Romo - The Sunday Show BBC2 1996

This is a feature on Romo that was broadcast on BBC2's The Sunday Show in 1996. It's an attempt to be tongue-in-cheek by presenter Katie Puckrick but I think the Romos just about come tops thanks to Xav from Dex Dexter's hilarious "out with the old" tirade.
Orlando aren't featured in it (you can catch a quick glimpse of Dickon and Tim watching Sexus) because we refused! We guessed (rightly it seems) that they would do their best to send up what, at the time, was a genuinely exciting club scene and didn't want any part of it.
In the film you can see Plastic Fantastic, Hollywood, Dex Dexter and Sexus. As well as Steve Strange, Tony Hadley, Marc Almond, Simon Price, future Suede biographer and bassist with NME favourites The Boyfriends David Barnet and all manner of 'faces' of the time.
How ridiculous it seemed, back then, for pop music to be influenced by the 80s...

Category:

Music

Tags:

• romo
• orlando
• new
• romantic
• steve
• strange
• spandau
• ballet
• marc
• almond
• suede
• sunday
• show
• the
• boyfriends
• sexus

[brk754]

Fascinating! I watched this show every week and forgot about Romo! It was even less successful than the similarly-hyped "Rio Grrl" movement. People wanted ordinariness or relatable popstars - thank God for Pulp and My Life Story - two bands that had essence of eighties (musically at least) and were able to crossover. Now of course La Roux and Lady GaGa are pillaging eighties style for all its worth! Pity about The Killers' neutered version of same. Real synth bands like Performance get no recog.

[tchipping]

@brk754 Rio Grrl? Was that for feminist Duran Duran fans?

Seriously though, having been fairly central to both there's no comparison. Riot Grrrl was a political movement with no desire for commercial success. And it largely succeeded in that it opened up a dialogue about women's role and treatment in the music industry. And its fashions, musical styles and iconography are still very much with us.



[tchipping]

@brk754 Romo was an aesthetic movement with commercial success very much its goal, albeit with a fatalism that we knew we were doomed to fail. For the journalists it was a kamikaze attack on their own kind. For the bands it was a glimmer of hope we might be recognised in a sea of rockist shit.

As far as Orlando's concerned we may not have had hits but we did get recognised (and temporarily wealthy), so I still consider it a partial success. And I'm proud of the music.

[brk754]

@tchipping OK, didn't mean to offend you or anything. I take the distinctions you made between the two movements. What did you think of The Modern who get closer to breaking big than you (closer than anyone until La Roux et al). The press seemed to hate them for being too much of an eighties replication - rather unfairly, i thought. To me - they had more in common with the older groups in this video than the Romo bands, namely - skyscraping tunes that sound like #1's. Plastic Fantastic? A joke!

[tchipping]

@brk754 You didn't offend me.I can't really comment on the bands because, as is the cliche, we didn't see ourselves as being similar. And we weren't consciously 80s influenced, it's just what happens when white boys do soul.I love La Roux but we weren't electro so it doesn't feel like the same thing at all.We loved modern swingbeat and pop, and old soul. Romo, for us, just happened to be the people who wanted to know about us, it wasn't our ideology. We thought we were Take That!

[MetaMorphy]

Very stupid. "The glamour"---that woman looks like a damn corpse; some Frankenstein monster coming out of Doctor Mengele's basement.

[tchipping]

Wouldn't a Frankenstein monster be coming out of Doctor Frankenstein's basement?

[luqas99]

Why why why isn't there more of the Sunday Show on YouTube?! Donna McPhail, Katie Pukrick, Dennis Pennis, Phil Kaye et al - it was an essential part of my school days and so much a product of the '90s! It deserves to be fondly remembered along with The Word, TFI Friday, Eurotrash (when it was worth watching...) and such others, yet even for a cultish youth-show it's been forgotten... C'mon people, there must be more of it out there..?

[brk754]

@brk754 Why did that post twice? That should sat "tunes that sound like number ones". Oops!

[brk754]

@tchipping OK, didn't mean to offend you or anything. I take the distinctions you made between the two movements. What did you think of The Modern who get closer to breaking big than you (closer than anyone until La Roux et al). The press seemed to hate them for being too much of an eighties replication - rather unfairly, i thought. To me,- they had more in common with the older groups in this video than the Romo bands, namely - skyscraping tunes that sound like #1's. Plastic Fantastic? A joke!

[ROoooo80]

I though Plastic Flantastic & Dexdexter were really good.. I think the DExdexter songs turned up on Xavior's 'Chainsaw Mass Appeal' album.....

[thecolster24]

I agree I loved this show also. It got me through many a hang over of a Sunday afternoon.