Lexicon – 9 – Review

Lexicon

New Wave and Beyond #9 Fall ’98 $3.95
(PO Box 1734 Wheaton, MD 20915)

by William Ham
(no relation to Greg from Men at Work, I swear)

I’ve inured myself to the dread in my bones, resigned myself to the stark inevitability of the day my son arrives home from school, morbid curiosity piqued by the litany of horrors he’s been fed in history class that day, looking up at (not quite to) me with sad, reproachful eyes and asking me that most loaded of loaded questions:

“What did you do in the eighties, Daddy?”

You may as well steel yourselves for it, all you late twentysomething and ups, dredge your consciences and measure your accountability: Did you fight the good fight, side with the forces of right, or succumb to the seduction of the pastel-tinged darkness? Were you out posting flyers for the indie Resistance, giving shelter to SST bands on your apartment floor, or were you at the arena rallies, raising your arms en masse in Bic-bearing salutes, giving over to the triumph of the will to power your Roland DX7s and chanting in corrupt ecstasy: “Ich wünche mein MTV! Androgyny macht frei!” Personally, I plan on peppering my boy with a conscientiously-calibrated combination of the wisdom of hindsight and abject denial (“Tears for Fears? Never heard of ’em…”), showing off my signed New Day Rising acetate and hoping he doesn’t discover the Our Daughter’s Wedding EP stowed deep in the closet, but I fear Lexicon editor David Richards won’t be able to get off that easy when the tribunal committee calls his name.

With precious little irony or snideness to distance himself from the enormity of his sins, Richards bravely, nay foolishly, stares right into the rouged face of the abyss and refuses to blink. In fact, he gives himself over to its infernal pull lock, stock, Aitken and Waterman. Look upon his works, ye Mighty, and despair: An interview with Scandal-abran Patty Smyth without a single mention of ex-husband Richard Hell for underground leavening. (Yes, you read right – Mr. Blank Generation was once wed to Ms. Shootin’ Out the Walls of Heartache Bang Bang. Do you think Richie misread the name and spent most of the marriage thinking, “Jesus, she sure has changed since Radio Ethiopia“?) A profile of Dead or Alive’s Pete Burns, festooned with photos designed to prevent some of us from smirking in nostalgic derision at the metalheads who gazed at that Poison cover in high school and gushed, “Those chicks are hot.” Two laudatory accounts of the Howard Jones/Human League/Culture Club package tour. Reviews which straight-facedly offer up such lines as “I practically worship the ground Heaven 17 walks on.” A chat with Clan of Xymox (the 4AD equivalent of Roxette). And last but… well, let’s leave it at “last,” a Men at Work cover story. Such stuff as bad daydreams are made of, all of it, but it’s the growing portents of future schlock that loom large in my pastel-colored, “In the Air Tonight”-soundtracked nightmares. Note that Richards and his minions have started to give over more space to current proponents of “the exploding synthpop genre, a genre with its roots firmly in the musical revolution of the ’80s.” (Don’t get too excited – the “exploding” bit was meant figuratively.) Consider that a Kate Bush tribute album and a Sparks remix collection are impending. And if you’re truly stout of heart, try grasping the implications of the following assertion: “As the members of the world’s first ever Adam and the Ants tribute experience, we are committed to historically recreating the characters, events, gigs, setlists, and recordings of the original Adam and the Ants: accurately, in real time, and exactly 20 years after the fact.” (That means you have four years left before they get to Strip – and yes, this is a threat.)

You may be tempted to laugh this away, to diminish the unsavory power that this darkest of decades still wields over the impressionable youth of this country, many of whom don’t remember those insidious claims that Cyndi Lauper’s career would last a thousand years and the like. Some reactionaries have even taken to stating that a Duran Duran live album never happened. Don’t allow this to be. Use Lexicon, not as the propaganda it’s intended to be, but as a warning to this and to generations yet unborn. Those responsible may try to cover their tracks, claiming “We were only following trends,” and JFK Jr. may soon stand at the site of the Wall of Voodoo video shoot and proclaim “Ich bin ein Berlin fan,” but the ineradicable truth is here, for all to see. It happened once. It must not happen again.

Oh, and David – I’m still waiting for that Scritti Politti cover story.