A new book from longtime music industry insider Jane Gazzo fills in Australian music history from a time before oversharing became endemic. Sound As Ever: A celebration of the greatest decade in Australian music (1990-1999), a book with Andrew P Street covers most things that you should know about the optimistic musical decade that was dashed against the uncaring digital rocks of the 21st century.
Early 90s CDs from Australian artists (and The Sultans of Ping FC)
Maynard: With the Australian musical landscape, sadly, experiencing a slight, lack of interesting musical punters, one woman has stepped forward to toot the collective horn of the dark yet simultaneously blindingly colourful decade known as the nineties. Jane Gazzo has done that and been there. From inner city beginnings at Melbourne’s legendary 3RRR to Triple J, Triple M and BBC Radio, through to you seeing her on ABC’s Recovery on a Saturday morning and Channel V and Music Max on Foxtel, you probably know of Jane.
But have you ever shared a flat with her? Well, I haven’t either, but Sharky from The Prodigy and Courtney Love have, and all of them are better people from the experience. She’s written for Q magazine, but more importantly, Dolly magazine. Jane has published a book on John Farnham, but a new epic nineties book Sound As Ever – a celebration of the greatest decade in Australian music, 1990 to 1999, please make welcome my favourite Latrobe University graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in cinema that strangely has not yet won an Academy Award. Talk about robbed! Welcome Jane Gazzo!
Not at all flattering still of Maynard & Jane Gazzo from Triple J 40th staff party 2015.
Jane Gazzo: Thanks Maynard, you are my favourite purple-suited presenter slash broadcaster.
M: I think you’ll find it’s aubergine. It’s great to be chatting to you once again. We bumped into each other at the Triple J 40th catchup party. That was the last time I think I saw you.
J: Oh, that was sooo long ago Maynard.
M: There was no one documenting that. There was no person from ABC Radio. There was no person from ABC TV. You had staff from 40 years of Triple J all in the one room.
J: It was a crime.
M: Some of those people are no longer with us. I’m glad that you are making your moment with the nineties here. Look, I was talking to a couple of people about this, Glenn A Baker, he reckons the seventies were the greatest decade in Australian music. I mean, you’re ignoring the work of Mother Goose. Even though they are from New Zealand. Richard Wilkins told me that the greatest decade in Australian music was the eighties and you can’t really deny the work of Joe Dolce. He did replace the Pope when he got shot that time, which is even better than an ARIA award in my book, you are ignoring a lot there for the nineties. So you gotta make your case. What’s so great about the nineties, Miss Pineapple-and-Vodka-Drinker?
J: It is a bold statement, I grant you that and yes, look, the eighties were fabulous but for me the nineties was the last decade of innocence. And by that, I mean, we didn’t have camera phones, we didn’t have mobile phones. Record companies had so much money to spend on bands and they pretty much did spend money on bands and the Australian music scene was in a really healthy state. But as the year 2000 progressed, that innocence seemed to dissipate.
M: Do you think the record companies spent their money wisely?
J: There was some flippant signings. I mean, The Sharp, let’s be honest.
M: Look, I will not hear a word against the black skivvy wearing legends from Melbourne.
J: Scratch My Back, baby.
M: Don’t deny Train of Thought.
J: No one remembers Train of Thought Maynard. I think it was an interesting time because you would go to a gig in the nineties and you would notice the A&R men – and they all were men – by the bar, basically seeing who had the fattest cheque book in their pocket.
M: There was something in their pocket, that’s for sure.
J: I’m just saying it was healthy. There was a lot of community, there was a lot of camaraderie.
Yet more Australian CDs from the 90s. (Maynard International Studios)
M: You, you did a lot of stuff on recovery of course. So a lot of people were watching you bleary eyed on a Saturday morning and you would’ve been exposed to so many new bands of all varying talent.
You would get a band on (Recovery) and you would never see them or hear from them ever again.
Jane Gazzo
J: Varying talent. Sometimes you would get a band on and you would never see them or hear from them ever again. A band that I remember appearing on recovery was a band called Cool for August. Now they weren’t Australian, they were American, but obviously the record company here were putting in thousands and thousands of dollars to launch them here. They never did anything.
M: What were they called?
J: Cool for August and I only remember that because they had eyeballs on the Recovery set. We used to recreate a lot of the CD single covers. We never heard from them again. Then there was things like Sin Dog Jellyroll out of Adelaide, the most stupidest band name ever. Sin Dog Jellyroll. Where are they now? I should have probably investigated it.
M: One of the things you have got in the book is the Where Are They Now? section, even bands I’d never heard of.
J: You get a mention in the book Maynard, because it was you that introduced me to the artistic delights of Tlot Tlot.
M: Tlot Tlot and Rob Clarkson, I loved championing music on Triple J that wasn’t even on their playlist at the time and Tlot Tlot were a lot of fun. Always good, always up for a joke. My partial nineties list of bands goes a bit like this: Itch-E and Scratch-E, Mr Floppy, The Mavis’s, TISM, Oxo Cubans, Tlot Tlot, Rob Clarkson, Area 7, The Porkers, Caligula, Ratcat, Frente, The Killjoys, The Sharp, Collette, Bjorn Again, Falling Joys, Floyd Vincent, Frank Bennett. There you go.
J: Where’s Things of Stone and Wood in that list?
M: Happy Birthday, Helen… You’ve been probably torturing yourself with nineties music in your head while you’ve been writing this book. Is there one that got stuck in your ear? And you thought “not this again”.
J: It was more of how did I forget this song? I actually fell in love with the Canberra band Sidewinder all over again and their track Titanic Days. I forgot how brilliant it was.
M: One thing you mentioned fairly early on in the book is that the nineties had a real feeling of optimism, that just isn’t happening anymore.
J: I’m so glad you mentioned the optimism Maynard because everywhere there was optimism, certainly after we came out of the recession that we “had to have”. Paul Keating was our new Prime Minister. There was a sense, as I mentioned that the record companies had money and if you formed a band, you could pretty much live off the takings of being a musician. The music scene was so vibrant and so healthy that anything was possible. And a lot of those bands that I interviewed for the book really talk about that optimism and that sense of we can do anything we can get as big as we can. Which is why bands like TISM became so big, bands like Spiderbait and You Am I. There was this optimism.
M: Well, that’s certainly gone now.
J: Yeah, I think it’s wavered somewhat.
M: You’ve got the double whammy of venues disappearing and people not wanting to go out.
J: It was the bloody pokies, wasn’t it? That was introduced in the late nineties that saw really great venues just forfeit the stage for pokies because they realised that they could make more money from them. … I’d say every 20 years there’s a revolution. I’m hoping that with the recent global pandemic, there’ll be a new revolution and we’ll find those protest songs and those bands will start coming out of little tiny warehouses again, and the scene will reinvent itself.
M: I really hope that’s the case, that’s the kind of thing I’d like to see. I just wonder whether a lot of the experts and people with experience have left the industry.
J: They all got out of it during the pandemic because they weren’t making any money and they realised they couldn’t make any money. So they had to change careers had to go into different fields and now there is a real, genuine skill shortage. What are we gonna do about it Maynard?
M: I think if one band can do anything about it, it’s TISM – This Is Serious Mum – and they kick off your book in a pretty major way with a complaint letter from Bruce Ruxton from the RSL Association of Australia to Shock Records complaining about their record.
J: It was so brilliantly done. TISM released a single called Australia, the Lucky C*nt, and wrote that word on their CD single.
M: But also to boot, they had a knock off of a Ken Done koala shooting up heroin on the front cover. So you had copyright infringement as well as offence, which is always a good double banger.
J: But you know, what is so hilarious? I talk about this in the book, that Ken Done didn’t take offence to the fact that TISM copied his koala and his koala had a syringe hanging out of his mouth, he took offence to the fact that they copied his sun, suddenly he was copyrighting the sun. … So Ken Done owned the sun apparently in the nineties.
M: Oh, I guess that’s on most of his tea towels.
J: Yes, Bruce Ruxton. They actually sent a copy of the single to Bruce Ruxton in the hope that he would get his knickers in a knot and low and behold, he walked right into it. He received the CD single with the four letter word on it and wrote a letter which said it should be banned and they used that to get more publicity for themselves.
TISM cover of Australia The Lucky Cunt CD 1993
J: Can we just pray silence please for the sad news of the first lady of music television in Australia, Basia Bonkowski or Rendall as she was known, of course, the host of the wonderful SBS show, a Rock Around the World.
M: Was she the first?
J: Yeah, I think she was the first and Suzanne Dowling was the second. In the media I think they’ve conveniently forgotten Suzanne Dowling who did Rock Arena. That was absolutely equally as brilliant.
M: As far as I know, you’re the only person in nineties media history, who has put me in the book, why?
J: Because you were so omnipresent in the nineties. I used to listen to your show. You were appointment listening, and that’s when radio was really important. I mean, Triple J had literally just gone national when you started and you were such a breath of fresh air on the radio. Still are, I don’t know how your mind works. You just presented really great radio, and it wasn’t just the fact that you brought really cool bands on the radio. I mean, you were the first one to play and break in this country, Irish band from Cork, Sultans of Ping FC. But you used to do this amazing segment with a wonderful woman, American woman “You’ve got the wrong Sinatra”.
M: Millie Sinatra, a lovely lady, and she would solve people’s problems every week on the show.
