No idea this was ever a single, let alone a video
Is "Red Light" the Banshees's version of "The Model"?
She falls into frame
With a professional pout
But the Polaroid's ignite
Upon seeing their subject
With a professional pout
But the Polaroid's ignite
Upon seeing their subject
And the aperture shuts
Too much exposure
Voyeur sucks into focus
Floodlit the glossy kiss-pit
Too much exposure
Voyeur sucks into focus
Floodlit the glossy kiss-pit
But as emulsion drips down - down
The aperture shuts
Too much exposure
Come into this room
The aperture shuts
Too much exposure
Come into this room
Come into this gloom
See the red light rinsing
Another shutterslut wincing
The sagging half wit sister
See the red light rinsing
Another shutterslut wincing
The sagging half wit sister
Pretty, pretty picture
Of an ancient nipple shrinking
That kodak whore winking
'Til the aperture shuts
Of an ancient nipple shrinking
That kodak whore winking
'Til the aperture shuts
Too much exposure
One would have to say "opticality" (if that's even a word) is an obsession in Banshees music
A surprising - yet absolutely logical - detour into showbiz retro-swank
"Put your lips at my command"
Imperious!
Camille Paglia could write an essay about the symbol-ogy within the "Right Now" video - mirrors, gold, Cleopatra, silent movie femme fatales, burlesque, swing, Mel Torme, glitterballs
Flamenco!
"See them staring"
All eyez on me
Still a superior analysis of Siouxsie's evolution, I think - from The Sex Revolts
renunciation of oceanic feelings was a means to power. The first Banshees
album, The Scream (1978), contains some of the most unfluid, fleshless rock
music ever created, stringent and staccato. 'Metal Postcard (Mittageisen)'
fetishises the inhuman perfection of metal, which Siouxsie declares will 'rule
in my master scheme'. 'Jigsaw Feeling' explores sensations of alienation from
the body: the imagery of fractured organs and limbs, the sense of a
disassembled bodily identity, resembles the hysterical un-body that figures in
Lydia Lunch's songs. In 'Jigsaw Feeling', the Ice Queen cracks up: Siouxsie
oscillates between 'feeling total' and being 'split in two'. It is only her
dazzling, frozen exteriority that keeps the psychotic interior contained. Later
in her career, songs like 'Christine' and 'Eve White/Eve Black' dramatise the
schizophrenic's struggle not to 'shatter kaleidoscope-style'.
'Regal Zone' (from 1979's Join Hands) is the ultimate ice statement:
Siouxsie stands 'alone in a Regal Zone', erect and intimidating. Similarly,
Siouxsie's early image--S/M dominatrix clothes, peek-a-boo bras that exposed
the breast but were far from titillating--invited the voyeuristic gaze only to
punish it. Her image, her sangfroid vocals, her commanding demeanour all
signify 'Look, Don't Touch'. Siouxsie doesn't want to be made of fleisch (that
evocative German word that means both flesh and meat), she wants to be made of
metal or ice, impenetrable, invulnerable.
Siouxsie stands 'alone in a Regal Zone', erect and intimidating. Similarly,
Siouxsie's early image--S/M dominatrix clothes, peek-a-boo bras that exposed
the breast but were far from titillating--invited the voyeuristic gaze only to
punish it. Her image, her sangfroid vocals, her commanding demeanour all
signify 'Look, Don't Touch'. Siouxsie doesn't want to be made of fleisch (that
evocative German word that means both flesh and meat), she wants to be made of
metal or ice, impenetrable, invulnerable.
This desire to be obelisk or basilisk (the mythological cold-blooded
reptile whose glance was lethal) had a sinister side. Siouxsie wasn't just the first
woman to take on glam rock's androgyny; in the early days of the Banshees, she also
followed through glam's flirtation with fascism, to the point of wearing a
swastika.
reptile whose glance was lethal) had a sinister side. Siouxsie wasn't just the first
woman to take on glam rock's androgyny; in the early days of the Banshees, she also
followed through glam's flirtation with fascism, to the point of wearing a
swastika.
For most punks, the swastika was a shock tactic or cheap nihilism, but for
Siouxsie, fascism's fascination seems to have run a little deeper. In a 1985
interview with Blitz, she recalled that 'when I was fifteen or sixteen I used to
go out of my way to have very unattractive hairstyles, very short, geometrically
very ugly, cropped and very frightening to the opposite sex... I think I always
knew the way I wanted to live... was completely as a fascist. I mean, I call
myself a fascist personally, I like everything my own way.'
