Peter Cox -- Richard Drummie -- the late Alan Murphy, Kate Bush's guitarist, who died of the "80s disease", HIV and AIDS.
Now that Peter is enjoying a much-enjoyed comeback as "ReBorn in the USA" winner, how about time to celebrate the band that made the 1980s.
Go South West!
The breakthrough came for Peter and Richard after, probably, years of giggling as musicians, with "We Close Our Eyes" (1985?)
Originally written for Chaka Khan, best known for "I Feel For You", which was later covered by Melle Mel, the track was refused by the black diva and returned to Go West. Her loss was Peter and Richard's gain, for this became their first hit.
Peter explained, "Chaka felt it was too personal, but it's just a song about closing your eyes and having a fantasy, dreaming." (Smash Hits, accessed 1988)
The story goes that the video director originally wanted to put Peter in a classy suit, like Richard's in the video. But something wasn't working.
Finally a stage-hand walked passed with a wrench. The director grabbed it and handed it to Peter, who stripped off his jacket shirt and tie.
"His muscles began to flex, and I knew we had the look", said the helmsman (quote from 1988)
A growing army of fans would come to agree.
[ 08 August 2003: Message edited by: kovacs ]
However, I do remember buying Appetite For Destruction when it first came out, and thinking that it was the greatest thing ever made, and also not realising that it was primarily about sex and drugs.
edit: I also recall that an album that used the word 'fuck' six or seven times was possibly that most shocking, daring and rebellious thing of which I could conceive.
[ 08 August 2003: Message edited by: Thorn Davis ]
Success breeds success for "The West", as a breed of fans would come to call them.
For their next hit, "Call Me", Peter and Richard knew they needed a unique look that would stand out from the crowd -- not an easy feat in the 1980s, decade of high style and design.
Peter probably heard about the concept of "post-modernism" (1985) when he aimed to reproduce the film Rumble Fish's unique look and combine it with the B-movie style of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.
There were fears that this look might incite a gay or homoerotic audience...fears that Peter boldly denied. He never said he was gay, or that Richard was; but he didn't take the prejudiced route of saying he wasn't.
Another radical innovation during this video was the addition of speech. At two points, the guys turn and speak lines to each other, reminiscent of the B-movie style. Richard says "what kept yer" as Peter arrives in the 50s cafe...and Peter responds, looking up at the 50 foot woman, "not 'her again!" The rough accents surprised those who had enjoyed The West's smooth, suede look in suits, but Peter and Richard weren't putting on an act. That was their real voices.
In the video, Richard did his own stunts. "It was only sugar glass," he assured us.
quote:Did you turn the volume down when it got to those bits in case your parents heard? When I was at uni one of the guys who lived way up high on one of the staircases would put his monolith-speakers on the window-ledge and play Sweet Child O' Mine at top volume over the quad. *Sweet.
Originally posted by Thorn Davis:
edit: I also recall that an album that used the word 'fuck' six or seven times was possibly that most shocking, daring and rebellious thing of which I could conceive.
*joining the fight
"Call Me" might have flopped unless Max Headroom headlined it on his show, The Max Headroom Show. Then, acclaim was guaranteed, as the programme went out to millions of viewers on the then-new Channel 4.
Next, Go West were asked to ascend to a higher level yet, as they wrote the theme tune for Rocky 4. Peter puzzled hard about what kind of track would suit the film, and came up with "One Way Street".
It wasn't 1985 anymore, and a new look was needed. Peter and Richard took notes from the hit post-modern series Miami Vice and its sister show MoonLighting, designing their suits from these visuals.
Some fans wondered if the colour-coding was meaningful, indicated a more feminine touch for Richard.
"It wasn't meaningful," Richard said in interview.
Like a rolling stone, the Go West bangwagon kept rolling, and next year (86) saw the release of a prestigious double-album, Bangs and Crashes. The first album had been eponymous -- it was time for a change. The discs saw remixes of favourites from last year, "Call Me", "We Close Our Eyes" and "Don't Look Down", given an exciting dance and beats twist by black mixers.
Finally the 80s party was over, and in 1986 Go West released a less successful album, Dancing on the Couch. Songs about historical kings and queens didn't go down so well with the populace, and Go West became just a memory, with their farewell gig at Labatt's Apollo (Hammersmith Odeon).
A later album, Indian Summer, failed to chart and only spawned one single, "King of Wishful Thinking" from the movie Pretty Woman. Alan Murphy was dead; the magic was gone. The lyrics of the song were only too true..."I am the kind of wishful thinking."
