Before Stacey Q, before Cyndi Lauper, before Madonna, before Gwen Stefani there was the original recipe manic pixie dream girl, Clare Grogan. It was her work with the band Altered Images where the hyperactive, estrogen-drenched, squeaky-voiced adorableness many singers would later take to the bank first truly burst into the public consciousness.
Unlike her imitators, Clare actually was a teenaged girl, which made her cutesy-pie teenager routine a lot more palatable. Grogan's lyrics were also incredibly dark and strange. She wrote disturbing little ditties about "Insects," "Dead Pop Stars," childhood cruelty ("Real Toys"), and stalkers ("I Could Be Happy"), as well as an obsessive ode to a former girlfriend ("Leave Me Alone").
Altered Images were a bunch of Siouxsie and the Banshees fans (there were a lot of them in Scotland at the time) who wrote to their heroes and landed a slot on the Banshees' 1980 tour. This was a good mix, since Altered Images were like the whimsical flipside of the sorcerous Banshees. Yin and Yang and all that.
After the tour, Banshee Steve Severin produced the Images' first LP, which featured the New Wave classic, "Happy Birthday," which was produced by Buzzcocks/Human League/Go-Gos helmsman Martin Rushent. A couple more albums followed (one great, one awful) before Grogan took to full-time acting.
They'd probably never admit it, but fellow Scots the Cocteau Twins seemed to learn a trick or two from Altered Images when they moved more pop in the late 80s, and certainly the iridescent Harriet Wheeler of Sundays fans borrowed some of Grogan's cutesy-pie vocal charm. I even see a lot of Clare Grogan in the early Kylie Minogue.
We even get a couple nice Synchromystic hits off of Clare- her birthday is March 17th, and she played Kristine Kochanski on the cult scifi series, Red Dwarf.
POSTSCRIPT: Clare is so adorable that I'll even forgive her for inspiring the insipid Spandau Ballet Paul Anka-knockoff "True."
OTHER POSTSCRIPT: I'd be remiss if I didn't cite Brenda Lee AKA Little Miss Dynamite as the prototype for the 80s MPDG.
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Oh, my goddesses...How did I forget Clare Grogan? I was so intent on being a Galactus-level asshole in the early 80's that I completely shut her out of my memory, but watching your embedded clips "Happy Birthday" and "Insects" brought her rushing back (happily, I should add) to mind. I agree with you that several bands probably borrowed some of her Pop zeitdust at the time and why not? She was freaking adorable. Heck, now that you mentioned it, I even see some of her in Patty Griffin's firecracker delivery in "Poor Man's House" and "One Big Love", although not so much in a Poppy way, but in a turned up folk rock spin on this 'Brenda Lee - MPDG' smash-up.
ReplyDeleteI will always have a huge spot in my heart for her. And Brenda Lee, even if she was way before my time.
ReplyDeleteShe was 4'9" in height.
ReplyDelete"I'm Sorry " was in every country roadhouse jukebox in my childhood.
(Vintage'53)
Backwoods opera.
DeleteWas this a European thing?
ReplyDelete