Crystal Passion Ch. 08

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It was when Margot Klein had sung her last song—an encore, in fact—with its catchy chorus of "Make Your Man Share the Burden! Watch him Stumble and Fall!" that the Crystal Passion band was due to take the stage. The honour of being the final act on the first night was simply a tribute to our status of being international. We may well have been the only band that didn't come from New York State. And this time, all of us were on stage. Not a slimmed-down ensemble as dictated by circumstances.

In the interval between the Crystal Passion band taking the stage and Margot Klein reluctantly walking off, acoustic guitar in hand while she waved appreciatively at her adoring middle-aged fans, there was a DJ set laid on by a woman in hippy gear who wouldn't have survived a single second in a British Night Club. She even allowed gaps between records which she thankfully didn't compensate for with inane radio DJ banter. Her idea of getting the audience ready for our set was to play songs by any and all of the British girl singers she could think of: so we were treated to an uneven mix of Joan Armatrading, Lulu and Sandie Shaw. She even played the Eurythmics' Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves: a tune I'd hoped never to have to hear again. I didn't appreciate being lectured about the virtues of "the conscious liberation of the female state" and being reminded that "the inferior sex has got a new exterior". While a few very bored hippies were swinging their motherly hips to this preachy housewife-friendly song, Bertha and Jenny Alpha were humping equipment onto the stage and Tomiko was setting up her mixing decks under a canvas shelter a hundred yards away.

I was nervous as I always am before a gig, but the signs were all good. I was sure we could only shine after what I considered to be an extremely tedious DJ set. And the audience which had thinned out as singer-songwriter followed singer-songwriter was at last beginning to be filled out with younger women who'd be up for something more upbeat and perhaps somewhat less self-satisfied. And many of these women were in thrall of Crystal Passion as a result of her daytime charm offensive.

Ariel Golgotha dashed onto stage with disarming enthusiasm dressed in an odd mix of ethnic chic and biker leather. She tried to address the crowd through the microphone, but all we could hear was a muffled voice swamped by the inspirational lyrics of Joan Armatrading's Me Myself I. And then with a half-audible sentence punctuated by the words "Fuck", "Shit" and "Golly", Ariel could at last be heard. She kept her announcement brief—possibly because she didn't really know any better than anyone else what our music sounded like—but I don't think Judy Dildo enjoyed being heralded along with the rest of us as an icon of Women's Liberation who was furthering the cause of feminism through the vehicle of Progressive Hard Rock.

And this may be why as soon as we took to the stage, Judy unleashed the unmoderated fury of full-throttle guitar licks which instantly energised the audience's younger element and dismayed the older hippy chicks.

This was the only set on our tour where we played the music we'd recorded in London just before we departed for our American tour. At the time, we'd thought that the six songs we'd recorded were unfinished work which would soon be accompanied by half a dozen more when we returned to England. But we valued the opportunity to try out our new material on an absurdly enthusiastic audience before we returned to our more usual tried-and-tested repertoire. What we didn't know of course was that these six songs—on average no more than five minutes long—was to be our final recording as the Crystal Passion band and that they would later feature on an album with the portentous title of The Last Word.

In many ways this album is the most unsatisfactory and patchy release credited to Crystal Passion, however much Polly Tarantella champions it as our masterwork. In those days, it was expected that an album should last at least seventy minutes. And this was to justify what was then the more expensive price of a Compact Disc compared to a vinyl record. The six tracks we'd recorded for the as yet untitled fourth album amounted to barely thirty minutes. So, what would have been a very good short album—perhaps bolstered by the songs So-So Sower and Muscle Mary that we'd recorded on an earlier session as a potential single release—was bloated to a full seventy minutes by an additional half an hour of out-takes, half-finished songs found on Crystal's personal cassette player and a few songs that hadn't been good enough for Seventy Doctors, the previous record.

Nevertheless, the six tracks we'd recorded fit together very well and when it came for us to assemble the album, it was because Philippa and Andrea insisted on it that the songs were released on the album in their original sequence: even if they appeared after a somewhat miscellaneous selection of those tracks, like Muscle Mary, that Gospel Records considered might yet have commercial potential. And these six tracks featured the whole of the Crystal Passion ensemble in all its miscellaneous glory in arrangements that Crystal had agonised over and had somehow got absolutely right. There was electric guitar and fiddle, saxophone and percussion, clarinet and trumpet, backing vocals, lead vocals, acoustic guitar, and, keeping up the rhythm, my keyboards, Jane's drums and Jacquie's bass. And it wasn't the mess that some of us had dreaded. With the help of Tomiko's expert engineering skills, it all held together as a coherent whole.