Siouxsie, fascism's fascination seems to have run a little deeper. In a 1985
interview with Blitz, she recalled that 'when I was fifteen or sixteen I used to
go out of my way to have very unattractive hairstyles, very short, geometrically
very ugly, cropped and very frightening to the opposite sex... I think I always
knew the way I wanted to live... was completely as a fascist. I mean, I call
myself a fascist personally, I like everything my own way.'
Monumentalism--the desire to be as imposing as a statue--is proto-fascist
because it's a flight from the liquidity of female biology, of nature. Like the
Futurists, Siouxsie's aesthetic fetishised stark contours and severance; in 'Desert Kisses'
(from 1980's Kaleidoscope) she even wrote a song of outright hydrophobia,
where 'tidal fingers' hold her in their 'deadly grip'. Although she gradually
distanced herself from the Banshees' early flirtation with fascism, Sioux continued to
take on magisterial and forbidding female archetypes, like the dominatrix and the witch.
because it's a flight from the liquidity of female biology, of nature. Like the
Futurists, Siouxsie's aesthetic fetishised stark contours and severance; in 'Desert Kisses'
(from 1980's Kaleidoscope) she even wrote a song of outright hydrophobia,
where 'tidal fingers' hold her in their 'deadly grip'. Although she gradually
distanced herself from the Banshees' early flirtation with fascism, Sioux continued to
take on magisterial and forbidding female archetypes, like the dominatrix and the witch.
On 'Arabian Knights' (from Juju, 1981), she updates Grace Slick's posture of the
stern matriarch who passes judgment on men's wicked ways, excoriating Islam's
patriarchal enslavement of women behind the veils of purdah, where they're reduced to the
role of 'baby machines'. In 'Monitor' she's an imperious dominatrix, commanding
her plaything to 'sit back and enjoy'.
stern matriarch who passes judgment on men's wicked ways, excoriating Islam's
patriarchal enslavement of women behind the veils of purdah, where they're reduced to the
role of 'baby machines'. In 'Monitor' she's an imperious dominatrix, commanding
her plaything to 'sit back and enjoy'.
As her career developed, Siouxsie found her way to more 'feminine' images
of power. At the same time--surely no coincidence--her lyrics ooze moisture.
With A Kiss in the Dreamhouse (1982), the Ice Queen melts; proto-fascist rigour
softens into luxuriant, langorous decadence. From the ornamented Klimt-inspired
cover image to the heady haze of neo-psychedelic sound, the album was all lush
sensuality and blissful blur. The opening 'Cascade' has Siouxsie enswirled in
droplets of fragrant sound, 'like liquid falling'. In 'Green Fingers',
Siouxsie's even able to imagine women's proximity to nature as a magical source
of strength, not vulnerability. Supernaturalism rather than anti-naturalism
becomes the new model for the Banshees, as the earthly lore of the witch
supersedes the glacial terrorism of the Ice Queen. With its Rites-of-Pan flute,
'Green Fingers' recalls the psychedelic classic 'The Garden of Earthly
Delights' by the United States of America, in which Dorothy Moskowitz sings
ominously of 'venomous blossoms' and 'omnivorous orchids' that lurk within a
girl's eyes; love is a Venus fly-trap whose nectar lures man to a sticky end.
of power. At the same time--surely no coincidence--her lyrics ooze moisture.
With A Kiss in the Dreamhouse (1982), the Ice Queen melts; proto-fascist rigour
softens into luxuriant, langorous decadence. From the ornamented Klimt-inspired
cover image to the heady haze of neo-psychedelic sound, the album was all lush
sensuality and blissful blur. The opening 'Cascade' has Siouxsie enswirled in
droplets of fragrant sound, 'like liquid falling'. In 'Green Fingers',
Siouxsie's even able to imagine women's proximity to nature as a magical source
of strength, not vulnerability. Supernaturalism rather than anti-naturalism
becomes the new model for the Banshees, as the earthly lore of the witch
supersedes the glacial terrorism of the Ice Queen. With its Rites-of-Pan flute,
'Green Fingers' recalls the psychedelic classic 'The Garden of Earthly
Delights' by the United States of America, in which Dorothy Moskowitz sings
ominously of 'venomous blossoms' and 'omnivorous orchids' that lurk within a
girl's eyes; love is a Venus fly-trap whose nectar lures man to a sticky end.
