On the way home today, in the park with his mates, a big bunch of them too, more that I could ever muster, even on a good day was a boy of no more than fifteen sporting what can only be described as A Flock of Seagulls haircut. This, for those not aware of said coiffure is the hairstyle whereby first you spike up your hair but then pull your fringe back down over your forehead, but leave the rest spiked, so that you have two elegant horns of hair, divided by a graceful, sweeping fringe. The only person ever in the public eye to venture such avant-garde hair, to my knowledge, was the lead singer of the actually not that bad synthpop band A Flock of Seagulls, back in the swinging 80s. He, apparently, discovered it quite by accident when having spiked up his blond locks just prior to a show, one of his bandmates hilariously surprised him by, you guessed it, pushing his fringe down, thus forming the basic structure of the hairstyle. Mr A Flock of Seagulls (his name, if I was ever aware of it in the first place escapes me ^Ö in fact I^Òll use the neutral ground of this parenthesis to apologise for any factual errors relating to the band, I^Òm doing all this from memory and my bank of A Flock of Seagulls information is scant at best) decided that, hey, his hair actually looks pretty damn good like that and he went on to be seen regularly with his hair just like that, on TV, in the band^Òs videos and, though I^Òve no actual corroboration of this, only a strong suspicion - in the privacy of his own home. The one problem with Mr. AFoS^Ò decision about the hairstyle looking good was that he was wrong. It looks stupid. It looks stupid enough for it to be featured on those ^ÑI love the 80s^Ò shows, the one for whichever year he rose to fame, and for such luminaries, such sparks in the dark black wasteland of comedy as Stuart Maconie and Kate Thornton to mock at length the hairdo. Well, let me posit a question at this juncture: who is laughing now? The youth of today, at least one of them, are out in public with that haircut. Dare to be different? I was shocked myself by it, I couldn^Òt help staring. Possible reasons for it: minor internet celebrity Tom Ewing^Òs recent piece about A Flock of Seagulls on Freaky Trigger. But this seems unlikely. The discovery by the kid of A Flock of Seagulls, perhaps in his parent^Òs record collection, or even just by a picture and the subsequent decision to copy the hairstyle. Perhaps the kid was the victim of a similar prank to the singer from A Flock of Seagulls and had similarly decided that his hair looked alright as it was. Two of those potential solutions run with the idea that the kid knew about A Flock of Seagulls, but this seems unlikely to me. The third seems unlikely in a lightning not striking twice way. More plausible fourth: he was just experimenting with hair, just as he was thinking ^Ñhm, maybe not^Ò his mum put her head round the door and said ^Ñwhat on earth have you done with your hair lad? Put a brush through it this instant^Ò and he was immediately sold on it. Or are we on the verge of a resurgence in popularity of A Flock of Seagulls? Soon will I walk through Sheffield amid mass gangs of people sporting the A Flock of Seagulls haircut? I don^Òt know if that would be a good thing or not. The problem with the haircut is that, as I mentioned above, that it looks stupid. Looking stupid though is about as subversive as you can get fashionwise these days. It^Òs a lot more subversive than looking good, if subversive is even the word and if good is even the word. If you look stupid for long enough, or if enough people do it then it sort of becomes acceptable though doesn^Òt it? But there are different stupids too, I dunno if any of you have seen that Japanese fashion magazine, I think it^Òs called ^ÑFruits^Ò if not then it showcases some of the more esoteric things that those wacky Japanese people wear. There^Òs probably a website or something. A lot of those people do look stupid, stupid in the sense that that^Òs not ever something that I would even consider wearing, and not because I don^Òt think I^Òd be able to get away with it, though sometimes that, but they also at the same time look really great, and a kind of great that I^Òll probably never be able to look myself, what with my relatively MOR fashion choices. But the A Flock of Seagulls haircut doesn^Òt ever seem to have the potential to be in a context or to create a context where it would be that kind of stupid and great. The tension between those two, incidentally, is perhaps where great fashion comes from. But nonetheless, given the different stupids that there are, I think the A Flock of Seagulls hairdo belongs in the sort of one that will never catch on. I suppose it^Òs not unfeasible that following the success of the band that some people copied the hairstyle. And later burned any existing photographs of them with it. But that^Òs a bit different to a fifteen year old kid in an Offspring hoodie. So I can^Òt see it lasting. Though he did have a whole gang of friends with him, and from my brief observations they didn^Òt seem to be mocking him, or staring at the hair for long periods of time. Perhaps he^Òs had it ages, and has kept it in defiance of mockery. I^Òd like to find out but I expect I never will. Alas. Or to look at it a different way. When I was at school one of the best teachers I had was my A-level French teacher, he was the kind of bloke that their aren^Òt nearly enough of in teaching ^Ö easy going, approachable, intellectual, but not in a particularly academic way etc etc. As well as all that he was quite the Serge Gainsbourg fan, and so rather than through Isobel Campbell or Whitney Houston it was through him that I first came across Gainsbourg^Òs music. But that was quite a few years back, before I did my A-levels. When I got to there the class shrunk significantly. Only seven people did the new fangled AS level French, and that number plummeted again to just three doing the full A-level. Though that was a 300% increase on the previous years class. French wasn^Òt a popular subject. I^Òll stress again that this wasn^Òt because of Trev, which is what everyone amusingly called the guy I^Òm on about, but rather for a number of factors which you can probably guess for