SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK18th May 2001But they were just so lame! A politically incorrect description maybe, but when most popular music is aimed below the waist it is the most appropriate adjective I can think of for the bland metronomic plod they produced. And their sound was so thin too, and we're talking of a time when normal TV speakers made even the heaviest metal anorexic. My recollection is that the presenters (Jools Holland? Mark Lamarr?) were dismissive, and did we all laugh when we got together in school on the Monday morning! Nobody liked them. Sigue Sigue Sputnik were one of the biggest promotional disasters in rock history. Hundreds of thousands of EMI's pounds went down the drain. ("EMI won't give me the budget to blow up a real helicopter. It's such a hassle" - Tony James of SSS) When I heard that Sputnik were playing The Club With No Name I went up into my parents' loft and rediscovered my old Virgin Rock Yearbooks and Guinness Hits Of The 80s. "SSS aren't really in it for the music, so they won't mind me pointing out that it's the biggest pile of garbage," an anonymous NME reviewer is quoted as saying of their Flaunt It LP in Virgin's 1987 yearbook. It also records that their supposedly "sold out" concerts were less than half-full. Their debut single "Love Missile F1-11" reached No.3 but the follow-up only No.20. The album entered the charts at 10, but in five weeks plummeted out of them. What I had entirely forgotten (or perhaps it never even registered in the first place) was that EMI gave them a second chance. Three years later their Dress For Excess album spent a solitary week in the charts, at No.53, and their next three singles spent a total of six weeks in the Top 100, reaching 31, 50 and 75. Sigue Sigue Sputnik was a marketing scam but the British public didn't fall for it (maybe for the last time?). The reasons for their failure are probably locked in the image they so carefully manufactured to "guarantee" their success. Their sound was heavily influenced by the U.S. punk synth duo Suicide, who a decade after their debut still seemed avant garde. Sputnik's idea was to imitate them but with 1950s style rock'n'roll guitars, to be futuristic and retrospective simultaneously. Ironically this is exactly what Suicide's Alan Vega did on his solo LPs, only more convincingly. Like DIY structuralists, James, Degville and co. married other opposites too: despite their Soviet name and iconography, they sold advertising space between songs on their records; despite their effeminate accessories, they wanted to be hard rockers. But they never quite followed through: they wore women's stockings over their heads like tough bankrobbers, but then carefully ripped and double-stitched them to flaunt whatever popstar features they thought they possessed. It could be argued that all this merely confused the public. There are even more obvious reasons for their lack of success: little about them appealed to the young female audience who made up the bulk of the singles market, and, frankly, for just about everyone else, they just didn't rock! So when I saw the posters in The Park, I was morbidly fascinated. "History will prove us right," they proclaimed. I nearly choked on my bitter with laughter when I read their claim to be pioneers of techno. If anything, that is precisely the element they removed when they replaced Suicide's jackhammer drum machines with the anaemic tappings of Mayhew and Kavanagh. And yet, lo and behold, when they appeared on stage, what did we see? No drums, but a synth blaring out preprogrammed beats and backing tracks. And operated by - contrary to the advertised bill and therefore apparently a very recent recruit - a young female backing vocalist in a small black cocktail dress.  Fifteen years ago such a line-up would have been innovative, and perhaps Sigue Sigue Sputnik might have had a Kraftwerk-like influence on future music. But they can't rewrite history, no matter how much they would like.
Their first three or four songs were "Suicide lite", the same phrase repeated over and over again, making 2 Unlimited sound like grand opera. I felt like crying out,"You've been conned, people! The emperor still has no clothes!"And yet... And yet I gradually warmed to them. They had made the effort to dress up. They were putting on a show. They had quickly built a rapport with a small gaggle at the front who were, unlike me, attempting to enter into the spirit of things. I felt guilty. Yes, I could intellectualise why they had so dismally failed. True, I could feel bitter about how they plagiarised the sound of another band I consider a hundred times more worthy of a place in rock history. But right there, right then... sod history, let's dance! As the set speeded along, the band gave up all pretence of remarketing Sigue Sigue Sputnik and turned into a goodtime covers band, blasting out Elvis and Stones tunes with facility and affection. When they left the stage, their roadie rushed on. "Come on, clap...Nah, don't bother. They're going to come back on whether you want them to or not." When it comes down to it, they were fun. I forgot to mention it earlier, but when I was searching my parents' attic I came across a box of LPs - all our adolescent favourites! You can imagine how the blood drained from my cheeks as Sigue Sigue Sputnik's "Flaunt It!" flicked into view. I phoned my sister. She vehemently denied that she had bought it. My parents were sure it hadn't been given to them. I could recall no childhood friend who might have left it accidentally. My God...I couldn't have, could I? Alex Wilkinson, GIMPmag. More photos and another review of this gig can be found at The Sputnik Surgery. |