Siouxsie revels in similar imagery of deadly voluptuousness in 'Melt',
where sex is blissful bondage, 'tiny deaths' that leave the man 'beheaded'.
'Slowdive' imagines swimming and swooning in carnal confusion, taking the
plunge into the uncontrol of desire, bathing in flesh. 'She's A Carnival'
offers a less sinister vision of the psychic fragmentation that once threatened
Siouxsie. She celebrates the idea of the self as a benignly chaotic polyphony
where sex is blissful bondage, 'tiny deaths' that leave the man 'beheaded'.
'Slowdive' imagines swimming and swooning in carnal confusion, taking the
plunge into the uncontrol of desire, bathing in flesh. 'She's A Carnival'
offers a less sinister vision of the psychic fragmentation that once threatened
Siouxsie. She celebrates the idea of the self as a benignly chaotic polyphony
of unruly desires and clamorous voices. Fascism fears the mob, but in 'She's a
Carnival' Siouxsie imagines mingling and merging with a festive multitude, in
the spirit of Dionysus. Where once Siouxsie's musical alter-egos were sharply
etched against the landscape, now she's "spinning in a dizzy haze", and her
forbidding glare is replaced by "a smile like Mardi Gras".
Carnival' Siouxsie imagines mingling and merging with a festive multitude, in
the spirit of Dionysus. Where once Siouxsie's musical alter-egos were sharply
etched against the landscape, now she's "spinning in a dizzy haze", and her
forbidding glare is replaced by "a smile like Mardi Gras".
On the next album, Hyaena (1984), 'Swimming Horses' is outright oceanic
rock, a song inspired by seahorses. Still, Siouxsie's interest in
gender-bending (women should be strong, men should be as weak as the
incapacitated, 'melting man' of 'Melt') persists: Siouxsie was struck by the
fact that it's the male of the seahorse species that gives birth. She clearly
likes the idea of women being freed of the burden of fecundity.
rock, a song inspired by seahorses. Still, Siouxsie's interest in
gender-bending (women should be strong, men should be as weak as the
incapacitated, 'melting man' of 'Melt') persists: Siouxsie was struck by the
fact that it's the male of the seahorse species that gives birth. She clearly
likes the idea of women being freed of the burden of fecundity.
By 1991's Superstition, Siouxsie completed her trajectory from the vampire woman of her
Goth goddess prime, to the vamp of 'Kiss Them For Me'. Here, Siouxsie modelled
herself on '40s movie idols like Rita Hayworth, who played strong and sometimes
sinister female roles.
To this I would add only that the explosive tension in the sound / image of Siouxsie and Banshees (Creatures too) stems from the opposed pull of the Dionysian - the tribally tumult of the drums, the dervish churn of hypnotic rhythm - which is in stark contrast to the frozen poses of the classical-Appollonian extremism - wildness / madness / frezy versus statuesque control and poise
Their love of Can, a band without image or theatrics or even stage presence really
Years ago on MTV I saw live footage of the band, in the early 90s, that was unbelievable in its churning Dionysian intensity.
Goth goddess prime, to the vamp of 'Kiss Them For Me'. Here, Siouxsie modelled
herself on '40s movie idols like Rita Hayworth, who played strong and sometimes
sinister female roles.
To this I would add only that the explosive tension in the sound / image of Siouxsie and Banshees (Creatures too) stems from the opposed pull of the Dionysian - the tribally tumult of the drums, the dervish churn of hypnotic rhythm - which is in stark contrast to the frozen poses of the classical-Appollonian extremism - wildness / madness / frezy versus statuesque control and poise
Their love of Can, a band without image or theatrics or even stage presence really
Years ago on MTV I saw live footage of the band, in the early 90s, that was unbelievable in its churning Dionysian intensity.
Very much reminds me of The Speng's idea of the battle of the sexes as being "eternal, pitiless". I see Siouxsie as quintessentially 20th Century more than anything, as a kind of bricolage of every left-field moment that that century offered, from Eric Gill to Roman Polanski to Louise Brooks to Man Ray. I remember her interviews generally being a long list of namechecks of artists and film stars.