yourselves, as well as the fact that the other member of the department, who you also had to be taught by for A-level was a complete bitch. The sort of woman who there are far too many of in teaching. The reduction in class size meant that lessons inevitably became much more informal, and given Trev^Òs laid back nature we did very little actual learning of French during them. Which probably accounts for our dismal performances in the exams, but it was worth it I think. So I discussed Serge with him on a number of occasions, I was a confirmed fan by the time I got to the sixth form and we touched upon such subjects as the relative conceptual merits of his Rock Around the Bunker album, which to my disappointment I still have not heard in its entirety, and I remember Ms Campell expressing particular admiration for that one as well, as well as how he managed to cover a great deal of musical territory whilst still maintaining a consistent tone to his records. I think this is down to Gainsbourg being such a distinctive vocalist ^Ö I think at the time I compared him to The Fall in that respect, but I don^Òt think my French teacher had heard The Fall. He also taught General Studies and I recall one lesson where he was covering my class (the idea my school had for that subject was that you^Òd get taught by a different teacher every week, which is a great idea I think, though it didn^Òt really work too well as the haphazard way that General Studies was organised, and the fact that nobody really took it very seriously meant there wasn^Òt enough continuity to the course, and also very few of the teachers put enough effort into the lessons ^Ö not especially their fault all the time as they didn^Òt get to choose the subject areas they had to teach). We^Òd done the usual General Studies thing, which was to watch a video and then have a bit of a discussion about the quote unquote issue it dealt with. Quite what that issue was I^Òve forgotten, but I remember it being an excessively dull video, so I can^Òt imagine the ensuing discussion being anything better than half-hearted. The thing was that General Studies lessons were always ridiculously long, almost two hours in one go, but because the school had only switched to having lessons of that length that year, most of the available material for classes would only take up about an hours worth of time, because that^Òs how long the lessons had always been in the past. So there was always an empty half an hour at the end of lessons where, unless the subject at hand was a particularly interesting one and the discussion on it was animated then the teacher would usually let us get on with whatever we wanted. This lesson I^Òm on about now was one such occasion where that happened, and I was sitting near to where the tapes were kept, including a couple of the Serge ones that Trev kept to occasionally play to his students. So I started telling the people I was sitting with about Serge Gainsbourg, and how I liked him and so forth, and being the nice guy that he is Trev said that he would put some on so that they could hear it. So that tape started up, I can^Òt recall which record it was, possibly a best-of, as I know he kept one of those in the classroom, nor which song sadly, but as the tune began and Gainsbourg^Òs breathy gallic drawl came loping over the opening chords a boy sitting over on the other side of the classroom called over to me and said, incredulation in his voice ^ÓKieran, do you actually like this?!^Ô as though doing so would be the maddest thing ever, to which I just grinned and said something pathetic like ^Óer, yeah.^Ô This slightly useless anecdote is apropos my being in a record shop the other day and seeing a couple of Serge records and remembering that I hadn^Òt listened to him in ages. So if this was livejournal then I would have Current Music: Serge Gainsbourg. But ok, what about this? When I was in that record shop looking at the Gainsbourg recs I mistook the music on the PA for being Pink Floyd when in fact it was some reggae group. And then I realised that it was actually a reggae group *covering* Pink Floyd. I had a look on the ^Ñnow playing^Ò thing and it was from some compilation which I have forgotten the name of, but I expect it wouldn^Òt be too hard to find if you^Òre interested. It was one of the songs off Dark Side of The Moon, the one about breathing I think, I^Òm afraid I don^Òt know the title because, to be honest, I can^Òt stand Pink Floyd. I don^Òt think I could bear to sit through Dark Side of The Moon in its entirety ever again, though admittedly, as with a great deal of the bands I purport not to be able to stand they have done a couple of things that I like ^Ö Wish You Were Here is a nice song for example, and there^Òs a cover of it by Sparklehorse which is fantastic too. I^Òm not sure if I can adequately articulate the reasons for my dislike for Pink Floyd. I fear it may be down to personal prejudice against a particularly snotty guy I went to school with whose three passions in life were Lord of The Rings, playing cards and Pink Floyd, so they^Òve always been part of an axis of loserdom for me. It^Òs certainly nothing to do with me not liking prog, though I can^Òt stomach Van der Graaf Generator either, but just the other day I was listening to Magma and loving every minute of it. But on the recent top ten of prog on channel four Pink Floyd were number one but where were Magma? Not even on the chart. What does that say about the state of things? And though I think it^Òs a brilliant idea, I^Òm baffled as to why a reggae group would want to cover a song like that. In fact, though I don^Òt really listen to very much of it, I think the whole idea of reggae is brilliant, how it came about is fascinating. And I^Òm wondering quite how reggae would^Òve sounded if instead of American rock n roll through their tinny stereos back in the day, the people of Jamaica would^Òve heard prog. - Kieran p.s. Here's a picture of your man from A Flock of Seagulls and the rest of the band too - http://www.aimrocks.com/images/flock_of_seagulls.jpg _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself with cool emoticons http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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