But a generation would remember the intelligent rock of GO WEST.
Faithful, the Go West website http://gowest.homestead.com/
quote:
Originally posted by Octavia:
Did you turn the volume down when it got to those bits in case your parents heard?
I don't think so, no.
I was just trying to remember where G'n'R fit into my personal development timeline. I can't think whether I listened to Appetite... before or after I started stealing pornography and set fire to the school. I've a feeling it was 'after', which makes it bizarre that I thought swearing on a record was so 'out there'. Perhaps it was because I was chastised by adults for my misadventures, and I partly saw records as being part of the adult establishment. Maybe I got a giddy thrill from the fact that these people who condoned my behaviour were out there destroying this establishment from within. If only I'd kept a diary, maybe my 11 year old self would have recorded my exact responses to every piece of pop culture I experienced, and I wouldn't have to speculate in this manner.
quote:
Originally posted by Thorn Davis:I was just trying to remember where G'n'R fit into my personal development timeline......If only I'd kept a diary,
Next time I'm home, I'll check in my diary to see how I recorded the feelings when me and my two best
friends listened to her taped-off-a-tape copy of Appetite on her crappy cassette player when we were 13. Dangerous.
Oh, I was 13 in 1991, so it is not relelvant to this thread. Sorry.
[ 08 August 2003: Message edited by: omikin ]
No pressure Om, but when do you think that will be ready?
I might wee with the giddiness of it all.
Words cannot accurately convey the surprise and dismay I felt as a 12yo keen to enjoy a bit of sparkly, inoffensive soulpop.
Sigue Sigue Sputnik, originally named Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, was born in Simbirsk on April 22, 1870, the son of a successful government official. The first breach in Sigue Sigue Sputnik's comfortable childhood came in 1887, when the police arrested and hanged his elder brother for plotting to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. Later that year Sigue Sigue Sputnik enrolled in the Kazan' University (now Kazan' State University), but he was quickly expelled as a radical troublemaker and exiled to his grandfather's estate in the village of Kokushkino. 
During this first exile (1887-1888) Sigue Sigue Sputnik became acquainted with the classics of European revolutionary thought, notably Karl Marx's Das Kapital, and he soon considered himself a Marxist. Finally granted the necessary permission, he passed his law examinations in 1891, was admitted to the bar, and worked as a lawyer for the poor in the Volga town of Samara before moving to St Petersburg in 1893.
In St Petersburg, Sigue Sigue Sputnik joined the growing Marxist circle, and in 1895 he helped create the St Petersburg Union for the Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. Police soon arrested the leaders of this organization. After 15 months in jail, along with another union member, A Flock Of Seagulls - soon to become his wife - Sigue Sigue Sputnik went into Siberian exile until 1900. At the end of his first period in Siberia Sigue Sigue Sputnik went abroad, where he joined Alien Sex Fiens, The Cramps, and other Marxists in creating a newspaper, The NME (The Spark). The paper proved to be an effective device in uniting the existing New Wave and Psychobilly groups, and inspiring new recruits. In exile Sigue Sigue Sputnik wrote his masterpiece of organizational theory, Love Missile F1-11 (1902). His plans for revolution centred on a highly disciplined party of professional revolutionaries, who would serve as the "vanguard of the proletariat" and lead the working masses to an inevitable victory over tsarist absolutism. 
more to follow later, sputnik fans!
So, at a gig immortalised on the B-side of "Need You Tonight" 12 inch, Hutchence was forced to push "Guns In The Sky Further", notching up the language as he sang "it's a load of f**king shit!"
Much later, in the then-musical future of the 1990s, reinvented post-modern rock stadium gods U2 faced the same problem. Having pastiched the 'XS's Welcome to Wherever You Are with their Achtung Baby album, Bono lifed a styling from Hutchence with "Mofo". On the record, he sang lyrics you could play to your twin sister...but live, he pushed up the heat by saying "mother-f**king rock and roll". The stunt lost some fans.
Unwilling to be pigeonholed as pure homosexual, however, I also had folk legend Paul McCartney’s ‘Pipe of Peas’ and the multilingual megamix of keyboard warrior Howard Jones’ seminal ‘Like to get to know you well’.
And so it would have stayed were it not for Streetsounds Electro volumes 2, 4, 6 and 9. Although these led to my Dad repeating ‘wikki wikki wikki wikki’ over a Casio pre-programmed beat pattern in the keyboard shop under the arches on Gloucester Road. The shame is that it sounded exactly like Newcleus.