J: Well, this is the thing, who’s doing that now on Triple J? I don’t hear any of that.
M: Sultans of Ping FC, yeah. Where’s Me Jumper? The film clip just had a jumper flying in the air. I mean, that’s the kinda thing you want. I remember one day the drummer turned up while I was doing Sunday Afternoon Fever, and I couldn’t believe it.
J: Well, it was because of him being on a, just a holiday. And I think he was staying at Bondi or Bronte or somewhere like that. He’d heard you playing Sultans of Ping so he rang up and he said “Hey, I’m Morty McCarthy, the drummer of Sultans of Ping.” Now I heard that and I was on Triple R at the time. So I remember ringing you and saying, “Can you give me Morty McCarthy’s details? I wanna interview him for Triple R.” And I have to actually thank you Maynard, because you may not know this, but Morty is now a very, very dear friend of mine. He lives in Sweden now and works for Radiohead doing merchandise.
M: Classic example of the unknown consequences of doing something nice.
J: See Maynard, you’ve had an effect on my life without you even knowing!
M: Look, we’ve gotta get back to the fact that Mr Floppy gets far too brief a mention. The album of the nineties was The Incredible Lightness of Being a Dickhead and Bruce Ruxton was on that album.
J: Oh my God. As was Peter Russell Clark, as was James Reyne, they just don’t make them like that anymore. I could have done a whole book on Mr Floppy and TISM alone.
Track listing of the legendary album from Mr Floppy, The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Dickhead.
M: I also learned a lot about Ratcat as well, having supported the guys more recently, I didn’t know that they had to spend so much of their own money at the behest of the record company to go overseas and do stuff that was a really bad move for them.
J: Yeah, in the middle of mass teen Ratcat hysteria they were told to go to London, to the UK, which makes absolutely no sense. And of course they never truly recovered once they got back because the kids had moved on, they couldn’t reclaim that fan base. Andrew P Street spoke at length to Amr Zaid, who was one of the original members of Ratcat, for the book and Amr had never told his story before. Amr had never talked about his time in Ratcat ever. He was really chuffed to be able to tell his story. I think he’s very proud of what they achieved in that short time.
M: In December, in a packed Enmore Theatre there, people still love them.
J: It’s fair to say it’s probably just Simon Day, these days. I think Amr and Simon haven’t spoken for years and years and years.
M: Being the music industry, and you said that those two haven’t spoken for a while, did you have to be careful who you spoke to and when you did, what you said? If you were talking to someone in a band and you knew that you shouldn’t mention What’s-his-name or The Interview?
J: Oh, put it this way, when I was doing the Where are they now? I had to be very careful with certain members who didn’t like other members, or who were really still nursing a lot of heartbreak from the breakup of their bands. And I had to be really careful with how I wrote about that. I just had to be really careful that someone wasn’t gonna email me and go “why did you mention that?” But I also wanted to get across the story of the person that was broken hearted.
M: Let’s talk about someone that was done wrong by the industry and that’s Tania Lacy.
J: Mmmmm. Again, another woman who has never told her story.
M: I remember being on the phone to her and Mark, because I was asked to host the show for a while. The first thing I did was ring them and they said, no, no, do it. And I didn’t do it because I supported what they were doing. And as she said, her booting off from Countdown Revolution was something her career never has recovered from.
J: It’s true. She had to take writing jobs to support herself, but she was told never to darken the door of the ABC ever again. She was fired by fax. She wasn’t even allowed to go and pick her things up. And the ABC said that the duo were fired for protesting about bands miming on the show, which was so far from the truth. As she puts it, she was protesting the fact – both her and Mark were protesting the fact – that the ABC were taking contra deals from record companies. Reporters were being flown overseas to interview bands, free trips, free prizes, everything that the ABC Charter states not to do, they were doing.
M: Shortly afterwards, the ABC really cracked down on that kind of thing.
J: As they should have. Tania Lacy was in her early twenties at the time and was being yelled at by these suits in middle management. What do you do? Where do you go? She was so talented. Cruelly wasn’t allowed to ever appear on air ever again. So she fled to, I think it was Sweden, where her husband was from. She’s back now.
M: She’s in Queensland now.
J: There’s a great article in Rolling Stone which I wrote, again based on the fact that herself and Caroline from Dead Star talked about just what they dealt with in the nineties. And so I put it into an article in this month’s Rolling Stone with The Wiggles on the front cover. To really tell their stories.
M: Another show that fell through the cracks was the one that was just on before Recovery, and that was The Factory, Tania was a powerhouse on that show.
J: I love the characters she used to take off. There was a Nana Mouskouri character. That’s where Tiziana Bouboulini was born of course. And she used to interview artists with the most hilarious of personas.
M: And they just chucked the whole thing away.
J: Yeah, very strange times. And it’s interesting because Countdown Revolution was a precursor to what Recovery would become where anarchy was encouraged. But as soon as they asked Mark and Tania to be as anarchic as possible, they got shut down.
M: Anyone who’s been to a Mark Little standup comedy gig would’ve told you what you’d be getting if you asked for him. At the Adelaide Festival, I think one of the rooms was sponsored by the submarine company and he smashed up the sign one night.
You nailed your nineties there with a list of stuff – in the nineties: Taragos, that was mainly the Toyota way of getting around with bands because the people carriers hadn’t expanded as much as they are.
J: When I went to London and people started talking about people carriers, I did not have any idea what they were talking about because I’d always called it a Tarago. I’d only ever known it as a Tarago.
M: The lists people have made of things that were really big, it’s interesting. Phones just don’t appear on the list. Cameras don’t appear on the list. The vodka and pineapple juice, because there were some wacky connections there. And I think even the vodka and energy drink thing was going on then, at the tail end of the nineties as well.
J: See it was Illusion Shakers for me, which I think were mentioned.
M: Were they blue?
J: They were Midori with lemonade and something else. And they were really big in the clubs in the nineties.
M: But I remember it was part of Sunday Afternoon Fever who had the most expensive Subzero, that lemonade.
J: I loved Subzeros, loved them.
M: And at clubs, they were really expensive. And I remember we found, oh, there was one going for as much as $7 at one time.
And also, at this time, I like mentioning that the import record thing was big. Because you couldn’t just click and download stuff from anywhere around the world. You had to go to a shop like Red Eye or many of the great record shops in Melbourne. If you wanted a CD, it could be as much as $45 in 1993 dollars
J: Weren’t record shops such hubs of community? You could go to a record shop and if the guy behind the counter knew you, he would recommend something that he’d know that you’d like, you’d check out all the musos looking at the musos wanted boards. You could find out about gig that were happening. You could get your import stuff. You’d get your street press while you were there. That’s really lacking in today’s world.
M: Yes, Saturday morning at a place like Central Station, you would have all the DJs turning up and all the important ones like Peewee Ferris and people like that would have their records put aside.
J: There is a fantastic map of old Sydney record stores in the book and some are still hanging on for dear life like Red Eye. We all remember our record shops really fondly.
M: Brunswick Street was the go in Melbourne.
J: Polyester was there, there was Sister Ray for a while. Of course, in the city you had Au GoGo and Missing Link records.
M: Missing Link. I remember getting my copy of 99 by Barbara Feldon there. They also released, I think, Kinky Boots, by the Avengers, which I used to play on the radio as well. And whenever a Kylie record was released in the UK about a month or two ahead of us, I’d go and get the import copy and I’d play it first. I liked doing that.
I ended up setting fire to my own bum. That’s what happens when you’re a trailblazer…
Maynard
J: You were a trailblazer!
M: I ended up setting fire to my own bum. That’s what happens when you set fire to your trail and you blaze it!
J: You opened the doors for the likes of me, Maynard, you opened up the doors for us.
M: You did the request show on Triple J of an evening.
J: After Michael Tunn! Remember Michael Tunn? Tunny had left by the time I took over his shift, I think he got burnt out because remember he was doing the Afternoon Show on ABC TV.
M: He was hosting Big Square Eye as well. He was 16 when he first arrived at Triple J.
J: And he was great! I took over from the Request Best and I changed it to Super Request.
M: I started doing the request show on a Saturday night before Tunny got it and it was a really weird thing because there had been no request show on Triple J before they got me to do it for a couple of months before Tunny took over. And the weird thing was you either got two sorts of songs. People would want something that was ultra commercial, or they’d want something that was really obscure. It’s like the audience didn’t know what to do with a request show on Triple J at first.
Michael Tunn had a really interesting way of broadcasting. He would have an FM radio, just a little transistor radio in the studio, and whenever he went to a song, he would listen to all the other major music stations in Sydney, find out what they were playing and try and better the song that they had on.
J: That’s amazing.
M: It means you’re being reactionary. You’re not leading your reacting, but it’s a way to do it. … And what was the weirdest experience you had doing a request show? The Triple J request show when I was doing it, when Tunny was doing it, when anyone does it is not a normal request show.
J: I’m gonna let you in on a secret Maynard: some nights on Super Request when I was hosting, there were no calls. Which is hard to believe because we were nationwide, but some nights we just didn’t have any talent or, you know, they’d ring up and they’d want a song that we couldn’t play or didn’t want to play. Or it was too daggy, too bad, whatever. I can’t believe I’m telling you this … I had this friend that was really good at putting on voices and accents. When we needed some talent on the air, especially Friday nights, I think Friday nights we struggled because everyone was getting ready to go out and I had this friend, Glen, who would put voices and accents on. Well, I, I loved that Radio Birdman song Aloha Steve and Danno. And I had read in the paper that day, that the guy who actually played Steve, the actor on the actual Hawaii Five O show had passed away.
