Back in 1984, Frankie Goes To Hollywood discovered that scandal
was the best form of popularity. Their single “Relax” had been
banned by the BBC, leading to people scooping it up out of the
stores and helping it hit the top of the charts. Thanks to music
video stations in America, people like myself got interested in the
band.
Of course, being 13 years old (meaning I was young and stupid),
I had no idea that the song espoused gay sex (or so the stories
say). Blissfully ignorant, I trudged down to the local record store
and dropped two weeks’ allowance on their double-LP debut
Welcome To The Pleasuredome. Fourteen years after it came
out (and 10 years since the band broke up under tense
circumstances), it remains a decent, but incomplete, first effort
that still holds a lot of pleasure.
Of the four sides of this album, the one that will interest most
people is side two, which features the two hits “Relax” and “Two
Tribes”. Frankly, I could care less what “Relax” is about (though
lines like “Shoot it in the right direction” now are a bit clearer
to me), fact is that it’s still a great song with a danceable beat
that rivals much of today’s dance music. Likewise, “Two Tribes,” a
statement against nuclear war, possibly was even a better song than
“Relax” was – it’s certainly more complicated musically. (I could,
however, have lived without the discussion of orgasm about 15
seconds after “Two Tribes” ended.) The other song on this side, a
cover of Edwin Starr’s “War,” is an interesting modern take on the
song that is just as powerful as the rest of the music on this part
of the album.
Welcome To The Pleasuredome also featured some highly
experimental music. The whole first side could be seen as one song,
even though it was broken up into parts like “The World Is My
Oyster” for no apparent reason. The title track is a tour de force
of electronic, dance and rock music that takes some time to really
get into, but is worth the effort and time. (The whole side only
takes about 15 minutes, so it’s not like you have to book out a
whole weekend to get into it.)
Unfortunately, a good portion of the second half of
Welcome To The Pleasuredome is either cover versions or
filler. It’s not that the cover versions are bad – “Born To Run”
and “San Jose (The Way)” both stay pretty true to the original
versions, while “Ferry”, a version of Gerry And The Pacemakers’
“Ferry ‘Cross The Mersey,” would have been better had it been the
whole version. Lead singer Holly Johnson gently delivered the
vocals on this one, even more so than the original.
The remaining music, such as “Krisco Kisses,” “Wish (The Lads
Were Here)” and “The Power Of Love,” don’t live up to the stronger
material that makes up the first half of the album. And one has to
wonder what the sound bite on the background of “Including The
Ballad Of 32” is really of -it’s some kind of sexual activity. The
album’s closer, “bang…”, seems to bring the whole concept – album
and group – to a solid conclusion. (Frankie Goes To Hollywood would
bring out one more album,
Liverpool.)
This is still a very good album, though it could have easily
been just a single album and been just as strong. Still, once you
plow through the filler,
Welcome To The Pleasuredome proves to still be a worthwhile
album to search out and pick up. (Last time I heard, this one is
out of print.)
