33 rebellions per minute
1983
Missing Persons, SPRING SESSION M
As implausible as it seems in the era of Limp Biskit and Korn, Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez, rock music once, back in the late '70's, seemed to suffer from too-high admission standards. If you knew 28 guitar chords and could whiz through them all in three seconds, you were fit to play before filled stadiums, protected only by fog machines and timed explosions; otherwise, well, there were always local bars willing to give you free drinks to play a version of "Satisfaction". I wasn't there, or at least I was stuck trying to interpret the world around me with a limited vocabulary of "wabbit", "Mommy", "choo-choo", and "no!", so I have my doubts as to whether this situation was ever _really_ the reigning state of affairs. But social movements regularly are started by myths, and this myth helped create New Wave. Music, according to New Wave's emaciated fashion-impaired founders, could be simple without being boring. It could be flashy, obnoxious, weird, and use only two chords, especially if both of them were played wrong. And while the direct effect of this principle on commerce as a whole could be overstated -- did it lead, pre-dilution, to any hits beyond "Psycho Killer", "Once In A Lifetime", "Rock Lobster", and "Pump It Up", none of which have the inescapability of "Dust In The Wind"? -- the domino effect on music as a whole was towards streamlined structure, the return of 3-minute singles, and easy-to-sing melodies. Enough people made successes with this easy-access form, in fact, that it became easy, and fun, to attack the progressive rock "dinosaurs" (ELP, Led Zeppelin, Genesis) for being unbelievably ponderous -- not, in fact, rock at all.
Torn between artistic ambition and the desire to keep being funded to make records (without which artistic ambition would be pointless), the various prog-rock bands almost universally moved towards 4-minute songs, synthesizers, and power chords. How successful they were, artistically, is completely up for debate. Personally, I'd praise Yes's TORMATO and DRAMA as continuing the band's run of masterworks, claim that Renaissance was actively improved by the sell-out, give Jethro Tull's '80's career credit for consistency at the expense of inspiration, and toss all the 1977-and-beyond Genesis LP's in some distant landfill mountain (Spectacle Island near Boston is especially inaccessible) so as not to risk corrupting homeless dumpster-divers; but then, my choices indicate my inherent doubts about the simplification project. You could tell, just by listening, that Yes and Renaissance had never really abandoned their love of classical music and vocal purity and intendedly uplifting lyrics. Catchy or not, it was choirboy stuff, and the kids weren't gonna be fooled so easily.
Thus the project of popularizing Progressive New Wave fell to a band fronted by a squeaky-voiced blonde New Yorker who looked good in transparent spandex outfits. Missing Persons had no prior baggage of 4-part suites, church organ solos, or one-legged flute players to contend with. They played very, very 1983 music, all twinkling synthesizers and restrained electric guitar solos and the soothing warmth of correctly programmed oscillators. Singer Dale Bozzio had just enough vocal range to decorate one impressive hit ("Words") with a melody that ascended in two simple measures from kittenish growl to squeak, before settling into the abstractly girlish chorus style that ran the day. "Noticeable One" and "Walking In L. A." let the verses hem and haw a little behind the beat, but jumped squarely into swaggering tagline choruses. "It Ain't None Of Your Business"'s chorus could've been the Police, before, not after, the fanciness of SYNCHRONICITY.
However: Terry Bozzio is considered one of the best drummers in the world, and song after song is decorated with drum fills worthy of Neal Peart. Warren Cuccurullo's guitar leads had the tone color of Alex Lifeson, to continue the Rush theme, but in execution ventured melodies and patterns that I literally can't compare to anyone's. The melodies are pop, but seem to use the songwriters' formula "write something sensible, then change one chord so it's wrong and see where it leads". "U.S. Drag" and "Tears" are both skewed and geometrical in exactly the way Phil Collins songs could be back when -- and we're _really_ stretching the timeline here, but it's true -- Collins had avant-garde cred; "…Drag" in particular has to be one of the weirdest songs I've ever seen fit sensibly into a bestselling album, and I'd tell you what the time signatures were if I thought the drummer and keyboardist and vocalist had ever come to an agreement on that. "Here And Now" uses jazz chords to segue into a pseudo-evil echoed whisper that Alice Cooper would've loved. "Bad Streets" has two instrumental breaks, right in a row, that are sophisticated enough to build quality five-minute compositions around. "Rock and Roll Suspension" and "No Way Out" break 8/8 beats into 3-and-5 or 2-and-6 counts as jarringly as they can manage, with splintered drumrolls and choppy beats. The former's singing is nervous and quivery, the latter breaks into Twisted Sister group chanting, and both sound equally sensible.
SPRING SESSION M is not, by my personal tastes, perfect. Several songs repeat the chorus four times when I'd be happier with two, and the lyrics have style but accept irony as a substitute for substance. Nonetheless, my two main beefs with the Duran Duran/ Flock Of Seagulls theft of the term "New Wave" is that they endorsed the anti-talent bias, and ditched the individuality in any sense other than clothes sense. From the viewpoint of 1999, this seems inevitable as a recipe for success. Missing Persons provided evidence, if only for one record, that the public was better than that.
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