RELAX : THE FULL STORY a compliation of desires, memories and perversions By V/Vm Test Records

bunch of words by %20

The Full¹ Relax story is one full of creative reuse, cultural banishment, and contractual abuse, at who's expense is for you to determine.

The United States is not the only country who's culture suffers from shortsighted commercial goals and "corporate impatience"². Across the pond in the United Kingdom, a difficult sound producing record label, V/Vm Test Records³ whose releases balance between the critiquing of the distrubing nature of societies fascinating with manufactured contents and the exploration of sonic potentials. Their butchering of content has produced a significant list of unsympathetic reviews, heck a large part of the 'fan' base believe the Relax is all a big hoax.⁴

Reappropriating cultural elements is ingrained in the Relax story. Frankie Goes to Hollywood's (FGTH) name came about from a 'The New Yorker' magazine article which happened to be on the bands rehearsal room wall.⁵ The version of Relax which everyone recognizes and is on more 80s compilations then I want to know about is not the original, but a remix by Trevor Horn⁶ which is now synonymous with "Remix...Don't Do ...oops I meant to sing 'Relax...Don't Do It'.

As the Relax remix navigated the BBC charts, notorieties bad side lead to the declaration by BBC Radio 1 DJ Mike Read that Relax (and it's companion video⁷) was 'overtly obscene'.⁸ Soon Relax was pulled from all further BBC broadcasts. In grand tradition 20 years later the industry still refuses to follow the advice of the song and has decided yet again that cultural elimination is the only worthy decision to follow.⁹

The next step in the chain of record industry immorality imortality is contractual renegotiation. As more profits we're being made from t-shirts¹⁰ then record sales, creative control drifted further away from the original band members. When Holly Johnson, lead singer, made it clear that he wanted to work elsewhere, Zang Tuum Tumb Records (ZTT) and the band entered a highly publicized lawsuit too keep them under contract, a contract signed when they we're nobodies. In winning, the band ended up paying ZTT monetary funds for the next 10 years, while being able to work for another major label. With this out of the way, their manager decided to get a piece too.¹¹

What's great about the V/Vm Test Records release is that it exposes the warts, misconceptions and outright irrational behavior displayed throughout the Relax history and those same actions are still being carried out by the controling regime. At no point in their history has the music industry catered towards offal butchered plunderphonic mouldy olde orphaned tunes, deviant kareokee wanna-bee outsider vox, phucked up g1y+ch'd out noiz, mash'g4bbr'eak'arseh'd'ore wit a touch of lemon dash, trash dropliftin' audio conceptual bullsheetz, irritainment in a plastic platter... not yet anyway, the industry does have a wonderful history of plundering the innovators though, so stay tuned out Sell Out 2007¹²!!!! But I digress...

Desires, memories and perversions, the Relax story has it all. The desire of a significant portion of the music industry to reach that mythical high point, to gain some misguided semblance of pure fame, factually counter pointed by V/Vm who butcher, decimate and distort to make audio sounds for a clientel who appreciate the imperfect, an alt.diff.real, faults and all, but also to comment on the culture which brought them into existance, to show those faults which are not apparent to those who are blinded by the adver-facade. Memories, again V/Vm Test Records has relived parts of the FGTH Relax story, not by choice but some people seem to want to repeat history, when you bannish something out of existance, most likely the same mistake will be made by future generations. And for the sake of name calling, label me a perverse pervert for appreciating an output like this, full of material questionable on so many levels that it's a wonder that someone would even think of putting it together, yet even make it possible. Lucikly, i'm not listening to be sedated, soothed, or appeased... as some would say relaxed, i'm not in the mood sorry.

So three jeers for everyone involved you've created a fascinating story. Unfortunately it's all true.

%20 - part time music fan, full time Corporate Shilling Whore

Links:
V/Vm Test Records Website - brainwashed.com/vvm/
Official Relax Discography - www.hollyjohnson.com
Official Frankie Goes to Hollywood Webpage - www.fgth.nl

Quotes:
Not everyone gets the chance for quotes.

