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Thompson Twins: In the Name of Love
Thompson Twins
In the Name of Love
(Arista, 1982)
Before charting in the mid-1980s with pop hits like “Hold Me Now” and “Doctor! Doctor!”, Thompson Twins was a politically motivated rock band. Their first US LP, In the Name of Love (second in the UK where it was released under the title Set with a slightly different track list) is the first step in a move toward a new direction by turning away from politics, utilizing more synthesizers, and gravitating toward mass appeal. In doing so, they isolated their early fans and angered the one-time adoring press.
That being said, this record is hardly synth pop and will come as a bit of a surprise to the casual listener, as this is more rock-centric (and maybe a little more experimental) than what they were known for later on. In contrast to what normally comes to mind when the name of the band is mentioned (the multi-gender/racial/hair-colored trio of Tom Bailey, Alannah Currie, and Joe Leeway) they were at this point made up of—count ’em!—seven members with backgrounds ranging from former squatters to seasoned musicians. But it’s the rhythm section of drummer Chris Bell and (former Soft Boy) bassist Matthew Seligman who steal the show as they put a boot under the music, turning every track into an irresistible and highly creative jig with the latter’s minimalist and Afro-beat experiments and the former’s tight, no-nonsense, anchoring force.
The Heroine Sheiks Return: “We’re Going for the Jugular on Every Song”
By the time you read this, the Heroine Sheiks are already out on the road. Their newest record, Journey to the End of the Knife, was recently released on Amphetamine Reptile Records and includes a new line-up. They toured the South and East Coast at the end of May, and a West Cost tour is tentatively slated for October. Bear witness: The band is now hitting harder, writing better songs, and needs to be seen.
Singer and group mastermind Shannon Selberg, formerly of the seminal Minneapolis band Cows, took some time out before the tour to chat with Crawdaddy! about the new record and line-up, the art of being a frontman, and working around the shadow of his previous band.
Selberg has built his reputation by baiting audiences through a one-two punch of his lyrics and a visual combativeness. In front of a crowd’s rapt attention, he walks a tight line between surrealistic drama and parody with an unusual brilliance not often seen in the rock world. The Cows were far from being taken seriously at first, sliding onto the Minneapolis scene in 1987 just as the Replacements/Hüsker Dü juggernaut was coming to an end. The Cows ushered in a new era of noise, art, irreverence, and bad vibes all in the disguise of a crooked party band. Their music was mostly devoid of melody and at times form, with Selberg occasionally bleating a roughed-up bugle. No one wanted to know about them and those who did considered them nothing more than a joke that would hopefully go away soon.
Good Riddance to the 40th Anniversary of the Summer of Love
There’s always a clamor on Haight Street, even now at night: neon lights, blinking lights, colored lights, and people standing outside yakety-yaking their current affairs on cell phones. Music spills out of doorways and thumps through walls, with shouts and laughs added in to concoct the sound of good times. White homeless kids look for a place to squat and some food or dope. There are no parades or street lamp banners trumpeting the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love. A few shops have window displays with fading Avalon posters, but what’s new? Every day here is a time warp of sorts, a more joyous Daly Plaza. You have to head off the main strip in order to find what really separates this place from the rest of the world.
Things get weird around this city after the sun goes down. Where the mornings and afternoons hum with history and promise, along with the fog rolling in from the Pacific comes the stench of danger and broken dreams. Leaving behind the Haight racket, you can plunge headfirst into the quiet of the side streets—a goldmine of lost stories and forgotten names spinning around in the wind like loose trash. And what about all those wayward kids who heard the media’s call 40 years ago and left Anywhere, USA to flood these very streets with nothing but the clothes on their backs? Kids disappeared. Swallowed up by open doorways, swallowed up into Golden Gate Park, and swallowed up into the night—if they were ever heard or seen again, the light was gone from their eyes.
Mountain Climbing with the Melvins
You know the type: trailblazers, cult heroes, pioneers. These are the type of bands that make up in prestige and critical accolades what they lack in multi-platinum album sales. Bands that have at least one surefire “classic” release in their catalog. Sure, you know the type. Well, in 2004, the organizers of London’s ultra-hip music festival, All Tomorrow’s Parties, decided to make the following year’s festival 
quite a show of trailblazers and cult heroes by picking a handful of these bands and asking them to play one of their classic records in its entirety. One of the groups asked to participate was the legendary Melvins who were requested to bash out their 1993 album, Houdini. Apparently the band liked the experience enough to record it for prosperity… problem was, they didn’t think of it until after the fact. They ended up playing the record again at a hastily organized show outside of Los Angeles some time later. It was released as Houdini Live 2005.
“It’s doubtful we’ll ever get a chance to play this whole thing again live,” wrote guitarist Buzz Osborne in the liner notes to that CD. So you can imagine the shock of excitement when it announced they were not only booked one night to repeat the live Houdini experience at Slim’s, a mid-sized San Francisco club, but two earlier (and much revered) records the following night as well. Those two LP’s, Eggnog (their second release from 1991) and Lysol (later re-titled: Melvins from 1992, both recorded for Berkeley’s fiercely independent Boner Records) are chunks of arty riffing, unusual time signatures, and absolute power. These records have become synonymous with the band’s early sound and nothing short of revelatory for some. Houdini, meanwhile, signifies a change of course both symbolically and technically. It was their first for a major label (Atlantic) and it cherry-picked some of the best qualities from previous records. The LP is a huge sounding grab bag of ideas, moods, experiments and ranges of aggression—and one Kiss cover thrown in for good measure.
As soon as these shows were announced, I got on the blower to the band’s press agent. Questions needed answering. Since that ATP festival, many bands have been playing their classic records live, and the idea is fast wearing out its welcome. (In fact, the day before the first Melvins show, Sonic Youth was over in Berkeley playing their 1988 LP, Daydream Nation.) Was one of rock’s most cutting edge bands plumb out of ideas? Why these three particular records? What about Ozma? Why not Prick? For good or ill, my subsequent interview with Buzz Osborne was done through email; Monica, the woman who handles their press, told me that’s how he likes to do things nowadays. The good part of this: no follow-up questions because, god knows, I do love to talk about this stuff. The ill part: no follow-up questions because, god knows, I do love to talk about this stuff. Whether it’s from years of having to answer stupid questions or from just not giving a shit, Buzz sticks to short answers peppered with humor or cynicism, sometimes evading the question and sometime hitting it head on with refreshing honesty.
Oar After 40 Years: Brilliant or Mere Ramblings?
by: Andrew Lau
“When I brought the record to [Columbia], they didn’t hear a thing,” he says with his hard-to-miss Brooklyn accent. “The record company barely released it.”
“You had to push them to release it?” I ask.
“Begged. Pleaded. They had no motivation to put this record out, they didn’t think it was ever going to sell, and it came out to complete silence. Nobody said, ‘Jesus Christ, this is a masterpiece. This is great work of poetry; this man has created a great work of art.’ It wasn’t packaged, no promotion campaign, no release party. I actually don’t recall anything happening.”
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by: Andrew Lau
published: November 24, 2009
in column: Feature Story
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