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It's 1979, I'm standing in
Birmingham's Barbarella's night club, the epicentre of
the West Midlands New Wave scene, and I'm listening to an
instrumental by a band called Duran Duran. This is not
yet the glam rock Duran of Planet Earth. Simon le Bon
hasnot been invented.
This is an electro pop outfit more in tune with the likes of
Kraftwerk, Ultravox, Brian Eno, the original Human League
and tonight's stark headliners, Fashion.
On primitive keyboards is Nick Rhodes, at the microphone
introducing songs inspired by F Scott Fitzgerald is the
thin, fey figure of Stephen Duffy. And they are
mesmerising. Within four gigs Duffy had quit and formed
The Hawks.
Now 23 years later, with retro-futurism in fashion, musical
history is repeating itself. In 1999 a chance meeting
between Rhodes and Duffy got them talking old times and
the songs they'd written but never got round to properly
recording. Well, better late than never.
The production may be right now, but in using only the sort of
analogue machines they would have had back then, the mood
is definitely pinned to the influences of 1978, opening
with the hypnotic industrial instrumental Memory Palaces
and proceeding toresurrect such glorious lost moments as
the cold pulsing Hawks Don't Share (from the Fitzgerald
novel), a Roxyish Lost Decade (the first song the two of
them ever wrote together), the Bowie-inspired live
favourite Big Store (an ode to Rackhams), the exotic
seductive haze of Aztec Moon for which Duffy plundered
Kerouac's Mexico City Blues for the lyrics. Clouded
memory doesn't tell me whether the funky electro beats
Come Alive is an oldie (though I suspect the Planet Earth
meets I'm Not Your SteppingStone rhythm is probably too
post modern ironic not to be new) or whether the gorgeous
Newhaven-Dieppe predates or tips the hat to Granddaddy' s
indie cascading pop.
But I'm willing to bet that the naggingly commercial World
Exclusive, where Human League meets The Lilac Time, is a
more recent number and I know for sure that while it may
evoke thoughts of Air doing the Midnight Cowboy theme,
that the dreamy Barbarella's, Duffy's affectionate memoir
of both club and youth, is as recent as, ooh, seven years
ago.
They say you can never go back. The Devils prove that not only
can you, but that sometimes the world takes a long time
to catch up with the past.
Mike Davies, Weekend:
Culture: The Devils Dark Circles (Tape Modern). ,
Birmingham Post, 10-05-2002, pp 52.
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