1990 08 04 New Music Seminar, NME

MADHATTAN'S TEA PARTY

NEW MUSIC SEMINAR 90

• A freeloader’s paradise or a valuable talkshop for new ideas depending on what time you get up, New York’s NEW MUSIC SEMINAR is certainly the biggest, strangest, funniest gathering in the music biz calendar. Lured by tales of eight live bands a night and a chance to ‘schmooze’ STEVE LAMACQ gamely took a look. In search of the perfect pitcher (of margueritas): KEVIN CUMMINS

Vicar of that quaint English parish The Hacienda, Tony Wilson talks in the type of reverent tones you last heard in a school assembly. Sitting, centrally, twixt a panel of nominated celebs, he looks down from his pulpit on a conference room full of 200 expectant music biz folk and announces: “Welcome to the New Music Seminar. The rest of the shit going on in this building this week is the OLD Music Seminar. This is the NMS.”

Wilson, casually dressed, hair slightly unkempt, takes charge of this year’s first (most?) interesting discussion panel at the 11th New Music Seminar - the big global event on the record industry calendar, attracting 7,000 label reps, artists and hangers-on to New York for five days of unceasing business brunches and wheeler-dealing. Every Tom, Dick and MD are in town to see and be seen... and they’re all trying to be polite to each other. It’s hilarious!

What was that Bob Monkhouse once said? “Sincerity, that’s the key. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made!”

Wilson’s Monday morning panel is an oasis of northern bluntness in this desert of good-mannered goings-on (though admittedly he’s upstaged later in the week by a fight between two mobs of homeboys... but that’s another story). Held in a sixth floor lecture room at the Seminar’s plush base in the Marriott Marquis Hotel, just off Times Square - NY’s downbeat Piccadilly Circus - the talk-in goes under the banner ‘Wake Up America You’re Dead!’

New York, for NMS week, is suffocating in temperatures of 90 degrees with stifling humidity to boot. In the two days leading up to the Seminar there’s been 12 murders around the Big Apple, with psychologists blaming the increase in criminal activity and homicide on the soaring temperatures. Elsewhere in the city, police are desperately trying to plot the next move of a serial killer called Zodiac Man, who picks his victims by their star-signs.

Meanwhile, Wilson is inside, onstage, gunning for another kind of confrontation. Lining up with guest panellists who include Marshall Jefferson, Happy Mondays manager Nathan McGough and ‘spoof inclusion, comedian Keith Allen, the Factory figurehead has come to bury the American dream soundtrack, not to praise it. Shoot. Happy Mondays aren’t Number One in the States, there’s gotta be something wrong.

With the help of his accomplices he goes on to plot the invention of House music in Chicago, the evolution of E in Ibiza and how on the Eighth Day God Created Madchester before going down the Hac for a bit of demonic freaky dancing. The New (Music) Testament says Britain is born again and the Yanks are dead meat.

“You used to know how to f—ing dance in America, God knows how you f—ing forgot!" Wilson starts off.

“What people in America don’t realise is that the music which has come out of Chicago and Detroit in the last ten years has so changed British pop music - not only dance but rock music - that now if you’re a British rock band and you can’t play in a style to which you can dance and with the rhythms that have come out of America then you aren’t a rock group that matters. You are dead.

“There are groups which American A&R men go berserk over - The Sundays, House Of Love - who in England are now so marginalised that they are irrelevant.”

Go get’em Tony. In seriousness this turns out to be one of the best ‘discussions’ of the week. There are over 80 seminar panels during NMS Week, ranging from ‘Independent Talent And Booking’ (yawn) to ‘College Radio: Let’s Talk’, but there’s nothing like Tony ‘The Tiger’ Wilson when he goes into one. He knows about winding people up. He knows about bending the truth to his own ends.

And he knows how the American mainstream is so sluggish, it makes the UK Top 40 look positively radical.

Enter Keith Allen, as Many hanger-on and in-joke. Masquerading as a Doctor of Psychology from Geneva he’s here to plot the rise of drug and dole culture in the UK rave scene. He's The Geezer With Attitude.

“The basic psychology,” says Allen, “was that I had a load of Ecstasy, topped with a little amyl nitrate - which gave a very popular sex-inducing vibe and I’d give these tablets to people and in return they would give me £20. And we were both very happy.