I’ll never be able to explain the allure of Whodini’s ‘Freaks come out at night’, or singing along to Rockmaster Scott’s ‘The roof, the roof, the roof is awn fiyah! We don’t need no water let the muthafucka burn! Burn muthafucka! Burn!’ The confusion of Kool Moe Dee’s ‘Go see the doct-orrrrrr’. Why? Why, three days later, do he have a burny willy? What, we axed ourselves as we ran home, is a Gucky? And what hour is Gucky time? Why did Schooly D make the pre-school mistake of saying ‘K for the way my DJ cutting’ when he had a perfectly good K word in the previous line (‘as one by one I’m knocking y’all out’).
There were no handbooks back then. No handy cut-out-and-keep slang guides in the Soaraway Sun. Nope. We middle class whiteboys had to find out own way. You try b-boy limpin in Clark’s Commandos. When your Dad keeps telling you to zip up your parka.
And Just Ice had metal teeth. With his name written in em. And he was having sex. Cool.
---------------
Nostalgic lol. My headmaster asking me what a ‘cru’ was. ‘Well, it’s like, ow we ip oppers spell crew innit.’ ‘O. I see. And a posse?’ ‘S’totally a cru.’ ‘Right. Is this like a gang then?’ ‘O man, like step off, yeah? Chuh.’
Gay slurs against Go West continued since Day One of their incesption. Two good looking men, in leather jackets and blue jeans...the rumours were staring fans in the face, with outfits like that evoking camp culture. Even the name, it was said, quoted the Village People.
"It was unintentional" said Peter, but the myth-mill increased with the release of "Don't Look Down" and "Innocence" on the album Go West. Close reading of the lyrics seemed, Beatles-style, to reveal clues about their sexual tastes.
quote:
fear I'm falling [sang Peter] keep your eyes on me, I'm Colin!
It was a dangerous claim, at a time of raised emotions for homosexuals. In the light of Clause, then Section 28, the BBC had introduced an experimental gay couple, Barry and Colin. The latter, Michael Cashman, was Peter Cox's cousin: and the words of the lyric clearly indicated gay solidarity.
caption:
Cashman, with gay star Ian McKellen
above: cousins in arms
But the shitstorm was only just beginning to gather.
[ 08 August 2003: Message edited by: kovacs ]
quote:
Originally posted by Harlequin:
Shouldn't this be in the music forum?
Music = life! 
quote:
Originally posted by 69 Comeback Elvis:
Stuff that maketh me to snort guiltily in I'm-so-not-doing-any-work manner
Go West, The Secret History -- Part 3
Peter had been born on 17 November 1955, a time when homosexuality was purely a social secret, or kept undisclosed. Growing up in Britain during that period, Peter probably had no idea about such thing as a gay subculture.
Early days: an informal snapshot
He met Richard [Drummie] on the club circuit and by 1982, they had decided to form Go West, named after the Marx Brothers film. Peter, at age 27, was the one who took command and decided on their musical direction.
To quote an online rock authority:
quote:The songs were well-crafted, well-arranged and produced and they used a regular session crew of talented and innovative players. Cox's voice was strong and distinctive and the Godley And Creme video for We Close Our Eyes was extremely inventive.
Source: centrohd.com
Quoting another source:
quote:
Backed by the likes of Austrian keyboardist/producer Peter Wolf and a cast of West Coast studio musicians, they've produced several albums of high energy dance pop.
Source: MSN entertainment
Their first album took a film noir approach, with moody line drawings by Nick Hardcastle (brother of keyboard-master Paul "The Wizard" Hardcastle) contributing to the 1940s sleazey feel.
private spies: a scan of the album artwork, done Aug 2003
The production was largely a family affair. Peter's cousin Paul Cox took the cover photographs, and even the keyboard duties were shared by Peter, Richard [Drummie] and a newcomer called...Dave West.
"Dave wasn't actually related to anyone in the band," Richard laughed, "but when we heard his name, we said 'you're in!'" (Imagined dialogue, circa 1982)
Despite the "PG"-rated nature of the band on a superficial level, under the surface things were anything but. Go West were marketed as a teen band of pin-ups, but the paradox was that they were grown men...Peter was a full 30 years old by the time "Bangs and Crashes" was released.
On "Call Me", Peter included the words
quote:
Watch this space, there's a message here for you
No need to read between the lines...
