Sigue Sigue Sputnik "Flaunt It"
Wednesday, March 30, 2022
I first heard the music of Sigue Sigue Sputnik while walking with my friend Kimley in London in 1986. My memory is that the music was wandering away from a boutique, or more likely, on Oxford Street. I heard about the hype, and the music didn’t impress or leave its mark on me. Ten years later, I wandered around the HMV store in Shibuya, Tokyo, and I noticed that they had this album out on sale, and one could listen to it through headphones. As I looked around the store while listening to the music, it became apparent that Sigue Sigue Sputnik made a lot more sense in Tokyo than in London in the late 20th-century. I didn’t buy the CD at the time because it was too weird of a juxtaposition for me at that moment. Minutes ago, I was wandering in the neon-lighted streets of Shibuya crossing, where the future is very much present. And Sigue Sigue Sputnik is very much about the future at that time and present.
Tony James is very much the essence of the London punk music scene and was a member of Generation X and was in a band with Mick Jones of The Clash and years later in a 21st-century band Carbon/Silicon. At heart, very much a conceptionalist and musician, he started Sigue Sigue Sputnik as the soundtrack for the 21st-century but done in the 1980s. Trashy-glam look with rockabilly overtures and tons of sampling of classical music and dialogue from numerous films, such as A Clockwork Orange. The hype was that the band planned to sell advertisements within its grooves and sound and on the back cover of their first album, Flaunt It. The plan is to make this band very commercial and sell merchandise or advertise other companies on the record. This is not an original concept because in 1967, The Who thought up the same thing for their brilliant The Who Sell Out album. What seems to be an avant-garde notion in 1967 became a reality in 1986 (or sort of).
Today I purchased a used copy of Flaunt It at Record Safari in Atwater Village. The album still stings, and in its manner, very beautiful. Or my version of beauty, which may not be yours. Still, “Love Missile F1-11” is a kick in the head, and it’s a beautiful marriage between Rockabilly and Space-Glam rock. It’s teenage in appearance but can only have been made by a person, such as Tony James, who was in their mid-30s at this recording. It takes a certain amount of age to reflect and to go forward. Bold gestures often make great art, but the devil in the details matters the most. It will take more than one listening session, but Flaunt It is like peeling an artichoke slowly and dabbing it into melted butter. One of the key figures behind this album is producer/artist Giorgio Moroder, who is doing the ultimate production job here on this record.
The sincerity among its grooves is all surface but done by a master chef working with delicious ingredients. I have always preferred superficial artists, and for sure, Sigue Sigue Sputnik is not for everyone’s taste. But if you are willing or ever had walked among the neon-light nights of Tokyo, I think one would understand the poetry that this band brings to the table. Imagination runs amok, and you are either sucked in or left scratching your head in some dark Canyon (Topanga/Laurel) of the soul.
To give full credit to the band, they are Neal X, Ray Mayhew, Miss Yana Ya Ya, Tony James, and Martin Degville, their singer.
