Fischer-Z: "Marliese"

2 April 1981

"Just when I'd consigned them to my personal list of no-hopers, Fischer-Z spring out of nowhere with a minor belter of a 45, a small epic that takes much of the competition to the cleaners."

— David Hepworth

John Watts' Fischer-Z last appeared in this space just over two years ago. I had just begun the blog's second phase with fortnightly posts covering the early, pre-Single of the Fortnight era of the Smash Hits singles reviews. I had only recently completed the dispiriting batch of 1984 records and I was beginning to feel as though I needed something to rinse the aftertaste of the mid-eighties out of my mouth. I went back to the start of 1979, a time of incredible disco records, a punk scene that hadn't quite dried up, new wave at its height and flourishing indie labels happy to promote local obscurities with brilliant curios. What I failed to anticipate was how stagnant much of it would soon become. The eighties had to happen because the seventies had given up.

Bands who carried on into the next decade had to change. All the best British groups that had arisen as a result of punk were those who suddenly seemed to have no connection to the antecedent genre. Some bands embraced synthesizers while others rediscovered their love for soul but groups who wanted to remain tied to the traditional rock faced stagnation. While the likes of Scouse bands Echo & The Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes went in the direction of sixties' acid rock and Scots Big Country and Simple Minds gradually pursued stadium rock, none were so forward as to channel hard rock and even metal.

David Hepworth is pleasantly surprised to see that "no-hopers" Fischer-Z were suddenly doing something that he considered to be worthwhile and not stuck in indie obscurity. He is so taken with "Marliese" that he think it would be a sure fire hit single if it had been "the work of The Jam or some band of similar standing". Too right. Paul Weller's trio were imperial in the early eighties with all their intended singles from "The Eton Rifles" all the way through to grand finale "Beat Surrender" having been megahits. (The only reason "That's Entertainment" and "Just Who Is the 5 O'Clock Hero" didn't fare quite as well was because they were imports that still managed to make the charts) Same went for The Police and Adam & The Ants. Had any of them written and recorded "Marliese" it would've been a sizable hit.

But would they have done a song like "Marliese"? Adam Ant was all for going over the top but he was never this histrionic with his vocals. Weller could deadpan with the best of them but there was a lot of passion in his work but he never over-emoted anywhere near this much. Sting could be as serious as anyone in pop but rarely was he this humourless. Watts sounds like he'd been tripping on a strict diet of Ozzy Osbourne and other leading lights of British metal. In the context of the times, this may not have seemed like such a crazy idea. With groups like Iron Maiden and Def Leppard on the rise, it wouldn't have hurt to have been associated with such a scene. Roger Daltry may have also been an influence and The Who's ear-splitting concerts were a major influence on those very same headbangers.

You will read into this review that I'm not especially fussed by "Marliese" but I do hear strains of a good tune hidden in there somewhere. The bass playing is stellar and the organ holds up its end effectively as well. The lack of subtlety in its piledriver production and Watt's throat-shredding vocal are what really drive me away but there could easily be a more digestible piece of new wave rock to be unleashed had they sought to find it.

Rock music had devolved into many sub-genres by the start of the eighties but by decade's end it appeared the splinter acts were beginning to find their way back to each other. The 'poodle-metal' bands like Motley Crue and Poison saw themselves at least as much as the inheritors of The Sex Pistols as Kiss. Older rock groups were finding success with metallish recordings. British record label Stylus began putting out a series of compilations called Soft Metal, Precious Metal, Pure Soft Metal and Molten Metal which proved very popular. Their mandate appeared to be one that brought as much as possible under the metal umbrella rather than narrowing it down to its purist form. Non-metal acts such as The Stranglers, Marillion, Journey, REO Speedwagon, Toto and even Spandau Ballet appeared on these LPs. Were it the work of one of these groups, this high tension item would have been immortalized on one of these Metal comps — loved and remembered by people who like this sort of thing.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Bucks Fizz: "Making Your Mind Up"

I'm a North American music fan who doesn't follow Eurovision. I don't care about it either out of genuine interest or (much worse) for the purposes of irony. Nevertheless, I do know of three winners in its long and storied history. France Gall won 1965 for "Poupée de cire, poupée de son", ABBA famously had a star-making win in '74 with "Waterloo" and Bucks Fizz took the title in '81 with the "deeply moronic" "Making Your Mind Up". (I am also aware that Celine Dion and Katrina & The Waves won the contest though I couldn't tell you what either of them performed) A pretty big step down from the first two, sure, but at least I know about it. No doubt very few brain cells were strained in the creation of it but what does it matter? It's insanely catchy and that just about makes up for (a) its stupidity and (b) the cringe factor. There isn't as much interest anymore in people having 'guilty pleasures' but I'd argue that this song is precisely why they're still needed. Hepworth accurately predicts the outcome of the song contest but I dare say he wasn't chuffed about doing so.