ReplyDeleteThinking about it, she was absolutely made out of the 20th Century. Or to put it more pretentiously (but accurately) her public persona was an index of that century's signifiers.
ha, that's a very good description - and didn't the Banshees do a cover of "20th Century Boy" as one of their early B-sides.
DeleteMind you, it could also apply to quite a few other postpunk icons - Ian Curtis or Howard Devoto
the whole of postpunk is like a compressed-together lighting-fast rerun of modernisms and extremisms from art / lit / film etc across the length and breadth of the 20th Century - Dada, Futurism, surrealism, existentialism, abstract expressionism, Beats / Burroughs, Pop Art, many more. And that's just with lyrics, graphics, image, persona... before you even get to the compression of sonic ideas
but i don't think it feels postmodern, like a reference game... because it's applying things that were never part of pop culture, into pop music, for the first time - so somehow that reactivates the original high-culture newness in a new domain -
ReplyDeletepop's postmodernism phase is when it refers back to its own history, i think, which Roxy were among the very first to do, but and during postpunk you start to get that with 2-Tone, with ABC, with Orange Juice etc. So that period 1978-83 or thereabouts, it's like a two-act play, the modernist phase (borrowed, reapplied) and the postmodernist phase (which is actually the second coming of glam in some respects - the Bowie/Roxy Children). Siouxsie kind of bridge that - the first phase of their music is very severe, and then they start referencing psychedelia and decadence (and Klimt). Doing "Dear Prudence" seemed a surprising move at the time.
Mind you, contradicting that, they did cover T.Rex and "Helter Skelter" on the first album, so perhaps more confused than that.
Postpunk artist's rhetoric and practice would jumble up modernist ideas and creeping-towards-postmodernist tendencies - they'd espouse contrary aspirations simultaneously.
I don't differentiate between modernism and post-modernism very much, personally - they were both part of the doomed effort to escape from patternwork.
ReplyDeleteI think there was definitely a thing going on from 1970 to 1980-ish, which most obviously started with Bowie, where people constructed their own selves from cultural bric-a-brac. This is usually portrayed as a flight from "stifling conformity", and I can understand that. I think that it was necessary for a lot of people from a working class or lower middle class background to create a new persona in order to actually do stuff. Really to evade the cultural limitations infused into your own personality by your parents and your social milieu.
I can see this in myself to a certain extent - I would probably have to invent a separate persona (let's Call him Stevo Danger) in order to follow a certain course (e.g. interpretive dance) that Phil Knight himself would look askance at ("prancing around like a ninny"). So there's a necessity for dissociation in the first place, and then you've got a smorgasbord of cultural references that you can use to create a new persona depending on how daring you are or what you want to do.
It's interesting how this tendency exploded into being and then faded out so quickly though. Maybe Morrissey was the last notable example of these kind of figures. I suspect that one of the reasons was that most of these people tended to be middling talents who got a quick boost from the freedom of their alter-ego, but unlike Bowie they didn't have what it takes to achieve megastardom or career longevity.
I was surprised how much I identified with Bowie when I embarked on the book (never having particularly identified with him growing up, I loved a lot of the songs and some of the albums, but in a oddly distanced way, he was so much already a pantheonic figure like Beatles and Stones. i was too young for the Ziggy moment and by the time i was ripe for that kind of thing, the figures with were the John Lydon, Ian Curtis, Paul Weller etc generation). But yeah following the journey of his life, I recognised a commonality of suburban, middle class, post-war experience - hungry souls grabbing to anything that would take them somewhere else than their surroundings. Pulling things from this as you say 20th Century archive of extremes and vanguards and often quite recent movements (Situationism would have peaked a little over a decade before I heard of it, in 1979) and others from much earlier in the century (Dada, surrealism etc). These were all jumbled up on the menu of a young pretentious mind - Beckett and Camus, Burroughs and Kerouac, Shulamith Firestone and Jeff Nuttall, Gramsci and Norman O. Brown... And that's just books.
ReplyDeleteI wish you'd start blogging again, Phil.
How's the book coming along?
"David Bowie" is himself a persona, inne? It's David Jones playing David Bowie playing Ziggy Stardust. Or at around the time of Scary Monsters it's David Jones playing David Bowie looking back at David Bowie playing Major Tom. A hall of mirrors, that fella.
ReplyDeleteI'm aiming to start blogging again imminently. I can't think of a bloody name for the blog though. Toying with "Acid Gammonist", but that might be a bit too flippant.