Win : Freaky Trigger

They need someone like Cherry Red to do a deluxe reissue.

totally.
i guess the album is still wrapped in some legal cr*p as FT got the Cherry Red treatment, and i suspect they would love to do the debut.

So this whole glorious insane mess of an album was produced by Zeus P Held!?!?! As in Gina X Performance Zeus P Held? I guess that makes a lot of sense now!

Someone please tell me about this Davy Henderson character, and what his/her/their bag is? I'm very much getting a feeling of "excuse me, but you are obviously a complete nutter and I want a word with you?" Dangerous, but also intriguing.

(Someone involved with the making of this record really, *really* loves T Rex, huh!)

other than the usual stuff via google/wiki, i know very little of davy henderson, and even less of Zeus.

I dunno, my feeling - on listening to Freaky Trigger and watching a couple of previous videos is... this band's whole schtick is SOOO inherently based on the creation of a wacky pop personna - like, I want to know more about that personna?

(Still really sulking about the discourse on the whole 'separating the art from the artist' thread, about that whole 'pure formalism is the only way to approach music; caring about the character and personna and personality of an artist is ~inauthentic bad fandom~' thing that makes me SO MAD - this is a band, where, like 30 minutes exposure really seriously makes me want to know 'who ARE these amazing pop cartoon characters?!?!?' Like, the creation of pop cartoon characters really feels like an inherent part of the art here?)

((Zeus B Held was really amazing at creating a *sound* to match the whole Gina X Performance schtick of 'I'm a boy, I'm a girl, I'm gay, I'm straight, I'm ALL OF THE ABOVE, come to my super-pop planet of infinite gender play and sexual freakines, we will have A BAAAALLLLLL' - and that production is all over this record, along with those kinds of sentiments expressed in the actual lyrics - so my feeling is very much, "hello, Win, please tell me more about your planet, I think I would like to visit?!?"))

What else is one supposed to talk about, when faced with music like this? The guitar strings or something?

I know Davey a wee bit. He's a total riot.

Well, give us the goss, girl?!?!? You can't say something like that and not elaborate. ;)

Or don't... I guess he's someone where knowing too much can spoil the magic and I don't want the magic spoiled just yet.

Found this, which seems pretty comprehensive:

https://section-26.fr/in-the-lands-of-scotland-davy-henderson/

(I had no idea he has been involved with so much stuff, of which I know only bits and pieces and never connected the dots that they were all the same person? If he's that many people, no wonder he's so all over the place.)

And he talks in that interview, about how his Win personna was a contrivance, but it seems like something he does do, but found the "Win" contrivance harder than others?

But I think, that your voice, it’s like you’re putting on an act every time. And I don’t mean it in a negative way.

I know! It’s performing. Basically. You’re trying to find something that will work, and it takes a lot of endaveour and hair-tearing… It’s not easy to make something up. That’s happening for me, again, cause I’ve started to make things up again, as in sitting down with tape recorders as opposed to messing around, really sitting down and starting to write. But it’s not easy, it’s like aggressively manipulating motifs and trying to manipulate them into sonic objects that you will love. And you’re always looking for something to hang on to. But in regards to singing, you’re always sort of performing, you have to. You find that you’re acting. You’re playing.

But it’s funny because, in pop music, it’s a lot about authenticity, and there’s a tension there, between a performing persona… For I feel that there are a few.

Several filters?

Yeah, Davy Henderson from the Fire Engines, the topless young post-punk guy, and the goofy pop star from Win, and the darker side in Nectarine N°9, there are several personas… Was it conscious?

It’s always difficult, cause it’s not easy to make music up. It’s not natural. But the most difficult, out of the things you just mentioned, was to be in Win… oh man, that was hard work.

(It's really irritating, because he was talking previously about how much he loves and digs and was influenced by Judee Sill, which is a thing I can hear when listening to his voice - but the interviewer drags him back to talking about Iggy, like, here, this dude is ~not allowed~ to talk about being influenced by a female singer/songwriter, even though what's amazing about his voice is how ungendered and flexible it is, he can't say he wants to be Judee Sill or Lydia Lunch when he sings, he has to talk about Iggy Pop, because that's what the interviewer hears in him?)

((The interviewer is kind of ... not smart? If he claims that pop music is about 'authenticity' when so much of what's great about pop music is the *acceptance* of inauthenticity?))

Anyway...

I think he really does address people as 'baby' a lot in real life

I guess the interview does go a long way towards explaining some aspects of this record...

