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| An image search for Soft Boys came up with zip, so here's some Soft Girls, who are now an "æsthetic", bless! |
You won't know this, the phrase having been appropriated by others as clueless in the matter as yerself, but it was U.K. style and marketing guru Peter York who first identified the Neurotic Boy Outsider, back in the dear old 'eighties, when pop sociology was quite the thing. York was an acute, non-judgemental observer; the
Sloane Ranger was probably his most famous field discovery, with
Caroline the polite, middle-class precursor of today's
Karen. An N.B.O. was exactly what it said on the tin; the troubled loner, the rebel without a cause. The N.B.O. has been a recurring pop music stereotype since Gene Vincent first dragged his leg up on stage and shorted out the mic in a spray of sweat. Syd Barrett and Skip Spence check the boxes, both authentically troubled, dying tragically young, and leaving a creaky solo legacy worshipped by fans who love a good wrist-to-forehead sob at the sheer cruelty of a world that can never understand what they understand.
In today's provocative and timely TL-DR Foamtorial™, we take a hinge at Robyn Hitchcock, who was never really an N.B.O. anyway. In spite of provocative song titles like
I Wanna Destroy You, The Face Of Death, and
Sandra's Having Her Brain Out, and in spite of his cleverly-managed respect for Barrett, he avoided becoming authentically troubled and is as much an outsider as any student at the stiflingly posh English public school Winchester can be
["public school" = exclusive private school for scions of the rich, such as the current British Prime Minister - Ed.]. Hitchcock is more a calculated eccentric, in the great English tradition of the well-heeled able to harmlessly indulge themselves. But he has successfully built the cult following required of an N.B.O., without ever having written a hit song or recording an album that sold into double figures. Respect.
The Give It To The Posh Boys e.p. was released the same year as Television's first album, and things looked good for a psychedelic revival to lead us out of the dead end of punk. Although the Poshie's music wasn't rooted in bohemian counterculture so much as the croquet lawn, it was refreshingly furious and a little unsettling. But not unsettling in the way Hitchcock intended, probably. His lyrics didn't have the poetic individuality of a Beefheart or a Barrett or a Verlaine, and sweated for weirdness:
"I fix my fish, I fool my frog ... I squash my teeth and slag my grub ... my girl is ripe in greasy silk, a split tomato in her mind" Wading Through A Ventilator
And there was the problem of the tunes. There weren't any. The music rushed by in a nagging wave of electric energy so intense you forgot about the tunes. It took until their second album, Underwater Moonlight, for them to get as close as they were ever going to get to mastering the art of the popular song. It's a great piece of work, introducing craft and technique without sacrificing the raw energy. But the lyrics didn't make the quantum leap they needed:
"I won't do you no harm, I just wanna show what's in my fridge, so come on little girl - is your name Hester or maybe it's Midge" Old Pervert
Surreal wordplay, never intended to be taken seriously, or just shit? Here's some contemporary Television screed for a little perspective:
"He half asleep at night, over his head, sensation of flight, and he wake up dreaming ... he run down to the airport, the rush, the roar, and he crouched down behind a fence, with a chest full of lights ..." Little Johnny Jewel
Unfair comparison? Yes, in the sense that Verlaine could write, and Hitchcock couldn't - unfair like comparing an Olympic sprinter to someone who can barely walk.
Hitchcock's words are scribbles in a schoolboy's exercise book, neither edgy nor witty while pretending to be both. Their inspiration comes from the
Winchester Notions [left - Ed.] a glossary of Wykehamist (as the students are called) in-jokes and slang, some of which was still current in Hitchcock's day. "Were you nailed shirking up town?" could be ripped right out of a Hitchcock song, and his early group The Beetles owed as much to the authors of the
Notions, The Three Beetleites, as the Four Fabs.
Hitchcock, whose subsequent career is idiosyncratic at best, plain dull at worst, is something of a "National Treasure" in the U.K., an honor bestowed on any show-biz personality who refuses to die attractively young. The eternal Neurotic Boy Insider. Respect.
This piece funded by The Anarko-Syndikalist Revolutionary Student's Council Union Collective, Winchester College.
