74: SOFT CELL – “NON-STOP EROTIC CABARET” LP

“THE GOOD NEWS IS, IT’S NOT BRAIN DAMAGE,” bellows Dr Cavendish, riding on the trolley and guzzling his bottle of Famous Grouse as the orderlies race me down the corridor, battering double doors aside with my skull. Peering from the bandages, wincing in the flickering green light, the distorted faces of dribbling ket casualties, wounded kebab shop gladiators and Deliveroo crash victims whiz past. Another set of doors – WHAACKKK!!! “THE WORST CASE OF LONDON SAUDADE I’VE EVER SEEN,” Cavendish burps, as a resus nurse blinds me with a light stick. “YOU SHOULD STOP ASTRAL-PROJECTING AROUND TOWN…OLD LONDON’S NOT COMING BACK, YOU KNOW! HAD ONE LAD IN LAST WEEK…TRIED ASTRAL-PROJECTING TO SATURN, THE LITTLE SOD…GOT NABBED BY THE GOATMANAUT! FRIED HIS BLOODY -“ WHAACKKK!!!
Running around the streets, bandaged up like a phantom pineapple. The fucker was right. I will never go to a weird art expo in Albion Stables again. Never fall off my chair laughing at a screening of Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas upstairs at the King & Queen again. Or snog a mad 19-year-old girl in St Pancras Cemetery. Or chant “Your son is dead, Fayed!” (to the tune of Que Sera, Sera) with the Yid Army at a ‘friendly’ at Craven Cottage (in what felt like a successful collective banishing of the endless Candle In The Wind loop). Or ride the 240 past that notorious beagle death camp The National Institute for Medical Research: its manky, unwashed green roof and chimneys poking into the sky (letter-bombed by the ALF at least twice during my pre-pube years). Or stumble out of the Red Rose after another night of extreme noise provocation. Or have a megaton of bass kick my guts in at Lazerdome. Or fling myself over the railings at Hyde Park, Loony Toons-style, to avoid a baton charge during the CJA riot. Or swig a Cobra in New Balti as Asha Bhosle gets soused with her accountant on the next table. Or buy speed off Conflict’s drummer in the Goldsmiths Tavern while somebody spins 140bpm gabba tunes with cut-up samples of screaming women. Or sit next to Diogenes in Golders Hill Park, watching the sun come up as the Wu-Flu sweeps the Earth…
When I heard Marc Almond invoke the trashiest Soho dives with lyrics like Lipstick marks on pint beer mugs/And love bites on the neck on Sleaze, I realised he was up there with Omar Khayyam, Baudelaire, Woops and Shane MacGowan. That song’s not on this LP…but Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret is pure E-fuelled praxis. All three Soft Cell albums are essential in my humble (four if you’re counting Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing, which you probably should). This isn’t cool to admit, but I always thought Soft Cell were miles better than Coil and New Order: Dave Ball’s synth attack on this is relentless, from the opening cowbell assault on Frustration to the melancholic swirls at the end of the tearjerker closer Say Hello, Wave Goodbye. I’m sure I’ve played this 100 times more than I’ve ever spun Movement or Horse Rotorvator - and I've played those two a lot.
Bedsitter may be the best summary of life in Bedsitland I’ve ever heard. Speaking as a former resident of that interzone, this song was utterly perfect and helped me and many others imagine we were part of a deathless, interconnected psychic gang, operating from our own private Jagos - rather than merely being skint, isolated youths, exploited by bastard landlords:
Speaking of bedsits and Shane MacGowan (peace be upon him), this song kills too, and adds the crucial ‘waking up next to a cold chicken shish, an overflowing ashtray, a malfunctioning TV, 12 empty bottles of Nigerian Guinness and a copy of Razzle’ element that Soft Cell’s epic lacks:
We'll do The Pogues later; let’s get back to Soft Cell. Seedy Films has a genuine sense of humour (setting it apart from turgid faux-sleaze efforts like Lou Reed’s Street Hassle) and I’m not gonna lie: Josie Warden’s backing giggles still do it for me (though maybe not as much as the violinist on Siouxsie & The Banshees’ Slowdive audibly gasping after popping a finger blister on her strings). How Youth never made it into a Cybernetic Broadcasting System Top 100 is beyond me. Youth has gone/Though we’re still young sums up how I felt at 18: that grim feeling of des vu ruining the present again: I could picture myself as the ageing perv in Frustration even back then…feeling my squeeze’s body slipping out of my arms even as we canoodled. The synth on this one’s so lush.
I’ve never seen a Sex Dwarf in London, but I did in Amsterdam, in the ‘freak’ section of the Red Light District. She was dangling on a coat-hanger, kicking her legs around, in the window next to the Incredible 28-stone woman: but I was transfixed by the lion-faced doxy. I’m not kidding, this chick had the body of an Egyptian princess (in scarlet Primark bra and undies) but the face of an actual lion. We locked eyes through the glass, the pink light cascading off her golden locks (or mane?).