Because what I love about it is... it is a Big! Pop! Record! that sounds like it's made by some kind of space alien who has no idea what Pop even *is*, and has just absorbed a great deal of the stylistic quirks and forms and conventions of what they think "Pop" sounds like, from listening to 30 years of pop radio transmissions, but has literally NO IDEA of what Pop is for, what kind of a culture produces it, what Pop is intended to do?

So it ends up a huge bundle of massive Pop signifiers thrown in a blender and swizzed around because... that's how an alien with no idea of earth culture would think of Pop?

And it sounds brilliant, it's absolutely amazing and bonkers, and it *sounds* like a Great! Pop! Record! - but I can completely understand why this record wasn't successful, because what has been produced in the end has nothing to do with pop.

i really feel "he's a total riot" combined with "I think he really does address people as 'baby' a lot in real life" pretty much nails his character.

this is the advert he refers to in that interview(i think there is a longer edit too). i reckon 99% of people in Scotland who knew this song knew it because of the TV ad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmkaDqT-Z-E

Yeah, the long version came up in the reccommended videos after watching this interview!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxqxJCeH3yo

I'm getting flashbacks because The Shamen had a whole 'strange machinations involving a McEwans ad' story, too? (In their story, the ad never ran because the tabloids did a huge expose on the band, and the song - but they got to keep the money anyway.)

Something that's wild to me, is that Davy Henderson and Colin Angus and Jim Reid were all born within about 6 months of each other? Yet, I absolutely think of them as being from three different generations of music? Like, the Fire Engines are late punk/early post-punk (Henderson must have been about 12 when they started?) the Mary Chain are absolutely mid-80s indie, and the Shamen are Acid House from about 1990. Yet these three dudes who are responsible for the three bands are exactly the same age? Did music just move *incredibly fast* during those 10 years, or is my idea of time just completely warped because I'm getting so LOLold?

Ah yes, i had totally forgotten about The Shamen's beer advert adventure. McEwan's got cold feet due to their druggy nature iirc. The Shamen also got a ton of attention from The Scottish tabloids over it.

Also referenced here -
https://archive.list.co.uk/the-list/1988-06-24/44/

I think music really did move *incredibly fast* during those 10 years though i'm still slightly taken aback to learn they were all born within about 6 months of each other.

One other Davey reminiscence. I put The Fire Engines on in Glasgow circa 2005 and afterwards they, but in particularly Davey (and Russell) held court and kept us mightily entertained into the wee small hours. Davey hit on my partner at one point but in such a non toxic, charming, blatant and cheeky manner that zero umbrage was taken, baby.

The Shamen were resolutely mid-80s psych-indie until they went electronic IIRC (in fact weren't they called Alone Again Or or something before The Shamen?).

But yes things moved fast. Also yes (at least in my case) memory of what happened when what overlapped with what, is deeply unreliable!

Alone Again Or were super-electronic, had one of the first electronic drum kits in Scotland and basically sounded like an early New Order B-side? So I think there... genuinely always had been a ~dance element~ to The Shamen, but they toned it down to try to fit in with Indie-Schmindie 80s Scot-rock? But let's not turn this into the Shamen Thread, Part 2!

Davey hit on my partner at one point but in such a non toxic, charming, blatant and cheeky manner that zero umbrage was taken, baby.

Haha, see this is... 100% my impression of the man? He really strikes me as the kind of guy who probably has at least 3 ex-wives and half a dozen children but no one ever bears any hard feelings, because he's so charming and cheeky and non-toxic, and it's just kinda like he can't help but be sexy, baby?

But - walking back from the fan fiction, to head straight into more fan fiction - this is something that I find particular striking, and I don't know if it's something specifically Scottish, or just these particular dudes. (Because it was so refreshingly UN-like 80s American rock?) But listening to stuff like Win and The Fire Engines' Get Up And Use Me and - bloody hell, the guy called his latest band The Sexual Objects, like this is not subtle?!?!?

But here's the thing I find really appealing about this stuff: a lot of these super-blatant come-ons seem to come via the Bubblegum Pop and Glam Rock influence, this was very sexual, very innuendo-filled music, and they are really fully embracing that in a joyous way. But the whole thing about Bubblegum Pop's sexuality, was that it was very phallic and male-gaze-focused, like the ur-Bubblegum Ground Zero was Sugar, Sugar - "you are my candy, girl and you got me wanting you" - Bubblegum was a trope that enshrined this idea of women as food, as sweets, and consumables, women as things to be devoured by men. A lot of the bubblegum pop songs by the Mary Chain, by the Fire Engines/Win/etc. really do seem to flip the script on that - that these are men presenting themselves as sexual candy to be consumed... by women. (Or indeed anyone with half a mind to, in Henderson's songs!) The Mary Chain's biggest hit was not this thrusting, cocksure rock god out to consume women - it was a man offering "I'll be your plastic toy" and lying on the floor with the word "candy" projected across his body. Jim Reid was offering himself for consumption! Win really seem to have the same thing going on - they are super-sexual, but in a way that they are representing themselves as "we are the candy, we are the chocolate, we are presenting ourselves as sweets for our audience's consumption" - which is a very different approach to bubblegum/glam sexuality. And it's an approach that really does manage to strip out the icky and gross toxicness of traditional rock'n'roll sexuality.