M: Jack Lord! Our Lord and Saviour, Jack Lord.
J: So it was 1998 and he’d died and so I went, oh well, that’s a great segue into Aloha Steve and Danno. Hey, homage to Jack Lord and Hawaii Five O by Radio Birdman. Why not? Great. I rang Glen and I said, “Mate, can you come on and just mention you, you’re a huge Hawaii Five O fan”. I’d always word him up. Uh, Jack Lord’s passed away. Can I play Radio Birdman? He said “Yep not a problem Jane”. He was used to it, coming on and requesting songs. So he got on air, we’re live on air and Glen put on a Chinese accent.
M: Oh no!
J: It’s awfully racist as well, but he just thought he’d take the piss and put on a Chinese accent live on air. Maynard, I lost it, I start laughing, I can’t hold it together because I know it’s my mate putting on a Chinese accent. My God, I had tears coming down my face. I got him on and I got him off, but Jesus, I was pissing myself, no word of a lie. The next day, someone from the Herald Sun was obviously listening and put in the entertainment section: “Jane Gazzo was so disrespectful to a listener who was talking about the death of Jack Lord, not cool, Jane”. My friend was putting on a friggin’ Chinese accent and someone took me to task and wrote about it, that I was the most disrespectful person in the world, ever!
M: By the way every commercial station does that for sure. Because the problem commercial stations have is not so much people ringing up, but ringing up with the right songs that are on the playlist.
J: Oh my God. I know. Well, you know, you and I have both worked in commercial radio when I worked at, um, a commercial radio that will remain nameless, but is still around today, they did this whole campaign: We’re gonna play the songs you wanna hear! So make sure you get in and, and fill in this thing online and tell us all the songs you wanna hear!
And, of course I got excited as a DJ, I went, oh great, we’re expanding our playlist from the 12 Cold Chisel songs and Guns and Roses songs that we constantly play to maybe 20 songs. And I remember my boss coming into the studio while I was on air, which was a crime in itself, but he goes “Have you got something lined up?” and I said, “Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna play Run to the Hills cause everyone loves Run to the Hills and there’s so many requests for it. “No, no, no, no, no, don’t play that, play Garbage.” “But there’s not one request from any male between the ages of 40 to 65 who was requested Garbage.” He’s saying “No, but just ring up someone and get them to ask for it, okay.” And I’m like, “What about Run to the Hills? Cause that’s what people wanna hear?”
M: I know this Chinese guy who really likes Garbage!
J: Such a lie to the audience!
M: The amount of lies in the book that I’ve spotted has been almost zero. The quiz at the end is a good one as well. You’re someone who’s written a few trivia quizzes in your time, Jane Gazzo.
J: Did you get them all right?
M: I actually didn’t do very well in them. Why don’t you throw one out to the listener right now?
J: Who was the host of Creatures of the Spotlight on Triple J on a Monday night? There’s one for you.
M: Peter Castaldi.
J: Correct. And who was his co-host?
M: I’d forgotten there was a co-host.
J: Yeah! Starts with L … Lawrie Zion, you don’t remember Lawrie Zion?
M: Lawrie Zion!
J: Creature of the Spotlight was Pete Castaldi and then Lawrie Zion. I’m sure they worked in tandem together.
M: Now that’s a good question for those nineties Triple J listeners. And I’d like to finish with you making a request on this show and don’t do your Chinese voice again! I’m on to you, Jane. Well, now the radio station would have to hand in its licence. And they’d just dig a large hole there, build a statue of you, then pull the statue down and dig another hole and put the statue in it.
J: It wasn’t me, it was my mate Glen. A request, all right, I’m gonna go Ratcat, That Ain’t Bad because “I love you” – that was the catch cry of the early nineties, and it really for me kickstarted the entire Australian music scene, such a great, great song to go out with.
M: Where can people get the book Sound As Ever: A Celebration of the Greatest Decade in Australian Music (1990-1999)?
J: In all good boutique bookshops, as well as the major chain bookshops, and you can get it online via Melbourne books.
M: I recommend people go along to your website: janegazzo.com and have a good read of what you’ve done, and all little incidents that have gone on. I do like the word that you shared a place with, and you worked for, Courtney Love ‘briefly’.
J: Briefly.
M: So was it the whole day?
J: It was 12 days all up.
M: Would the word ‘mercurial’ be good to use?
J: Batshit crazy is probably better.
M: This book is worth reading, worth having, it’ll settle arguments. Cause that’s one thing, you’ll be at home, you’ll be watching stuff, one person will look at the Wiki, other people will look at YouTube, they won’t have the same answer, they’ll be pushing and shoving, and everyone will be drinking the pineapple and vodka juice, and you can solve the answer by just having this book. Oh, hang on a minute, you supported Hugh Jackman as a DJ?
J: I was his support act.
M: What do you play when you’re supporting Hugh Jackman?
J: Playing stuff from Motown and sixties Soul and eighties stuff. I was having a ball, such a highlight in my life being the support act for Hugh Jackman and on the eighth show when I got off stage for the last time I did a cartwheel down the runway, just cartwheeled all the way back.
M: What song would you finish with?
J: I think I finished with You Can’t Hurry Love by the Supremes.
M: Have you thought of what song we should play for you?
J: Ratcat, That Ain’t Bad.
M: You don’t want to change your answer? You don’t want to phone a friend? Particularly a friend who puts on a fake Chinese accent. I’m not having that guy on the show again!
Jane Gazzo, thank you very much. She’s requested it twice so we have to play it now on the Maynard Request Fest here. Sound As Ever: A celebration of the greatest decade in Australian music (1990-1999) it’s great and so is Jane!
There’s a new Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons podcast from Luke at UFOcast. As a guest presenter (Captain Aubergine) on the latest podcast, I look into episode Operation Time, in which Captain Scarlet looks like he’s been to an all weekender Rave by the end of it.
Spooky hospital Supermarionation from Captain Scarlet
It’s Captain Aubergine, Maynard here!
First of all, there’s always that organ stab right at the beginning. When we first see that dirty back alley that Captain Scarlet hangs out in, we hear the mighty organ flourish at the beginning.
It does herald the fact that a great drama is afoot in this episode. Of course, we’ve got Dr Fawn again, wonderfully played by the Australian Charles “Bud” Tingwell, who was born in the Sydney seaside suburb of Coogee, and flew during the Second World War in the Mediterranean theatre, doing reconnaissance flights in Spitfires, Hurricanes and Mosquitoes.
And because the Mysterons just love giving the game away, they inform everybody that they’re going to KILL TIME, which confounds everybody. They even get the Spectrum computer onto it. They just put in ‘time’ as the search word. It’s a bit like putting in ‘water’. “Oh, we’ve got a lot of results for that.” In fact, they got 14 micro files of it. That much! Wonder if you can fit that on a USB?
So the Mysterons are going to kill time. Hmmm… Could mean a lot of things. They could play some experimental jazz. Read that copy of “The Wasteland” that’s been lying around the house. Or really get stuck in and fix that kitchen drawer that doesn’t close properly.
Although I guess the Mysterons could just destroy the drawer and have it rebuild itself, but that drawer probably wouldn’t close properly either, being an exact copy of an object that was broken in the first place.
The opening shot is a very, very surreal camera moving across the ceiling of an operating theatre. And there are some very scary medical looking instruments, some kids might not enjoy this.
That’s where we’re introduced to the Cerebral Pulsator. In this opening surgery scene there’s a rare shot of obvious Supermarionation strings on Dr Magnus. I’m just having a quick look at Captain Black there too. He could really use a good night’s sleep.
So they’ve got this whole thing about time. What does that mean? Is it something to do with Dave Brubeck? Is it Prince’s backing band? Is it the song from “Dirty Dancing”? They just don’t know.
And in this is a great closeup on Captain Blue. What an impeccably designed outfit by Sylvia Anderson. Really good attention to detail.
Spectrum assigns their best agents to strategic locations. Captain Blue is going to New York, Captain Grey is going to Rio de Janeiro (“Woo hoo!”). Captain Ochre is going to Moscow and Captain Scarlet assigned to London. I guess Captain Razzmatazz got sent to Weston-super-Mare. You never know, the Mysterons might go there in their downtime.
Then we see Dr Magnus leaving the hospital. He’s wearing the neurosurgeon casual look there with a strong accent on the cravat. He goes to see the General. Hit pause and have a good look at that consent form that the General signs. That is an actual consent form by look of it.
The operation looks like stereotactic surgery of the thalamus. I didn’t have the three days necessary to go to neurosurgeon school, but I’ve read it up on it and it is an operation that you do with the patient being awake under a local anaesthetic, it usually takes between two and three hours and is not often performed now because ultrasound can do the work of actually going in there and removing parts of the thalamus itself.
So this is based in a bit of reality. Someone in the Gerry Anderson studios knew their neurosurgery.
Captain Black in the orange turtleneck follows Dr Magnus after he’s had the consent form signed. What happens next I’m sure many Americans have experienced. They’re loitering at the red light. The person behind them just wants them to move because they are in a hurry and so gets out a gun and takes take a shot at them.
