Romo
Mid-1990s, United Kingdom
History[edit]
Birth of Romo[edit]
Club Skinny was created in spring 1995 by promoters Kevin Wilde and Paul "HiFi" Nugent as a club playing stylish 1980s pop as an antidote to the fashion for indie-derived Britpop. The club was originally located at Camden's Laurel Tree venue, then the home of top Britpop clubnight Blow Up. Wilde and Nugent regarded it as a subversive and "punk" act to host their glamorous pop night at a major epicentre of the indie/Britpop movement they were opposing. Although initially forced to make the compromise of including concerts by upcoming Britpop bands in order to attract punters, the club gained momentum after members of Persecution Complex, a female David Bowie-influenced band noted for their flamboyant dress sense, became regulars at the club, attracting a flow of further flamboyant club-goers in their wake.[3]
A further development was the recruitment of two glamorous 1980s-styled bands Plastic Fantastic and DexDexTer. The former was a Brighton-based Roxy Music/Japan-influenced outfit fronted by former Scorpio Rising/Supercharger frontman Stuart Miller with bassist John Gold and German brothers Conrad and Shadric Toop on guitars/keyboards interchangeably.[4] The latter were initially known as MkII featuring Basques Even and Gage on keyboards and bass, guitarist Gjeih and Irish singer Xav[5] aka Xavior (born Paul Wilkinson, also formerly known as Paul Roide) a future Placebo keyboardist. The two Basques had been making synth-based music in Spain for several years before relocating to England and recruiting Xav and Gjeih. The two bands were duly scheduled to double-headline the 17 August edition of Club Skinny.[3]
In addition, one of the aspiring Britpop bands who had been playing at the club, Viva, led by Derek 'Del' Gray, were inspired by the club to reinvent themselves as a pure pop/disco outfit in the same vein as ABC circa The Lexicon of Love.[6] Wilde would subsequently become the manager of both Viva and DexDexTer.[7]
Discovery by Simon Price of Melody Maker[edit]
Melody Maker writer Simon Price was already alert to the existence of Plastic Fantastic and had previously linked them, together with Sexus, a Manchester-based "intelligent handbag" duo consisting of singer David Savage and keyboard player Paul Southern (together formerly indie guitar duo Sanity Plexus) and a non-glamorous electronic act called Boutique, as "New Romo" [sic] in a June 1995 review for Sexus's debut single "Edenites".[8] His colleague Everett True also heavily used the term Romo for a Plastic Fantastic review that summer.[9]
Price was invited to the aforementioned double bill edition of Club Skinny. With the event judged a success by the audience, musicians, promoters and Price himself, he not only began to cover the scene enthusiastically in his writing, converting his colleague Taylor Parkes along the way, but also, together with Toby Slater, opened up a second clubnight for the scene in Soho, named Arcadia. This was based at L'Equippe Anglais in Duke Street but later moved to legendary Soho drag bar Madame Jojo's.[2]
Club Skinny meanwhile also relocated to HQ's (now known as Lockside), a venue in Camden Lock Market close to Dingwalls, starting with the club's 31 August 1995 edition.[3] A Plastic Fantastic/ Viva/ DexDexTer triple bill at the venue on 28 September 1995 was reviewed by Parkes in memorable fashion:
Legacy[edit]
In Romo's wake over the next several years came a fresh wave of glam/style orientated clubnights. One of the first of these was Club Kitten, the successor to Club Skinny, based at the latter's old location of HQ's in Camden and featuring Stuart Miller as DJ.[55] Club Kitten, together with The Pony Club in Regent Street, became the hub for a late Romo/post-Romo "New Glam" scene featuring Persecution Complex and post-DexDexTer Xavior.[56] Another important post-Romo club was Stay Beautiful, run by Simon Price at various London locations from 2000–2009 and in Brighton 2011-2016.
