Sinister: Sarapalooza? Pah....

[the duke of harringay]

Madame Cholet wrote:

> >I was genuinely thrilled by 'Are you scared to
> get happy?' at the age
> >of 18, and I know Matt and Claire wholehearted
> believed in what they
> >were doing, but their ramblings became
> increasingly irritating and
> >pictures of cherries and disused railway lines
> didn't scream 'POP' but
> >Middle England.
> >
> First of all it's Clare. Second of all, if you
> think your 'ramblings'
> didn't become 'increasingly irritating'...you're
> mistaken.
> Thankfully.....

(beth then rambles on for a while...)

and i drop by and say, hey, can i sit on your
fence?  Because i agree wholeheartedly with what
(Mc)Taggart said about Gentle Despite, and agree
that a lot of what Sarah records released was
self-parodied and redundant (i mean, that group,
what were they called?  Aberdeen?  they were the
pits...), but i also want to hug beth because she
gets it soooo right about what was so great about
Sarah, and how getting up the noses of people like
(maybe) Robert was part of the whole damn appeal.
The Orchids took shed loads of drugs and drank
like fishes.  So, i would hazzard a guess, did
loads of others (certainly the drinking bit..),
but what they did NOT appear to do was adhere to
the tired old rock'n'roll rhetoric in the way they
made records.  Top marks for that.

And i believe there ARE parallels to draw with
B&S, if not simply for the fact that in the NME
'interview' when Richard jokes about putting
warning stickers on their records  saying that the
records might contain tweeness.  Pure Sarah.  And
the fact that they get up the nose of the NME /
the music press.  Pure Sarah.  Sarah records
operated well outside of the norm where 'indie'
music is concerned, and so do B&S.  Sarah records
was prinicipled (you may have disagreed with the
principles and say that they held un-trendy
-today- pc-friendly political views, and that's
your perogative), and so too are B&S (or at least
they appear that way - if you believe the NME it's
more by accident that design, but since when did
you believe the NME?).Sarah records meant almost
nothing to me after Sarah 50, and only a handful
of the early singles actually still make me
delighted, but that's hardly the point.  What
Sarah (and Matt & Clare by implication) did was to
engender in many people that there was a world
where you could escape the humdrum rampant
dullness of rawk, without having to jump stylistic
ship totally and go with, say, Hip Hop or Techno.
And although i'd find that a bit blinkered, i fear
that if i was sixteen i'd have felt the same.
That i wasn't sixteen is probably a signifier as
to why i'm  more on the fence with this than
others may be.  I dunno.

just my opinions :-)

keep the faith,

duke.


--
Tangents On-Line
http://www.virtual-pc.com/tangent/
Tangents On-Paper: PO Box 102, Exeter, EX2 4YL, UK

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