This whole chase scene shows Supermarionation at its best. Those trees look great. And the close ups of the two drivers, Captain Black and Dr Magnus, really build the suspense. Ah, if only the Doctor had some form of communication that was mobile in his car!
Captain Black shoots out his tire and he has a big crash. Oooh, they’ve Mysteron-ed him! Captain Black comes up behind the Mysteron-ed doctor and gives him his order to KILL TIME. Spectrum are really up against it here. We’ve got an ethereal enemy. Basically, they just put their googly eyes on something and they can make a copy of it if it’s just died, which is why there’s a grisly murder in every episode for the children.
We cut to Cloudbase where Colonel White’s having a contemplative moment looking out of the window only to be interrupted by Captain Magenta, who maybe has had a bit too much coffee. “It came to me in a flash!” There’s a WTF moment from Colonel White. You don’t get that every day.
Captain Magenta probably has been into the Mysteron champagne there by the sound of it, but he’s right. ‘Tiempo’ is Spanish for time and now Spectrum know what the jig is and they’re onto it. So Captain Magenta is the hero of the show.
Spectrum move the operation to Cloudbase. Dr Magnus starts behaving in a way you don’t want your neurosurgeon to behave before or during an operation. He turns into Dr Shirty: “Let’s get on with it.” And Dr Sweating Bullets: “Set the voltage for 1.7.” “But Doctor that’s far too high!”
And he gets his hand in front of the x-ray machine when they’re taking one of the photos of the patient, then he wants to set the Cerebral Pulsator to the ‘Let it Rip’ setting, which doesn’t make anyone suspicious whatsoever. “You sure you should do that?” “No, no, no, no. I’m setting it to 127 million, that’s just fine!”
“I’ll thank you Doctor to remember I’m performing this operation.” It’s not like I’m working for the enemy or anything. But then the radiographer sees that bare bones photo of the x-ray of Dr Magnus’ hand has turned into a full photo of his hand skin and all. Well, that’s just not right!
Dr Magnus turns up the Cerebral Pulsator to the Ozzy Osborne frequency. Meanwhile, the radiographer tries to get past Captain Magenta, whose gun by the way matches his outfit. Does Captain Scarlet’s gun match his outfit?
Because Captain Magenta has got a chip on his shoulder to start with: “Oh, Captain Magenta, right? Not Captain Red, not exciting, like Captain Scarlet. Captain Magenta!” Everyone probably makes fun of him, except Captain Ochre who probably wouldn’t make fun of him. Captain Razzmatazz certainly wouldn’t. So Captain Magenta has a lot to prove in this scene by keeping the one guy who could save the day out. Because he hasn’t got a colour. He’s just a radiographer.
Meanwhile, Dr Magnus just keeps turning up the beats per minute, like a rave from the late nineties. So has the General been killed? The operation sheets are pulled back to reveal … Captain Scarlet! Who has had his brain fried. Again.
Sometimes Colonel White gets a bit cavalier with the whole Captain Scarlet thing, doesn’t he? He could have stopped this operation before Captain Scarlet’s brain was fried, it was pretty obvious, but no, no, we just let him fry Captain Scarlet’s brain, because with his retro metabolism everything will be fine again. He won’t mind.
So Dr Magnus being the victim of a Spectrum suck-in with Captain Scarlet then bolts out of the operating theater, knocking Captain Magenta out of the way, probably making him the butt of a whole stack of other jokes. “Oh right. You stopped the radiographer, but you couldn’t stop a Mysteron. Who do you think you are? Captain Red?”
Captain Blue gets the drop on Dr Magnus in the Generator Room. Although Captain Grey did also offer to come along with Captain Blue to the Generator Room and there’d be two of them, he went “No it’s best I go alone.” Why not have two people there? Two people with guns? Although maybe it’s a good thing for Captain Grey because look what happened to the last person who went on a mission with Captain Blue. Not naming any names there.
Captain Blue throws a ladder against Dr Magnus and he falls against the high voltage wires and we have a very grisly electrocution there. The kids will love that.
At the debrief at the end, Captain Scarlet’s sitting there. Seemingly fine, although he doesn’t have any dialogue in this scene. I wonder after what’s gone on with his brain, he’s having the Homer Simpson thing, where there’s a monkey banging cymbals together in his head. And that’s all he can hear.
We’ve learned very important information from this about the Mysterons: they’re impervious to x-rays, and high voltage currents will kill them just as much as it will a human. Important information for the episodes to come.
A super scary episode, particularly for those people that aren’t good with hospitals.
The script was by Richard Conway and Steven J Mattick – they had done earlier work on the show, but I think this was their first script that was filmed. It took about two weeks to shoot, but that was about how fast the show got made. Ken Turner’s direction is great.
With those spooky operation shots of the ceiling, I’m not sure I would’ve signed that consent form.
Captain Aubergine, Maynard, Sydney Spectrum signing off!
Stereotactic thalamotomy … I’ll have two of those thank you.
Maynard International Studios presents his Olivia Newton-John 1999 interview, Alan Carr the producer of Grease, and many of Olivia’s music clips plus extra surprises. Expect guests popping in to show their Olivia love.
Maynard with his Olivia Newton-John signed albumGlenn Keenan dances with Olivia & Gene Kelly
Olivia Newton-John weekend kicked off with Tell Me About It, Stud!, the video livestream quiz show where you got to show off your quirky Olivia Newton-John knowledge against everyone else watching.
With Maynard as host and Richard Saunders as the scorekeeping empath with guests Tim Ferguson, George Hrab, Brigitte Handley and our choreography correspondent Lesley Fountain (Glenn Keenan) the only thing we can say was that the real winner on the night was Olivia herself.
There’s a new Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons podcast from Luke at UFOcast. As a guest presenter (Captain Aubergine) on the latest podcast, I look into episode 2 Winged Assassin, in which Captain Scarlet attempts to save the day by driving badly and being very rude to his passenger.
Action packed Supermarionation from Captain Scarlet
I enjoy my debut as Captain Aubergine, reviewing an episode of Captain Scarlet made me look at this show that aired in the UK the same year The Beatles released their Sgt Peppers album. It screened in 1967 (55 years ago) but was set in the wildly futuristic year of 2068.
While certainly dated (a children’s show with cigarette ad billboards and multiple characters smoking) it really showcases the talent and imagination of Century 21 Television Productions. The Supermarionation of Gerry Anderson, along with Sylvia Anderson’s costume designs in all their 1960s swingin’ colours, are really on display here alongside a very dark theme of amorphous alien revenge.
Spectrum Is Green!
Watch the actual episode Winged Avenger and see if we got it right…
Captain Scarlet does a drive-by of Sonny and Skippy
Olivia Newton-John was one of the most talented and nicest Australians around and to celebrate her work let’s have two video livestreams over the weekend of 26th-27th August.
Maynard International Studios will present her Maynard interview and many of her music clips plus extra surprises on a video livestream on Saturday night at 8.30pm. Expect guests popping in to show their Olivia love.
But on Friday night at 8.30pm (10.30 UTC) it’s Tell Me About It, Stud!, the video livestream quiz show where you get to show off your quirky Olivia Newton-John knowledge against everyone else watching and playing along.
It will all happen at https://www.mixcloud.com/live/dj-maynard/ with pre shows starting at 8.15pm (10.15 UTC).
There will be a live chatroom both nights, so feel free to play along on Friday or comment during the show on Saturday.
Mari Wilson, 80s UK pop glamourpuss, is our guest in this possibly career defining show for Maynard. From Neasden to New York, from “Just What I Always Wanted” to “The Eyes Have It” via “Ecstasy” and much carry on over the decades, Maynard and Mari have a grand old chinwag.
Joining fellow Neasden immortals such as Twiggy, Gerry Anderson and Bob Marley… Mari Wilson still often wonders what was the deal with the Neasden Sea Scouts, as Neasden is 40 miles away from the sea.
“I’ve got a thing about Tupperware. You’ve got to know the right way to let air out of it.”
Mari Wilson – Tupperist
Mari Wilson with her 1983 Tupperware collection.
Mari working on that beehive at home. Photo by ANL/Shutterstock
Mari having a musical good time in 2022.
Mari Wilson with her parents 1982. (Daily Mail)
Mari Wilson’s iconic Showpeople album cover 1983.
Mari Wilson demonstrates the peril of doing a calendar photo shoot with limited headroom for her famous beehive. By the legendary Adrian Boot. As mentioned in the show, Mari was wearing that June outfit during the recording of Showpeople. (It’s Crimplene.)
Mari Wilson’s dates supporting Level 42 in UK in November 2022.
Witness the quick change power of Mari during Baby It’s True. Thrill to this audience of Dutch New Romantics.
Mari on Dutch Top Pop show 1984.
Mari Wilson live performance of Cry Me A River on The Tube 1984 with her strings the Prawn Cocktails.
Mari with Matt Backer – The Eyes Have It.Maynard’s research, a selection of Mari Wilson press 1980s.
Official looking transcript of Maynard’s interview with Mari Wilson
Maynard: Valued listener, only three musical artists deserve their very own section in my extensive music collection. They are ABBA, Tom Jones and our guest today, Mari Wilson.
From an early beginning in the backyard bathtub in Neasden, to the bright lights of New York City and Crouch End, Mari has wowed the world with her albums such as Showpeople, The Rhythm Romance, Pop Deluxe and Emotional Glamour. And the singles: from the perfect 80s pop of Just What I Always Wanted, to the cinematically dangerous Would I Dance with a Stranger, to any of the belting heartfelt ballads on Pop Deluxe, Mari’s worked with Boy George, Mark Almond, Heaven 17, not to mention Harry, Barry, Larry, Gary, Cary and, of course, Jim.