The innuendo was clearly present, as an invitation to "read between the lines". The only lines he could have meant were his lyrics; for "Call Me" was actually a narrative about placing an advertisement in the personal columns.
The code of placing "message[s] here for you" in his words continued, with "SOS". A rocking track showcasing the axework of Alan Murphy, the song featured these songwords:
quote:
Watching your window, across the street we share
Eyes on your shadow...in your underwear!
(Un-der-wear...)
Though the lyric sheet explained that the line was "eyes on your shadow...you are unaware", the misheard words had already been heard by fans, and the message was already there in their heads. This was heady stuff for a teen band.
Peter then sang "Innocence", supposedly a story about
quote:
One man alone, in search of innocence.
The line was delivered with a rasping cry at the start of the song. Peter went on to describe
quote:
Room with a view, for a man who is starting over
A new beginning, in a new town where no-one knows his name...
Looking for somewhere to hide from the sound of thunder
Out of the storm, the air will feed the flame!
Dangerously ambiguous, the lyric did not state what form of innocence -- sexual, drug-related -- the anonymous protagonist sought. It was acceptable to society while Peter distanced himself from the man in his song, although more than one commentator picked up on the reference to Room With A View -- a homosexual coming-out novel like Maurice or Another Country.
Across the land, journalists' fingers were posed over keyboards, wondering whether to strike...wondering what meaning was hidden this time "between the lines" of Peter's meaningful words.
quote:
Telling himself once again...
One kiss, one promise broken...
"I'm just telling stories," he claimed to Richard, tapping his notepad with a biro pen. "That's all we ever do in songs...tell a story." (imagined conversation, circa 1986)
quote:
Closing the door, he knows yesterday's gone forever...
So much unsaid, but nothing left to say...
And tomorrow he will be a different man
[instrumental break]
His mind is made up, he's got to leave while he still can
But we learn from our mistakes, sometimes answers come too late
Will he be lost forever in search of innocence?
It seemed clear to that Peter was using the third person singular, safely taking about someone else -- not him. But a close reading of "Innocence" showed that Peter couldn't hold in the truth behind his fiction of "one man alone". In the final stages of the song, he allowed himself to improvise with a dangerous ad-lib.
If you listen close, he says out loud "Anywhere...they don't know my name! And the air can feed the flame!" It was an anguished cry, and Peter clearly forgot himself, unable to tape over the song once it was laid down on the recording. He had attempted the old "Problem Page" trick of telling a story about an imagined friend, when it was about his own situation: and in the last moments, the disguise had faltered.
No wonder the remix was called, "The Desperation Mix". Peter had some hard thinking to do, coming to terms with himself...and his feelings about Richard.
Go West, the hidden history, #4
Putting personal rifts behind them, the West decided in 1989 to concentrate on the one thing it had always been about -- "the music."
"We've been stupid," Peter gruffed, standing up from the table and taking his espresso cup to the window of their shared Docklands apartment.
"Not just you, mate...me too," Richard told him softly. Peter turned at the word he wanted to here, and their eyes looked up. He couldn't help smiling.
(imagined conversation, 1989)
Luckily, the pair had a new project to get their grips into. While researching the lyrics for "One Way Street" for Rocky III or IV, Peter had made a useful and exciting contact. One day Stallone, star of that movie, had offered to take Peter out on a cruise down Sunset Beach, on motorbikes.
biker buddies: richard and peter
scanned August 2003
"Where are we headed?" Peter asked above the powerful roar of the engines. The pink glow of sunset hazed through palm trees above. For the first time in ages, Peter felt free...content.
"I got someone I'd like you to meet," smiled Stallone, whom Peter had been told to call "Sly".
They pulled up in front of a bar near the beachfront. Cool blue neon carved out words in the dusk sky...reflected in sudden puddles that Peter had to skip over, scurrying to keep up with the bigger man.
They entered the crowded bar area and weaved through a crush of guys. Leather and denim predominated. What sort of a place was this, Peter asked himself with a grin. Then the owner stood in front of them.
"Peter...this is Bruce," introduced Sly. "Bruce...Peter."
next: try harder
quote:
Originally posted by London:
Room With A View is not a homosexual coming-out novel!
OK SO I MADE ONE MISTAKE!
quote:
Originally posted by 69 Comeback Elvis:
or singing along to Rockmaster Scott’s ‘The roof, the roof, the roof is awn fiyah! We don’t need no water let the muthafucka burn!
