Mojo - The Music Magazine

Pink Floyd Issue

New issue

Click For CONTENTS

Features Disc of the day

Haircut 100
Pelican West

(Arista, 1982)

Get in the mood for Friday's reunion concert, if you dare!

Haircut 100

'80s graphics guru Neville Brody has had a pop at Haircut 100, tracing the beginning of the end of popular culture to the moment the outdoorsy white-funk ensemble first entered the UK charts. Which dates the decline of all things good from some time in mid-October 1981. Well excu-use me, Mr Once Trendy Design Guy, but there was more than one player in that badmouthed decade's style/content mismatch, and some would say that he with a hand in this is not wholly without sin. Now Brody has designed some fine record sleeves, but is this really a patch on this or this? And more to the point, do Beckenham's Nick Heyward and clean-cut chums really deserve tarring with the Go West brush?

This Friday, "The Haircuts" reform for a one-off show at Chelsea's Cadogan Hall and, putting my cards on the table for a mo, I shall be in attendance. In context, and despite the lightweight window-dressing, they were an authentic aspect of the British post-punk infatuation with funk and jazz that gave us, at opposite ends of the credibility scale, A Certain Ratio and Spandau Ballet. Haircut 100 would start shows with War's Low Rider at around the same time that Orange Juice were starting theirs with Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah), and there were other elements - the chaste and campy self-deprecation; Heyward's scratchy guitar and twinkling chord changes - in common. And while it would be overcompensating to rate Pelican West alongside the same year's You Can't Hide Your Love Forever (although both were championed by the way-coolest girl in my High School, Sharon Gumbley), there's more to Heyward's only album with the band than the smash hit singles, notwithstanding the bongo-furious disco jitter of Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl) and Fantastic Day's madly-grinning trumpet voluntary. Dig beneath the surface for the spangly proto-indiepop of Snow Girl and - best of all - the misty, suburban English melancholia of Milk Film : a template, surely, for the twee pop wave that would break later in the decade.

Citing something like a nervous breakdown, Heyward went solo after this, with a buff new bod and the odd standout single - 1983's fey A Blue Hat For A Blue Day, 1987's more muscular Warning Sign - struggling to affect a transmogrification of his hardwired reputation for winsome bubblegum. In 1998, Creation's Alan McGee - as part of an addled campaign to rehabilitate some of the overlooked pop craftsmen of the '80s (including The Dream Academy's Nick Laird-Clowes) - spunked another tranche of the Oasis millions on Heyward's The Apple Bed, but vindication was not forthcoming. For that, he'll have to wait for Friday. See you at the front, Alan, shouting for Baked Bean.

Danny Eccleston

Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 14/12/2009

Further Listening

ABC - The Lexicon Of Love (Mercury, 1982)

Blue Rondo À La Turk - Chewing The Fat (Diables Noir, 1982)

Nick Heyward - The Apple Bed (Creation, 1998)

Related MOJO content:

Haircut 100

Comments

Comment on this post


Click here for House Rules

  • Truely great pop music. One to file alongside The Lexicon Of Love, Dare, No Parlez and Welcome To The Pleasure Dome.

    Posted by Alexander Meerkat at 12:37 PM GMT 14/12/2009 Report Abuse

    Reply to this post

Comment on this post

end of body content back to top

Footer

Home

News

Features

Disc Of The Day

Newsletter Sign Up

Gallery

Tickets

Mojo Shop

Message Boards

Subscribe

Covers

About

Our pals:

We Like

Join us on:

  • youtube
  • twitter
  • facebook

© Copyright Bauer - all
rights reserved.
Reproduction of this
website, in whole or in
part, in any form or
medium without express
written permission from
Bauer is prohibited. All
use is subject to our
Terms of Use

end of footer back to top

Back to top