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Earlier this year,Justine Frischmann,lead singer and guitarist for the British neo-New Wave group Elastica and her band mates,Donna Matthews(guitar),Annie Holland(bass) and drummer Justin Welch, decided to stop granting interviews and photo sessions to the British press. Their reason? Elastica was getting too much publicity. The British press was hyperventilating over nearly every move Frischmann made.
When Frischmann began dating British pop heroes Brett Anderson of Suede and Damon Albarn of Blur,even the Fleet Street tabloids were getting into the picture.
In Britian,Blur and Albarn are famous. Frischmann's private life and domestic arrangements with Albarn were treated by the tabloids as a nationally syndicated soap opera. The tabloid The Daily Star labeled Frischmann's home a "love nest" and the Star's reporters began to fantasize about Frischmann's and Albarn's love life.
Frischmann is concerned that the tabloid photographers who wait around her home,looking for a shot,might get a bit too close. 'We've never had any curtains in our bedroom,"she noted.
However the problem of,"too much publicity",is questionable. Is there really such a probelm for a British band? The majority of British bands succeed or fail,solely on the amount of ink they're getting.
Why would Frischmann take the want to risk placing her band in almost certain obscurity by making a move away from the glare of the media spotlight?
"Britain is one of the most difficult places to deal with hype,"Frischmann said during a recent interview. "That's why we took eight months off and didn't do any interviews or put any records out,just because the hype had gotten so out of hand. We were getting way too much attention from magazines like Melody Maker and NME. After a point,"she continued,"it doesn't really matter how many more magazine covers you're on. The hype was something we worried about. British magazines are notorious for one moment saying you're the greatest,and then the next moment they're trying to bring you down by saying all these awful things about you and creating this backlash against you."
So, this past summer Elastica embarked on an American tour,landing a slot in the Lollapalooza tour and earning quite a few fans along the way.
"We thought that tour was great,"Frischmann said. "We loved traveling through America,it's a really beautiful country. We met so many of our fans here in the states,and that's when we decided to try touring on our own as a headliner in America."
The bands self-titled DGC Records debut has been well recieved here in the USA. Elastica seems to be riding a wave of popularity in part due to the umpteenth British Invasion,with a smart,tight,punk-pop sound reminiscent of early Blondie and Duran Duran. While the twentysomething quartet is too young to remember the first wave of punk rock,Frischmann has an uncanny ability to sound like the lost child of Blondie's Debbie Harry. Elastica sounds as of they completely missed the now old fashioned grunge rock movement which washed up on British shores several years ago and was not well received.
"Nirvana weren't saying anything to us about our lives,"Frischmann said. "It seemed to be specifically about the American experience,things like video cheerleaders with anarchy symbols on them.
"I'm quite romantic about my life,"she continued,"I definitely have got hat disease of thinking that I'm in a film of a book,and that I'm quite important. I'm totally aware how irrelevant it is to anything,and I don't expect anyone to respect me for it,but in my own brain I get a little kick out of it."
End.
