John Foxx Redux

TESSA MEIJER: How I discovered John Foxx REDUX

I’m standing somewhere towards the back, upstairs at the Pressure Point in Brighton. It’s the end of July 2006 and I’ve just come back from a long summer holiday. Lots of happy people all around me, a promising crowd, the right sort of music is playing. I’m apprehensive though – I have no idea what to expect. It’s been a long time.

In 1978 I was a difficult teenager and found my solace, as almost all my contempories did, in music. I’d been given a little transistor radio for Christmas and it fitted neatly under my pillow. In this way, illicitly after my parents had gone to bed, I found John Peel, discovered the sort of music I was going to love for the rest of my life and heard Ultravox! for the first time.

Back at the Pressure Point the lights have gone down and I turn and make a face at my husband. What’s this going to be like? Will it be any good or just an inexpensive mistake? The crowd whoops joyfully; so many people, that was a surprise! And now I can hear a gentle wash of synthesised sound. A promising start....

John Peel eventually made me spend my pocket money on all the Ultravox! albums and I wasted much time in my bedroom staring out at the streetlights in my middle-class suburban street and imagining different worlds. When Metamatic appeared I was utterly smitten. Each track seemed to map some aspect of my life in Pinner perfectly, from the yellow streetlights to the cracks in the pavement. No-one Driving was quite simply the anthem to my angst-ridden existence and I couldn’t work out how John Foxx could have looked into my life and understood things so profoundly.

Now the synthesisers are building up the sound and are being joined by drum machine, and other noises. My apprehension is melting away, there are two banks of equipment on the stage and the tension is growing as the synthesizers hold a sustained note. I can hear a voice behind the noise singing a line and then the synthesizers unexpectedly swoop down several octaves and hit the bottom. I turn again to my husband and this time I grin with delight.

I continued to adore John Foxx for a couple of years, but in the eighties my interest waned. I didn’t much care for a lot of eighties pop music and I had a lot of other things going on. Somehow we missed his return to the music business in 1997 and it was only as we were checking out the gig listing in the window of our favourite music store in Brighton that we saw that John Foxx and Louis Gordon were to play the Pressure Point. It was cheap and very close to home, so we thought we’d take the risk. We had absolutely no idea what to expect. I wasn’t even totally convinced that it would be the same John Foxx. So many years had passed.

The synthesizers keep the note, and there are some pleasing piano-like sounds. Two figures stride onto the stage and take their places behind the banks of equipment as drum machines start to beat an intoxicating rhythm. I crane my neck and wish we’d gone closer, although it’s a small venue. The taller figure takes a breath, leans forward, and as a very familiar voice confidently starts to sing, my teenage self rushes up to greet me and I know from this moment on for certain that it’s going to be a very memorable night indeed. And yes, it is the same John Foxx, of course it is. I’m to go on to attend every show, to meet and chat with John Foxx, to make warm friends with like-minded people. But for now the crowd goes wild. And the world slides sideways.

Tessa Meijer, February 2008