“Now I should really put this into perspective by saying that I am now the father of eight children, because as you know, when you get ‘on one’ - as we say in England - you want to chuck it about all over the place. ”

LAUGH LAUGH LAUGH.

Natch the Americans in the audience, not privy to Alien’s real occupation, are totally lost. They might as well have been watching a foreign film without subtitles. Jefferson interjects with some astute comments about American guys being more concerned about “making it with a chick” at clubs rather than listening to the music.. . but there, on the very end of the panel, US DJ Derrick May is steaming like a pressure cooker. He’s well pissed off.

“Bullshit, none of your (Allen and Wilson) bands know where our dance music’s come from. I’m bustin’ my arse making my music and when I see bullshit like Adamski at Number f—ing One in the charts that’s shit, if that’s what it’s about, dance music is dead.”

It goes a trifle downhill after this. Jefferson ups and leaves as Allen and May start arguing. Wilson takes some questions from the floor from irate Americans, incensed by the drug element on the UK scene and the suggestion that the Brits have reinvented House by mixing it with rock music.

As I beat a hasty retreat for the door, late for another meeting, I can just hear May calling Allen a few choice names...

Allen: “What exactly is a long-arsed motherf—er?”

May himself gets up and leaves, unable to take the Manchester boys’ and Allen’s sense of humour. Dance music is a serious business right?

CUT!

THE ANNUAL New Music Seminar is a colossal marketplace. You don’t just get tired and emotional experts arguing with each other on panels during the day, you get a choice of around 26 gigs every night - in the region of 350 bands playing during the Seminar’s five day run - and half a hotel floor of trade stalls and sales people.

And then there’s the ‘schmoozing’. Probably the only activity that hasn’t been banned in the foyers of American hotels (they’ve done away with smoking, leafleting, breathing etc...). Schmoozing is actively and openly encouraged, particularly in the Marriott’s revolving eighth floor bar, where most of the Seminar-goers congregate at one time or another.

That’s the done thing, you go in there, buy youself a bottle of beer and schmooze and... what do you mean, what is it? You’ve never schmoozed? You lucky sods.

Schmoozing is the American slang for doing a bit of casual business. Nothing as obscene as arranging a meeting or going out formally for brunch - you wander up to a likely-looking contact, start chatting, pump them for information and then try to sell them something.

Not obviously of course, you simply hand them a business card, suggest a couple of ideas and buy them a few drinks. Good schmoozers can probably get through ten people in one lunchtime session. It’s apparently turning into quite an art. Right down to NMS Today- the Seminar’s daily free newspaper - suggesting that schmoozing is the best way to go about business (they devoted a chunk of their first day editorial to it!).

Of course, schmoozing would be a hit-and-miss affair if you didn’t know what everyone at the Seminar did - or what they could do for you - so the NMS make sure you have to wear a laminate identity pass, emblazoned with your name and company, AT ALL TIMES!

Apparently, last year, one record label boss became so frustrated at being continually approached by bands and managers that he flipped his pass over and wrote on it in big letters ‘I’M NO ONE YOU’D WANT TO KNOW!’

MOST PEOPLE at this year’s (biggest ever) Seminar didn’t arrive ’til late Friday or early Saturday, thus missing the opening day niceties. My first encounter, having booked into the Marriott is at 1 am, Saturday morning. On the 26th floor, I bump into a slightly inebriated Norman Cook.

“Norman, all right?”

He looks quizzical.

“It’s Steve, from the NME, remember?”

“Oh right, how are you doing, sorry I’m looking for my room. I can’t remember what number it is.”

And so the debauchery begins. Saturday, officially the second day, is spent queueing up for registration, where you’re given your dreaded laminate and a bagful of record company promo CDs and literature. Gigwise it’s a bit of a dead loss, except for an Energy rave where Black Box made their first ever American performance before an inquisitive audience - including several members of their US record company - performing a five-minute PA before fleeing the stage, worried about overstaying their welcome. Most people were still battling their way from the bar to get a good view by the time they’d upped and headed for the wings.

Sunday proves far busier. Starting with a Face The Nation working breakfast for the English contingent of labels and booking agents (chance for an early schmooze), the afternoon is spent watching the ‘UK Majors: Is Bigger Better?’ panel, featuring A&R men from Blighty pleading their innocence when faced with a barrage of criticism over their signing and firing policy.

