The Counterforce No. 35
Miki Berenyi's Fingers Crossed, Lush, and my own pursuit of that perfect shade of red hair
I finally got a chance to read Miki Berenyi’s Fingers Crossed memoir and it was so good, I didn’t want it to end. I even put it down before the final chapter to make dinner and finish it afterwards so I could prolong the experience of reading it. Although her post-Lush life is condensed into just the final five pages, her writing could easily have held my interest for many further chapters covering from 1997 on. I’ve said it (many times) before that I don’t usually enjoy the parts of biographies that dwell on the person’s childhood, but here was different. Hers was far from typical, and with a certain amount of glamor - her mother is Yasuko Nagazumi, who pregnant with Miki at the time of filming means both were in You Only Live Twice, and father Ivan escaped from Communist Hungary for London, traveling around the world as a reporter though extending those stays to indulge in a multitude of affairs. An early description of her father complaining how America pretty much left Hungary to the Communists reminded me of Tibor Fischer’s Under The Frog, a very good book I’d like to revisit. But back to this one. Part One is 165 pages of her growing up, not even turning 16 until page 130. She flits between two homes where the only thing she likes about each is the parent who resides there. At her father’s physically deteriorating house she has to deal with a horrifying, abusive grandmother. And while her mother’s homes in London then L.A. go in the exact opposite, affluent, direction, she can’t stand her mother’s new beaus’ affectations and controlling personalities.
The second half of the book details the Lush years, from their early friendships to their tragic ending at Chris Acland’s suicide. Chris is painted throughout as a wonderful human being, a positive force who nevertheless didn’t know how to express his pain to others. We get the excitement of signing with 4AD and working with Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins, the difficulty of making Split, and then on through the mess of Britpop. Of which, besides being ‘Miki from Lush’, she has even more of an insider look at the disgusting excesses of the industry as she was living with John Best of the Britpop PR firm, Savage & Best, at the time. The 1992 Lollapalooza tour is given many pages and rightfully so. And Lush’s run-ins with other artists, many of whom incongruous - such as Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ministry, and Ice Cube on that tour, as well as Warrant coming up at a record company meeting - is as funny as it is puzzling. And through it all is her complicated relationship with Emma Anderson, both positive and negative described with nothing-held-back honesty.
I have such fond memories of buying Spooky, on cassette at Secret Sounds in Bridgeport, CT that summer of 1992. And their sound has always defined the word ‘ethereal’ for me, even before I was aware of their song ‘Etheriel’. Miki’s voice otherworldly and the chord changes often don’t make any sense to me. I’ll still listen today and think ‘never would’ve thought to go there’. From my first introduction to them it is impossible to overstate the effect Miki’s hair had on the young Aug Stone. It was the perfect shade of red. And just looked so awesome, completely captivating me. I’d go so far as to say it was one of the Top Three Things of the 90s. I knew I had to have my hair that colour one day. And as a mohawk.
Come April 1997 and I’m finally ready. My friend Cathy bleaches my hair for me - her roommates unhappy that she’s used one of the kitchen’s wooden spoons in the process - and also presents me with a tape of My Bloody Valentine’s Ecstasy and Wine that I’ve been looking for forever, with The Cranes on the flipside. My friend Josh then shaves the mohawk in his front yard and we leave the hair on a metal statuesque structure there. By summertime birds have used it to build their nest. Eleven of my friends lived in this house that year, come September it was condemned by The City Of Boston. After a blond week it is time to dye it. I head to Newbury Comics and buy a bottle of Manic Panic Poppy Red. Surely it’s Poppy Red, Miki even says that in the book. But there’s a problem. Instead of the brilliant red I’ve been desiring for years, it comes out fuchsia. Disaster. And it turns out a mohawk is a lot of work to put up. Two of my roommates and I have birthdays all in the same week and on April 26th we throw our one and only party at that apartment, complete with drinking beer on the ceiling, shimmying up the sides of our narrow hallway. Around 2AM a large group thinks it’s time we get the mohawk to its fully glory. There is a heated discussion about what is best to use to get it to stay upright - egg whites, Elmer’s glue… The lot go in, including the yolks, as various parties, led by my friend Bill, all get their hands in my hair. While all this is going on, I start holding hands with a friend of mine. I walk her home an hour later and at her doorway utter what I still consider to be an amazing line - “Are we going to go listen to Psychic TV?” She politely tells me ‘no’ but a week later we are dating. I wake up the day after the party, my pillow completely covered in dried eggs and glue.
