nus“: PREVIEW [ v SINGLES g
I Goat: Good Times
(Beggars Banquet) It was inevitable that Goat would one day release a single called ‘Good
Times‘. Almost as inevitable as choosing to back it with a cover version of The Stooges‘ ‘TV Eye‘ in fact. This band strive to make cliche-perpetuating a
’ recognised art form but. for all their predictability. their dumb rawk posturing. their penchant
fortrite.chanty choruses. you have to hand it to them — they still manage to
sound betterthan Birdland. (FS)
I The Paul Weller Movement: into Tomorrow (Freedom High) Dumped unceremoniously by Polydor after delivering sixteen Top Ten hits with The Jam and The Style Council. Weller goes all independent on ‘lnto i Tomorrow‘. And sterling } stuffit is too. With more 2 guitar than we have i become accustomed to from him of late the song ' owes more to early Style J l l
Those nice young EMF boys play a version of Cream‘s ‘Strange Brew‘ to underline the point that they are a rock band. and seek out credible names to remix their tracks: producers like Afrika Bambaataa ; and. odder still, Jim Thirwell, otherwise known as Foetus. a ‘siek‘ figure in ripped leather and shades who perpetrated some of the most brutal and blasphemous tortured- artist exorcisms to make it to vinyl in : the last ten years.
The petulant audience reaction.
’ again. They didn‘t make a big show
of it by getting purist and developing
hang-ups about their credentials. Perhaps it‘s something to do with their comparative youth (the oldest member, Ian. is 23) that it‘s come so easily. The older, Manchester-based
baggies remember punk and the
i subsequent Northern scenes. rubbed
' shoulders with their prime movers.
had the trendiest club in Europe as
theirlocal . . .That‘s a lot ofbaggage
to be carrying around when you‘re
Council singles than the later dull~as-dishwater mature material. A hit. methinks. (JH)
I Light Oi The World: Keep
The Dream Alive ‘ I r E intro leads smoothly into a Yorfer‘. Ultimately. 3
(Cooltempo) This promises ; brassy chorus reminiscent though. despite the
so much. An orchestrated I I i ' odeyssey‘s‘Native New : obvious good intentions
the songgocsnowhm ; EMF: ‘teenybop JESUS developingaband. But then. from ' then. ataCarter USM gigin and. as they say‘ the mad Jones, 01. serious rock act? the uncharted cultural desert of the University of London Union. when to obscurity is paved with ‘ I ' . Forest of Dean comes this they were bombarded with verbal good intentions. Or _ BOth v Says AlaStdlr unselfconscious pop noise. The first and physical aggro for ‘treading on
; something. (JH) Mabbott, and yet LP to make an impact on keyboard Carter‘s indie turf‘. must have
I Mann: Riders On The
player Derry. for instance. was New
depressed them. But by this time
. , stran el neither. . ‘ i smmuwé‘? Mal-n." be . g y Order's Law Life. Halfofthe they were not only under fire from I i :3?l%;::‘;'.“gfd..‘;” '3 Manchester baggieswouldlike to the credibility police.The publicity
capitalise on the
encroaching Doors retro
offensive. but let them be
castigated for
emasculating the sultry
understatement of the
original recording with
some cheap. user-friendly
syncopation. There‘s
nothing sacred in the
ignominious death ofa
bloated debauchce. but
there is something
definitive and
untouchable about Doors
compositions. Mann have
unsuccessfully gatecrashed a great taboo;
it‘sonly fairthatthey prepare to be booted out on the pavement to lick
their wounds. (FS)
Even in the video for their first hit. ‘Unbelievable'. EMF were pushed
3 E > m m a. g
48 The List 3— 16 May 1991
' as arena-fillers-to-be. looning around in shorts and baseball caps on
the kind ofstage-set featured in
' scores ofpromos for Simple Minds
or Status Quo. [wanted to hand it to them. and not just for the hype.
which was a scaled-up version of the methods the boys had used to drum up a capacity audience for their first ;
5 pub gig; telling everyone they met
about this fabulous new group called
EMFthat they‘d heard about. More impressive was their easy and subtle assimilation ofdance culture into a
mainstream. obvious Big Pop
; dimension. EMFjust took what they
wanted. smoothed over the join and got on with the business ofdoing it
spiton New Order. . .
If there‘s one thing EMF have shown so far. it‘s that they‘re very good at being a p0p group. at papering over the memory of Bros with their own image. More than that. they‘ve got an age-range of fans wider than Bros could ever manage. But they’ve responded to that with a laddish self-destructiveness to disassociate themselves from a position that they don‘t feel is very cool. They don‘t want to be tarred with the ‘teenybop Jesus Jones‘ brush, and so they trash a hotel at the EMI annual conference (with accomplice Nigel Kennedy!). spraypaint the backdrop ofthe Smash Hits A wards and destroy their instruments in the process. They also
machine started churning horribly against them at their own party, The Rave At The Cave. when they opened their show with a tape of the theme from Sesame Street. Next day, The Sun reported that they came on stage to a Hitler speech and sparked a riot. Unbelievable indeed.
Their desperation for credibility has led them to release ‘Children‘ as their new single, apparently the hardest track they‘ve got although it‘s certainly no mosh anthem. The arenas and stadia are still EMF‘s destination. but the signs are that they might now slow down as they ponder exactly what route they want to take to get to them.
EMFpIay the Barrow/and, Glasgow on M0n13.