Notes:
¹ "Full" is used liberally here, there are several great websites which documents the many occurances of Relax lps, cds, bootlegs, flexidiscs etc. ^return
2 "Corporate Impatience" - A wonderful term created by Jasper Fforde in the Thursday Next novel "Lost in a Good Book. In the ficticious Nextian universe a mega-corporation 'Goliath' when approached with a problem which they don't want to deal with, but they know it will cause trouble to their profit margin if not dealt with, unleash their corpojustice through acts of "Corporate Impatience". EMI in the DJ Danger Mouse case used a form of "Corporate Impatience" to 'solve' the grey issue, commonly known as "Cease & Desist" letters. ^return
3 "The unit 'vvm' is used for bioreactor culture. The first 'v' stands for volume of air (e.g. liter) ; the second 'v' stands for per unit of medium (e.g. liter); 'm' stands for per unit of time (e.g. minute). For example, 2 vvm (l/l/m) means in 1 minute time there is 2 liter of air passing through 1 liter of medium." -info curteosy of archive.org ^return
4 It's nice to have the appreciation of the public:
"u know v/vm.. this could all be a prank in itself... these chaps are seriously fucke'dup" MUX
"in a way, they should've known that this would happen sometime...." sttcfsh
"I think Vvm have been waiting for this kind of thing for a while. It's about time someone sued them." humanoidmustnotescape
oh boo hoo, v/vm is being sued. big surprise. the music is annoying and the label's output is about as funny as Jim Davidson. and yes, they did bring this on themselves. zoekmijnsnor
that totally sucks. on the other hand, it's sort of unfortunate that nothing i've ever heard from v/vm is good enough to be worth getting sued over. james ^return
5 Info from the Official Frankie Goes to Hollywood Website "the beginning & the bang" ^return
6 Mr. Horn utilitzed the latest technology, drum machines & samplers, to craft the remix in such a way that he determined it to be worthy. This went as far as removing all instrumentation by the original band, and replacing it with drum kits and samplers. At this point i'd like to play a little game of what if:
What if audio sampling enforcement had occured just 10 years earlier. Yes virginia there was a time when artists could sample without having to worry about paying for sampling clearance and lawyer time. Some significant works we're produced in this time, Public Enemy's "It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back" and the Beastie Boys "Paul's Boutique" are prime example, but then a hammer fell, and good or bad music hasn't been the same since, but it definitely has placed a major restriction on certain forms of creativity.
But imagine if that sampling restriction logic which developed in the late 80's early 90's occured one decade earlier. The early 80's saw the rise of drum kits and sampling machines. What if the creators of the Linn Drum Machine for instance decided that those drum hits, cymbol crashes, and other audio bits which we're bundled in that device were their material which could be presecuted against if consent was not granted from the Linn Drum Machine company for their use. Would music have developed and expanded as it did? The Trevor Horn bassline for Relax, was created on one of those machines. The bassline for Talking Heads "Psycho Killer" which some say sounds very similar to Relax was also created on a Linn Drum Machine. (although this could all be a baseless rumor, except it's a baseless rumor which originates from the leader singer of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Holly Johnson website) With the current standings on audio restrictions both of these artists would have had to have paid significant fees before anyone could have heard either of these songs. With stricter control on sampling, we can all look forward to a future where a certain type of creativity will not exists. ^return
7 "...it took a while to catch on in America. Relax peaked at number 67 in the spring of 1984, while Two Tribes just missed the Top 40 in the autumn. The band were told that the poor chart positions in U.S. was because they were fashionable in New York and L.A. where there are large gay communities. (It took a repackaging of the single and a new video that took away the S&M/Gay visual language Frankie had used in Europe to make Relax a U.S. top ten hit in 1985.)." -ok so sometimes selective informing or creative not-telling works... ^return
8 Info from the Official Frankie Goes to Hollywood Website "the beginning & the bang" ^return
9 "The mythical VVMT69 never existed or so we believe, it was rumoured that it did but then it no longer did and never had." according to V/Vm Test Records ^return

10"the statistics of the situation are that in one five-week period no fewer than 125.000 Frankie T-shirts were sold." www.fgth.nl Also of note with these t-shirts is that the design seems to pirate the minimalist design theory of Katherine Hamnett's 'Choose Life' shirts. info curteousy of An Alternative to Reality (V/Vm Test Records don't sell t-shirts, no matter how much I complain) return

This work is dedicated to the Public Domain.