Flying Lizards

The Flying Lizards were one of the most original English new wave bands to emerge at the dawn of the Eighties. They were among those best able to build on the insights of luminaries like Brian Eno, carefully avoiding the temptation to squander those fundamental ideas on easy, disposable pop. Formed in London in 1978 by the brilliantly eccentric Irishman David Cunningham (a self-taught composer and keyboardist who had moved to London to study art), they had little trouble landing a record deal with Virgin, long one of the major labels (though at the time no one yet used the term "major") that had shown a keen interest in all the new musical ferment of the era: Sex Pistols, PiL, Rip-Rig & Panic, Magazine etc.

Cunningham had, in fact, already launched his own small but enterprising label, Piano Records (the imprint that released masterpieces such as the debut album by This Heat, as well as records by Steve Beresford and Michael Nyman), on which he had recorded his first solo album, "Grey Scale", released in 1977. A work that was courageous, experimental and conceptual all at once, it translated Cornelius Cardew's ideas into a kind of chamber minimalism for solo piano and aleatory gestures on the instrument. The Flying Lizards, by contrast, had no pretensions toward contemporary avant-gardism whatsoever. They were, to all intents and purposes, a new wave band with electronic leanings — albeit a thoroughly sui generis one. Assisted on the first album, "The Flying Lizards" (Virgin, 1980), by the excellent English jazz pianist Steve Beresford, by David Toop (a veteran of the English avant-garde, a friend of Brian Eno and today a critic for the prestigious magazine "The Wire") and by vocalists Vivien Goldman and Deborah Evans-Stickens (who also went on to become a journalist), Cunningham gave free rein to his "rock" urges.

The use of keyboards recalls, to some extent, the Brian Eno of "Another Green World" (Island, 1975) — futuristic and vaguely decadent at the same time. The album achieved a certain amount of international resonance (particularly in Europe) thanks to the strong sales of the single "Money", released the previous year, in 1979. It's a "cubist" cover of a famous 1960 hit by Barrett Strong, from the early days of Motown Records. The original track (a rhythm'n'blues classic) was so thoroughly distorted by studio manipulation (it brings to mind the dub experiments Adrian Sherwood carried out on Mark Stewart's 1983 album "Learning To Cope With Cowardice") that it became unrecognisable — something entirely new and unprecedented.

The rest of the album, in any case, is a treasure chest full of surprises. Side A opens with a bizarre cover of a Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill song, "Mandelay Song", which here sounds like a cross between the progressive haiku of After Dinner and the kitsch vocalising of Klaus Nomi. "Her Story" grafts Lee Perry-style dub onto the sound of the Raincoats. This splendid all-female band (the Raincoats) is also the main inspiration behind the closing "The Window", which would not have looked at all out of place on "Odyshape" (Rough Trade, 1981), the second masterpiece by Ana Da Silva and co.

The brisk beat of "Tv" is constantly peppered with dissonant counterpoints and shrewdly deranged arrangements. "Russia" sounds like a lighter version of the Pop Group's punk-funk, built around a melodic phrase inspired by none other than Shostakovich. "Summertime Blues" is another bizarre cover, this time of an Eddie Cochran rock'n'roll classic: melody and structure stripped to the bone, carried by little more than a few guitar riffs, piano and a percussion beat that builds to a cacophonous finale.

A single block of sound with a steady, cadenced rhythm characterises "Flood", while the dark, nocturnal melody of "Trouble" recalls the style of contemporaries Factrix, over in California. John Cage might well have been proud of a rock track like "Events During Flood". Had the great American (non-)composer ever turned his hand to pop music, the result might not have been so different from what the Flying Lizards achieved.

Public success was modest, but critical acclaim was even greater, so much so that Cunningham, continuing his work as a producer for Piano, released an equally strong second Flying Lizards chapter the following year, "Fourth Wall", which featured, alongside the ever-reliable Steve Beresford, rock intellectuals such as Robert Fripp, American saxophonist Peter Gordon (of LOLO) and Michael Nyman (for whom Cunningham became the go-to producer throughout the Eighties).

A recent reissue, released by RPM Retrodisc/Cherry Red (double CD, 2010, distributed by Goodfellas), combines the Flying Lizards' first two albums along with all their 12"s and singles. Among the bonus tracks appended to the first album, "All Guitars" (1978) stands out in particular, with its scorching guitar work laid over a maximalist keyboard melody. The other bonus tracks are dub versions of the album's standout numbers, including those famous covers that made the band's name.

The influence the Flying Lizards left behind can be traced, for example, in certain no-wave artists (I'm thinking of the Skin Graft roster, with oddballs like Zeek Sheck or Mr. Quintron). What remains, above all, is the sense of a great electronic rock ensemble — cultured and intellectual, yet certainly communicative rather than cerebral, and only tangentially linked to Eno's meta-rock and ambient music.

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07/08/2011