Camp vs Cool, some idle speculations on the British pop sensibility

A propos of little, beyond, I suppose a continuation of my New Romantic thread, I thought I'd air an hypothesis that struck me recently: The British pop sensibility leans more to the camp than the cool. Discuss.

Is this really obvious? Forgive me if it is, but I do think if we audit the most characteristic icons or moments in our pop history, then there is a decided bias towards mince rather than menace, over-statement than under. I raise this because 'cool' (a pretty meaningless term if truth be told) is an attribute often used lazily in association with what we do over here - London is way cool drivels the emo from Vancouver -; is it? I wonder. Cool is more consistently a US pop cultural property, while we guys have difficulty sustaining the detachment and self-regard that this state demands.

Which is interesting, because I think we were responsible for defining a look and stance that can be seen as one of the first prototypes of what we now identify as cool. Dandyism was an English phenomenon, emerging in the regency. And dandyism in its pure form was very much about understated elegance. Nuance, nicety and nonchalence, rather than opulence and flourish. It led to black becoming the uniform of the man about town, and black, through various iterations is the sartorial staple of cool. Now, to put this immediately in perspective, look at what we do with black now. The Goths are one of the few home-grown British pop style cults, who are, of course, drenched in black, and cloaked in melancholy. Does that make them cool? It should do, but something goes awry. Apart from Pete Murphy in the BASF ad (white socks accepted), Goth is as camp as a row of black tents. Even Goth - home-grown British Goth - doesn't take itself too seriously, and camps it up with lace and red and purple and all kinds of kitchy drag, because it just can't leave it alone, just can't do the nonchalant detachment demanded of cool.

This, I think, is quite prevalent across the piece if we would but briefly survey it. Punk, cool? The Ramones maybe. But not the British version. Recklessly camp, despite a dollop of theatrical menace. Roxy? OK, maybe in the suave lounge-lizard incarnation, but, surely its only in this country that a bald, button-pushing nerd like Eno would consider pushing the eyelined envelope of camp so far with that absurd getup. Kraftwerk pushed buttons too, but never dropped their guard. Bowie essayed cool with the Thin White Duke, but that was only a phase he went through, and before you knew it he was dragged up again for Scarey Monsters and upstaging even Steve Strange in the video. Yes, there are a few counter examples. The Velvet Underground surely defined late-60s arthouse cool, but then Reed camped it up rotten with the Transformer album cover, and Walk on the Wild(e) Side, and there are many poodle-haired absurdities from 80s US rock that thought they were cool, but went where even Slade or Gary Glitter feared to tread as regards a version of camp. But on balance there appears to be something deeply lodged in the British pop psyche that prevents us doing cool with much conviction. 'Performance', a film about an East End villain, as hard as nails. Before you know it, he's riffling through Jagger's drag box and upstaging old wiggle bum himself. Clockwork Orange? Alex and his Droogs should be as cool as those glasses of milk plus, but they just can't resist mixing ultraviolence with some high theatrical camp. The single false eyelash says it all.

I've no idea what this adds up to, or from where it all comes. But here it is, and long may it continue. The day we can do cool with real conviction is the day we start to take ourselves seriously. May I never see the day.

Yet further thoughts on New Romanticism and identity

Forgive my silence. I've been, well, doing stuff. I know real bloggers do stuff, and then this stuff is grist to their blogging mills. Happy they. The stuff I do - my dear, too tedious to trouble you with - simply gets in the way of the stuff I think about and sporadically write about. Especially this stuff, which happened way back in the past. So here, belatedly, is part two of my musty musings on New Romanticism and identity.

I'd broached the, largely rhetorical, notion that style might have a bit more substance when it appears at a definitive moment in our development. Specifically in my case, where a good measure of iconoclasm and cynicism (or 'smart-ass trouble-maker' as my teachers no doubt termed it), may have been cause or effect in my adoption of a style cult allergic to acquiescence.

Regard the 'erbert in the photo, which was me in my 'Brideshead' phase of image essaying. Consider that I had not been to a public school, in fact had got through and very swiftly out of the state school I attended, largely untroubled by education, and you might wonder what confounded conceit compelled such white trash from Croydon to get up in such high-faluting drag. The look of it, merely the look of it. 'Twas all that mattered back then.

Creativity, imagination, improvisation, were all in the service of self-expression, and, while still at school, provocation. 'Boys hair must not be longer than the collar at the back', as the school rules stipulated. So my fringe brushed my collar bone, cropped up neatly at the back. 'Girls must not wear make up to school'. Of course, sir... and boys? With what glee we brought about a gender-bending codicil to their sartorial statutes. A very velvet revolution. And at 16 I was out of there, sans qualifications. Hairdressing called, eventually at Kensington Market, the very Mecca of trendydom back then.

