Fad Gadget, the Clarendon Ballroom, London. Friday 27th June, 1980.
We’ve played with Fad Gadget before, on the under-card for a Cabaret Voltaire gig at ULU on Malet Street back in May. I’m a fan, having bought his Tubeway Army-does-‘Nuts In May’ debut single ‘Back To Nature’ last year. Fad, or Frank Tovey to the DHSS, is the first signing to Daniel Miller’s Mute label. As The Normal, Miller’s innovative TEAC and biscuits, bedroom-beat 45 – ‘TVOD’ / ‘Warm Leatherette’ is the single that launched a thousand synths. Fad / Frank’s follow up, a jittery electro wriggler called ‘Ricky’s Hand’, has been well received by the music press, and he finds himself headlining the second night of Stevo’s Electronic Party at the crumbling Clarendon Hotel, marooned on Hammersmith Broadway by the ever-circling carbon-coughing thrum of the A219.
The room is full of asymmetrical haircuts wearing Kensington Market clobber as Fad and his band take to the stage, their forceful, brittle bang and crash pounding out of the P.A. Fad is dressed all in white, and sings in the now familiar post-punk, cyborg warble favoured by many frontmen of his generation. Moving quickly, Fad grabs an electronic drum, a D.I.Y. construction of steel, wood and wire. This he tosses high into the Hammersmith night, rising like the moon. Gravity inevitably prevails, however, and as the drum falls, Fad leaps, like Joe Jordan climbing for a header in front of the Stretford End, and meets the falling instrument smack between forehead and pudding-bowl fringe. In the crowd, there is an intake of breath so sharp that it is felt as turbulence by jets overhead, as they make their final approach to nearby Heathrow. Apparently unfazed, Fad continues to sing, unaware for a moment that the collision of metal and flesh will have inevitable Ballardian consequences. Sure enough, a red trickle emerges from under his hairline, and then turns into a crimson tide, blood running down his face onto his pristine white shirt. The song comes to an abrupt halt. Dazed, Fad wipes his blood from his face and smears it absent mindedly on his shirt. Looking like the Beatles’ ‘butcher sleeve’ made flesh, he leaves the stage.
In the audience, there is both confusion and bemusement. As opening numbers go, this was quite literally a show stopper. Down the front, young girls are sobbing:
“FAD, FAD! HE IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT?”
Their mascara melts and runs down their cheeks, as if in tribute to their fallen, bloodied idol. Around them, the hubbub of clink and chatter continues; but the band has been off stage for a while now. We’re wondering about getting paid. Will Stevo have to offer refunds?
Suddenly, Lazarus-like, Fad clambers back on to the stage. Bandages piled atop of his head like a tourniquet turban. He looks like a cross between The Mummy and The Sheik Of Araby. The venue erupts, the girls squeal in horror and delight, the photographers snap away like crazy. Fad’s back! What a trouper.
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