WOW I just had a moment of pure trainspottery nerd-boy recognition! I traced a path; I recognised an allusion! It added to my understanding of the text (the Disco D and Princess Superstar track 'F*** Me On The Dancefloor')! Wow! This must be what it feels like to be, say, Damo 666 or something.
[ 14 August 2003: Message edited by: London ]
Peter's bare feet walked over warm blond wood. He placed a cup of cappucino coffee at the side of the futon. A face grinned up at him. Ice-blue eyes blinking; a hand pushing through ruffled dark hair.
"I should have house-guests more often!" mumbled Bruce Willis, looking up at Peter Cox.
It was June 1989.
Later, the two men sat on Bruce's veranda, watching the brightly-colored sails of the windsurfers on Venice Beach and sipping a companionable Quattro with ice. That afternoon, the soundtrack album to Die Hard II was hammered out.
Peter and Bruce -- the pair had fast moved onto first name terms by now -- both cradled acoustic guitars and looked at each other as they played off the other man's riffing and changes. Bruce had decisive, quick movements, Peter noticed; he gripped the guitar neck as he'd grip a bottle, or a fishing rod. He was an outdoors guy, tanned with the West Coast sun...a league away from the suburban British towns Peter had grown up in.
"Let me play you something I wrote myself," Bruce offered with a crooky half-smile. He strummed, then began "One, two, three, hit it boys!"
Quick as a flash -- he had Bruce's album The Return of Bruno indoors, and had listened to the opening track more times than he could count -- Peter joined in, his higher soulful voice chiming against Bruce's gruff vocal and making the other man beam in surprised pleasure. "May I...take your order...bourbon rocks...glass of water..."
The two men sang the chorus in unison: "Coming right up!" then collapsed in laughter.
Bruce was the first to stop.
"OK, let's get back to work," he gruffed. His voice faded as the camera moved away from the veranda, leaving the two men becoming more distant...just figures in white shirts, bent over notepads...immersed in their discussion. "I think we should go with 'If You Die Hard (I Die Hard Too)' for the title track..."
next: a disappointment for Peter
quote:
Originally posted by London:
I dig this satirical cultural analysis: particularly the 'imagined conversations', by the way. What's it for?
...FUN I think -- I don't know! I'm possessed! if one other person sees where I'm "coming from", I'm fulfilled.
If you had been in London's Docklands during September 1989 you might have seen two fit and crisply-dressed men travelling from Limehouse to Mudchute. The first was tall, with neatly-cropped sandy hair; the second sported a trendy cut, longer at the back and wavy, short on top. They wore clothes -- a crisp white shirt, untucked into Levi's 501s, for the first guy, and his companion wore a black vest.
The Docklands Light Railway sped past silver buildings, symbols of Thatcherite excess and corporate power from that age, as the two men wrestled with their friendship.
Other passengers couldn't believe it. For this was Peter Cox and Richard Drummie, lead singer/vocals/keyboard and guitarist/backing vocals/keyboard in Go West. And they were on this train!
Part Five: End of the Dream?
"You what?" exclaimed the shorter man with the brunette cut...Richard Drummie. When he grew angry, Peter knew, Richard reverted to his South London roots. They had drawn on that in the "Call Me" video. Now it just sounded angry.
"The whole album's been scrapped, mate. Not just the album, the movie."
Richard hadn't heard a word beyond the word "mate". His eyes screwed up in contempt.
"Some mate you are," he returned bitterly, then spat "mate", with sarcasm.
(reconstruction of the talk they had, Sept 1989)
Willis' film had been literally blown "out of the water" since that legendary meeting on Venice Beach, with Peter.
Planned meticulously around a thriller attack on a cruise ship, Die Hard II had been scuppered by the release of Steven Seagull's film Under Siege, based around the same premise.
Willis was furious, and vowed to ruin Seagall's career...a boast that would come true in the 1990s, as the other man's role as a martial-arts action hero floundered, and Willis' soared with brave choices at the box office, like Twelve Monkeys.
But Peter was left without a movie -- without a soundtrack. For what was a movie with no soundtrack, and vice versa? That evening he sat in his apartment, alone. Richard was in town, hitting the clubs -- he'd said he was going "out...just out, OK!" -- and Peter was cross-legged on the floor, flipping playing cards into an upturned hat, with a desultory movement.
Then, he took a bouncy ball and tossed it against one white-painted wall, catching it on the rebound...changing hands, and throwing it again. And again.
A neon light from a wall outside cast garish flickering colour into the otherwise-dark apartment. Then it began to rain, and the windows were beaded with droplets so that Peter appeared out of focus, then the focus changed and you could see him through the pane.
