Erasure

Purveyors of shiny pop gems to the masses, Erasure was formed by Vince Clarke in 1985. Fresh from Yazoo and a couple of collaborations with Feargal Sharkey (under the name The Assembly) and Paul Quinn, Erasure drew on the best of Vince's early work. It built upon the cheerful bleepings of early Depeche Mode, adding a little more depth to the rather strange lyrics of songs like New Life and Dreaming Of Me, and exchanging Alison Moyet's 'rootsy blues' vocals with the choir-boy falsetto of Andy Bell. That's a different Andy Bell to the one from Ride - Erasure's new vocalist was an ex-butcher and glittery gay diva in the making. Since its humble beginnings, Erasure has produced two decade's worth of shiny disco beeps and managed five number one albums and twenty-five top 20 singles, fusing Andy's thoughtful lyrics with Vince's ever-evolving synths.

Humble beginnings, yes: Vince, seeking a further outlet for his musical success with Depeche Mode and Yazoo, advertised for a singer. It had worked with Yazoo (Yaz, in America.), enticing fellow Basildonian to work closely with Vince to produce two knock-out synth albums and four hit singles. Forty candidates later, Andy Bell made the grade and in September of 1985 the first single Who Needs Love Like That was released. It barely charted, and the follow up single, Heavenly Action was doomed to a similar fate. Even 1986's 'Oh l'Amour' made little impression on the UK charts.

Releasing Wonderland, the first album, Erasure took the opportunity to tour, taking the synths on an extended tour of sparsely-populated back rooms and university student union bars. It was during this phase, working hard to drum up support, that Erasure's single Sometimes, taken from the second album The Circus, slipped into the UK charts at number two. The third album, The Innocents, swooped in at number one on the British album chart, as did its follow up, Wild!, both albums producing a range of hit singles but never quite managing to achieve the elusive number one spot. Chorus followed in 1991: Erasure were on a roll.

Famed for a certain camp charm, it was this relentless, in-your-face homosexuality that led to b-sides like No GDM, songs like Pistol and Sexuality, and the eventual 1992 release of ABBA-esque. Four ABBA covers, complete with shimmering front-cover and a range of dreadful remixes, pushed Erasure to number one for the first time ever. They followed up with a greatest hits album, and have since kept up a warm, analogue sound. I Say I Say I Say marked Erasure's last real chart success, producing the singles Always, Run To The Sun and I Love Saturday. Though Erasure have in no way been unsuccessful since, albums such as the eponymous Erasure (a masterpiece of entirely uncommercial ambient twiddlings), Cowboy and the cover versions of Other People's Songs have been moderately but hardly staggeringly successful. The second greatest hits album can often mark the beginning of the end, though Erasure rallied round with the 2005's Nightbird and 2007's Light At The End Of The World.

The eighties were notable for bands like Erasure, of course. Bronski Beat, The Communards, Pet Shop Boys and Soft Cell all embodied the two-blokes-with-a-synth feel of the era, and it was all the better if one of them was gay. In Thatcher's Britain, homosexuality was embroiled in a mess of 'family values' propaganda and Clause 28 villification campaigns. Andy Bell, openly gay and camper than a row of fairy-lit pink tents, joined a significant group of talented, popular and openly-gay pop frontmen, bringing the very idea that perhaps it's not too bad to be gay to an ungrateful quantity of conservative homophobes.

Erasure show no signs of splitting up, though both Vince and Andy are free to pursue their own side-projects. Andy Bell intends to release a solo album in the near future, though it's been on the cards for years, and Vince Clarkehas recently teamed up with Martyn Ware (of Heaven 17 and early Human League fame) to produce ambient soundscapes, including a piece intended for the National Centre For Popular Music's Soundscapes 3D auditorium, utilising cutting edge Lake Huron audio processing hardware. Clarke And Ware are a little less pop than Erasure, producing cutting-edge synth with an emphasis on technical wizardry; Pretentious and Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle are vocal-free ambient epics, with an unmistakeable Vince Clark spin.

Erasure: Maybe not as active as The Pet Shop Boys, but just as much fun...

Album Discography:
Wonderland (1986)
The Circus (1987)
The Two Ring Circus (1987)
The Innocents (1988)
Wild! (1989)
Chorus (1991)
Pop! The First 20 Hits (1992)
I Say I Say I Say (1994)
Erasure (1995)
Cowboy (1997)
Loveboat (2000)
Other People's Songs (2003)
Hits! The Very Best Of Erasure (2003)
Nightbird (2005)
Light At The End Of The World (2007)

Batty Man

"How I see it, Empress, is that all the people who are talking about faggots and making battyman music, it's like they are bigging up battyman! You understand? Battyman deserves no space on my album! When I say, "Babylon" or "corruption", a dem that, mother of all that! A dem that, you understand?"

Battyman or, indeed, chi-chi man, is a derogatory term for a homosexual or gay man, originating in Jamaica. The word occurs alarmingly often in Jamaican popular culture, in music related areas and amongst other popular celebrities, including those barely-linked to Jamaican culture, such as Ali G.

