Article: 261384 of talk.bizarre
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
From: lsc@netcom.com (Lisa Chabot)
Subject: Retro: Greens
Message-ID: <lscDIxIuA.2In@netcom.com>
Summary: you've got to pay your greens fees before you can sing the greens
Keywords: Madonna joke
Organization: VMl
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 1995 22:37:22 GMT
Lines: 59
Sender: lsc@netcom22.netcom.com
Status: O
X-Status: 

  While its precursors are several, the Greens were born on the rainy
evening of the 10th of January in 1996, in a Manhattan sushi bar.  Taking
its inspiration from a naive, literal interpretation of the revival run 
"How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" of 1995, Greens came 
to speak to and for generations of upper and upper-middle class people
around the world (at least, outside of third- and fourth-world countries)--
their hopes, their fears, their trust funds, their country club dues.

  Most Greens groups featured very "straight"--in the mainstream fashion 
sense, not sexual orientation--men and women in their mid-thirties,
sporting pseudonyms and campy band names.  Mutual Fund, of the '97 
sensation band, Sea Monkeys, put it this was, "Basically, artistical
expression was at odds with our day job personae--which we acknowledged 
both in acceptance and ridiculation by adopting stage names yet not
disguising our faces or appearances.  Most of our guys would just wear
our work suits, at first.  And we always passed out business cards to fans."

  Indeed, keeping your day job and making business contacts at night was 
central to Greens sensibilities.  As in the lyrics of the Poodle Skirts'
"Daddy Said":

                Daddy said
                when I called home to ask for
                an advance on
                my allowance to pay the phone bill--
                "Buffy-hon,
                I'm tellin' you--
		FOUR YEARS AT HARVARD WILL MAKE A BORN LEADER OF YOU."

  But the Greens were not without its own examples of more direct
self-lampooning: Ed's Bowling League's cover of Alice Bowie's "I'm so
Bloody Rich", Marcus Needless and the Commodities Options Brokers'
"Brother, Can You Spare a Jar of Grey Poupon", Biff and the Weed
Whackers "As a Matter of Fact It Is My Road (and I'll Cry if I Want To)".
Indeed, Grecian Formula's court battle as they attempted a "hostile
takeover" of the rights to "Have a Cigar" could in itself be viewed as the
apogee of Greens philosophy as performance art.

  It is a mistake, however, to see the Greens as just another reaction against
the fin de siecle hedonism of the prevailing pop scene, as epitomized by
Madonna, in the style of Prince earlier changing his name to an 
unpronounceable symbol, not to be outdone, changed her name into a 1993
photograph of her breasts.  However, it's also a mistake to disregard this
as having no part either: a continuation of and simultaneously, a reaction to.
For as the artist formerly known as Prince, the artist known as Tits, 
Michael Jackson, and also perhaps OJ's lounge-reggae career are examples
of life as art, the Greens go one step further with their view , as in the
words of Spam's "Hot Dish",

                Art is work;
                Work is art:
                Have your people call my people--
                We'll do lunch.

.
.
.
-- 
                        "Everyone wants Mr. Toad's Wild Ride!"  (Mallrats)