The Moodies

I'm writing an essay on British rock bands of the 1970s who adapted music hall form to their own uses (I know, it's a stretch for me). It's an excuse to tunnel more deeply into the 70s, a time when rock bands and contemporary conceptual artists alike were rethinking the meaning of performance. There were a lot of interesting efforts to mix rock and theater, Bowie perhaps being the most famous: but there were scores of others.

One of the bands I plan to feature is the Moodies, a group (five women, one man) who sang an eclectic range of music: pop standards, doo-wop, variety song, and other pre-rock pop.  The women sometimes dressed as men, in order to sing 'macho' rock songs, and to up the ante, imitated male drag artists. T Moodies' gender-bending performance quickly generated a buzz among other the art rock intelligentsia: Malcolm McLaren, Brian Eno, David Bowie ( the quasi-kabuki look adopted by some of the Moodies was lifted from Bowie himself, in his days as a mime in Lindsay Kemp's panto troupe), and one of the first (and greatest) critics to cover pop music for the daily press, George Melly.

But the fan following wasn't just about camp or irony; without the instrumentation of the classic rock combo, and their defiantly amateur, confrontational ethos, they clearly anticipated UK punk.  Eventually, the record companies noticed the Moodies too: but the major labels couldn't figure out how to translate the Moodies' brand of visual performance on vinyl, and the group disbanded without making a record. The Moodies also came to soon for the age of music video. 

The group has recently garnered some attention in the UK at least, thanks to The Wire (an excellent biographical essay by Michael Bracewell in the March 2010 issue). Click on the link to download a recent interview with all the band members but one, on Resonance Radio:

http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/3770/

What fascinates me most about the interview is the uncertainty that the band maintained, even cultivated, regarding what they were doing: were they a vocal group, or art school prank? Was this a socio-political theatrical, aimed at shocking audiences with gender subversion: or was it just dress-up night? Art or a Goof? Clearly one thing it was, was postmodern, though as Richard Williams remarks on the broadcast, no one quite knew what THAT meant in the early 70s (aside from Bowie, Eno, and McLaren).

Check out the audio clip of the Moodies hosted at The Wire site while you're there: a haunting cover of "(Remember) Walking in the Sand," reminiscent of the moody, campy melancholy of Soft Cell: sans electronics.