Gavin' Index

No.1: THE TANGO

While it has been said that there are as many styles of Tango as there are bars in Buenos Aires, in reality there are only three predominant styles:-

• a) TANGO DE SALON: This formal style of Tango is more suited to a medium to large floor such as a ballroom.
• b) SHOW TANGO: Perhaps the most widely seen style by the general public. This is a stylised stage variant.
• c) TANGO ORILLERO: This is more suited to smaller floors such as Tango cafés and bars. In this type, the man and woman weave intricate figures around each other while taking up very little space. This style is definitely more intimate.

THE LEAD

The first ingredient of a good lead is for the man to dance his own moves clearly and confidently. Clarity from the man is all-important, as it enables the woman to detect the speed, the alignment and feel of a particular movement early enough to respond appropriately.

With his latest album Shag Tabacco, Gavin Friday has also delivered the best 'four-in-the-morning album' this country has ever produced - the musical equivalent of a world inhabited by the likes of Joyce, Beckett, Ballagh, Patrick McCabe, post-Achtung Baby U2 and their European soul-brothers Berholt Brecht / Kurt Weil, Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel as they sit down to sip a cocktail in the late, lamented Mr. Pussy's Cafe-de-luxe on Suffolk Street.

Not surprisingly, Gavin is buzzing because he knows his time has come. But then a lot has changed in Gavin's life in the last three years since he released his last album, Adam 'N' Eve with arch-collaborator Maurice Seezer. He's scored his first movie, In The Name of The Father, gotten married and had a close encounter of the most chilling kind, with death. And that's just for starters. He also feels that pop music, in the broadest sense, has changed for the better and that he has absorbed some of those changes.

"Probably the biggest difference between this record and the last ones, is producer, Tim Simenon, from Bomb The Bass," Gavin explains. "As a solo artist I tended to work so far with people who understood my reference points totally. Tim is different. He's only 27-28 and comes from a totally different culture, having come through in the mid 80s with rave, dance." [contd]

Joe Jackson

Gavin' Index

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