{"id":23139,"date":"2013-11-07T16:29:24","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T21:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=23139"},"modified":"2013-11-07T16:29:24","modified_gmt":"2013-11-07T21:29:24","slug":"throwback-thursday-frankie-say-relax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/throwback-thursday-frankie-say-relax\/","title":{"rendered":"Throwback Thursday: Frankie Say Relax"},"content":{"rendered":"

All my posts this week have mentioned 1980s musicians: Devo<\/a>, Ronnie James Dio<\/a>, and Jimmy Somerville<\/a>. I’m going to continue the theme and write about Frankie Goes to Hollywood for Throwback Thursday.<\/p>\n

I’ve been pondering Frankie since Monday<\/a>, when I remarked that I regretted chucking my iconic Frankie Say Relax concert t-shirt long ago.<\/p>\n

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Ross on Friends kept his. I’m jealous. Click for clip.<\/p><\/div>\n

I previously wrote that I saw Frankie at the Beacon Theatre<\/a>. Considering that I recently discovered I had misremembered the date of a 1980s Depeche Mode concert<\/a>, I suddenly suspected that my Beacon Theatre memory was inaccurate. I was right to be suspicious! It appears that Frankie performed at the Ritz, not the Beacon, in November 1984<\/a> and May 1985<\/a>. I’m not sure if I went in November or May, but I will insist on the accuracy of my memory in one respect: It was a wild time. Fuck this disparaging New York Times review<\/a> that says the response to the group was “considerably less than ecstatic.” My friends and I made our way to the front row, and I will swear on the head of my beloved flat-faced cat<\/a> that everyone around us was dancing ecstatically. Let’s ask Mick Jagger — he was at one of those November shows<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Frankie’s big song, “Relax,” became a No. 1 hit in the U.K. after<\/em> BBC Radio banned it for being too sex-ay<\/a>. According to the sometimes-reliable Wikipedia, by the time the song reached the top spot on the charts in late January 1984<\/a>, it had also been banned from the BBC’s Top of the Pops<\/a><\/em> television show, even though the band had performed the song on the program earlier that same month<\/a>. Eventually, the BBC had to un-ban “Relax” because it was moronic to try to ignore such a hot song. Coincidentally, 1984 was the last year that Jimmy Savile served as a regular presenter on Top of the Pops<\/em><\/a> (his Jim’ll Fix It<\/a><\/em> show — aimed at kids — continued airing on the BBC till 1994). In 2012, a year after Savile’s death at age 84, it was revealed<\/a> that Savile had sexually abused people — the majority of them children at the time — for over 50 years<\/a>. Some of the abuse took place on BBC premises. The news — and the fact that the BBC dropped a news investigation into abuse allegations<\/a> — caused a crisis at the broadcaster<\/a>. So there you have it: A big bureaucracy censoring a pop song that referred to gay sex even as it let a monster ruin the lives of hundreds of people. Always be wary of censors<\/a>! The fuckers always want to wash your mouth out while ignoring the fact that their whole house is filthy.<\/p>\n

Anyway, here is the Frankie Goes to Hollywood “Relax” video, which is set in a kinky club populated by leather daddies, a blonde Amazon, a tiger, a toga-wearing holdover from the Roman Empire … as Stefon would say, “This place has EVERYTHING.”<\/a><\/p>\n