But then a funny thing happened. Looks led me to books, and through books into forging a very different identity for myself. 'Forging' in all senses, as there was more than a measure of guileless imposture in the transformation from hairdresser to intellectual, dunce to don, over the next 10 years. My journey from high lights to high table (Merton College, Oxford if you please), all started simply because I picked up Brideshead Revisited as a style manual, and discovered I actually liked reading books when not forced to by a teacher. The next revelation was that I had a brain (up yours Mr Jenkins, BEd), and there was plenty scope for cheek and iconoclasm, by whetting its edge against the thought and expression of the past. I also learned what was new about the Romanticism I'd been flirting with, and where the roots of those stances and sentiments lie. My pretentious apprenticeship was bearing fruit as song lyrics and allusions suddenly made sense.

It is difficult for me now to separate the dancer from the dance, the dandy from the don with any precision as to cause and effect. I can just be thankful my sartorial coming of age coincided with a highly creative moment in pop culture, and not soon after, when pop lost touch with ideas and yoofs forgot how to dress. Had it been sneakers, hoodies and student loans I might never have gained a glimpse of those stars.

Love without hope,
as when the young bird-catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's daughter,
So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly
Singing about her head, as she rode by.

Robert Graves, 1925.

Is there anything that can be added to what I think is the perfect love poem? One sentence nearly says all there is to say.

(Please forgive my apparent languor, but I can hear rustlings coming from the LoveSunshine blog cave, now that spring is here...)

Fringe benefits (further thoughts on new romanticism)

So-called New Romanticism has been much on my mind of late. (a) because I’ve just secured tickets to see ABC perform the entire Lexicon of Love with full orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in April, and I’m wondering if I still fit into my gold lame jockstrap; (b) I’ve just finished reading a fascinating book called Bonfire of the Brands by a chap called Neil Boorman. Boorman was a brand fetishist, obsessed with constructing himself and judging others according to labels. He then underwent a Damascene conversion, saw how he was being hoodwinked by the black arts of marketing, and decided to destroy his colossal cache of branded schmuter in a public conflagration. What’s really interesting about the book is Boorman’s insights into how his identity and sense of self-worth had been built up over the years through the props of apparel. Like some scarecrow constructed out of designer dreams, he was entirely what he wore. He traced this tendency back to playground peer pressure, and turning up to school in the early 90s wearing the wrong brand of sneakers. The shame, the ostracism, from that moment he would always wear the right labels, so he would always be loved.

This set me thinking. Ten years older than Boorman, I had a very different experience, and wonder how much of what I’m about emerged from the crucible of pop cultural influence. So indulge me as I sprawl on the couch for a few sessions. Romance is about to get ‘New’, and all about Me (sorry).

Let me whisk you back to Croydon 1981, and what may have been my equivalent of Boorman’s defining moment. Whilst his milieu was the trainer tribes of street style (sic.), it just so happened that when I emerged into fully-formed fashion awareness the role models flitting glamorously before me subscribed to and encouraged a very different mindset. Discerning dissent, rather than tribal conformity, was the creed I signed up to, and this may also have had far-reaching effects.

‘New Romanticism’ was my moment. A Croydon-lite version of it, adopted long after the real innovators had moved on, but still resplendent with the originary spirit, which made it different from most style cults then or since. From Teddy Boys to Hoodies, most youth style cults prescribe uniforms of identification and identity. To ‘be’ and ‘belong’ depends on adopting tribal insignia. Length of coat, cut of hair, latest label, or coat worn inside out, upside down, or with the sales tag still dangling from it (yawn), the majority of movements encouraged cults of conformity. Mod was slightly different and more sophisticated (constantly moving on, yet still a cult, albeit for the cognoscenti); Punk ripped it up and started again, but was still easily emulated. ‘New Romanticism’ took the elitism of Mod, the extravagance of Punk and made dressing up less about belonging as escaping. It was anti-tribal, defined by an urgent need to actively avoid what the twerp next to you was wearing. This meant going to extremes, but that’s what the 80s were about (and Christ knows how we got away with it). The question was not what shall I wear, but who shall I be (Cossack, lounge lizard, dandy highwayman?) If two outfits were the same that night, you’d failed.