He put on "Goodbye Girl", on repeat...CD format. Then, suddenly, he turned it off from across the room, using a remote control. He would use those songs. He wouldn't let the band down! He could just retitle them, and the album, and give it all new names. New cover pictures...the works.
It came true, and the next album from Go West was called Indian Summer.
Not many people bought it, but Peter owned a copy, and it always reminded him of his time with Bruce...Bruce Willis.
Hurrah it's now Go West Friday at last, and my thread will be on "active topics" all day!
[ 15 August 2003: Message edited by: kovacs ]
[ 15 August 2003: Message edited by: London ]
More tomorrow though!
[ 15 August 2003: Message edited by: Bamba ]
I didn't expect the Bruce Willis chapter. I like honest homosexuality.
[ 15 August 2003: Message edited by: kovacs ]
It was the end of the consumerist 1980s -- December 1989, precisely -- and all around the country, people were preparing for a new era.
Style magazines proclaimed that all the accountrements of the capitalist "me" decade were now "OUT", and yuppie businessmen cleared out their offices and loft apartments to make way for the fresh set of values of the 90s. "Cats" were OUT..."Dogs"...IN. That symbolised the move from selfishness to a generous attitude in what people like Peter York were already dubbing, "the we decade."
In his Docklands warehouse conversion, one man was packing the accessories of the 1980s into a series of packing chests and tea boxes. The mobile phone...he raised a crooky smile...he'd had some good times with that...the parties at the Limelight and other discos..."nah", it could go. With a wry look he tossed it into the chest on top of The Face magazine and the empty bottles of champagne from all the wild parties.
Then he went to the high window and looked out over the street at the darkening sweep of London. Tonight would be the night. His name was Peter Cox, and he was lead singer in the band
Later, backstage at his New Year's gig at Brockwell Park, Herne Hill, Peter sat opposite his friend and colleague, Richard Drummie. Preparing for the 90s look, Richard had a new cropped hairdo, and was wearing a space-age white shirt with matching trousers, and a funky silver transfer of a baby on the front of the shirt. He looked different, Peter thought...but good. Yet the thought only peeked into his mind, because he was concerned with work right now.
"I've got a new song I want to sing, Ritch'," Peter began, holding a sheet of paper in one hand. He cleared his throat.
Richard looked puzzled. "New material, mate? Now?"
Peter smiled at the reassurance that the two were still friends, but he knew this was something he couldn't tell even to Richard.
"Trust me..." and a hand reached out to touch Richard's shoulder. "I have to do this."
Half an hour later, and GO WEST were performing some of their marvellous music to an appreciative crowd. "Don't Look Down" had opened the set, followed by "SOS" and some newer, less accessible material from Dancing on the Couch. The audience had dampened a little during slower and more ambitious numbers like "From Baltimore to Paris", but when Peter took the mic and announced that it was about The King and Mrs Simpson, there was a wave of applause that started patchily at the back and grew steadily until it reached a roar of acclaim at the front, by the stage.
"Now I'd like to try a new number," Peter announced, and he felt his fingers shake on the guitar. He glanced at Richard, and his colleague began to play the song they had discussed, although Richard wasn't even sure what it was. Like a professional, he found himself knowing the chords...instinctively.
Peter launched into the soulful vocal style that had always been too good for chart pop, and soon he was blasting out these lines:
quote:
Outside, I'm masquerading
Inside, my heart is fading
I'm just a clown
Since you put me down
My smile is my makeup
I wear since my breakup with you
He looked at Richard again, and the band fell silent. They all knew something was going down. Peter had written the song "Masque of Love" only a few years ago, and by choosing this song he was clearly continuing that lyrical theme. But why? They only knew it was something to do with the bond between the two frontmen.
As those long moments dragged out and the London crowd gazed at the band in uneasy wonder, Richard's mind raced. Make-up...that could just be a theatrical thing, but it was also associated with, well, gays. But Peter wasn't a gay, was he? Suddenly a flickering montage of images ran through Richard's head...Peter's hand on his shoulder...the lyrical reference to gay club Brief Encounter in "Masque of Love"...the ambiguity in all his songs except "Goodbye Girl"...the weekends away with Bruce, and Mike Cashman. Peter was...gay?
Peter was looking across the stage at Richard with searching eyes. The two men stared at each other, expressions locking in communication, then comprehension. It seemed like minutes had passed in uncanny silence. Then Richard's fingers moved; he grasped the neck of his guitar and found the chord. With a smile, he continued the song where they'd broken off, and stepped up to his own mic to join Peter on backing vocals.
