Transvision Vamp
Rebel Yell From The UK
Music 89
Interview with Nick Christian Sayer
[submitted by Justin Whyte]

Transvision Vamp's Velveteen bristles with clean, sharp hooklines and Wendy James dramatizes the lyrics with insolent cool and banshee screams.

But guitarist Nick Christian Sayer claims Transvision Vamp is more than a good fun pop bad whose energetic beats suits bedroom vamping, motoring with the FM turned up high and Gym classes.

"A pop song," says Nick, "Should have some spark of rebellion. It should get up some peoples noses. When I was a teenager music fueled my rebellious urges. The Sex Pistols inspired me to get up and do something besides find a safe job."

Transvision Vamp's targets for rebellion are England's number 1 hitmakers, the songwriter/production team of Stock, Aitken, Waterman - the force behind amongst others, Sinitta, Jason Donavon and Kylie Minogue.

"Stock Aitken Waterman churn out Kylie Minogue music to sedate young kids," says Nick. "I don't dislike Kylie. But I am saying she is a face used to sell a product and it's not been done with any feeling, and that's the horrible thing."

"Till we came along, there'd been nothing like Tell That Girl To Shut Up (from the first album Pop Art ) in the chart's for years. There were kids out there who were hearing a fuzz guitar and getting excited about music for the first time in their lives. I was really proud of that."

"Pop Music is quite trivial in the whole scheme of things, but the way people react to it is important. That's why we're disliked by the music establishment. We don't make music that doesn't reflect the smugness of 10 years of conservative government. And they don't like that."

Music 89 asked rock historian Glenn A Baker to comment on the nature of rock rebellion:

"It is the prerogative nature of every generation to believe that the raw passion of music will flicker and die without thier intervention. It is a noble delusion of no small arrogance, one which has given us some interesting hiccups in rock's history. Punk, it can be reasonably asserted, was the end product of working class British revolution, the angered howl of legions of unemployed, disillusioned kids who could no longer relate to the untouchable rock superstar as dots on a distant concert stage. Punk snarled at and spat upon entrenched privilege, boisterously sweeping away complacency and predictability. At least it was that way until the Clash started showing up at gigs in individual Rolls Royce's."

"The truth is: Rock music is inevitably cyclic. It ebbs and flows, changes and adapts in set patterns."

With very few exceptions rock's real rebels came along 35 years ago. These primal wildmen challenged the very values of post war Western society and most them paid a high price for doing so. Since then, as regular as clock work guitar toting, pretenders to the throne have insisted it is their divine mission to re-arrange the face of rock and, indeed the very face of society.

Awhile this niavity is almost endearing, it's hard not to laugh at these cocky neophytes, who one day in the near future will be boring old farts. that the new guns in town will be railing and rebelling against."