THE FLYING LIZARDS: "The Flying Lizards" (Virgin V2150)
    Why did the hit maker make an LP? Because it was expected of him. Slips down easy.
    It might just be my crisis now, but pop music could be a dying arena. As it cannibalizes both itself and as much modern art and literature as it can swallow, this spiral of self-consciousness increases across the board (from the revivalist Clash to all those lovingly called "post modernists") and we're left with chamber music. Chic, self referential, disposable window dressing: passion and confusion edited or glossed over. I wish it weren't so, but it's no use pretending: what's it FOR?
    Making money, of course - but after that things get complicated. David Cunningham wants to make a few bob (who doesn't?) but could quite fancy himself as Eno, or Joe Meek, as a great producer. These aren't great times and he isn't, talented though he is: "Flying Lizards" - very much his reptile - is a witty, literate, dazzling collection of sly, modern parlour-games, except for one intrusion of feeling, Vivian Goldman's "The Window".
    Part of the problem lies both in the musicians and the conception of the album. The musicians aren't credited: most of the basic tracks are done, I believe, by improvisers David Toop and Steve Beresford. Elsewhere, various members of The Pop Group and This Heat play: this wouldn't be important if it wasn't for the fact that, often, they're slumming. They're putting out a certain kind of noise for the pop arena, not because they really want to, or it's the only thing they know how to do, but because it's there, it's fun to play with, maybe to even add something to, and maybe it's nice to make money from.
    The play is fun, but is play enough? It presupposes some pop literacy: can you expect everyone to understand this, and can you appreciate the record without it?
    Questions, questions. Virgin has the answers, the Flying Lizards are the turkey who laid the golden egg. "Money" was, if nothing else, cost-effective. The pleased press release states that Flying Lizards was coined as the name of the group unlikely to succeed: diverting, but ambivalent. Things aren't quite that crazy in the world of pop - Virgin must have had some faith, otherwise nobody could have persuaded them to put out even a loss leader of 5,000 copies.
    In hindsight, the success of both singles wasn't that surprising: after the Ramones reductions and Devo's sneaky "Satisfaction", minimalism was in. Better, too, if middle-class, deadpan and petulant: very funny, the perfect antithesis to the original's earthy, rebellious  fervor - and, among scrap yard vistas of "street credibility", subtly subversive. The one-liner joke works, is repeated, and then becomes an act with a few shaggy dog stories. I don't blame Cunningham - pop, like all media, is a drug - but the album suffers from chance economics. It's there because it has to be.
    So, "Flying Lizards" is like an Art Mart: free glasses, 10p off the Enos', never mind the bollocks.
    Bar the two singles - "Summertime Blues" and "Money" - and an authentically circus-like version of Brecht-Weill's "Mandelay" song (providing the mandatory self critique and cultural context), "Flying Lizards" is not an album of covers. Shame - I'd have loved to hear them doing "It's My Party" - but they're not kitsch like that: the rest of the album is an eclectic, somehow coherent mixture of careful dub/disco fusions (not unlike Eno's past attempts in this field) with feminist experiments and more open-ended pieces reminiscent of Cunningham's "Grey Scale" past.
    After the quick, bitter-sweet "Mandelay", the first side quickly settles down into a group of up-tempo disco plays sandwiching "Summertime Blues" and the third single, "TV". The first of these, "Her Story", is the most reminiscent of "RAS": a bubbling bass overlaid with vacuum clean electric noises and sweet female voices singing lyrics like: "But you can still make money by singing sweet songs."; male voices cut in "I own you / You don't own me / You are my territory" - cue further female moans. Succinctly feminist, and it works whether you get the lyrics or not. The other, "Russia", is more impenetrable: an insistent bass riff and trailing rhythm guitar, buried lyrics.
    "TV" isn't a cover, but it might as well be: an idiotic reworking of "Shotgun Wedding" stripped to a riff the Rivieras would have been proud of, lyrics reading like Fast Product hand-out - all youth, so-sophistication, white convertibles and media - and ludicrous discords so you're in no doubt it's a playful novelty. All covers (unless totally inept) provide interesting possibilities and relationships within the originals; all three Lizards' covers pale at present before Dollar's  exquisitely dreadful "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", whose unconscious dumb exploitation provides a far clearer explanation of the archetype the Lizards are after but are too self-conscious to attain. I dream of Dollar constantly, I could never dream of the Lizards.
    Most of the second side is taken up with delicate, lazy instrumentals which drift along much as Eno's "Music For Films" did. The production is mostly better, the techniques of subtraction usually different, but the effect is as pleasant and as ambient.
    Before the side slips away, however, there's a surprise: the final "The Window" - a woman's song sung lightly by Vivien Goldman over a loose, open reggae beat. Alone on the album, it describes the situation (mundane enough, boyfriend wants in, banks on window, girl ponders) always dryly but with honesty and (I hope) some self mockery: "Sometimes you fight for the world / Sometimes you fight for yourself".
    Billboards around the corner shout "BJH! Robin Trower! Camel! Uriah Heep!" And I can't help it, I'm glad the Flying Lizards exist. In such a context their clipped-on and radical discipline and wit is a major plus. Nevertheless - perhaps I want too much pop at present - their album equivocates it'll probably be a minor financial and major chic success and enable the participants to do lots of other worthwhile things, but it reeks of compromise. In it's own clever, magpie way it seems symptomatic of a deep uncertainty and cultural malaise, but then I'm confused and scared these days...

- John Savage/1980

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