And clearly, I respond to that, a lot.

I know it's all about the personna, and not the person.

People can represent themselves in song, in art, that are totally in opposition to the way they act or inhabit the world. (Which often makes the sense of betrayal worse, when one discovers how far artists' representations of themselves is from how they have portrayed themselves.)

But that doesn't mean that looking at the personna, describing why it is appealing, is the wrong way to approach a pop act, or an inherently bad way of experiencing music?

Agree it does not sound like American rock but there is a hell of a lot of Americana involved here -eg. the dresscode, sleeve designs, and the aspirational nature of the music and lyrics. But yeah, Orange Juice, Simple Minds blah blah blah but not to downplay an inherent Scottishness to all this (no mention of Love & Money yet?) there is really no such thing as a Scottish music scene outside of maybe folk circles. All these bands operated in the London-based UK music scene. The idea of throwing every pop signifiers into whatever technology was available and throwing it out had already been done to death with enormous success by eg. Trevor Horn. Creating a fantastic stage persona and playing it to the hilt goes back decades of course but was particularly explored and exhausted in the early 80s (Sigue Sigue Sputnik being an enormous nail in the coffin). One reason that Win were not more successful wasn't that they were inaccessibly weird, but that they were considered to be behind the curve,

Someone clearly didn't read past the third paragraph to find out *what*, specifically, was unlike American rock.

They flip the bubblegum pop script on turning women into snacks? It's a weird take but we all experience things our own way.

I saw Davy speaking with Lawrence before a screening of Lawrence Of Belgravia in 2013, he was the surprise interviewer who just happened to be there a the peak of my Win/Nectarine No. 9 obsession. He had a weird and rambly, inherent interviewing style, bad mic technique (i.e. you could barely hear him), wondered if he was pissed as early as 1pm, etc. I got the impression that the audience wasn't too appreciative of this, some eyes were rolled.

*incoherent

Yeah, he doesn't seem like someone who should be *doing* interviews from that end? Like, having a conversation he'd probably be hilarious, but him trying to interview someone seems like it would be disastrous.

Listening to You've Got The Power and it's actually quite a strange song, like it sounds like it should be political, but I can't actually work out what the political angle is...

"you've got the power - to generate fear / you've got the power - to censor what is real"

Erm, who exactly has these powers? And they don't seem like these are good powers to be using? It's weird because the beer advert actually elides the second half of the couplets, and combined with the video, which seems kinda 'smash the system, man!' but the actual lyrics - to me, at least, read like an indictment of the system? Maybe? I've no idea TBH.

(Also makes me wonder - if this song was so widely known in Scotland, was The Shamen's Synergy a wink, a nod, an answer record, changing it from "you got the power - to generate fear" to "we got the power - you and me, you and me / we are together in ecstacy" - I don't know if this is political either, but "we got the power - you and me" is to me a more powerful statement than "you got the power to generate fear / censor")

Haha, I'm also not surprised that ILM posters have no interest in or experience of female sexual pleasure, let alone critical consideration of lyrical depictions thereof.

Well, I do!

Anyway, after all this time, I'm sold! I guess one is on Spotify but the other is not. (I looked about a month ago)

Most of the 'why is this not on cd' albums have now been. Actually, a whole lot are now out of print and expensive.

So, we can hope. If sSs' "Flaunt It" can get a 4cd appraisal, and Black Box Recorder can have a lovely box set, Surely......

I'm also not surprised that ILM posters have no interest in or experience of female sexual pleasure

they don't? i think you'll find some most certainly do!

I'd say that at that point in time the Win song was universally known in Scotland so you could well be right about The Shamen's Synergy being an answer record, which I had never considered previously. Good call!

Apparently it sold enough in Scotland to make the UK top 40 but the charts compilers adjusted the sales down and didn't even make the top 75.

I'm also not surprised that ILM posters have no interest in or experience of female sexual pleasure

Hahaha, ok guilty as charged. I really do enjoy the energy & the fresh perspectives you bring to these otherwise tired out threads so I am sorry for being obtuse.

If anyone is looking to buy "tears baby" on cd and doesn't want to join a club, might want to check the "last night from Glasgow" website

urgh terfs label

?