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Rating: 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.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Love Missile F1-11 (04:28)
US bombs cruisin' overhead
There goes my love rocket red
Shoot it up....
Shoot it up....
Blaster bomb bomb bomb ahead
Multi millions still unfed
Amondo teeno givin' head
Shoot it up....
Shoot it up....
Hold me shake me, I'm all shook up
Psycho maniac interblend, shoot it up
Now shoot it up
Shoot it up
Shoot it up
Shoot it up....
Teenage crime now fashion's dead
Shoot it up
There goes my love rocket red
Shoot it up
Shoot it up
Shoot it up
Shoot it up
Shoot it up
04 Rockit Miss USA (05:49)
Vigilante USA
Rockit USA
Star Wars Western USA
I feel bigger with my baby
Red dawn crazy crazy
Ultra venus USA
I feel bigger with a trigger
Got a gun today
Hi tech sex n' rockets baby
Death wish crazy crazy
Moscow rocks my baby
Rockit Miss USA
Rockit Miss USA
Rockit USA Rockit USA
Rockit USA Rockit USA
Watch n' wait Miss USA
Come on Get me USA
Terror Tactic USA
Make my day oh make my day
Rockit Miss USA
Rockit Miss USA
Rockit Miss USA
Rockit Rockit Rockit
C'mon baby Rockit
Rockit Miss USA
Rockit Rockit Rockit
C'mon baby Rockit
Rockit Miss USA
05 21st Century Boy (05:16)
Stereo
video
sci-fi sex
let's go-g-go
let's go.
Saturn dreams. lazer beams
21st century
sex machines.
Can the cartier
toss the tissot
timex kJd
time to go go.
I'm a space cowboy
I'm a 21st century whoopee boy.
- This is a new age of television -
Siamese
Lebanese
Chinese speaking strip T V.s
Singapore
El Salvador
Coca Cola.
Mercury
luxury
shove that fender fist at me.
I'm a space cowboy
I'm a 21st century whoopee boy.
- Ladies and gentlemen
there is 1990 -
I'm a space cowboy
I'm a 21st century whoopee boy.
Embryo
UFO
freak
oh psycho horror show.
Hips and lips and beauty queens - let's party -.
Venus ramp
sexy tramp
make-up muck my Vegas vamp.
I'm a space cowboy
I'm a 21st century whoopee boy.
I'm a space cowboy
I'm a 21st century whoopee boy.
- An American dream
An American dream -
I'm a space cowboy
I'm a 21st century whoopee boy.
I'm a space cowboy
g-g-generation whoopee boy.
Let's go
go
go
let's go
let's go;
let's go
go
go
let's go
let's go;
Let's go
go
go
let's go
let's go;
let's go
go
go
let's go
let's go;
- I love technolosy!-
- I love technolosy!-
06 Massive Retaliation (05:10)
Retaliation baby
Sense my sation baby
Bangkok hit back
Stimulation baby
Inspiration baby
Hong Kong hit back
Termination baby
Assassination baby
New York hit back hit back
Confrontation baby
Radiation baby
Moscow hit back
Termination termination
Infatuation baby
Inspiration baby
Moscow hit back
Transformation baby
1990 baby
come on now come on baby
Hit back
07 Teenage Thunder (05:10)
She's got more than most could ever be
More gore for her more lust for me
More hot for her much more for me
My adolescent fantasy
Teenage thunder
Teenage thunder
Atom age wonder
Bombard the boredom ban the bomb
No more heroes no more fun
Shotgun hero kills for nothing
Kills for money
Kills for fun
Teenage thunder
Teenage thunder
Ahhhhh
Teenage thunder
Atom age wonder
Teenage thunder
Atom age wonder
Do it for her
Do that for me
Get down get on it
Just give it me
My adolescent fantasy
Teenage thunder
Atom age wonder
Teenage thunder
Atom age wonder
Teenage thunder
Teenage thunder
Adolescent wonder
Teenage thunder
08 She's My Man (06:05)
Yeah she talks like a woman
But she shakes like a man
She's got more rhythm sexual feeling
From a mutant than a man
Yeah she's my man
She's got the prettiest face
The wittiest mind
The prettiest gargoyle ever find
She's my man catch her if you can
She's my man
Desperate loving made me blind
She's my oriental lover
Now she's two of a kind
And she shot me from the body
With her lipstick mind
Yeah she's my man
She's my man catch her if you can
She's my man
She's unlike no other creature
She's a killer in disguise
She's just starred in my x feature movie
Thrilling all the boys
She's explosive neon highs
She's a freaked out freak android
She's my pleasure seeking leisure boy
You're in, not out, good bye
Yeah she's my man
Catch her if you can
She's my man
(chorus) 2 riffs
(chorus) Bass
Drop Catch her if you can
(chorus) (chorus etc)
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