Peter stared, then his face broke into a grin. The words blasted from him on a tide of relief and gratitude, and he heard Richard, his friend and partner in music, coming in to harmonise with him.
quote:
Baby, baby, take a good look at my face
You see my smile looks out of place
If you look closer it's easy to trace
The tracks of my tears
Peter Cox was crying. But they were tears of happiness.
the end
quote:
Originally posted by kovacs:
But, and I'm not messing around here, I'm surprised you think that putting someone's hosted pics up on a forum for everyone's judgement is acceptable. You've demonstrated that Boomspeed isn't "private", but it's not so hard to get into Hotmail either, and I don't think anyone would go through your inbox to find amusing or suspect mails for posting on here.
I think you're over reacting. You posted the pictures. The pictures link back to your boom speed account. You seem to imply that I'd somehow 'hacked' into your picture account and revealed to the forum something that was hidden when in fact anyone with a right mouse button could have easily found the same thing. I assumed precisely because you'd had this stuff in the not-even-vaguely-private account from which you'd taken these other pictures that you wouldn't mind me making a light hearted inquiry about them. I have (or will when I finish this) edit out my post because I don't want to piss you off over something so trivial but comparing me hacking your explicitly private Hotmail account (which isn't actually easy to get into and I don't know where you get that idea from) and simply following a link from something you consciously posted up on the forum yourself isn't even a vaguely fair comparison. If you're that worried about stuff like this then I'd use Misc's upload thing in the future which is entirely anonymous but I think here you're inventing a point of net etiquette that has never existed.
Pat: I like what Kovacs has done here: following Habermas, he counterposes the traditional idea of an objective cognitive-instrumental (functionalist) reason to other reasoning capacities that perform subjective and intersubjective duties within the rich fabric of societal interactions; in this case, by hijacking key pop-cult icons of the Thatcher-Reagan interregnum and ventriloquising what he suggests might be the homeoerotic subtext to each "iconnarrative".
From the ideas of intersubjectivity developed here, Kovacs might usefully develop a distinctive theory of 80s-into-90s discourse ethics.
Greg: Uh...
This thread rocks. In a non-ironic way.
[ 19 August 2003: Message edited by: kovacs ]
quote:
Originally posted by kovacs:
They link back to it if you bother to right-click and c & p the picture properties -- they don't "link to it" as in I invite you to click on the pictures here and visit all my other stored images.
No, there was no nice little link in your posts themselves but, given that it's possible and easy to anonymise yourself here (i.e. posting pics through Misc's upload or using a host that doesn't allow aces to picture folder, only the pictures themselves) I'd read into the situation that you weren't that bothered. Otherwise I would have assumed you'd take either of the measures I outline above.
quote:
Originally posted by kovacs:
I agree, it's not really comparable technically. But Boomspeed is "password protected". Doesn't that imply the idea that this is a personal account?
Two things:
One, having never used boomspeed myself, I had no idea it was password protected so the implication was lost on me. Also, given that they don't protect your actual folders from public view it still wouldn't have given me the idea that this was an account you explicitly wanted kept private.
Two, the above point notwithstanding, password protecting something wouldn't again neccessarily have implied a desire for privacy on your part as the password protection on boomspeed isn't actually designed to do this, only to prevent others from deleting your photos or adding their own and sucking up your allocated space.
quote:
Originally posted by kovacs:
It wasn't a great parallel, but I regarded the Boomspeed box as semi-private, as I would a web email address. It's not so much that you'd be curious and look in that box, but that you felt freely justified in posting up links to the other pix for everyone else to judge. That seems a bit of an ethical leap to me. I don't have a list of netiquette rules to check it againt, but it surprised me.
Because your boomspeed box is open to anyone who looks then I ethically felt that viewing it was the same as viewing the pictures you'd actually posted. As for posting the link up, again I didn't think you'd have a problem with that because anyone else could go and do what I did so pretending otherwise would be doing just that, pretending. I suppose this is the part of your attitude I don't fully understand: this semi-privacy that you mention is basically a pretence, it's not even slightly private* which is why I didn't feel that I was violating anything.
quote:
Originally posted by kovacs:
I appreciate your edit. I would have thought there was some seed of a discussion here, but it seems nobody else agrees with me or feels like commenting.