Yes, I know it all went horribly wrong. As the 80s became the 80s proper all this inventiveness and attitude somehow came to sanction mullets, far too much hair product and the triumph of style over substance (abuse). But I do wonder, if Boorman took his identity from this playground baptism into brands, whether I became a difficult little swine, a dedicated cynic and non-conformist (I’m not sure I even want to be labeled these things), partly because of the parade of powder, pout and pose that flounced past me at that moment. Its creed: dream, but also dissent; display but also discern. Can this unstable vinaigrette of sentimental cynicism I’ve been shaking and slopping before you derive from the mere accidental epiphany of a fringe flopped tantalisingly across a suburban TV screen nearly 30 years ago? I'm not talking about dressing up (I long gave up that lark), but some deeper vestige of this attitude that remained when I wiped the blusher off for the very last time? To be explored further…

Don’t it make my Brown Eyes Blue

They say you should never meet you heroes. For the same reason you should never analyse too deeply the things you love. I made this mistake when preparing to post on another of my favourite love songs, ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’ by the Pouges. I’m not a proper Pogues fan, but I have always loved that song. I respect them as genuine musicians, admire Mr McGowan’s dedication to dereliction, and thank them from the depth of my heart that there is at least one Christmas record (their ‘Fairy Tale of New York’), that doesn’t send me screaming from the shop after having heard it a zillion times that week. And yet, there was always something troubling me about the Pogues, and I’m sure the fault is mine. But, try as I might, I couldn’t help associating them with those sham(rock) Irish bars that sprung up a few years ago, and are now found a very way long way from Tipperary the length and breadth of Europe. (The fact that he attended a major English public school adds one final chip to my shoulder). ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’ is, however, a beautiful song, especially when I remained in blissful ignorance of what it was quite about. The opening set the scene for me, and I didn’t think much beyond that:

One summer evening drunk to hell
I stood there nearly lifeless
An old man in the corner sang
Where the water lilies grow
And on the jukebox Johnny sang
About a thing called love.

I loved the melody, I revelled in the sweet melancholy of the sentiment, and assumed plenty. I vaguely thought it was an old Irish folk standard, that they had brought to my attention. Not fooled by ‘Molly Blooms’, Bloomsbury, I was more than ready to believe this was the real McCoy. Well, so it is, but it’s all a bit complicated, and I thought folk was simple. I had formed the idea that it was simply about a young man, who found himself blind drunk one summer evening. So drunk that he either imagines, or is unable to get to, a beautiful woman who throws him a haunting glance across the room. On sobering she is gone,

And the only thing that I could see
Was a pair of brown eyes that was looking at me
But when we got back, labelled parts one to three
There was no pair of brown eyes waiting for me.
And a rovin' a rovin' a rovin' I'll go
For a pair of brown eyes
For a pair of brown eyes.

I imagined it a drunkard’s version of Yeats’s ‘The Song of Wandering Aegnus’, another one of those lost opportunity love lyrics so dear to my heart. Dear me no. I googled it simply to learn who wrote it, and got sucked into reading McGowan’s own semi-coherent account of what is in truth a Chinese Box of narrative complexity (drunken anecdote by an old drunk about the first or second world war, gets somehow mixed up with the singer’s own lament for lost love), and every reference tells a specific tale. This might all enrich the true fan’s enjoyment, but it’s rather throttled this fair-weather folkist’s elusive dreams. I’ll have to go rovin for another brown-eyed ballad, or refrain from killing the things I love with a little learning.

Every body's gotta learn sometime (or do they?)

“Random thoughts for Valentine's day, 2004. Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap”.

The first lines (in voice over) of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Spoken by Jim Carey’s character, and if you haven't seen the film simply because that gurning goon is in it, then relent. It is one of the most original, perceptive, and, possibly depressing films of recent years. See it with someone you love tonight.

It paints a pretty bleak picture of humanity and of love in particular, centred around Valentine’s Day. "It’s our busiest time", declares the receptionist at Lacuna Inc., explaining why a desperate patient cannot get an appointment to have all memory of an unhappy relationship removed from her mind. This is the conceit of the film, using a far-fetched idea to probe some pretty accurate truths. Starting with the hype associated with this very day.

There is nothing remotely ‘romantic’ about St Valentine’s Day. If you’re single, you’re made to feel like an even bigger loser, and modern technology simply compounds the misery. Where once there was only an empty doormat, there are now so many channels, offering myriad possibilities for self-pity on this joyous day. Or if you’re a couple, you’re coerced into dutiful observance. ‘Romance’, by edict, whether you feel romantic or not. Which means, in my limited experience, being rushed through a rota system of dining out surrounded by other happy couples feeling they have to look especially soppy at each other all night to somehow feel the magic of the day. ‘McRomance’ indeed. Do you want fries with those sentiments?

The slick, unsentimental professionalism of Lacuna Inc erasing memories of love is a fitting counterpart of those cynical swine responsible for exploiting expectations of it on that day. A perfect arrangement, and so Valentine’s Day is Lacuna's busiest season. The bleakness continues. We scarcely encounter a happy couple in the film, but instead legions of the broken, desperate to recover from their experience by erasing their pasts. Andre Gide once said ‘Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.’ Lacuna Inc is there to sort this out.