Despite never realising her lifelong dream of owning a donkey by the seaside, Mari has succeeded in breathing life and laughter into her catchphrase: it's a glamourous song and it's glamorously sung.
My favourite UK Type 1 diabetic, please welcome Miss Beehive, The Neasden Queen of Soul, eat drink and be Mari! In fact, be Mari McMillan Ramsey Wilson! Hi Mari!
Mari: Hello there! That was quite something, wasn't it, that intro, that's very kind of you. You missed one album out there and that's Cover Stories. It was the one before Pop Deluxe. It's very sparse, just piano.
Maynard: And I saw you giving a lovely sparse performance of Female of the Species on YouTube at a show.
Mari: Oh my God, I think I’ve only sung that once, that song,
Maynard: What got me was it was in a lovely restaurant and people were eating. Mari is singing! Don't eat the soup while the woman's singing! Great version.
Mari: Well, thank you. That was years ago. My goodness. How long ago? That must have been 20 years ago, at least.
Maynard: Minimal arrangement. I quite liked it. In fact, we've got telegrams from people that want me to say hello to you. Some of your Australian fans want me to say hello and ask some questions. Are you up for it Mari?
Mari: Absolutely. Of course.
Maynard: First one comes from Dave Milton, who was the owner of the Blue Note Club in Derby.
Mari: [Laughs] That brings back some hilarious memories that does!
Maynard: He said that “Mari and her band were always the most professional and the easiest group to work with that I ever worked with while I owned the Blue Note.” There you go.
Mari: Well, that's nice to know. I don't think every club owner would say that mind you.
Maynard: Is that because sometimes there were 12 of you and you left mud marks in the dressing room and that sort of thing?
Mari: I'm pretty OCD. No, I always leave the dressing room probably tidier than when I get there. When I look back to those times, The Blue Note was fantastic. We had some fantastic gigs there. I think we played there a few times, actually. It was just very vibey and it was at the time when … I always find this quite hard to describe … but before you become whatever word you want to use “famous” or “successful” or “known”, you know, before you have that hit. It's the time sort of just before that that you never get back again. you know, I wasn’t as massive as somebody like Madonna, but still for a few years, I was having hit records and touring and recognised and all that kind of thing. But it's the bit before that, that is the nicest because you can feel something's happening, but it hasn't happened yet, but you feel like it's going to.
Maynard: There's that moment when you've still got your friends and the people you know coming along, and the new people are coming in, and it's blending like that. Is that kind of what you mean as well?
Mari: Yeah, it's the anticipation. It's a bit like when you are falling in love with someone, those first six months when you shag like rabbits. Oh, I don’t know if I can say that. Can I?
Maynard: Oh, we're going to get dirty here, don't you worry about that!
Mari: Oh good. It kind of feels like that. And then when you get the hit and everything, that is great, but there's something better for me about the “just before” - it's lovely.
Maynard: Well, we've got a quote here from you from March 5th, 1983, from the Record Mirror on the front cover: “Mari Wilson: I'd rather muck about than be sexy”. A completely out-of-context quote that they love putting on the front of these magazines.
There's another one from you I like: “The problem about being famous is what if I'm walking down the shops and I fall over and there's a hole in my tights”.
Mari: Did I say that? That's ridiculous!
Maynard: That's a legitimate issue. If there's a hole in your tights at any time and someone notices, it can be embarrassing.
Mari: Well, yeah, well but it's quite fashionable to have holes in your tights now. I think the worst thing would be if you didn't have any knickers on - that would be a bit worse, but I didn't think of that at the time
Maynard: That would get you in The Sun. You'd be in The Sun for sure.
Mari: Oh yeah, it would, yeah.
Maynard: There's Ryan Wallace, who worked for the BBC for a while, and when he heard you were from Neasden, he asks: is the best way to drive to Neasden via Shoot Up Hill Road? Does that mean anything to you?
Mari: Well, it depends where you're coming from, you'd have to go through Willesden. This is sending people to sleep isn't it?
Maynard: People are putting this into their GPS right now as we talk. Bob Downe, also known as Mark Trevorrow, who I believe has worked with you a few times in the UK. Remember him?
Mari: Bob Downe! Gosh, yes, I do!
Maynard: He just says “Huge hello” and he still thinks you are completely fabulous.
Mari: Oh, that's lovely. Oh gosh, isn't everyone being really nice, how lovely.
Maynard: Glenn Keenan, he was over at my place the other day. And there's a photo of you on the wall doing your makeup, 10 by 8, I really like that. Is that your bedroom?
Mari: Oh, that, yeah, it's a great photo that.
Maynard: [Glenn] said she confused the hipsters of the early 80s English music press. And I think you did. They didn't know quite what to make of you sometimes.
Mari: No, they didn't because it was just after punk had faded away. But the great thing about the 80s was everyone was very glamorous. Boy George, the Human League, the Eurythmics, you know, we all dressed up, but we dressed up in our own way. A lot of us didn't have stylists, it was our own taste. Most of my stuff came from charity shops.
Maynard: Every fashionable woman I know, wants to know: did you get your dresses made for you or did you mainly buy from vintage shops? There’s a great quote from you saying you love going out on tour because it gave you an excuse to buy new outfits.
Mari: Later on, I did have someone making me stuff, but it was, there's a place called Portobello Road in London and they've got loads of what we would now call vintage shops. They sold second hand stuff. And I used to go down there and get things. And also there was in Neasden, every so often there was the Neasden Sea Scouts jumble sale. Now why there were Sea Scouts in Neasden I've got no idea, we’re nowhere near the sea.
Maynard: Maybe it's a global warming thing. They were getting ready.
Mari: Maybe they were ahead of their time, ‘cause I'm talking like 1980. The women who used to run the jumble sales would phone me and say, just letting you know, there's a jumble sale coming up and there's a few lurex dresses. Should we put them aside? So they did. I used to get my earrings there. You can't find stuff like that now. And I've still got some of it. The first dress I wore on TV cost 20 pence from the Neasden Sea Scout jumble sale. It was a blue lurex number. I think they didn't know what to make of me because I wasn't really like anyone else. And that's the point, isn't it, in my opinion, for a musician or a pop star not to be like anyone else.
Maynard: I managed to get a copy of the Melody Maker with you on the front cover with a little bird. You've had enough of this guy who’s interviewing you and you say, “Look, I'm not actually Depeche Mode” you say during the interview, because it's obvious that you're not, and he's interviewing you like you are, or you should be.
Mari: Were they trying to be a bit political, were they?
Maynard: The whole thing started out, because it was his birthday and he had to interview you for lunch. And that's what he started about. Typical English journalist starts writing about something that has nothing to do with anything that is part of the story. He goes on about, you know, you don't write your own songs. Are you a singer? And you went “I'm an entertainer”. And it's when you said you were an entertainer, it was like, you were like throwing gasoline on the fire and then you eventually said, “Look I'm not Depeche Mode.”
Mari: They could be, and they still can be, quite nasty. And like, what are you getting out of it? Maybe it's just envy because they're not doing much themselves. I don't really know. And also, it's much harder to write nice things about someone than it is to write nasty things. It's quite easy to write nasty things. You can find all these wonderful adjectives and be clever with your words. But to be nice about someone takes a bit more effort, I think. Dusty Springfield never wrote one song.
Maynard: You got the cover. There's a double page interview. And this guy, ugh.
Mari: That's a very valid point Maynard. The fact that, yeah, I'm on the cover, I've got a double page spread, so wait a minute, who's the fool here?
Maynard: February 26th, 83. Look, you're in there with Laurie Anderson, Thin Lizzy, Madness, Eurhythmics, Depeche Mode and you on the front cover. So there!
Mari: Exactly.
Maynard: By the way, listener, Mari Wilson. She's not Depeche Mode. In case anyone's tuning in for Depeche Mode, you'll be sadly disappointed. One last greeting: Kim Sand writes “Did you stop doing your beehive hairdo because you were getting migraines from the 150 hair pins you had to put in all the time?”
Mari: You sometimes get headaches, actually. When it started, I just used to do it myself and it wasn't that big. And then I got my hairdresser Susie, and I said, oh, we, we need a bigger one. So she did quite a big one. And then I met Peter Cannon who I'm still very, very close to.
Maynard: And he's the one who did the M class hairdo, which you later evolved into I believe?
Mari: Yeah. He's amazing at hairdos. That's his forte. He's brilliant at that. He’d say “oh, should we make it a bit bigger? Oh, what should we put in the back? Let's put this in the back” and all that. It was so exhausting; I would have to go to … I've got a fantastic photograph someone took of me asleep in bed in a hotel, with my head hanging off the side of the bed, because I couldn't put my head on a pillow because it would squash my beehive. It was usually because I would have an interview or something first thing in the morning, so I thought, oh, I don't want to have my hair done again, oh, I'm not going to take it down, I'll leave it. And it looks like the Elephant Man, it's quite hilarious actually, this photograph.
Maynard: I enjoy watching your videos because you did hide little things in the back of your beehive, there’d be a Christmas decoration or a photo or a coloured ribbon. People should have hired it for advertising space.
Mari: Yeah, they should have!
Maynard: Your Name Here!
