Spin
September 1988

This Raggedy-Andy fellow, thatchy hair falling into his eyes, in white T-shirt, scarecrow arms poking out, and blue jeans cinched tight at the waist and cuffed up over black boots, scampers up a rickety fire escape to the roof of the building that houses Caroline Records. I follow him on bandy legs. I'm scared of heights. "You want to put me on the defensive here, don't you?" "Yeah!" he laughs, and jumps onto the tar paper. Urchin. Mary is his name, he says, Mary, Mary, quite contrary.

It turns out to be, though, a very nice idea, the sky is sunny blue, and there's a late afternoon breeze. Mary sits cross-legged and slurps Slice. We start to talk. He starts to shiver. Not yet spring and Mary, a.k.a. Ian Hoxley, is here with his band Gaye Bykers On Acid for their first American tour to promoting the new album, Drill Your Own Hole (on Virgin in the UK). All between the ages of 22 and 24, the foursome from Leicester are in New York to check out the territory. If they like it well enough, he tells me, maybe they'll move there or to the West Coast.

The UK press calls their music "grebo." "That's lame journalism," Mary scoffs, "but if that means rebelling, then fine. But grebo is sexist." He adds pensively, "Though I guess we're as sexist as other men are. I like Frank Zappa. I don't consider him sexist. We're political because we're young." Their way-over-budget film, by the same name as the record, "is a parody of us getting signed and attacks evangelism and music journalists besides."

These faux-metal flower children from England are not gay, he says, "but we're not ridiculing." He hastens to explain, "We identify with minorities." So too with bikers and acidheads, I guess. Mary makes the point of slamming a new law being proposed in Parliament, Clause 28, in which "the government is trying to put through a ban on teaching about homosexuality in the schools."

Allied with fellow Leicesterians Crazy Head and Bomb Party, Gaye Bykers pull comics, sci-fi and other genre lit references, satire, and politics into their raucous, funky din. Onstage, Mary is a saber-toothed sprite, flailing and galloping about, snarling "Get into the groove..." Snatches of T. Rex and some Marc Bolanisms; a John Lydon sneer; a Mick Jagger strut; and messy scissor kicks. Is this scene Babe Beefheart or the British Replacements? Pop-colored cut-out flowers hand over the band from the club's ceiling. Peace and love, y'all, pretty Mary says from his perch atop some amps, crooning, "I can't get no satisfaction..."

- Barbara O'Dair

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