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In 1986, the much-anticipated finished product of the ten revolutionary yet reactionary years since the first punk earthquake finally hit the stores. "Flaunt It," the title declares. The object in question is none other than the manifesto of post-modern rock.
Fresh from the legendary Generation X, bassist Tony James spent silent years crafting the last frontier of rock bands. It would be quite reductive to say that by creating the Sigue Sigue Sputnik he merely offered a new wave variant to the pop-punk sound of the rustic ex-group managed alongside Billy Idol. In reality, the product stands as a contemporary art masterpiece, a means to "become a star," the last frontier of pop songs.
Just as twenty years earlier bananas and jeans with zipper openings graced the covers, now, paying homage to the new prevailing cultures, there's a poster in Japanese cartoon/video game style featuring an iconography reminiscent of a kind of Mazinger, launching a series of explosive shots from its deadly hyper-technological limbs, set to destroy everything in its path. It is a cyber-samurai eager to appropriate every musical genre that set trends (from Elvis to the glam T-REX style, from Eddie Cochran to the most apocalyptic David Bowie) to become trendy itself. Indeed, to become the most commercial object ever conceived (indicative that it was produced by Giorgio Moroder?), even deciding to sell the gaps between one song and another for lucrative advertising spots (such as those for Id Magazine or L'Oréal).
James only wants a multiform and malleable body ready to sow the seeds for the music of the new millennium. Taking their name from a Moscow street gang (the translation being "Burn, burn Sputnik"), the band in formation immediately attracted some of the era's most curious artists, such as Andrew Eldrich of Sister Of Mercy or a young Annie Lennox recommended by Mick Jones and rejected because "she could only sing." Technical skill here indeed has no depth; in the second great rock'n'roll swindle, only the media phenomenon counts and the brazenness to impose themselves on half the world as "the next big thing" through effective provocations. Thus emerges an avant-garde look of cyberpunk on amphetamines, with sponsor-covered and plastic shirts, collections of piercings and chains, earning them the distorted nickname "Sick Sick" even before their official public appearance.
In reality, this triumph of the most trashy form hides incredible substance. A music full of inventiveness, like a demonic meat grinder, delightfully fishing from the modern repertoire of the previous thirty years to create a living pastiche worthy of the Residents of "Third Reich 'n' Roll"; it is a crazy collage of sounds and feelings, where nothing contains everything within itself but devoid of its emotional power. The riffs, the love phrases, everything is reduced to mere wallpaper, drained of meaning and merely good for (delicious) broth.
"Love Missile F1-11" is perhaps the clearest example of this futuristic rock'n'roll: the voice of Martin Degville synthesizes Gene Vincent's heartaches with the alienation of Alan Vega, launching a missile that alludes to fanciful sexual symbols as much as to an impending nuclear war. In the background, echoes of Mozart, cut-and-paste guitars like New York Dolls filtered through the Roland G-707 (the synth guitar that Mick Jones, a close friend of James, gifted him for his birthday) and samples from classic 80s films like Terminator, Mad Max, Pacino's Scarface, Blade Runner. But beware, Sigue Sigue Sputnik do not want to celebrate their era but rather illustrate the more innovative aspects of the present with a prophetic and certainly not optimistic vision of the future. Amidst the bouncing video game melodies of "Rockit Miss Usa" (inspired by the ever-beloved Suicide of "Rocket Usa"), there is a heavy - though always playful - admonishment of the increasingly pressing military control of the USA in the western world with a fantastic tale of the (at the time) two superpowers destroying the world with increasingly lethal weaponry based on nonexistent offenses and insults. And the beauty of this wonderfully astonishing music lies in this ever-truthful poetic about our future: the combination of sex and war, love and death, carefree Bolan-esque glam (the hilarious 21st Century Boy says it all) versus the dark à la Peter Murphy full of despair and terror. It's a battle between love and hatred for the growing dehumanization, the younger sibling of the de-evolution of cousins Devo, from which we are dazed, packaged, cataloged like a perfume or a can of meat.
This is "Flaunt It," the final destination of rock, whether you arrived here from the irrational violence of Iggy Pop or Donna Summer's robotic dance. Here you'll find this and more, romantic songs screaming "She is my man," identifications between television and religion, mutant kids calling themselves "the bastard children of Ziggy." It's what we ultimately are too, "the final product." It's up to us to still recognize ourselves as humanity that, though tired and traumatized, remains intact, pulsating in its identity before its products and its consumption.
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