Several other Romo musicians ran glam/style orientated club nights – notably Minty vocalist Mathew Glammore's "Kashpoint"[57] (at a January 2004 instalment of which Glammore performed a medley of old Minty songs[58] and a March 2005 instalment of which featured a Minty reunion),[59] Xavior's "Hanky Panky Kabaret" clubnight[60][61] (and associated meetings in London's Wolsey restaurant)[60] and Dickon Edwards' "Beautiful And Damned"[62] and "Against Nature".[63] Wilde and Nugent would later unleash another scene – the Club Rampage/Club P*rnstar "Bratpop" scene in late 1998 (also the beneficiary of a Melody Maker cover special).[64]
Other promoters also hosted such glam/style-orientated clubnights in the 2000s – most notably Glam-Ou-Rama, which later relocated to Tel Aviv.[65] Romo Night in Sweden, first established in 1996 during the original London scene's lifetime, was still active as of 2003.[66][67]
Romo was also frequently cited as a precedent for (if not actually an influence on) the electroclash scene of the early 2000s.[68][69][70][71] The Disciples by James Mollison, a book of photographs of music fans, includes a spread of photos of fans at a London concert by major electroclash act Fischerspooner, mostly dressed in Romo-style attire (one of whom is Simon Price).[72]
Writing and production team Xenomania, who became critically and commercially successful in the 2000s for their work with groups such as Girls Aloud and Sugababes, started out as remixers for songs by several Romo bands, including Hollywood's "Apocalypse Kiss" and Sexus' "How Do You Kiss?". According to Tom Ewing of Freaky Trigger, writing in 2003, Xenomania's Romo roots could be heard in their then-current work.[73] Writing in 2004 in regards to Xenomania's commercial success, Ewing said: "You can find Romo links everywhere if you look!"[74] Ewing also compared Hollywood (whose repertoire had included "Lost in Moscow 3am")[75] to Russian duo t.A.T.u., who he said were "entirely Romo, though it would be more accurate to say that Romo was a spirited runt in a litter that also birthed them."[74]
Musical characteristics[edit]
One wing of Romo bands, such as Plastic Fantastic and DexDexTer cleaved towards flamboyant art-glam. Although actually mostly referencing Brian Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets (particularly the tracks "Baby's on Fire" and "Needles in the Camel's Eye"), Fantastique no.5 was reviewed in the NME by Pulp members Russell Senior and Candida Doyle as "Ro-mu - as in Roxy Music. The influences are that transparent!"[76]
Other bands such as Viva, Belvedere Kane, Sexus and to a lesser extent Orlando, took inspiration from the nightclub-orientated Hi-NRG/Handbag house chart pop of the mid 1990s. Viva bassist Lee David described how his band's sound "came from going to clubs and seeing what got people dancing."[24] Sexus's sound was characterised by Price as "intelligent handbag."[20] Musically, Orlando combined the synthesised dance-pop of 1990s boybands and American swingbeat acts with verbose lyrics in the general style of Morrissey and Richey Edwards.[19]
The dance-pop influences seeped through to the scene's art-glam wing also - interviewing Plastic Fantastic, Melody Maker's David Bennun suggested that the band's preferred mix of Plastic World (by dance producer Howard Hughes) "sounds like Hawkwind gone disco."[77] Hollywood's single "Apocalypse Kiss" (transformed from the original dark electropop 1995 demo to a piano house sound by remixers Apollo 440) was described by Tom Ewing of Freaky Trigger as "gothy handbag with big production and those flattened Europop vowels."[74]
Despite the Romo scene being a backlash against the values of Britpop and indie, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic nonetheless characterised it as "a fey, arty offspring of Britpop," noting that the genre took influence from "a touch of irony, modernist art, a healthy love of the Style Council and the Spice Girls, inspiration from Pulp, jealousy of Menswear, a vague idea of Roxy Music, heritage in the Smiths and the Manics, and a minor obsession with Dead Poets Society." Erlewine furthermore summarised that "Romo essentially boiled down to a cross between Adam Ant, Roxy Music, Pulp, and Blur, with a hint of an idea of what Bowie may have meant."[78]
Criticism[edit]
Being as it was an attack on the very notion of authenticity in music, Romo's inauthenticity was itself declared pernicious by its opponents. While Erlewine praised Fiddling While Romo Burns he nonetheless complained "...There's nothing but style and artifice here, and at crushing levels ... it's filled with affectation and pretension.".[78] Others were more blunt about this, such as Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys. "I hate Romo" he declared, "it's so plastic!"[79]