It is this set of six songs that Polly so often proclaims as the definitive sound of Crystal Passion and which she already has plans to have re-recorded by a set of Band Aid musicians. Perhaps there'll be someone like Squarepusher or Jon Hopkins playing my synth chords (though I wouldn't be at all surprised if they featured Elton John instead). Perhaps they'll have a decrepit Heavy Metal guitarist play Judy Dildo's licks (but knowing Polly's hatred of Judy, it probably won't be anyone who's any good). And I have no idea who'd play the role of Crystal Passion. Would it be Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus? Whoever it might be, I can't imagine she'd appear naked on stage as Crystal did at the Sisterhood Women's Music Festival. And if Taylor Swift did appear undressed in the cause of authenticity, I doubt whether she could carry it off with as little sense of embarrassment as did Crystal.

The six songs have perplexing titles like Curry Carousel Chorus, Gloria in an Escalator and Tell Me You Love What I Want You To Love and although I now know every word by heart I still have no idea what Crystal was getting at when she wrote the lyrics. I sometimes wonder if she means me when she sings "Thank you, Kirsty" over and over again in Lamb Ram Community. Inevitably, there's no explicit reference to either 'Pebbles' or 'Simone' in her lyrics, any more than there is to a 'Judy' or a 'Mark' or anyone else she regularly made love with. Crystal's lyrics remain enigmatic well beyond the grave, however well they rhyme, scan and give the impression of having meaning. What I do know is that I always burst into tears whenever I listen to the songs in sequence. They touch me deep inside even though I don't know what Crystal was singing about and, as I've told Polly many times, she never gave much away.

"Fuck, Crystal," said the Harlot who had to solemnly intone "Sanitary. Sanctuary. Salutary. Sanity." in You Carry an Affirmation. "What the fuck is all this about?"

"It just sounds good," said Crystal.

"Not that good," said Thelma who shared the backing vocal duties with the Harlot. "And what's it got to do with 'Offer me an Amphora'? Where do you get all this pseudo-mystical shit?"

"Do you think I should change the lyrics?" Crystal asked gently.

"I didn't say that," said Thelma. "It's not that it doesn't sound good. It's just that the lyrics don't make much sense."

And I don't think even Polly Tarantella would disagree with Thelma's assessment.

The first and only time I ever felt like a pop star, as opposed to the keyboard player in an obscure uncategorisable music group was that night when we appeared on stage. So, this is what it's like, I thought as the women in the audience danced, swung and moshed to music with complex time signatures, enigmatic lyrics and an eccentric set of instruments. I didn't know at the time that many years later, when nobody could mistake me for a 'babe' and when I could no longer shave my hair in case people thought I was on chemotherapy, that I would then be far more famous for my role in the Crystal Passion band than I was at the time.

And what were we like as a band when we were in full flow?

I'd like to think we weren't at all bad really.

There were some truly talented musicians in the group. Not just Crystal but also Andrea, Philippa, Olivia and Judy Dildo. And it was Judy who on this night, as she increasingly did as the American tour proceeded, who made the greatest impression other than Crystal herself. I'd be fooling myself if I were to claim that Jane, Jacquie and I were much better than just about adequate. I've heard far better rhythm sections on old Tamla Motown records and on almost any modern Jazz record. And although Polly might be loath to agree, none of us, including Crystal, offered what Judy Dildo could in terms of stage presence. And on this stage, the two women were almost as one. Both were either totally or almost totally nude. Both had guitars strung over their shoulders. And both dominated the stage: Crystal with her inexplicable unassuming charisma. Judy with her Rock Guitar theatrics and her teasing of the audience's expectations. And whatever Polly says, Judy knew how to play guitar. You can hear it on the CDs, but nothing compares with the imagination and daring of the live show. If she was still active, she'd probably have become famous in her own right. Rather than as the object of Polly's unquenchable rage.

And, just like for a rock band, our audience clamoured for not one, not two, but three encores. And we'd have gladly given more if Ariel Golgotha hadn't brought the proceedings to a close. Fortunately, we had enough material for as many encores as might be required, but Crystal decided to give our American audience exactly what they'd really wanted all along. And this meant that the third encore featured the Beatles' We Can Work It Out which somehow melded into Walk On By and climaxed with Nirvana's Come As You Are. No one could pretend that Crystal's vocals sounded much like either John Lennon's or Kurt Cobain's, but on this occasion Judy Dildo showed an unexpected skill at singing with a rasped voice which just happened to harmonise well with Crystal's more folky voice.

"Fuck!" said Jane as we left the stage. "That gig almost makes the American tour not seem so bad..."

"That was fucking awesome!" said Olivia.

"You did real good there!" I said to Judy Dildo, swallowing for the moment my resentment that she was sharing her bed with Crystal rather more often than I was.

Judy was dripping with sweat, but she knew that she'd done a good job. But she wasn't going to let that detain her.

"Yeah. Yeah," she said distractedly before pushing her way through the crowd. "If you could just excuse me please..." she said as she disappeared.

"Where do you think she's going in such a hurry?" Andrea asked as we watched her go.

I didn't know, but I knew well enough where Judy was later that night from the passionate cries of lovemaking that came from the tent she shared with Crystal. And no amount of intimacy with the now reconciled Jane and Jacquie could make up for my hurt feelings.

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