One New Year’s Eve in the mid-2000s, I went out to Camden with a miserable bloke from Northern Ireland (at the time, we were ‘mates’, but he’s done me dirty since, so fuck him). We were drinking in goth haunt The Devonshire Arms and some girl said a big bash was happening in an underground club near Temple, so we got the tube there. The downstairs part resembled an old medical museum, with skulls and bizarre potions displayed in glass cases. Wish I could remember what it was called. Anyway, we were at the bar, looking like clueless normies – but we couldn’t stop staring at this black bloke dressed like Blade. Well…if Blade had worn wraparound shades and a bright red latex jumpsuit. Suddenly – a white goth girl was in our faces.
“Is there a problem?” she asked. “You’re looking at my friend and laughing?”
I had to explain, no, we were admiring the geezer – and I know I look like I’m off to urinate on a war memorial while chanting “WHO THE FUCK IS ALLAH?” down Whitehall, but I’m one of you. I’ve got Bela Lugosi’s Dead on blue vinyl and used to cruise around the South Beds suburbs listening to Unknown Pleasures at 3.30am, damn it! Sure, I understood what was happening: I remembered going to that Luton shithole Mirage when I was 17, where bouncers had to patrol the ‘peace staircase’ between the first-floor indie disco and the Mr Byrite-clad hordes downstairs…where wearing a stripey mohair sweater and a studded wristband might get you a bottle in the face at chucking-out time…but I still felt a bit sad that I’d been unfairly judged. Fair play to her for having her mate's back, though. I danced to Hong Kong Garden (and bought Blade a pint) to prove my alt credentials.
But then – the DJ played the next two Soft Cell tunes, straight off Side 2 – and neither my miserable NI mate nor the goth bird (nor Blade) got up and danced to ‘em. Bunch of bleedin’ posers! Ironically, these were the two tracks on the album I used to skip when I was a teen, tuning in from Bedsitland – but, that night, I went batshit to these, joining a small but Dionysian scrum on the dancefloor (and aided by a hit of poppers from a rather nice woman with a bat tattoo on her left shoulder). Marc’s acerbic cynicism set to Dave’s punchy electro makes most NDW sound lame and lifeless in comparison. What an amazing album this is, easy 10/10.

“THE GOOD NEWS IS, IT’S NOT BRAIN DAMAGE,” bellows Dr Cavendish, riding on the trolley and guzzling his bottle of Famous Grouse as the orderlies race me down the corridor, battering double doors aside with my skull. Peering from the bandages, wincing in the flickering green light, the distorted faces of dribbling ket casualties, wounded kebab shop gladiators and Deliveroo crash victims whiz past. Another set of doors – WHAACKKK!!! “THE WORST CASE OF LONDON SAUDADE I’VE EVER SEEN,” Cavendish burps, as a resus nurse blinds me with a light stick. “YOU SHOULD STOP ASTRAL-PROJECTING AROUND TOWN…OLD LONDON’S NOT COMING BACK, YOU KNOW! HAD ONE LAD IN LAST WEEK…TRIED ASTRAL-PROJECTING TO SATURN, THE LITTLE SOD…GOT NABBED BY THE GOATMANAUT! FRIED HIS BLOODY -“ WHAACKKK!!!
Running around the streets, bandaged up like a phantom pineapple. The fucker was right. I will never go to a weird art expo in Albion Stables again. Never fall off my chair laughing at a screening of Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas upstairs at the King & Queen again. Or snog a mad 19-year-old girl in St Pancras Cemetery. Or chant “Your son is dead, Fayed!” (to the tune of Que Sera, Sera) with the Yid Army at a ‘friendly’ at Craven Cottage (in what felt like a successful collective banishing of the endless Candle In The Wind loop). Or ride the 240 past that notorious beagle death camp The National Institute for Medical Research: its manky, unwashed green roof and chimneys poking into the sky (letter-bombed by the ALF at least twice during my pre-pube years). Or stumble out of the Red Rose after another night of extreme noise provocation. Or have a megaton of bass kick my guts in at Lazerdome. Or fling myself over the railings at Hyde Park, Loony Toons-style, to avoid a baton charge during the CJA riot. Or swig a Cobra in New Balti as Asha Bhosle gets soused with her accountant on the next table. Or buy speed off Conflict’s drummer in the Goldsmiths Tavern while somebody spins 140bpm gabba tunes with cut-up samples of screaming women. Or sit next to Diogenes in Golders Hill Park, watching the sun come up as the Wu-Flu sweeps the Earth…
When I heard Marc Almond invoke the trashiest Soho dives with lyrics like Lipstick marks on pint beer mugs/And love bites on the neck on Sleaze, I realised he was up there with Omar Khayyam, Baudelaire, Woops and Shane MacGowan. That song’s not on this LP…but Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret is pure E-fuelled praxis. All three Soft Cell albums are essential in my humble (four if you’re counting Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing, which you probably should). This isn’t cool to admit, but I always thought Soft Cell were miles better than Coil and New Order: Dave Ball’s synth attack on this is relentless, from the opening cowbell assault on Frustration to the melancholic swirls at the end of the tearjerker closer Say Hello, Wave Goodbye. I’m sure I’ve played this 100 times more than I’ve ever spun Movement or Horse Rotorvator - and I've played those two a lot.
