Poppies ][: The Revenge! Pop Will Eat Itself, T&G, London: RCA terminated their contract. Now they're back And they're pissed off... Blimey, they're beggingfor it. "Spare 10p for a Pop Will Eat Itself ticket, guv?" If you don't know why people like Pop Will Eat Itself, you're never going to comprehend Claire, standing in Kentish Town High Street pan- handling for her ticket money. Her woolly hat's got 40p in it; the going rate is 35 a ticket (thanks, touts, you're really providing a service). It is 7.30, and I don't think she's going to make it. Poetic, really, that Pop Will Eat Itself should be showcasing their own insidious appeal at London's doomed Town & Country this week- end. Both band and venue have been dealt a cruel blow by myopic capitalism, and isn't it funny how Everybody knows it's wrong. Everybody. While the T&C's sinister shut-down is a popular, cast-iron cause, who'd have thought the world would be so quickly united in its indignation at the Poppies' unceremonious de-bagging by RCA? Treated by the rock cognoscenti as a joke for six years, and now officially deemed a liability by the record company, it is down here among the Poppies fanbase that the injustice of both their current dilemma andtheir long history at the mercy of blanket critical snobbery hits home. Top Ten hit, two sold out London shows, star- studded guest-list, all of a sudden Pop Will Eat Itself are the most popular band in the world! And the crux is, they always were, you tools. "They've always been crap and they're very good at it. They went through a slightly less crap phase, but now they're right back on target." So conclude Simon and Mark, 20, a draughtsman and a salesman respectively. Simon's in a Ludicrous Lollipops T-shirt; he should know. We are cornering likely Poppies fans outside the venue so as to paint a sociological picture of this most beguiling rock creature and to find out the answer to the question that even Arthur C Clarke remains tight-lipped over: why the fuck do you like Pop Will Eat Itself? "Because they're mad bastards!" proclaim Ashton and Oliver from Henley College, 16, clearly relishing their own out of-school vernacular. Unlike the Brummie desperadoes they idolise, Ashton and Oliver's testicles remain undropped. Fans since '89's 'This Is The Hour' LP, these well-spoken tots also like Chumbawamba and EMF. Anna and Sarah, 15, from Guildford and Battersea, gaily admit that it is they who are killing the record industry. Big Poppie Kids, neither of them own any of the records, they tape them all off mates. "Make them cheaper! is their message to the music biz. Schoolie Paul Matthews, 16, from Hughenden Valley near High Wycombe is, like Claire on the corner, ticketless. He and three mates approach a salt-of-the-earth- good-to-his-mum tout who offers the requisite literature for a sum total of UKP120. "Is there no discount for buying four?" asks Paul. "That is with discount!" replies the entre- preneurial pillar. Paul didn't actually know the Poppies had been dropped. "Record companies are all shit aren't they?" reasons Lee, 21, would-be Marxist refusenik stude from Rochester. He's seen PWEI 30 times! That's a lot of T-shirt money. Once inside the ill-fated venue, the Big Ouestion switches from, Why the fuck do you like Pop Will Eat Itself? to, simply, Why the fuck wouldn't you like Pop Will Eat Itself? Ashton, Oliver, Sarah, Anna, Lee (and probably not Claire and Steve) are now inextricably entwined in the wall-to-wall Dante's Inferno of virgin flesh and 100 per cent cotton, consumed by PopWillEatltselfmania. Suitably gee-ed up by well chosen supports Back To The Planet and Meat Beat Manifesto, this crowd is ideally placed for hi-octane, hand- tooled, techno-colour, cyber-idiot kicks. Comin' up! They enter to the sleepy Ovaltine strains of Roy Orbison's 'In Dreams', most memorably minted by a camp and unhinged Dean Stockwell in Blue Velvet. Apt! The Birmingham Five have so successfully shrink-wrapped their accident-waiting-to-happen allure now, they actually display their own brand of tumbledown slick. (It's worth remembering that the Poppies willingly used the old 'crap is good' gambit to their advantage and that their recently attempted seriousness coup was doubly irksome to the press.) The songs are better, the rest remains the same. That candy- coloured clown they call Clint Mansell still baits the eager, stuck- together front rows, shirt off, skirt on; Graham bounces about the stage like a space hopper; familiar samples from the 'Looks Or The Lifestyle' album herald each well- turned number, drummer Fuzz actually lending tutored precision to the sound; the glorious Designers Republic backdrop winks away. It's audience-friendly to the point of come-on, and the dancing goes all the way past the bar to the very back of the hall, ergo the Town & Country lives. I'd love to be watching this symbiotic cavalcade with a coach party from RCA and Folgate Estates. Their faces! "Who knows, who cares, who'll remember anyway?" shrugs Clint in 'Eat Me Drink Me Love Me Kill Me', no irony lost on this 3,200 legged merchandise display, whose allegiance has evidently hardened since the Poppies' Black Monday. "They couldn't have been dropped at a better time!" declares Fruitbat beside me, a hint of jealousy in his voice perhaps? "Best band in the world!" concludes Oliverfrom Henley. And worth every penny, as I'm sure the vultures outside would agree. Kill the baddies. ANDREW COLLINS ======================================================================== The above article was taken from page 24/25 of April 1993 "Select" magazine . Omnipage Pro (a text recognition package for use with the HP ScanJet][c) spat out the above in about 30 seconds! Sure beats typing the whole thing in ... I'm going to use it more often - although I did have to spend about 15 mins cleaning it up and proofreading .. -- Richard Smyth, Melbourne, Australia. rjsmy1@silas.cc.monash.edu.au richjs@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au http://bambam.eng.monash.edu.au/users/rjsmy1 http://yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au/~richjs