Ex-Rent Hell presents… Buddy’s Song | Little White Lies

Ex-Rent Hell

Ex-Rent Hell presents… Buddy’s Song

22 Mar 2016

Words by Adam Lee Davies

Chequered floor, retro VHS tape, and audio cassette on a wooden surface.
Chequered floor, retro VHS tape, and audio cassette on a wooden surface.
Remem­ber when Hol­ly­wood tried to make Ches­ney Hawkes a bona fide movie star?

Ex-Rent Hell is a col­umn ded­i­cat­ed to the seami­er side of the 1980s VHS boom. Each week, ERH selects a film from this cursed era and asks one sim­ple ques­tion: what went wrong?

The fall of the Berlin Wall might not imme­di­ate­ly appear to have much bear­ing on direc­tor Claude Whatham’s 1991 film, Buddy’s Song. It is a keen­ing synth-pop lament to the sub­ur­ban ennui and gen­er­a­tional ter­ror­ism of grow­ing up young, gift­ed and pal­lid in the sti­fling Metroland of early-’90s Slough. Yet it is undoubt­ed­ly a cin­e­mat­ic prob­lem child of those Cold War years.

Through­out the 80s, Britain had been in eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al thrall to the US. MTV, McDon­alds and Mia­mi Vice had seduced us all, but with the end of Cold War hos­til­i­ties and the death of the Evil Empire, Amer­i­ca packed up and went home, leav­ing no more than a metaphor­i­cal pile of soiled dol­lar bills on Blighty’s dress­ing table. We were no longer reborn in the arms of the USA, but were instead aban­doned like spot­ty lit­tle teen-scream war-brides. We were left to slouch around sud­den­ly-dis­mal provin­cial town cen­tres in Mr Byrite den­ims and iffy Top Gunn jack­ets bought down the mar­ket. War, it appears, will make bad­ly dressed corpses of us all.

Stalk­ing through the wreck­age is Bud­dy Clark (Ches­ney Hawkes). He is so blond, pale and wan that he looks like a work­ing mod­el of Nicholas Lyn­d­hurst made entire­ly out of lol­ly sticks and yoghurt pots. Bud­dy is the young, dis­en­fran­chised face of New Europe. Caught up in a hold­ing pat­tern of arrest­ed ado­les­cence, he spends his days bomb­ing around in shop­ping trol­leys amid the grimy mod­ernist con­cre­tia of down­town Slough with his best mate, Mook­ie – a lit­tle black hip-hop kid with a Brook­lyn accent and ill-fit­ting Dal­las Cow­boys jack­et who may or may not be a fig­ment of Buddy’s imagination.

Rep­re­sent­ing the floun­der­ing, self-delud­ed Old Order is Buddy’s father Ter­ry, played with pup­py­ish incom­pe­tence by Roger Dal­trey. Very much Del Boy to Buddy’s Rod­ney, Ter­ry is yesterday’s man. A throw­back. A Ted­dy Boy. A rock­a­bil­ly rel­ic des­per­ate­ly beat­ing back strange com­put­erised waves of change – sym­bol­ised here by a cat­a­logue-bought Yama­ha syn­the­sis­er. He is armed only with an inex­haustible arse­nal of Bryl­creem, doo-wop and work­ing class intran­si­gence. But when Ter­ry is sent to jail for some Ham­bur­glar-esque lar­ce­ny, Bud­dy must ask him­self some hard ques­tions. The answers to which are found in pur­chas­ing an acid-yel­low key­tar, some PVC trousers and writ­ing a clutch of piss-weak elec­tro-yacht-rock no-nos.

The music-indus­try com­ing of age tale that fol­lows is pitched some­where between Rocky and Rain­ing Stones; a Sat­ur­day Night Fever for the Smash Hits set. Bud­dy goes from stonewashed rags to mild rich­es while a sup­port­ing raft of errant soap stars rock to a Euro­vi­sion back­beat. Dal­trey – long since rel­e­gat­ed from man­ag­er to lack­ey to dis­grun­tled heck­ler – car­pet-bombs each and every con­cert with cries of Get yer hair cut!”

By the time Bud­dy and his band, The Weak­lings, sign with Rick Span­gle of Mam­moth Records, it is clear that the Ascent of the New has final­ly cast off the Bake­lite shack­les of post-War aus­ter­i­ty and America’s cul­tur­al colo­nial­ism to break free into the sleek, digi­tised, and face­less future we all now enjoy. Mrs Thatch­er had sold Daltrey’s Eng­land by the pound, and it was up to Buddy’s gen­er­a­tion to some­how remort­gage it. Not with any­thing as grub­by or archa­ic as pounds, shillings and pence, and not with Yan­qui dol­lars nei­ther, but with ener­getic cross-plat­form pan-Europa sat­u­ra­tion, a fae­cal hunger for the stric­tures of cor­po­rate com­plic­i­ty and music so emp­ty, cold and incom­pre­hen­si­ble that it exists sole­ly as quan­tum foam.

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in LWLies 51: the Inside Llewyn Davis issue.

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