In the early 1980s music enjoyed a phase of costumes and makeup emulating London street artists of the era. It was a somewhat temporary phase I embraced, likely because of my penchant for British acts and music, but one that did not last too long in the grand scale of music history. During its prime there were various examples on the premise that made their way on to the charts and into the dance clubs, some of which you’ll still hear on themed mixtapes (the 80s never really went away musically) and others perhaps not so much.
Think Boy George of The Culture Club, for instance. The two primary leads of Haysi Fantayzee were actually school mates with George O’Dowd (Boy George). When Culture Club first appeared in 1982, around the same time as Haysi Fantayzee did with their first single “John Wayne is Big Leggy,” lead Jeremy Healy first accused O’Dowd of ‘stealing their look.’ George responded that it was not their look to steal and that was the end of that. The look was also made popular in London by several young London club-goers called “The Blitz Kids,” who according to British lore started the New Romantic movement as an answer to punk. It was all about the fashion and being glamorous and fabulous instead of scruffy.
Other examples of the trend were Bow Wow Wow, whose lead was a similarly styled Annabella Lwin, a 13-year-old singer recruited by Malcolm McClaren in 1980 along with members of Adam and the Ants. Speaking of which, Adam and the Ants rose to fame with its own Indian/Colonial styled face makeup and costumes in 1980 after reforming a new version of the group upon the members leaving. There is also Bananarama, who may not have played the theme quite to the extent of the aforementioned examples, did fit the bill in their earlier years.
Haysi Fantayzee were pretty much the least successful of any of the bands who believed in the costumed new wave entertainment. They only existed between 1981 and 1983, and only charted two times with the title I am highlighting today and the previously referred to “John Wayne is Big Leggy,” a tune that was released first and played the gypsy, street gimmick to the hilt in their odd, comic-strip inspired video. “Shiny Shiny,” a song the band called an anti-nuclear war song, was my first introduction to them in 1983. I cannot say I would have ever pegged the lyric, which made no real sense to me, to be anything close to political, I was just captivated by its bouncy beat and the two intriguing looking aliens dancing around in the video.
1983 may have been one of the epicenters of my younger life. This is the year that I turned 25, the year I finally came out as a gay man, the year of my first foray into the legal system, the year of my blossoming in the bar Revolver, and the year that I had my first gay relationship to speak of. I could say that my world turned into color in 1980 when I moved to Los Angeles, but in 1983 it became pastel. As life will have a habit of doing, adulthood and responsibility took hold of me at some point, but it was certainly not during that year. I was free as a bird, even through the experience of my first DUI. Nothing seemed to matter. I was in a constant state of discovery, and everything was opening me up wider and wider to a more authentic self. That isn’t to say I wasn’t still dealing with subconscious fears and tumultuous doubts about my worth on the planet Earth, but things were becoming more easily masked. Beginning to own my true sexuality was a major blast of fresh air, but it was still early in the 1980s. There were underlying factors that were coming to the forefront both inwardly and all around me that made homosexuality scary and continually taboo outside of the safe havens that existed in major cities. Fortunately, I was in one of them.
In the Los Angeles clubs we would dance to the New Romantic music along with the continued beat of a waning disco era. I cannot say I, or any of the people I spent time with were dressing in the combination of Rasta, Dickensian, or tribal costumes that the bands highlighted today were prone to display. I was still very much in phases of my goth/vampire days. I still had my God-given black hair (soon to begin going gray or white) and dressed head-to-toe in black. What else would one wear in an era when we did not appear in the light of day?
I am to understand that like myself, a person who has completely retired or killed off the character I portrayed in those days, the band members of Haysi Fantayzee moved into other places as well. Jeremy Healy continued to record for some time but moved into record mixing and DJing, Kate Garner, the female of the group eventually became a photographer in Los Angeles, and the third (non-costume wearing) member of the group, Paul Caplin, became an entrepreneur in the Technology world.
It will be interesting to see how many people remember this song or their other single for that matter. This is more of a blip in the bigger new wave era of the 1980s. They will always be something I remember for how they stood out, but they will likely not make it on to too many of the 1980s mix tapes you’ll hear at Starbucks or Trader Joe’s these days.
Well, I feel fine,
No, it ain’t no crime
I was dreamin’ of a demon, I at a dime
Dime floats
Colonel toasts
Send ‘em up the hill boys, ain’t no joke
No chance, no chance, no chance, no chance
Shiny shiny, bad times behind me
Shiny shiny sha-na-na-na