I was quite happy to edit and I really have no reason or desire to piss you off and my post was meant to be light hearted, not some kind of calculated violation. I would also have been happy to dicuss this as it raises some interesting issues which, with a lot of people lives moving into the electronic realm, are probably only beginning to raise their head but I'm just out of a huge long meeeting so sorry 'bout that. I also hope the online rage you mentioned on another thread has nothing to with my actions and responses here.
*Well, it would be if you weren't posting images on the public internet using it as without that no one else would know if it's existence but you know what I mean.
[ 15 August 2003: Message edited by: discodamage ]
edit: I didn't think anyone but me and perhaps London liked this thread.
[ 15 August 2003: Message edited by: kovacs ]
he says you have 'unusually soft lips for a man', by the way.
a story from the never-before-told past of the 1980s' most important rock band
A rude awakening
Electricity pulsed through the clock radio. It was a new Casio model and had red digital figures, now showing 7am. A song came on mid-way through, invading the sleeper's dreams.
quote:
lipstick cherry all over the lens, and she's calling!
The sleeper was well up on the charts of the day and he immediately recognised the sounds of Duran Duran's "Girls on Film" single even through his waking haze. Music was his life; in fact, he lived for music. He was just a boy now but soon his name would be Peter Cox.
Grey years
It was a bleak morning in November 1982 when Peter Cox awoke on a day that would change his life. Going back, we can resituate ourselves within that period. Margaret Thatcher had declared battle on the striking miners, under militant leader Arthur Scargill. In Parliament, she frequently came to a head against her opponent, Neil Kinnock, then-leader of the Labour Party and future MEP. The winter of discontent, under Michael Foot, had been swept away with the old decade (1970s) and a new spirit invaded the land -- a spirit of mercenary, can-do money-grabbing. What would be known, even then, as the "me-decade".
Unexpected surprise
Yet the cliches we know from the 1980s, decade of style and fortune, were not yet in place by 1982. Yuppies swigging champagne in London fountains, and glamorously-dressed musicians who made every Top of the Pops into a daring, blazing catwalk were something of years to come. In many ways, the "scene" was more like the dismal late 1970s, with gloomy post-punk bands like U2, The Police and The Jam offering sour-faced anthems for a disenchanted youth.
wild boys: duran were the pioneers
Only a few new faces on the scene held the seeds of glories to come. One of them, we have already met -- on the radio. For Duran Duran were a shocking new outfit who had picked up on the craze for Space Invaders with "Planet Earth" and with sequels like "Girls on Film", really stretched the new medium of music video to its fullest capacity. Another force to deal with was Adam and the Ants, for similar reasons.
New faces, unfamiliar places
But these were the pioneers, the trailblazers. To find the other heroes of the 1980s, we have to look in unexpected places.
Like at the unassuming breakfast table where a young man called Peter was hungrily eating Ready Brek. Still living with his parents, he had a conversation with his mother.
"Mum, I'm planning to go to the Diamond Lights tonight...is that OK?"
"You mean that youth club?" his mum, Mrs Cox, checked. She was a down-to-earth figure, with an accent rough and unassuming as Peter's.
"Yes, that's right," Peter corrected her, earnestly. "I shan't be back too late, OK Mum?"
(imagined chat, circa 1982)
Smile of a friend
wild boy -- peter was an attractive tearaway like this
Outside, Peter took off his school necktie and slipped the loop over his forehead, tightening it gently so it sat like a striped headband. That was better! Now he was an Ant Warrior. He rolled up one sleeve of the white school shirt.
"Alright, Pete!" said a rough voice.
"Tone!" shouted Peter in greeting, holding out a hand for the other to shake.
The boy who strode towards him, palm out, was stocky with a lop of dark hair over one eye in the "heavy-head" style.
Peter hadn't seen his friend since before the weekend, and he looked him in the eye as they clasped hands.
"Well well," he repeated. "Tony Hadley!"
(imagined, based on probable data)
[ 15 August 2003: Message edited by: kovacs ]
[ 16 August 2003: Message edited by: ben ]
quote:
Originally posted by kovacs:
The History of Go West -- 3 in a Series
"It wasn't meaningful," Richard said in interview.
I truly loved Go West, I even wrote to Jim O' Fixit about them. But doesn't Richard look like Liza Minelli's recent ex David Guest?
quote:
Originally posted by Spiderwoman2002:
I truly loved Go West, I even wrote to Jim O' Fixit about them. But doesn't Richard look like Liza Minelli's recent ex David Guest?
Why yes! So he does.