Highlight is an exasperated Jeff Young (Radio 1 dance DJ and A&R man for A&M Records), rubbed up the wrong way, opining “ Why? No one’s ever given me a good explanation for this. Why is it credible to be signed to an indie and shit to be signed to major?”

Other than this he comes over surprisingly on-the-case. The most frustrating aspect of this panel was the lack of representation from labels like CBS and Warners - the people you really build up grudges against. Weren’t they asked or did they bottle out?

On to the gigs. Hurrah! Remember, Lamacq once again has a bet going with a journalist from another paper to be the first one to make 200 gigs this year, so the Seminar provides a great chance to get ahead. Apart from those mentioned elsewhere, the big event - on many a schmoozer’s lips-was Monday’s show at the Academy featuring a rather dull techno-rock display by DIE WARZAU, with their dour metallic funk, and interesting headliners NINE INCH NAILS, just signed by Island in the UK and specialists in an industrial (post Goth) rock sound with sinewy guitar and a firm, sometimes brutal backbeat of bass rhythms and drums.

They were frontrunners to create the biggest Seminar ‘Buzz’ of the week, but as the days blurred away in a haze of frantic cab rides from venue to venue, they came in for some shock competition.

Last year’s most talked about appearance (ie the strangest and most colourful) came from the, then unknown, GWAR. This year it was the more angelic, but equally strange POPPIES, playing at the Spo-dee-o-dee.

Like a cross between the New Seekers and Joseph & His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, there were - at a rough count - 26 of them on stage, two blokes and 24 girls tripped out on the hippy, laid-back vibe of Greenwich Village.

They were sweet and loveable and they finished, on another astral plane, with a cover of ‘Daydream Believer’. One of the three-girl nucleus of the group is apparently Welsh. The rest of them (save for the bassist) come from the planet Beautiful People. Very strange.

There are plans for three of them to tour later this year, arriving at venues a day early so they can audition different people from each town to join them on stage each night.

I thought I might be dreaming all this but fortunately the next taxi I grabbed took a wrong turn, going the wrong way down a one-way street. No, I was awake after all. It was the driver who was asleep (smoking is now also banned in New York cabs so there was no way of steadying your nerves).

Other good bands: there weren’t that many of them. The NMS may crow about the opportunities for uncovering talent during their New Music Nights showcase itinerary, but too often it was quantity of bands before quality. HOUSE OF LOVE’s Gala Night gig, supporting born-again rock goth Pete Murphy at the enormous, hi-tech-decorated Palladium, was good, even though their (US influenced?) metamorphosis into a marketable rock band- with reworked, climactic finales to ‘Don’t Know Why I Love You’ and ‘Nothing To Me’ - was a little unstable. Restricted to support slot status they played a greatest hits set, wandering through ‘Love In A Car’, but making up for it with a storming ‘Christine’ that brought applause from the audience just three bars into the song.

Look out for (cough) GOD’S EYE, who played a metodically punky set at CBGB’s and are managed by the same people who brought you The Lemonheads. The three-piece haven’t signed a UK deal yet, but the demo is Boston style guitar brilliance. And MANIFESTO, Fire Records’ first American signings, who opened at The Spiral - again guitar based but with a tangled, tantalising sense of tune and a dead cert indie hit in ‘History’.

And finally, the wildest, most shambolic, noisy, cynical and jam-packed gig of the week? THE VELVET MONKEYS, a s'uper-group’ made up of various New Yorkers, Ball members and Sonic Thurston Moore, standing in as replacements to Buffalo Tom at the Rough Trade night at Woody’s In The Village. Following GALAXIE 500’s brooding set, most of which I unfortunately missed, the Monkeys delivered a dirty, rock ’n’ roll gob in the face.

Typical song introduction: “So what if we can’t play? All you people from the f—ing Seminar got in for free. ”

Spot on.

BACK AT the Marriott the big rumours at the start of the week were that the Hacienda posse had been threatened with expulsion - not for Keith Allen storming round the eighth floor bar swearing - but for plastering their hotel and the Sound Factory with their Hac stickers.

There were widespread reports of feuding behind the scenes between the Manchester contingent and the Seminar organisers - including a dispute over Happy Mondays’ fee for their closing night show. But in the end the on-off Mondays gig was on, even if Shaun Ryder failed to show for his panel appearance alongside Ian Broudie and Julee Cruise under the heading The Stars Of Tomorrow’.

