Siouxsie and the Banshees have at least two Glamanifesto Songs - two singles released within two years of each other.
"Fireworks", a national anthem for the emerging and then as yet unnamed tribe soon to be known as Goth
"Dazzle", which I only just realised (courtesy Simon Price) came with a Glamour Mix on the 12-inch.
Here's the single version and its incandescent video.
Fountains = a symbol of aristocratic extravagance from time immemorial - command of the vital elements, and squandering thereof, at a time when the lower orders had to lug it by the bucket out of the ground from wells or carry jugs full of it on their heads for miles and miles.
"Fireworks" is much the better song I think - the orchestration and stampede-y beat on "Dazzle" make it a bit overbearing and stiffly strident.
And he crackling in our colours
With teeth of gelignite
When he sighs his song and pirouettes
Thro' a dance of dynamite
We are fireworks - slowly, glowing
Bold and bright
We are fireworks - burning shapes
Into the night
Twist and turn - burn, burn, burn
Twist and turn - burn, baby, burn
Tempting to roll out the Bataillean reading here...
"Painted Bird" is also something of a Goth Nation rally call and war song.
Confound that dowdy flock
With a sharp-honed nerve
Because we're painted birds
By our own design
There's other Siouxsie songs in these regions of self-worship / demand-to-be-worshipped and exhibitionism / voyeurism - or that speak of a morbid excitation of the eye.
"Red Light" and "Peek-A-Boo", as discussed earlier on this blog.
"Regal Zone" - I had always fondly imagined this as another song in this zone of Star Solipsism / Siouxsie as Untouchable Idol enthralling her fan-vassals... But it appears to be a political comment - if I remember right, something to do with the Iranian Revolution, the fall of the Shah, the Ayatollahs... File alongside The Stranglers's "Shah Shah A Go Go" then...
Coronets rest on a death's head mask
No-one is safe while the curfew lasts
But crusted orbs glitter, sceptres gleam
While helmets of blood fill the screen
They look away
And then they say:
"For the good of the land
For the love of the man"
Standing alone sitting alone
On the throne of the regal zone
Old limbs hang in the torture room
While old kings hang in the portrait room
Their noble eyes gaze on the uneasy dance
Of the squirming body on the marble plate
They look away
And then they say:
"For the good of the land
For the love of the man"
Standing alone sitting alone
On the throne of the regal zone
"Icon", likewise, is no self-deification exercise but something to do with organized religion, about a Polish priest who burned himself alive if my memory serves.. sitting alongside "The Lord's Prayer" on Join Hands.
Still, imposing regality drips off of all these songs and vocal performances, so it is temping to take isolated lines like "standing alone... on the throne of the regal zone" or "icon in the fire" and see them as imperious proclamations of Siouxsie's self-regard. Especially as she once described herself as a fascist, in the sense of wanting things absolutely her own way.
Likewise, who the fuck really knows what "Dazzle" is about - all you really come away with is the lines
Dazzle it's a glittering prize
Before your eyes
- and the self-goddessing hauteur of Siouxsie's voice.
I saw a girl in her early twenties at St. Pancras station on Tuesday with a Banshees t-shirt, and she had made a reasonably successful attempt at looking like Siouxsie. So this stuff still works.
ReplyDeleteAbout five minutes earlier I saw another young girl with a Duran Duran t-shirt.
Yes it's perennial as a form of stand-offish glamour / look but don't touch / Mystery-as-Mastery. The Ice Queen.
ReplyDeleteEqually though it's not necessarily always successful at keeping admirers at a distance. I've been out with two Siouxsie-influenced girls and one of them I married.
ReplyDeletemildly surprised to see the dismissal of 'Dazzle' here, which I had never heard until recently and was very struck by: one of the *extremely few* attempts to completely explicitly copy the Associates circa 'Sulk' - the density of the arrangement, the clattering bombastic momentum, the feeling that all this grandiloquence might collapse under its own weight, the edge of mania - though without the voice, alas. He should have covered it.
ReplyDeletehello Owen, nice to hear from you. I was actually planning to write you an email about an article you wrote last year.
ReplyDelete"Dazzle" is around the point when for me it l gets a bit overwrought and bombastic with the Banshees. It's.... fine.
This connection between the Associates and Banshees is something I felt at the time - not so much with that specific song, though. But this vibe of psychedelia being crammed into 80s pop - the overload and disorientation, without necessarily any direct 60s echoes (well, okay, the Banshees would do "Dear Prudence" and there's a flute that's a bit Donovan-y in one of Dreamhouse songs). At the time I wasn't the kind of person who obsessively checked out who the producer of records was, but it's notable that Mike Hedges went pretty much straight from doing Sulk to engineering A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, and one of his other clients at that time was The Cure.
Yes - strangely Hedges wasn't able to capture the same magic when producing the Manic Street Preachers. And email away!
ReplyDelete