February 2002 and I’m ready to try again. I’ve certainly been thinking a lot about it these past years. I’m 25 years old and my life is finally going how I want it to. My band is playing monthly to a few hundred people in Boston and New York (Boston area clubs have a rule you can only play once a month within a 45 minute drive). I finally acquire the correct Manic Panic - Vampire Red - and Seth shaves the mohawk for me. Cue me being on top of the world. This feeling stays for a few months until that summer when, after I shave it off (hmmm…), things go more wrong that I ever could’ve predicted. The fall-out of which lasted years. Strangely, there are very few pics of my hair during this time frame, those halcyon months, as if it could not be captured. But here’s one from Lifestyle playing at Don Hill’s NYC that Easter weekend, and another of my visiting my grandmother, where you can see the colour better.
Back to Lush. 1996 was an amazing time for b-sides in the music world in general. Formats were running rampant, you’d have to buy both CD1 and CD2 of any release, and probably the vinyl too, to get all the unreleased songs. And a pretty penny on import from the UK. My friend Chris’ house was hangout central that summer, and we’d spend hours listening to his recent acquisitions of older British punk - Conflict, Flux Of Pink Indians, Subhumans, Amebix, many others, and Zounds. So I was absolutely thrilled when the Single Girl single (CD2) contained a cover of Demystification
Then on 500 (Shake Baby Shake) (CD1) they did a lovely cover of The Magnetic Fields’ I Have The Moon. A surprise as well cause it’s not like The Magnetic Fields were very well-known at the time.
The one time I got to see Lush was at Toad’s Place in New Haven, CT in the summer of 1996. I still remember it as the best sounding gig I’ve ever been to. The fact that I was ripping bong hits out of a large fish bowl before I went might’ve had something to do with that. But despite all the internal strife within the band, Miki writes that they were in top form then as a live band, so I’m sure it really did sound great.
Sporting Moustaches is out April 1st and I was thrilled Pop Matters published an interview I did with Reggie Chamberlain-King about it. My memory was sparked of a family friend with an enormous handlebar moustache imparting to my sister the words of wisdom ‘Never pet a dog that’s on fire’
Book launch is at WORD in Brooklyn on Wednesday April 3rd. Hope to see you there. Nashville is April 19th, Cleveland May 18th, and Chicago May 21st. I’d love to read in more cities, hit me up if we can make that happen
SEVEN SONGS
Piroshka - Scratching At The Lid. My favourite of Miki’s new project.
Korova Milk Bar - Do It Again. Looking thru my Apple Music the other night for The Rosehips, I was incensed to see that, except for I Shouldn’t Have To Say on a Subway comp and So Naive on a C87 comp, they are nowhere to be found. BUT! As I skimmed through that Subway comp, my eye was captured by the band name Korova Milk Bar and they are just the sort of brilliant pop that I love, catchy as hell, with awesome female backing vocals, melodies that sound like Peter Hook but transferred to a guitar. I spent the next morning learning as much about them as I could.
The Rosehips - Bloodstained Fur. Sometime in 1998, I’m visiting London and flipping through the racks at the Rough Trade shop on Talbot Road, I spy an all-black sleeve with ‘the rosehips’ written in yellow. The sticker reads ‘ESSENTIAL POP LISTENING’. And that’s enough for me. Throwing it on when I return to the States, I fall in love.
Vashti Bunyan - Diamond Day. Another excellent Lush b-side was their cover of I’d Like To Walk Around In Your Mind. Miki talks about how it came from an obscure record of Phil King’s that was just labeled Vashti. They had no other info on the artist, and it would take a few more years for Ms. Bunyan herself, long disappeared, to get in touch about the publishing. I forget how I came to discover Vashti Bunyan, I remember Harvey Williams leaving a comment on my LiveJournal when I posted about her - ‘Oo, Vashti!’, but Diamond Day has always been my favourite of hers.
Lush - I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend. And, why not, another awesome Lush b-side. A Rubinoos cover that is better than the original. Amped up with teenage excitement, a great pop tune.
Raspberries - I Wanna Be With You. RIP Eric Carmen. You wrote some fantastic pop songs. This is my favourite Raspberries song. Why write more than one line to a verse when you have an amazing chorus to get to? And that way you don’t even have to figure out a rhyme
Mingus - Main Score Part 1. All these memories of 1992 have me recalling my first ever visit to London that summer and how it immediately felt like home. As soon as I touched the ground, I somehow sniffed out the Rough Trade shop and Intoxica and Life felt like this was the way it should be. Our hotel was in Bayswater and in the basement of the mall there was a Tower Records and before setting off to find The 100 Club, I picked up Mingus’ Epitaph. It seemed a sweet deal, £3.99 for the double cassette, though the pound was like 2. 5 to the dollar at the time
As always, these Seven Songs lists are collected here on a monster Apple playlist