Mari: I just wanted to move on. Everyone has their first look, don't they, look at Phil Oakey from the Human League with his lopsided bob and things like that. So I did have loads of other hairdos, but I don't have it now or anything because when you do that kind of 1950s and 60s, which I still love, and I still have a nod to it in the way I dress. I mean I'm 67 now, so if I was to have a beehive now, when I was young, it was kind of cute and ironic, because I had a nice plump face and everything, but now you no longer look cute, you just look older. And when you're 67, you don't want to look even older.
Maynard: You've still got the great fashion sense in The Eyes Have It with Matt Backer that's up on YouTube. You’ve got a great selection of outfits.
Mari: I still do it with my clothes, and I still sort shish my hair up a bit, but nothing like then. I still love it.
Maynard: Have you got kids or a teenage daughter that at one stage said, “oh Mum, your antics are a bit embarrassing for me”?
Mari: I have a 25-year-old daughter.
Maynard: Well, I hope she stops saying that then.
Mari: Yeah. Well, you know, sometimes I'll say, “Do you want to come to the gig?” And she'll say, “Oh, well, I suppose you're just going to be doing Cry Me a River … no, not really”. And I thought “Thanks a lot!” But she will. In fact, I'm singing tomorrow night at my friend's 60th birthday. There's loads of us singing tomorrow. So she's coming with me tomorrow night, but probably because she wants to see everybody else. [Laughs]
Maynard: Mari Wilson, another thing I have to ask you. Watching your many live performances over the decades on YouTube that I've seen, to my ear you seem impervious to a bad PA or fold back. I've heard no bum notes or out of tune stuff going on at all. Have you always got a good PA or you've got a good ear for getting the right note under difficult circumstances? Singing in the sun in the middle of Holland, working a difficult gig with a bad PA, you’re on the note every time.
Mari: The 80s was good training, really, because the sound was always terrible, because there were 12 of us, it wasn't like a duo or even just a 4-piece band. There was 12 of us. That's a lot of people making a lot of noise and the first line up, they weren't the most amazing musicians. And I don't mean that in a horrible way. We were just all young and hadn't had the experience and a lot of them ended up not being musicians. It wasn't like it was their dream to be a musician. I think it was just their dream to do something that was good fun. And it was, so there was that side of it. And we just didn't have the technology. Then you'd play places and they had old PAs and you couldn't hear yourself because the band was too loud. And maybe that was the training, where I learned to tune into my own head. And I learned how to pitch despite all that. And maybe that's paid off.
Maynard: You've also got a talent, not many people would know that hadn't seen you live at the time: you're also an amazing quick-change artist. In Baby it’s True on more than one live performance, within 50 seconds, you leave the stage change your outfit and come back on within 50 seconds, or around about 48 bars, I've actually counted it. How'd you do that? What's the secret, Mari, come on! A lot of women can change quickly in the back in the back of a cab, but that's quick.
Mari: Well, the most important thing is you've got to have something you can step into. You can't have something going over your head, that's not going to work, especially with a beehive. So you're going to have a dress with a zip down the back, step into it, zip it up and get back on.
Maynard: Did you have any help or was this all a one woman show?
Mari: Peter, my hairdresser. He was always there in the wings, waiting. I remember once I went on stage, because Baby it's True was my intro, and still is when I do it with my huge Wilsations Band now. It's still the first song. It's still the song I open with. And it starts with that baseline, you know, that bass riff. And Hank had done his spiel, the bass riff was going on and then “Here's Mari!” and I walked on, and my beehive got caught in the lighting rig and I couldn't. So, of course he said, “Here's Mari!” I don’t know how many times. I'm kind of going “Help me! Somebody help me!” Eventually I did get help, because they were thinking, well, where is she? Cause I wasn't backstage, but I wasn't on stage. So there are many stories like that.
Maynard: Did the beehive cause issues in photo shoots? Because for your calendar, your 1983 calendar, it looks like they didn't budget for enough headroom for the beehive and you in the same shot.
Mari: Yes. That's why I'm either seated or bending down looking very awkward. It was a photographer called Adrian Boot, who's a remarkable photographer, tiny little guy. We did it at his studio in the grounds of his house, I believe, but he couldn't get me all in the shot. Isn't that ridiculous? He couldn't get all of me in the shot. And why didn't he just do the head and shoulders then, but it was all about the outfits you see, because we were copying Julie London's Calendar Girl album.
Maynard: And as I've mentioned many times, Mari Wilson's calendar from Showpeople can be reused this very year. All the dates match up again.
Mari: Oh wow. Yes, I saw that you'd said that somewhere. Isn't that amazing?
Maynard: I went to the trouble of making an A3 version of the Mari Wilson calendar for this year.
Mari: Have you? Oh, you're amazing!
Maynard: It’s hilarious as an A3.
Mari: Very funny. It was a laugh doing it, you know, and, and I tend to use them on certain months.
Maynard: Oh, August you're in Spain with a “Manuel” kind of person. In July you're in a beach chair, you've got a guy in some Speedos and some budgie smugglers leaning over you.
Mari: I’ll have to have a study of that.
Maynard: Look, have you got to keep many of these outfits, or have you just had to rationalise at some point in your life?
Mari: I gave a lot of my dresses to Children in Need about 25 years ago, which is a charity here. I remember signing the inside of the dresses and stuff like that. So I don't know who has them. I have some, I sold some because I did a Crowdfunder for one of my albums.
Maynard: Was that the Dolled Up project?
Mari: No, Dolled Up was financed by Bill Kenwright, the theatre entrepreneur, who I know. He just came to a gig one night and I was doing my new songs and he said, “Oh, they're great”. And I said “Well, I'm trying to make an album at the moment”. He said, “Who are you signed to?” And I said, “Well, nobody, I've just got my own label”. And he said, “Well, I'll pay for it”. I thought, oh, okay, you've got millions, that's fine. So he did.
It was Emotional Glamour I think. I gave away the very first dress I had, you know, I auctioned it off to raise money to make the album. And it was for someone in Australia, funnily enough.
Maynard: Did you get many Australian fans? Because, looking at your chart history, Just What I Always Wanted was released as a single here, but from what I can see, the album never was.
Mari: Well, that's interesting, isn't it? Because I've never been to Australia.
Maynard: You were very influential on a group I was in called The Castanet Club in 1982. One or two people had the album on import, which cost a lot of money in those days. And we'd play it. And the image of the calendar and the glamour, and we even tried I think to do one or two covers off the album - failed miserably. But still, it was a big influence on the look and the way we were. And I wanted to thank you for that, for that alone.
Mari: Well, thank you Maynard, goodness me!
Maynard: I’m just going across the room now, because one of the albums that I really thought was great was The Rhythm Romance album of yours. It's a great jazz crossover album. Yeah Yeah is great. And your version of My Funny Valentine that was on there.
Mari: I'm very proud of that version. People really liked it, because the thing is what happened in my pop thing, it got to about 1984, something like that. And I felt like we were just doing the same thing and it was time for changes really. Everybody wanted me to do different things. My manager wanted me to do one thing and Tot Taylor wanted me to do high energy stuff, a bit like Hazell Dean. I know Hazell. She's lovely.
Maynard: You could have done a Hazell Dean!
Mari: I didn’t want to do high energy stuff, it wasn't my taste. I recorded a song called Let's Make it Last and instead it became Let's Make it the Last, because it was the last one I recorded. And I hated it.
Maynard: It was a very full on shock for someone who was used to your other material.
Mari: Yeah, it was all Fairlights, which was a keyboard everyone used back then that did all kinds of special tricks. A bit like Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Relax, they have a lot of that on their records. It just wasn't me. And it was weird because the day I did the vocal was the day my Dad died suddenly. It was almost like everything was pointing to me saying, ah, this is it, I don't want to do this anymore. This isn't who I wanted to be. I wanted to be Judy Garland and Dusty Springfield and Bonnie Raitt, if you mixed up a hybrid of those three, if you like, and I just wasn't going there at all. And I just thought it's time to go. So I told the record company I didn't want to be with them anymore, I told my manager “I don't want to be with you anymore”. I just cut ties with everybody. And of course, most people are dropped by the record company, not the other way around.
Maynard: I've heard you say this, you had a manager who believed in you. Now, most people in show businesses are going Really? What? Who is this manager that believed in their artist? Where is this person? And the fact that the manager believed in you and got you the support for Stan Getz at The Albert Hall. That's amazing.
Mari: Yes. That was a different guy, because what happened as a result of me cutting ties, I was in litigation with the record company for 18 months. So I couldn't sign with another record label, and my sax player said, “Well, you’re a great jazz singer. Why don't we put a jazz quartet together and do jazz?” So I did a few gigs. And then Brian Theobald, who was at Ronnie Scott’s - Ronnie Scott’s is a very famous club in London for people that don't know, it's been there since the 50s. And everyone's played there: Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, everybody. It’s still going. Ronnie's agent was a guy called Brian Theobald. He became my agent as a jazz singer, and he put me on at Ronnie's, he put me on with Stan Getz, I mean, it was hilarious when he put me on with Stan Getz at the Royal Festival Hall a lot of people had said to him, well, you’re putting a pop singer on with Stan Getz, that's outrageous! And I remember when I walked on stage, I walked on and I went, “Right, my agent’s told me to drop the cartwheels from the act this evening”. And there wasn't one titter in the audience at all, because they were very much jazz buffs, you know? So they didn't have a sense of humour.
