Melody Maker
April 22, 1978
Going Soft?
Ian Birch Meets The Soft Boys
by Ian Birch
When did you last savour the possibility of an Armenian mating ritual? Or, for that matter, feel like asking a tree for an autograph? But then maybe the situation hasn't arisen yet. Maybe you'll remember or maybe you'll forget: it doesn't really matter because it hasn't happened yet.
No, I haven't gone berserk. Those are random and slightly-modified snippets from the world of The Soft Boys. The Soft Boys are, to use a handy handle, unique. After a period of shrouded incubation in Cambridge, they have signed with Radar Records and are poised to infiltrate the nation's bloodstream.
The process will be far from easy, and the reason is that their music is so bizarre. They polarise audiences.
You may think that they are erudite, elliptical claptrap or, on the other hand, fearlessly experimental. Just to confuse matters, they are neither and both.
However, before you make any snap decisions, bear a couple of points in mind. First, they are still a young band and so can veer between the inspired and the almost diabolical. Secondly, don't judge on just one viewing. They need and deserve several before any hardening of the arteries sets in.
Most important, though, is that they are unquestionably a force to be reckoned with. It may take years, or they may be espoused overnight, but in one form or another something defiantly original will emerge.
The Soft Boys are Andy Metcalfe (bass), Robyn Hitchcock (vocals, guitar), Kimberley Rew (lead guitar), and Morris Windsor (drums). Robyn fronts the band, writes the material and was the one S.B. I spoke to at length.
Background info was skated over because, in the context, it seemed somehow unimportant. Robyn began for example: "I was in a group called The Beetles in London about five years ago when I was at art school. It didn't get very far but it got me going. The others can speak for what groups they were in. Then I emigrated to Cambridge because I had to have somewhere to go. I was on the run, to some extent. So I sheltered in Cambridge."
Apparently Simon Boswell from Advertising persuaded Robyn to head for Cambridge because of the fabled number of musicians lurking there. But Robyn found himself on the Folk circuit. Unbeknownst to him, Andy was trailing around the Bluegrass and C&W circuit.
Anyway, Robyn made a demo, which effectively nose-dived, but it did get him an audition as the singer for a local White Soul outfit, which was the bare bones of The Soft Boys.
The original motivating force was Charlie Gillett's brother, who subsequently left and is now forming his own band, The Hormone Squad. After several attempts at securing a lead guitarist, Kimberley was found and the present lineup coalesced around the start of this year.
Still, they managed to get out a three-track single on Lee Moods' Raw label (another Cambridge-based venture) in '77 which drew the attention of Andrew Lauder, head man at Radar. That, rather scratchily, brings us up to the present tense.
"So," I hear you say, "what are they like!" The comparisons so far have been with Syd Barrett (the quizzical Cambridge cohort of yesteryear) and Captain Beefheart (no comment necessary).
Over to Robyn: "That's fine. Unfortunately you can't see Syd Barrett at the moment. You can see Beefheart. Straight down the line, my favourite albums are Please To See The King by Steeleye Span and Clear Spot by Beefheart. They're favourite ones from this decade; therefore the sound will lie somewhere between the two."
And sure 'nuff he's absolutely right. They will move from an abrasively electric Steeleye instrumental to a newly-interpreted Magic Band rhythm full of rich and wintry disjointed structures, that sometimes work superbly and sometimes fall flat on their rear ends.
Robyn's abstruse and weird images ("Machines can't swim") tumble out in hectic profusion, with the result that they sound gloriously luxuriant or just plain dumb. Strict discipline isn't, as yet, the name of the game.
"If you do this sort of stuff, you've got to be quite pushy about it. It's got to be tight. That's the thing about using Rock, inasmuch as it's physical. If I was in a Folk club, I'd have to be a stand-up comic or have to have pretty tunes. With Rock, you're so much further away, to start with. Most Rock is about having a good time. This is bad-time music to an extent, but then it's not.
"There's an awful lot of dread in it. It's very dark, but then a lot of the words are quite funny, almost silly. We could easily go out and do nightclub stuff and be absolutely fatuous. We did the 'Postman's Knock' for a few gigs. The Albion Dance Band did that as well.
"It just depends where your aptitudes lie, and it's a matter of covering all angles, I suppose. The Soft Boys cover all angles. It doesn't stay the same for very long."
But that welter of variety and images, Robyn, which antagonise and intoxicate... "It depends whether you write sitting down or standing up. You should never sit down and write at a desk. You should always think up the words when you've got the electric guitar on, because that's the kind of pulse you've got to put the words to.
"So T.S. Eliot wouldn't have written 'The Four Quartets' in exactly the same way -- at least some passages he wouldn't have written in exactly the same way if he'd been standing over an electric guitar, because he wouldn't have had time to think."
"You have to think about dramatics. It's good to have a song which maybe would last five minutes and build up and have crests and waves rather than cucumber, saucepan, traffic signal, gods, worms -- we're back here and nothing's happened. That's the weakness of bombardment. You do have to come up and go down."
The Soft Boys' material includes sounds like "Wading Through A Ventilator", "The Face Of Death", "Hear My Brane", "The Pigworker", and "(I Wanna Be An) Anglepoise Lamp" (coincidentally the first Radar single). Onstage, they do chillingly, contemporary versions of "Heartbreak Hotel" (with more than a nod to John Cale's epic Gothic descent) and "Cold Turkey" (which is very special).
I had to ask about some of the songs and Robyn was only too willing to oblige. First up was "Face Of Death". "It's just about somebody who literally looks like the face of death. I thought, 'Christ, I'd hate to be like him,' and I wrote the song with the idea that you've got to associate with whatever you're most frightened of or whatever you most despise. It's like touching lepers or something, almost masochistic. You could take it down to Baden Powell talk and say you must face challenges."
Then there's "Fatman's Son" ("I've no idea what that's about"), and "Where Are The Prawns?", which concerns "somebody being made love to by seafood." But let's not forget "The Pigworker". Explains Robyn: "There're two guys who run a holiday camp for dismembered baketball players and they're trying to prise open this girl who is made of bubble-bath liquid.
"They're trying to open this girl called 'Heather' because she hasn't complied with the basketball regulations and in the end they get her opened up by a pterodactyl. (You know how much they look like bottle openers.)"
Aside from Kimberley's often excellent lead breaks (a fresh-faced bopper if there ever was one), Andy's sturdy bass and quirky backup vocals (watch out for the Hawaiian shirt), plus the urgent and inventive drums courtesy of Morris, onstage they all come together for strangely strange collective intros to the songs: chants barked out at the audience.
"That's good for continuity. You see, sometimes I really like chatting to the audience, and sometimes I don't. Obviously, if you did 45 minutes straight off, some people would turn off whilst others would just be carried by the fact that it's relentless.
"So do that or have a specific thing to say between songs, don't say, 'This-is-one-Ruger-wrote-for-Jeannette-hope-you-like-it.' Or, 'Some-of-you-may-remember-this-it's-by-Buddy-Holly.'
"I mean, say that if it wasn't by Buddy Holly, because then it would create a certain amount of interest. You've got to accept it's a show. It's not market gardening and unfortunately it's not 'The Four Quartets'."
Perverse? Pig-headed? Artful match/mismatch? More egocentric hogwash? If it entertains you does it matter? Also, if it sets you thinking, can that be bad? Wait a minute, this is no apology. Give it to The Soft Boys. Little by little. (To be continued at an unspecified date.)
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