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 JAPAN
LYCEUM,
LONDON
Melody Maker
The rock press, like Mary Whitehouse, doesn’t take kindly to gender confusion.
It likes its men to drink hard, do drugs, make women, hang out with the
lads and still get the show on the road. It likes its women to be
buxom, preferably blonde, initially willing, ultimately grateful and
ever-after barefoot in the kitchen.
The golden rule is uncomplicated : never the twain shall merge unless, like Bowie, you call it art.
Teeny bop transvestites, however, are the pits and Japan are the
favourite victims of faggot-baiting now that Bolan is dead and no
longer an embarrassment. Of course, his mincing and mascara have been
forgiven/forgotten in dewy-eyed retrospect, but not so Japan, who
continue to pollute our public auditoriums with their paint, powder and
poofy hair-dos.
Their latest album “Gentlemen Take Polaroids”, was treated to a
typically gleeful lambasting from the press, so along with others with
more money than sense, I ventured along to the Lyceum to see what all
the fuss was about.
In short, nothing. Strip away the glam-rock trimmings and underneath, a
dull dreary, monotonous beat drones on and on in a tepid disco groove
as each synthesised number glides unnoticed into another equally as
featureless.
A conveyor belt of sound without climax or depth, beginning or end,
fronted by David Sylvian who, for all his Ferry mannerisms, cant match
the man for vocal or visual style.
Steve Sutherland, Melody Maker.
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