Maynard: They can be very snooty, jazz buffs.
Mari: Oh so snooty! Sitting there with their arms folded, what can you do? But I did kind of prove myself in the end and I worked with some fantastic musicians, still do. That's how I ended up getting into jazz. That's why The Rhythm Romance happened because I was approached by that record company saying, do you want to do an album?
Maynard: And that was in 1990. I bought this CD album. It's still got the price on it in Australian dollars. It was 47 Australian dollars in 1990, because it was an import. And I paid exactly the same for Marigold and the Cry Me a River compilation.
Mari: That's crazy, isn't it? Gosh!
Maynard: And played them to death on triple J, my radio station I was working on at the time, nationally. In 86 there was some of your stuff in the triple J library and I was doing Midnight to Dawn, and you could play any music you liked, it was that kind of radio station. But you’re working on something at the moment, aren't you Mari?
Mari: Yes. I mean, I'm very proud of Pop Deluxe. I think we did a really good job on all those songs that are, you know, quite well-known songs, but I think I've put my own take on them. And I thought, well, it's time for a change and I don't want to do any more covers. I don't mean at all ever, but I don't want to make another album of covers. So it was time to get down and start writing again. We've written and recorded about 6 tracks now. Maybe towards the end of the year I'll decide what we're going to do with it.
Maynard: You have your support with Level 42 across the UK there.
Mari: Yes. I'm going on tour with them in November. That'll be really good fun I think. It'll be a different audience as well for me.
Maynard: I wouldn't have automatically thought of you with Level 42.
Mari: There may not be a gay man in sight, Maynard, in that audience. I don't know, different demographic to me, but that's a good thing, I think.
Maynard:. Mari Wilson's Christmas Pageant with The New Wilsonisations, you're having a Christmas pageant on December 8th in Islington in London. I thought you should be getting Boy George, maybe Dee Snider would like to come along again, renew your friendship. And let's face it, what could Simon Le Bon possibly be doing on December 8th? He must have that night free. So invite him along as well.
Mari: Okay, I will, yeah. Well, I did appear with Soft Cell a couple of years ago when they did their show at the O2.
Maynard: In fact, I think you should sing Tainted Love.
Mari: Yes, it's a good song.
Maynard: Both versions. Yeah, I think it should be a pageant, maybe a bit of panto. Have someone dressed up, have someone, “Where's Mari?” “Behind you!” Do that stuff. That's Christmas.
Mari: Well, let's see, I've got a few ideas for some guests at the moment. It'll be all over social media.
Maynard: People, have a look at Mari's Instagram because when the lockdown was on, you were wandering around the centre of London to some of your old haunts, like the Top Shop hairdresser. Nothing anywhere, nothing!
Mari: It was the weirdest, weirdest thing we just said, “Let's drive into town”, drove into town ... desert. Desert town. I've got photographs that I took of Regent Street, Oxford Street, nothing, no cars, no people. It was so eerie. But also quite beautiful in a way, because you could really look at the buildings and get a sense of what it is or what it was really, because it still hasn't really, really recovered. And the fact that Top Shop, that iconic, huge, on four floors, Top Shop, which is where I did initially get my beehive done back then. So sad. It did make me feel rather sad.
Maynard: I also felt that in some ways the Dutch really got the Mari Wilson experience there, because there's a couple of Dutch music press that I've actually been able to grab. It's great, looked on eBay and there was someone who'd clipped Mari Wilson bits out of the paper from 82 all the way through to 97 or something.
Mari: Wow! You've got more stuff than I have.
Maynard: I've taken a photo and put it up with the caption “I may have over researched this interview”.
Mari: [Laughs] I've written the sleeve notes for the box set.
Maynard: It’s Cherry Red. They make great box sets.
Mari: I mean, it's taken a long time because of the politics.
Maynard: With rights? It's all rights isn't it?
Mari: Oh, yes. The rights for this and … oh gosh! In the past they couldn't find the Showpeople orchestral version of Cry Me a River. Warner Brothers! Couldn't find it! You're a record company, what do you mean you can't find it?
Maynard: Where's the video of you singing that with the orchestra? I'd love to see that, there must be one.
Mari: No, there isn't.
Maynard: Because I've seen photos.
Mari: Yeah, there are photos. You see, I only ever made one video. Can you believe that?
Maynard: Beware Boyfriend.
Mari: This is the problem of having a 12-piece band because the budget, it wasn't there, although it was great fun, I wouldn't have changed anything. So we made this video for Boyfriend, and then when I recorded Cry Me a River with the orchestra at Air Studios, the iconic Air Studios in Oxford Street, which isn't there now, someone, I can't remember who, filmed a lot of that. And then they chopped it all together with different bits and made a video for Just What I Always Wanted, which was shown on MTV. There might be a weird grainy version on YouTube, I'm not sure, but it wasn't made for Just What I Always Wanted, someone just did it.
Maynard: In fact I was wondering as part of the box set, is it possible for a DVD of the clips to be on there or something like that?
Mari: I don't think they're doing a DVD.
Maynard: Any rarities? Because a lot of your B-sides and live stuff, and particularly The Young Person's Guide to Compact (the record label) had a couple of songs on that. One of them I think, recorded it at … did you play after Eraserhead, the movie? Did you come on after that and sing?
Mari: That was hilarious. My Mum crowned me.
Maynard: Oh, that's what that photo's from!
Mari: That was my Mum crowning me, yes. Hilarious. We put on Eraserhead and Mari Wilson together because you know, two interesting hairdos.
Maynard: All these intense art students going “This … this music's rather flippant”.
Mari: I remember we had the baskets you get in the supermarket. Even I did it, I think, walking around the audience, carrying these baskets that had Mari Wilson badges in them and little silly things, just handing them out to people. That's what I mean about … because that was just before it happened as well. It's those times that I really treasure, because once you've had some kind of success, you just don't get that feeling back, because you can't.
Maynard: Compact Records had that bit of a “we'll have a go and see what happens” attitude.
Mari: Oh, definitely. Yeah, I mean, Tot Taylor is a really clever guy
Maynard: The front cover of Just What I Always Wanted, where you're holding Tupperware and wandering around this fabulous thing that looks like a set, but I'm damn sure that's someone's lounge room.
Mari: It was someone's lounge. We did dress it up a bit, but it was someone's lounge. It was a journalist, actually, it was his flat and I had, and still have, quite a collection of Tupperware because I had many Tupperware parties a long time ago. I've got a thing about Tupperware.
Maynard: They’ve got the vacuum seal. If you've got some mince, you pop it in there, stick in the freezer.
Mari: Absolutely! And my cat, she only has half a pouch in the morning and half a pouch at night. So once you've opened it, it has to be kept somewhere. And it's kept in a nice yellow square Tupperware container until teatime when she has the other half.
Maynard: And the cats have a hard time, they can't burp it, they can't get it out.
Mari: No. And you've got to know how to let the air out with Tupperware. I'm very knowledgeable about Tupperware.
Maynard: With Just What I Always Wanted on BBC Top of the Pops, there's three or four different clips of you on that. So where were they with Wonderful? Or the other ones off the album?
Mari: Well, Wonderful probably didn't get high enough in the charts for me to appear, I'm thinking. Gosh! Isn't it awful how you can't remember, but it was a long time ago, Maynard.
Maynard: Cry Me a River, the one where the people are dancing and there's all these little beehives on a stick, I don’t know if that's a Top of the Pops one.
Mari: I did do Top of the Pops Cry Me a River and I sang live.
Maynard: You sang it live, and you can see all the smarty bums around there: “We don't see this very often”.
Mari: Because I just thought, I can't mime, that would be a very hard song to mine. You have to sing it. You have to be honest and show some kind of emotion with it. It was me that insisted on it, I said, “I want to sing it live”.
Maynard: On The Tube as well, you had The Prawns, the violinists with you?
Mari: Oh yes, The Prawn Cocktails. Yeah, they were great.
Maynard: That was just a great performance live as well. And that gave everybody a big glass of shut up juice as well when you did that. And it's a great signature song for you.
Mari: I have to do Cry Me a River and I have to do Just What I Always Wanted, even if I'm doing it with a small line-up.
Maynard: That album has a great Burt Bacharach cover.
Mari: Oh yes, I still do that. It's a lovely song. Not easy to sing, actually, either, that's typical Burt Bacharach because he plays the weirdest chords and his songs go in the strangest directions. Clever.
Maynard: Just want to mention Just What I Always Wanted, listening to it with headphones on, there's so much of the time in it, that sounds like there's a DX7 sample of a toy piano in it. There's early vocoder being used in the backing vocals. It makes an interesting 12 inch as well.
Mari: It's a fantastic record. It still stands up. It still gets played on the radio quite a lot. It's a great song, but it's a fantastic record. Tony Mansfield, who produced it, did a really great job on it. And there are lots of little things going on in there. Toy piano, Tot always loved things like that. And we always on a lot of our records, we'd want a bit of a French horn. I remember recording it. Certain recording sessions are just such good fun, and you remember everything that happened. I remember I was making tuna fish sandwiches. I remember all of that. I remember what I was wearing. I was wearing a crimplene pink dress with matching jacket that came from a charity shop with white stilettos. I remember all of that.
Maynard: That's almost what you've got in the June calendar shot
Mari: Yes, it may have been, you know what, it might have been that outfit.