The receptionist tells another disappointed patient, "I’m afraid you can’t have the procedure more than three times in a month. Those are our rules". It suggests a relentless and inexorable gravity of unhappiness in every love. Joel (Carey), surveying the fellow diners in a restaurant, wonders: "Are we like couples you see in restaurants? Are we the dining dead?". By that stage they were. Few of the flashback memories being erased suggest a happy, fulfilling relationship. They are both annoying. He is drippy and morose (and Jim Carey). She flighty, high-maintenance, and with a puerile penchant for trashy hair dyes. I'm not sure you can really fully identify with either. Which somehow makes them more Everyman and Woman, rather than shiny plastic Hollywood Rom-Com lovers. Which pushes the point home harder and more plausibly.

And so it breaks up, just before Valentines Day, and Clementine (Kate Winslet) has the operation. "Our files are confidential Mr. Barish so we can't show you any evidence. Suffice it to say, Miss Kruczynski was not happy and she wanted to move on. We provide that possibility". In revenge, Joel follows suit. "Will it give me brain damage", he asks. "Well, technically speaking, the operation is brain damage, but it's on a par with a night of heavy drinking. Nothing you'll miss". Nothing you’ll miss, and so a whole relationship, what he might ‘miss’ so painfully or desperately, is wiped away. But what’s so depressing in all this is the suggestion that love is doomed to follow a pattern, and that mistakes are destined to be repeated. The burned child is supposed to fear the fire. Not with love. The clinical procedure of erasure uses Sci-Fi ingenuity to explore a lamentable near universal truth.

This is the half empty perspective on the repetition pattern the film invokes. An optimist might look at it differently. If I could find one today (he's probably reading all his Valentine cards) he might discover more hope in the fact that, once they’ve had each other erased, Clementine and Joel meet again, and fall for each other again. This might give a more hopeful gloss to a very bleak picture. The new couple learn about what they have both done, and how they both felt about each other when they broke up and wanted to forget. They have all this information before them, and yet this is how the film ends (look away if you haven't seen it):

Joel: I can't see anything that I don't like about you.

Clementine: But you will! But you will. You know, you will think of things. And I'll get bored with you and feel trapped because that's what happens with me.

Joel: Okay

Clementine: [pauses] Okay.

Hope or despair? Your view may very well depend on what kind of Valentine’s Day you're having.

Truly a great love song

Buddy Holly died fifty years ago this month, so I thought I would feature one of the first love songs to touch me, and one that stands out from its times, 'True Love Ways'.

My first real enthusiasm was Rock 'n' Roll, the early stuff. Once I'd acknowledged that being a streaker wasn't a serious career option (http://helioholic.blogspot.com/search/label/vocation), I put all my energy into collecting old records, combing my hair and curling my lip. It's a good job the wind didn't turn, or I'd have been stuck like I was here, aged 9 and obsessed with the 1950s.

But I didn't go for Elvis, for the same reason I don't like the Beatles - because everyone else did and does. Buddy was the rocker for me. He was the thinking man's Rock 'n' Roller. Sensitive and bespectacled, he smiled rather than snarled, and was obviously a genuinely nice guy. He proposed marriage to his wife on their first date. Buddy was the true romantic of the Rock 'n' Roll era.

And I think this shows in his love songs, especially 'True Love Ways'. What distinguishes it mostly is something decidedly lacking from love songs from the epoch - sincerity. Maybe it's me, but I think I just bought into the whole rebel rocker image, and then was surprised to find this snarling, hip-thrusting animal suddenly getting all doe-eyed and gooey, simpering teen love platitudes according to record label diktat. Rock 'n' Roll love is either pure bubble gum, or really about sex. When Eddie Cochran sang 'Three Steps to Heaven', you knew what he was really talking about. It's almost an instruction manual into getting into a bobby soxer's silky boxers, and he even chuckles dirtily when he growls 'That sure sounds like heaven to me'. Good Golly Miss Molly sure liked to ball, and you can bet Little Richard didn't waste much time buying her flowers.

But Buddy was different. 'True Love Ways' is a grown up love song. He doesn't even call her 'baby', while acknowledging the full reality of love's wilful repertoire: 'Sometimes we'll sigh,

Sometimes we'll cry'. In short, it is true about love's little ways. The song's arrangement seems to straddle both the swing and the pop era, with Buddy crooning over harp, strings and a spine-curdling clarinet. It is goose-bumpy stuff that positively wrenches your heart-strings. You just know he was singing to his wife, soon to be widow. It was his wife's favourite song, and one of the last songs he ever recorded. All this sings out in 2.5 minutes of pure pop perfection. They sure don't make 'em like that any more.