Total Tune Divas!

Lady Sasha revisits glam legends The Human League.


Does 80s pop – surely the crème de la crème of the gayest pop decade ever – still kick, bite and fuck like a bunny? Oh Jumping Jesus on a choir-boy’s crotch, yes! The 80s, remember, was a gorgeous, perfect porn-storm of deviant hormones, with Princess Julia, Marilyn and Boy George – legendary Blitz-kids all – bubbling up into psychedelic, pansexual enfants terribles, revolutionising the entire existing music scene.

Wham, Pete Burns, Soft Cell and more – the hit acts kept coming like a manic male slut ODing on Viagra! But, ironically, in this topsy-turvy, Alice in Wonderland, delightfully bent blitzkrieg, the queerest band of all were straight – the Human League!  

Well, why not – isn’t sexuality, like gender itself, just a psychological performance we stage to amuse ourselves and make our lives less stunningly predictable? No, I’m not suggesting you fuck the other side – which Oscar Wilde compared to cold sick after hot, spotted dick – but please, sincerely applaud the queer-acting straight!

Never heard the phrase? Oh, queer Satan on suppositories, where have you been? It’s just ‘straight-acting gay’ turned right round like a record, baby! See, truthfully, we live in a totally sexualised, pick ‘n’ mix culture, and aren’t any sub-group’s mannerisms- including our own mincing, Polari and theatricality – up for grabs?

For sure, and Phil Oakey – canny hi-glam frontman of the Human League – merely jumped aboard the metrosexual boat decades earlier than bovine herds of heterosexual oafs. Well, wouldn’t you? No wonder Oakey’s initial, killer, lop-sided fringe – deeper than a particularly fetching builder’s bum-crack – wowed the nation in 1981. Along with similarly bewitching spectacles Marc Almond and Pete Burns, Oakey formed a stunningly deviant, poster-saint pink triangle, a racy, Royal Family with no limits – ever – on the dashboard!

No wonder colourless, current pop-stars suck by comparison. Who’d give even the quickest, vacuum-assisted wank to a penniless Robbie Williams not completely showered in multi-million dollar fairy-dust? At best, he’s all low-rent, bricklayer chic, and dumb, doe-eyes pleading for flickers of pop godhood! Maybe you guys are suckers for glazed, human vegetables, but not me – frankly, I like my aural, musical sex hard, outrageous and memorable.

So tonight, I’m more blessed than Mother Mary swimming in clouds of astral, Messiah-birthing spunk. Unbelievably, it’s 35 years since the Human League’s stellar Dare album ascended to secular sainthood, and fittingly, that Everest-peak of perfect pop occasions a triumphant tour.

The atmosphere’s tense, expectant, the Royal Festival hall as coy and frisky as a tranny tart turning her first trick. Suddenly, everything’s red, bright, scalding claret spilling everywhichway, like gorgeous blood from a fascist’s quite properly punched-in face. Am I hallucinating? Wiping gore from my own, inexplicably beaten-up and briefly scarlet-smeared eyesight? Not quite – it’s Phil Oakey’s startling entrance, who – insanely but very, very moreishly – comes on like a hunky apprentice Hellraiser, all moody leather smock and attitude.

Okay, his hair’s succumbed to follically-bigoted, Testosterone Terrorism, but the music’s truly scrumptious, morbidly obese, full-fat chords making your starving ears instant, junk-food junkies, helplessly screaming more, more, more! It’s all textbook 80s – boxy keytars and clear Perspex drums- and Oakey’s superb, milking the crowd more smoothly than a parlour-full of parched ladyboys. He’s joined, to huge applause, by Susan Sulley and Joanne Catherall, beautifully slathered in impeccable, supermodel slap, still apparently ageless, dancing around invisible, metaphorical handbags. Who could ask for anything more?

Well, we do – and we get it! Love Action, Open Your Heart, Don’t You Want Me, Mirror Man, Fascination – we’re deluged by an unstoppable tsunami of high-camp hits. And unlike rivals ABC, Culture Club and Spandau Ballet, Oakey’s song-writing chops often boast serious, socially-concerned teeth; Seconds tackles JFK’s assassination with pithy compassion, and Lebanon remains a distressingly relevant take on Middle-Eastern turmoil.

Me, I soared sky-high on what Noel Coward, dismissively, called the power of cheap music. Cheap? Maybe, but music more lean, lovely and lethal than a perfect, penis-bush shave! Who could ask for anything more?

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