Adamski, the Mondays’ support act, never arrived (dog probably in quarantine), meanwhile Martin from 808 State refused to tell a radio interviewer his star sign on air in case our mate Zodiac Man was lurking outside with a few grudges about astrology to settle.

Wilson was right about one thing though. This year’s NMS had some curious ideas about New Music. Among the acts playing were HOTHOUSE FLOWERS, which they could just get away with, but WRECKLESS ERIC? You might as well try selling someone the wheel as a new invention. Mind you, what can you expect from a country that’s going potty over the new Nick Lowe LP?!

Work invariably got in the way of having a good time, but some of the panels had their moments - if only because they appeared to be based on Monty Python’s Argument Sketch. The classic example? During the College Radio panel one DJ questioned a panellist from Virgin, asking why he was never sent any dance records by them.

“But we do send them out to you.”

“You don’t.”

“We do.”

“Don’t.” And so on and so on. They’re probably still there now.

At least the NMS can claim it tried to attack a few of the more important issues happening right now in the States - particularly the censorship row surrounding 2 Live Crew’s ‘As Nasty As We Wanna Be’ LP and an in-depth two hour discussion on further attempts to enforce companies and shops across the States to sticker ‘offensive’ LPs with warning signs.

By Wednesday, final day, an awful lot of people were looking jolly pleased with themselves, in sport-speak they must have “done the business”. But the grand finale still had one twist in its tail .

As crowds of people waited for the closing talk-shop, featuring among others David Cassidy, Peter Hook, Ice Cube and Barry White, all hell broke loose on the hotel’s seventh floor, a skirmish between rival homeboys. Three floors of the Marriott were closed as security staff moved in to break up the fight, though rumours are that trouble flared up again in the evening after most people had left.

The stars on the final ‘Artists’ panel, making their entrance over 30 minutes late, couldn’t hope to compete with the excitement raging elsewhere in the hotel. But David did say how overwhelmed he is with his fans’ loyalty and Peter Hook was at least smiling. No one, though, could quite believe that one man stepped up to the audience mic for the sole purpose of saying: “I’d just like to thank Barry White.. for talking.” Well, thanks Baz from us all. It was really deep.

Actually I prefer this as my quote for the week.

First man: “Have you come here for any particular business?”

Second man: “Me, nah, I’m only here to get away from the wife.”

What would the vicar think of that?

HAPPY MONDAYS 
808 STATE
THE SOUND FACTORY

THE QUEUE winds around the block, people would kill to get in. Word is that 4,000 people are planning to be here, the result of a year’s sustained propaganda: this showcase for the Manchester vibe arrives to pockets of Yankee wannabee-Mancs in dreadful flares, unlikely hooded tops, and - now get this - ‘On The Eighth Day God Created Manchester’ T-shirts with, of course, long soup-absorbing sleeves. And hoods. And centre partings. Lord preserve us.

It helps having 808 State to open: They’re barmy, jigging around epileptically in the land of Techno -this must be like playing at Bethlehem. They take advantage, playing their best at a club dedicated to the music that goes so well in Manchester. It’s no coincidence that the song to have them gawping is ‘Cubit’, with colossal guitar sample chords, and Martin’s speech on respect due to American DJs.

If you'd read the press, and come along to see the bad boys and new hopes of Britain, and you saw this together, coherent, rocking bunch of freaks, you would have been disappointed. The Mondays have grown up. ‘Wrote For Luck’ is the ideal rock/dance hybrid, nasty and polished at the same time,‘Tart Tart' makes no sense to anyone except the severely off their heads, with Shaun leering like Uncle Ernie.

And then there was ‘Step On’. Enter Rowetta, beautiful, sexy, not giving a damn, and still carrying that handbag in front of 2,000 people. She seems a bit embarrassed, but they finish by rolling across the stage, Bez jaunting backwards and forwards, bent back with his pelvis thrust forward like he’s trying to deal with a massive hard-on. After this, factory ligger and very ‘happy’ Keith Allen dances on stage for ‘Wrote For Luck’, smiling like Jack Nicholson, hugging everyone. He is the last to leave. This is completely mad, and completely sane.

The fire service come into the building, staring menacingly at the people squeezed into this seething Turkish Bath. Perhaps it was the free vodka, but I don’t think so; The Mondays will storm the US. Cali the diplomats.

Penny Anderson