of their songs). This was quite a problem for the MTV programmers. What is a fledgling music video network to do? Either find new talent or close up shop. Not surprisingly, they chose option A. I’m not sure how much research was conducted, but I’m willing to wager that a quick scan of the United States rock underground would’ve picked up the rumblings coming from the likes of Black Flag, the Misfits, Hüsker Dü, the Minutemen, etc., not to mention a thriving national metal scene. The dismal American market failure of the Sex Pistols was doubtlessly still fresh in the minds of many and convinced those who measure artistic merit in terms of album sales that punk rock was a dead-end route, and as any sophisto rock crit weasel will tell you, stay the fuck away from heavy metal because it’s music for cretins and juvenile delinquents.
Naturally, MTV looked across the Atlantic. They wanted something stylish, tasteful, and, above all, profitable. What they found was – yes – synth pop, an unholy mating of disco and anti-rock concept which was inspired by, but not derived from, punk. It was no surprise that these hack musicians with nothing to market but clothes and a foppish sense of their own decadence were more than happy to make videos and thus exhibit their own artistic alienation, sensitivity, and big hairdos to the great unwashed mass of American consumers. We ate it up, too. What else are you going to do when there isn’t anything else to watch on TV?
It didn’t last, but it also never quite left us. Nowadays, there’s even a nostalgic hankering for it. Here in Portland, the “Modern Rock” station, KNRK (get it, NRK – anarchy! Anarchy, my ass!), has a daily spot called “Before the Revolution” (oh yeah, the Revolution where Bush and Pearl Jam replaced Def Leppard and Extreme on the airwaves. Thanks, guys!) where they clog the radio waves with this pap for a good half hour, thereby continuing the fiction that before Nirvana’s “Smells Like Platinum Spirit” broke big, there wasn’t any contemporary rock scene at all. I wonder who believes that lie.
Oh yeah, this was supposed to be a record review of some kind. I don’t know, The Fixx play a set, perform all the songs they made videos for (plus some other ones), talk to the audience, the audience cheers, and everybody goes home at the end. Nothing remotely interesting happens. I bet the show was nothing like the videos.