Maynard: Could be crimplene.
Mari: Yeah, crimplene, what a horrible material that was.
Maynard: it didn't breathe, did it?
Mari: Oh God, no, it didn't crease because you could have gone out to sea in it, and you would've been fine.
Maynard: I always like to end with a song that the guest picks and it can be anything you've done ever. What would you like me to finish on? And maybe we could talk about that for a sec before we play it?
Mari: Oh gosh! Oh my word.
Maynard: While Mari's thinking here's Mari's profile from June 5th, 1982. Musical influences: Stevie Wonder The Beatles; Hero: Your Dad; Books: George Orwell, Grimms’ Fairy Tales and The UFO Phenomenon. I looked that up, that was a 1980 release about the history of UFOlogy and the fact that they may come from somewhere else. So you were getting into The Other back then, Mari!
Mari: Yeah, I can't believe I said that though. Honestly, it's hilarious. I mean, I'm a bit of a comedian as well as being a singer. [Laughs]
Maynard: Your fantasy was to date Oliver Reed, but the Oliver Reed from 10 years ago.
Mari: Oh yeah, Oliver Reed, when he was about 22, oh my God, he was absolutely gorgeous! Black hair, blue eyes, tall. Oh, gorgeous! And then he just lost his way somewhat.
Maynard: Speaking of lost your way, what happened to the Austin 1300 Estate with the sunroof, the 1971 car there? How did it meet its end?
Mari: I think it just conked out after a while and I got myself a Mini.
Maynard: That seems very you.
Mari: Yes, it was blue. Metallic blue Mini Clubman, it was. It was very nice, but that Austin 1300 ... I think what happened was I went to see some friends of mine in South Kensington, and on the way home all the electrics went, and I had to drive home with no lights or anything. And I thought I'll either get arrested or I'll have a terrible accident, but I did make it home. So that was a sign that it was dying.
Maynard: What was it like when you heard yourself on the radio, your song for the first time? How'd that happen for you?
Mari: I was at home with my Mum and Dad, and we knew that Annie Nightingale going to play it. It was a Friday night. Annie Nightingale’s like an iconic DJ here.
Maynard: So is this Radio 1?
Mari: Yeah, Radio 1. She played Dance Card, which is crazy record. And she played it. And I remember we turned it up on the radiogram, in the front room. It was thrilling. It was absolutely thrilling.
Maynard: I think you knew something in the early 80s, because you were doing songs like Rave and Ecstasy, which was about six years ahead of what was going on in the culture.
Mari: You know, no one's ever mentioned that, but that's very true.
Maynard: Why do you think I was playing it in 1990?
Mari: [Laughs] One of the fastest records ever made. I think Ecstasy.
Maynard: I do like the slow version, but the fast version's my favourite.
Mari: It's ridiculous, it's so fast, it's mad.
Maynard: So from your discography, which one would you like to choose?
Mari: I think White Horses.
Maynard: Tell us more about that one
Mari: White Horses was a TV show here in the 60s. And it was actually, I think it was Belgian originally, and it was about this little girl. So when I was a kid, when I got home from school, my Dad would be at home because he was a shift worker. And so, he'd be at home, and I'd sit on his lap and we would do the crossword in the Evening News and then we'd watch kids’ TV and there were loads of things, you know, Blue Peter, Magpie, all these different shows. But this one, White Horses, I can't even remember what happened in it. I know there was a white horse and a girl of about 12.
The theme tune, sung by a girl called Jackie, was called White Horses. And I'd always wanted to sing it because the melody and the lyric are just gorgeous. I mentioned it to my guitarist, in fact, I emailed him, and I sent him a YouTube link and I said, can you have a look at this because I need you to learn this song because I'm going to record it and I want to play it live and blah, blah, blah. And he wrote back, and he said, “Well, I don't need to because my Dad wrote it”. I didn't even know!
When I do it live, I don't even say what it is. I start singing it and everyone goes, “Oh!”, because they remember the TV show and it gives you that lovely, secure, warm feeling, you know, when you got home from school.
Maynard: It would take you straight back to sitting on the couch with your Dad doing the crossword, in a really wonderful place.
Mari: Yes, it's such a lovely, lovely song. I'm probably asking you to play something that maybe a lot of people in Australia won't know.
Maynard: Maybe we'll have a chat when the box set comes out, because I'm sure there'd be a lot of people who are going to be interested in that. That might be an import one here. I remember my Kevin Rowland album, have you heard him doing The Greatest Love of All? Have you heard Kevin's version of that, Mari?
Mari: Yes, I have.
Maynard: It's unique, isn't it?
Mari: Well, he's unique. He's unique. I went out with him for 5 minutes.
Maynard: Hang on a minute! Stop the … Kevin and Mari!
Mari: Yes! Back in the day. It was very brief. I'm not even referring into anything in particular when I say it was very brief. [Laughs]
Maynard: Raunchy Mari! Does he choose his own key and the band choose theirs, and they meet halfway in between?
Mari: I think it's that. I'm glad we’ve got people like him to mix it up a bit, because sometimes I put the radio on, or I'll hear something and I think what is this? This is absolute tripe. There's a lot of tripe out there. And there's a lot of songs that were written by 14 people. And it's not even a song, it's a chant. It's one line that they sing over and over and over again. God, but there is also some fantastic stuff out there, but as far as pure pop music has gone a little bit down the drain, I think, although I do like Harry Styles, I must say.
Maynard: Like you said, whether they're writing by committee, whether it's people that are inexperienced that are doing it, but at no other time in history has there been a chance to find your own music. No matter what you're into, you can find it somewhere.
Mari: Absolutely yeah. But it's just that the pop side of things is, I think, not so good. And I think a lot of it is because there's not much humour going on. There was a lot of humour going on in pop music and it's all terribly serious. Can we not have a bit of romance please?
Maynard: It's not written in a clever way.
Mari: I think that's what I'm trying to say. It's not exactly literature, is it? They all sing like Hylda Baker. She was an actress about 50 years ago, and she used to say, “Who are you standing there?” and I just think, oh my God, they're all singing like Hylda Baker. You know, one note will do thanks. We don't need 25 notes where one will do. Thank you.
Maynard: I blame the talent shows for that, The Voice, because everyone goes “Aaah”, they've got to warble up and warble down. They don't just hit the note. They give you a choice of three or four.
Mari: There's two things. There's the pyrotechnics, which is totally unnecessary and meaningless, and the other one is: how high can you hit that note? That's not singing. Singing is about creating a mood and making someone feel something. I mean, even Whitney Houston would hit a note and hold it, but that was a completely different thing, it was in context.
Maynard: Kevin’s version of The Greatest Love of All, he makes it his own, and when he goes for the key change, he just blows through that key change like he’ll get to that key change when he feels like it. Don't you give me your key change! It's fantastic. I love it. He doubles down. I've never heard a vocalist do that to that extent before. He said he's bringing his soul to it. And if that's what he's bringing soul to, I'm down with it.
Mari: I think we need people like that. Like we need Mark Almond. Mark is so dramatic. He gives like 250% with everything. It's great.
Maynard: Is he actually as sexy in person as he seems? It was Slice Radio from Orange, who are in the middle of New South Wales - they asked me to ask you that question. Why, I don't know, probably a huge Mark Almond enclave going on in the middle of New South Wales I suspect.
Mari: Well, I've never thought of Mark as sexy because we're probably not attracted to each other in that way.
Maynard: Yes, it's a certain thing, that chemistry, yeah.
Mari: Yeah. You know, but he's lovely. He's a lovely, lovely man. And I love him. I think he's a great guy. He's sexy to other people. Let's put it that way.
Maynard: There's your answer Slice Radio from Orange in New South Wales. Put that in your pipe and smoke it or light it or vape it, whatever you want to do.
Mari Wilson, thank you. Let's have a listen to White Horses. I'm looking forward to hearing more about the great pageant on the 8th of December there in Islington in London, and I'm really looking forward to the box set that's coming out.
Mari: Thank you. Thank you so much, Maynard, it's been lovely.
Maynard: Well, I would do the old cliche thing of “this interview is just what I always wanted”, but everyone always says that don't they?
Mari: Rather! [Laughs]
Maynard: Thank you for your time, Mari Wilson.
Mari: My pleasure.
Maynard: I've just been spending the day immersed in my Mari Wilson collection here.
Mari: Oh I do apologise!
Lesley Fountain’s Wonderful World of Dance the video livestream from Maynard International Studios…
Spend quality dance time with Lesley Fountain (Glenn Keenan) & Maynard
Get your pumps on and get dancin’. Lesley Fountain’s Wonderful World of Dance brings you Petula, Fish, Heather, ONJ, Gene, John and other highly talented dancers that rightfully don’t talk to us.
The Fabulous Dancing Fountains 1983, Chantal, Fish, Lesley & Bubbles
Lesley Fountain’s Wonderful World of Dance has some very bespoke sponsors.
To warm you up for the video livestream spectacular (Lesley Fountain’s Wonderful World of Dance) Maynardarama goes live from one corner of my room Batman pyjamas and all (with fly sewn up) for some 1997 retro sights and sounds.
WARNING: contains unexplained facial hair (a goatstache).
Be impressed with the high tech appearance of the “stuck up monkey” on Foxtel 1997.
Be watching live for Lesley Fountain’s Wonderful World of Dance 8.30pm Saturday 18th June.