Fischer-Z: "Remember Russia"

8 March 1979

"Dr. Who meets future shock victims in the scarred wastes where radioactive debris rains on mankind."

— Cliff White

It was still a couple months prior to John F. Kennedy's famous "We choose to go to the Moon" speech but the launch of the first Telstar satellite in 1962 was a key moment in the Space Race. Having been embarrassed by the Soviets with Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin (and even Laika), the first NATO-friendly communications satellite was a coup and was probably even looked upon favourably even by those who considered lunar travel a waste of time and resources. We were now upon an era of instant communication, even if the mail remained slow and it could take months or even years for a pop hit to cross the Atlantic.

Just twelve days later, nutcase genius producer Joe Meek gathered with his wards The Tornados to record "Telstar". As extraordinary as its namesake, it is three minutes of instrumental surf rock with effects that still dazzle, particularly with its distinctive use of the clavioline. Though obviously futuristic, it retains a charming primitive quality and one can practically see the string holding up the spaceship as it hurtles its way through space. The music wasn't made by computers, it was cut and mixed by dour men in lab coats and, indeed, so too were the shuttles being sent out to orbit the Earth. Rather than being built by robots or 3D printers, they were very hands on projects with music critic Neil Kulkarni observing that last year's fiftieth anniversary footage of the Apollo 11 Moon landing showed a ship that was very "Blue Peter".

If we then jump ahead to the late seventies the landscape has altered. Space exploration has been culled, the glory days of space rock — from The Byrds' "Mr. Spaceman" to Pink Floyd's "Set Controls for the Heart of the Sun" and on to all kinds of prog rock nonsense — have been and gone and, yet, machines are beginning to take over as man becomes redundant. Young children had Star Wars figurines to maintain the illusion but to many technology was showing its ugly side and it wouldn't be for another three or four years as families began buying up home computers and VCRs that the average citizen could at least be placated by a sense that they were getting something out of it.

This void of progress leaving everyone behind is the backbone of "Remember Russia" by Berkshire group Fischer-Z. This being 1979, it's tempting to take the skeletal reggae, hyper-dramatic vocals and tight, choppy group performance as being not unlike The Police, albeit with the added attraction of an unsettling organ as an add on. Repeated listenings, however, begin to expose the differences. Where Sting could never quite remove tongue from cheek, lead "Fish's Head" John Watts means every word he sings. I've belittled earnestness in the likes of Jim Kerr but here it works well. Watts refuses to spell out the incidence and one YouTube comment helpfully points out that "this song is amazing and has real meaning to those that understand" but even that misses the point. You don't have to have lived through some sort of technological wasteland to feel moved by this song. When Watts screams "damn those satellites to hell!" you're right there with him.

It's easy to take "Remember Russia" on face value, that it's a diatribe against Communism and the planned economy, but there's nothing to suggest that's what Watts had in mind. Instead, I propose that he's arguing that the Soviets place little value on human life and, while we in the West are meant to be against everything our Iron Curtain counterparts stand for, it's beginning to spread throughout the world. Tech is leaving us all behind and we're even letting it happen. We're now more than forty years on from then but this is still relevant, if not more so. And it still sounds great. Maybe it's every bit as futuristic as "Telstar".

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Joe Jackson: "Sunday Papers"

Wags didn't know what to do with disco and punk but at least they had pub rock that they could wrap their heads around. Elvis Costello and Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe and Graham Parker & The Rumour: they all wrote classic pop-rock with just enough chords and they all had humour. Joe Jackson never quite fit in with this lot but he got lumped in with them all the same. More strident and with a knack for taking empathetic situations and making you side with whoever did him wrong, he churned out some great but unlikable tunes over the years. "Sunday Papers" is a prime example: nicely played and sung (assuming you can stomach Jackson's voice) but with an undeserved smarminess, like that guy on Twitter who makes hackneyed observations but is convinced they're original thoughts. And for all his bluster about press, I'm sure he's right there with them when they go on about the nanny state and how political correctness is the greatest blight currently facing humanity.