'huge, queer and tawdry' but 'much admired by the public'

Recently took delivery of Saint Etienne's delayed new compilation, London Conversations, and have been thinking about how unlikely a band they are. Their danceable cover of hairy old Neil Young's 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart' hit in 1990, the same year as Candy Flip's not dissimilar take on one of the few non-dreadful Beatles songs, 'Strawberry Fields Forever'. Would anyone have expected either of the acts behind these apparent novelties to go on to spend 20 years as one of Britain's most cherished, most quietly trailblazing cult bands? I can't think of such a deceptive start since Bowie first came to mass attention with 'The Laughing Gnome'.
And then a detour in my musings when, last night, cappuccino_kid took me to see Black Box Recorder. Because don't those two bands almost form a subgenre all their own? Two male survivors, who aren't fronting the bands but who definitely need to be on stage, not backroom boys. One frontwoman called Sarah, thought a bit flat by some but recognised by indie boys of a certain stripe as an aspect of the goddess; her stage persona is all about the innocence, maybe with a little tang of experience, but you know she's no puppet. And the songs all inhabit a world of England past. The difference being, Black Box Recorder are the England you hoped was past but fear might not be (behind the stage last night, a Union Jack emblazoned with ROCK AND ROLL NOT DOLE), where Saint Etienne are the past you hope is still there just below the surface (watching the 'Hobart Paving' video, I remember that King's Cross, and I miss it).
Support was Madam acoustic; I swear she looks younger than she used to when hospitalsoup was in her band, five years or more ago.

Interesting that today should bring further confirmation of Stephen Fry's status as a national treasure, as I was already planning to write a little about him, having yesterday read Simon Gray's Fat Chance. Some of you may remember that in 1995, Stephen Fry, then in a play called Cell Mates, disappeared, and was briefly feared to have killed himself before turning up on the Continent (very Black Box Recorder, come to think of it). Simon Gray was the author and director of that play, and aside from having previously loved his Smoking Diaries, I was intrigued by the possibility of A Book Which Didn't Like Stephen Fry. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think he's great, but just as I enjoy Lawrence Miles' anti-Steven Moffat agenda re: Doctor Who, I tend to find devil's advocates fun. Come on, if you'd lived in the ages of faith, wouldn't you have wanted to read The Three Impostors* even if you believed, just for naughtiness' sake? So Gray was royally let down by Fry, and the front cover quote is "Makes Mommie Dearest read like a Mother's Day card" - Mark Lawson, The Guardian. Well, that should have been my first warning. Granted, Smug Slug does sometimes restrict himself to stating the bleeding obvious, but more often he misses the point entirely, and Gray himself notes that "The Guardian, ever vigilant in its defence of truth and the decencies, published an article quoting the unfavourable reviews, neglecting to mention that the Guardian's own reviewer had written both warmly and intelligently about the play." And if there is a villain here it is the media, and the media's delight in reporting what the media is saying without ever deigning to return to primary sources - something of which we see even more these days simply because there's more media and more pages and airtime to fill, with results I'm sure I need hardly list and decry again. Gray does accuse Fry of certain crimes - a tendency to play himself, for instance, whether he is meant to be playing someone else, or just honestly being himself. Well, that's hardly news, and nor is it delivered in terms significantly more damning than Gray uses of himself in The Smoking Diaries. Fry comes across more as a sad figure than a mad one, and more mad than bad - and since he's come out as a manic depressive, none of this really does much to contradict his own acknowledgment of his situation. Part of me's disappointed that there is no anti-Fry book, but mostly I just think 'bless'. And posthumously bless cantankerous old Gray, too. Though the real hero of the tale, would you believe, is Rik Mayall.

*Which reminds me, sbp - any joy locating my copy of the Arthur Machen novel of the same name?