Whilst it would be foolish to take much offence from Ali G's clearly tongue-in-cheek use of the term, it is nevertheless a fact that in many cases the word is used with deadly seriousness in such songs as Buju Banton's 1990 hit Boom Boom Bye Bye, which encourages the killing of homosexuals or, more recently, Chi-Chi Man from TOK, which features the lines: From dem a par in a chi chi man car, blaze a fire mek we burn dem. From dem a eat in a battyman bar, blaze a fire mek we done dem.

It might not be what we'd laughingly call 'the Queen's English', but it's pretty clear. It's hatred, not even thinly disguised. It's a plain and straightforward declaration of irrational and crudely-directed hate, involving fire and derogatory name-calling. But the question is, can this hatred be explained by culture?

It's true that being gay or lesbian is the ultimate sin under Jamaica's widely-held religious beliefs. According to the Guinness Book Of Records, Jamaica has the most churches per square mile, and let's not forget that there is also a strong Rastafarian component to Jamaican society. Complicate this further with laws that support intolerance - in Jamaica it is still legal to arrest two men caught having sex in private - and you are provided with a culture that seems to have by-passed any semblance of understanding and is hell-bent on making sure every Jamaican teenager, gay or otherwise, grows up with the the inculcated certainty that you're better off dead than queer. Or, to put it another way, if you're queer then you're dead.

Can this be true - an embedded culture of hate? Many proponents of Jamaican culture, citing such examples, insist that the implied hatred is simply not there, it is merely a natural reaction founded in culture and religion. The argument here essentially being that these 'battymen' break both legal and moral boundaries and thus deserve pretty much all they get. Others, such as Swedish band Army Of Lovers claw back the word in a more aggressive manner, releasing the song Mr Battyman with its deliberately provocative lines, all delivered in a sarcastic Buju Banton-esque intonation: He meet dem hunky sailor... He dress in fruit and flowers... Dem say that him obscene...


Obscene... right. Then there's the mOBSCENE, who really put the boot in with their homophobic mob:

"The gay man who died after being attacked in Trafalgar Square last autumn was called a "batty man" before he was kicked and stamped on, the Old Bailey heard. Ian Baynham, 62, died in hospital on October 13th 2009, several weeks after he suffered head injuries while on a night out."

Quote 1 taken from interview with Luciano and Mikey, available on jahworks.org
Quote 2 taken from PinkNews.co.uk, April 20th, 2010

The Villain - Trick Trick

"I don't want your faggot money any goddam way..."

The Villain is an extremely exclusive album by US rapper Trick Trick, probably best known for his work with Eminem, since his solo efforts don't appear to have troubled the charts very much at all. Anyway, what makes it exclusive is that you're not to buy it if you're gay. Or lesbian. Or even bi-curious. I'm not sure if wanking off in the shower with the rest of the football team after soccer practice would preclude you from purchasing, but it's probably best to err on the side of caution, particularly if you looked to the left or right to see how your neighbour was getting on. Similarly, if you've ever thought a same-sex friend to be vaguely ripped, or if, indeed, you use the word 'ripped' seriously, you'd best leave this album on the shelf: Trick Trick don't want your dirty faggot cash. Okay?

"Every time you turn on the TV, that sissy shit is on, and they act like it's fucking okay."

'Dyke bitches' Ellen Degeneres and Rosie O'Donnell come off particularly well on the album, apparently, although Mr Trick Trick did want to go on the record about all this, telling All Hip Hop that the album wasn't really aimed at a homosexual audience. Whether his co-performers Eminem, Ice Cube and 50 Cent share Trick's views is beyond the scope of the interview, sadly.

"The world is changing for the worst when shit like that happens. And I address that issue. I address it as hard as hell"

So, yeah - if you are a bit poofy, then watch out. Mr Trick's determined to send a 'scud missile right through (your) fucking cruise ship'. Oh - full disclosure time: I'm slightly camp at times, so I've not been allowed to listen to this album. Instead, I got my bitches together, we went on a bit of a cruise around town looking for a real trick. The treat is optional!

"He goes both ways / Either way he's gay / Ain't no other way to say / He's a fucking faggot so I'm lettin' off my AK / Bust 'em in his forehead / He ain't worth lettin' live / A man and man shouldn't raise another man's kids!"

The Villain was released by Koch on the 29th of September, 2008. It doesn't come with free bullets, so if you do want to shoot some faggots as suggested above, bear in mind that will cost extra. The eloquent, achingly poetic quotes are by Christian Mathis, better known as portly rapper Trick Trick. And oh, is it just me or the fact that he's called 'trick', he's released on 'koch' records and he's got an obsession with being gay lead you to think that he might just be a screaming bender, trapped in the tortured closet of his own internalised homophobia... oh, okay; just me then.

Original interview here. Album available here. Dustbins available here.