Hungry Like The Wolf

Not much to say that what Abby & I do relates to Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran. It doesn't. Yet I call us Neo-Romantics, and the aegis thing we have going for the Aughts Neo-Romanticism, for complicated reasons. Then, there were the New Romantics in pop music in the early-to-mid-Eighties. They are worth bringing up here, because, on both musical and fashion levels, they were Gaetan Spurgin's bag. Gaetan, as I have written about in The Seattle Star and Scud, resembled Mary H in that he cared very much about self-presentation. His clothes were a part of who he was, and he related to them as such. The band he was in when I met him as of 1999, Metro, played music more tilted to straight rock, but their fashion moves were a Goth-ed out version of the Neo-Romantics. Not the posh side of the New Romantics, as it were, the racy side of them. A heavy emphasis on Eighties fashion meant that Gaetan's studio, as was later established, always had the New Romantics lined up to be played at key times. Gaetan's thing with glam meant, along with other things, that he was often the most elegantly wasted human being on the East Coast. Nineties grunge passed him by, and he had nothing to say to indie rockers either. Watching Gaetan share venue space with indie rockers was always amusing, because he was a stickler for sharp dressing and indie rock dudes in those days dressed down. Also interesting to understand that Gaetan was real, human, and had some depth to him. He could turn off the New Romantic persona whenever he needed to. Mercurial. And, with lots of European experience, an interesting contrast to the rest of Aughts Philadelphia.