Sinister: reggae goes prog

[Kieran Devaney]

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

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