Bedsitter may be the best summary of life in Bedsitland I’ve ever heard. Speaking as a former resident of that interzone, this song was utterly perfect and helped me and many others imagine we were part of a deathless, interconnected psychic gang, operating from our own private Jagos - rather than merely being skint, isolated youths, exploited by bastard landlords:
Speaking of bedsits and Shane MacGowan (peace be upon him), this song kills too, and adds the crucial ‘waking up next to a cold chicken shish, an overflowing ashtray, a malfunctioning TV, 12 empty bottles of Nigerian Guinness and a copy of Razzle’ element that Soft Cell’s epic lacks:
We'll do The Pogues later; let’s get back to Soft Cell. Seedy Films has a genuine sense of humour (setting it apart from turgid faux-sleaze efforts like Lou Reed’s Street Hassle) and I’m not gonna lie: Josie Warden’s backing giggles still do it for me (though maybe not as much as the violinist on Siouxsie & The Banshees’ Slowdive audibly gasping after popping a finger blister on her strings). How Youth never made it into a Cybernetic Broadcasting System Top 100 is beyond me. Youth has gone/Though we’re still young sums up how I felt at 18: that grim feeling of des vu ruining the present again: I could picture myself as the ageing perv in Frustration even back then…feeling my squeeze’s body slipping out of my arms even as we canoodled. The synth on this one’s so lush.
I’ve never seen a Sex Dwarf in London, but I did in Amsterdam, in the ‘freak’ section of the Red Light District. She was dangling on a coat-hanger, kicking her legs around, in the window next to the Incredible 28-stone woman: but I was transfixed by the lion-faced doxy. I’m not kidding, this chick had the body of an Egyptian princess (in scarlet Primark bra and undies) but the face of an actual lion. We locked eyes through the glass, the pink light cascading off her golden locks (or mane?).
One New Year’s Eve in the mid-2000s, I went out to Camden with a miserable bloke from Northern Ireland (at the time, we were ‘mates’, but he’s done me dirty since, so fuck him). We were drinking in goth haunt The Devonshire Arms and some girl said a big bash was happening in an underground club near Temple, so we got the tube there. The downstairs part resembled an old medical museum, with skulls and bizarre potions displayed in glass cases. Wish I could remember what it was called. Anyway, we were at the bar, looking like clueless normies – but we couldn’t stop staring at this black bloke dressed like Blade. Well…if Blade had worn wraparound shades and a bright red latex jumpsuit. Suddenly – a white goth girl was in our faces.
“Is there a problem?” she asked. “You’re looking at my friend and laughing?”
I had to explain, no, we were admiring the geezer – and I know I look like I’m off to urinate on a war memorial while chanting “WHO THE FUCK IS ALLAH?” down Whitehall, but I’m one of you. I’ve got Bela Lugosi’s Dead on blue vinyl and used to cruise around the South Beds suburbs listening to Unknown Pleasures at 3.30am, damn it! Sure, I understood what was happening: I remembered going to that Luton shithole Mirage when I was 17, where bouncers had to patrol the ‘peace staircase’ between the first-floor indie disco and the Mr Byrite-clad hordes downstairs…where wearing a stripey mohair sweater and a studded wristband might get you a bottle in the face at chucking-out time…but I still felt a bit sad that I’d been unfairly judged. Fair play to her for having her mate's back, though. I danced to Hong Kong Garden (and bought Blade a pint) to prove my alt credentials.
But then – the DJ played the next two Soft Cell tunes, straight off Side 2 – and neither my miserable NI mate nor the goth bird (nor Blade) got up and danced to ‘em. Bunch of bleedin’ posers! Ironically, these were the two tracks on the album I used to skip when I was a teen, tuning in from Bedsitland – but, that night, I went batshit to these, joining a small but Dionysian scrum on the dancefloor (and aided by a hit of poppers from a rather nice woman with a bat tattoo on her left shoulder). Marc’s acerbic cynicism set to Dave’s punchy electro makes most NDW sound lame and lifeless in comparison. What an amazing album this is, easy 10/10.