Whatever happened to the Fixx?
Oh, I know they're still around, but when did they become so uncool as to no longer warrant mention?
Aside from their commercial success with the songs "One Thing Leads To Another" (U.S. #4), "Saved By Zero" (U.S. #20), and the album Reach The Beach (#8 on the Billboard charts with sales of over two million copies), people, by and large, seem to have forgotten that the band's debut album, Shuttered Room, made quite an impact among those of us seeking out "the latest in new wave sounds".
Hearing "Red Skies" on the radio for the first time was a lot like hearing Red Rider's "Lunatic Fringe" the year before, as both songs were so starkly atmospheric and evocative that you could practically walk around in the worlds they created. You had to hand it to the band; their tunes stuck out like beautiful sore thumbs next to the Olivia Newton-Johns and Bob Segers of the day.
As a would-be rocker, myself, I remain envious of any five chaps who can plug in the same way as the rest of us, but what comes out of the amps and speakers sounds almost otherworldly.
In the case of The Fixx, much of the credit belongs to guitarist Jamie West-Oram, whose playing over the course of the first Fixx record, Shuttered Room, is fluid, angular, muscular, and never any more than what each song requires. That the same guitarist can pull off the nuanced parts of "Red Skies" while unleashing shards of metal on "The Strain" puts him at least on par with The Edge, if not Johnny Marr.
Meanwhile Cy Curnin's face may not ring a bell, but his vocal work has always been flawless. Even now, he and the band are doing supreme justice to their early material because, near as I can tell, neither Cy nor Jamie has aged in over 30 years.
So is Curnin better than Le Bon? Yes, by a mile.
Better than Bono?
Unequivocally, yes, yet The Fixx are left playing odd clubs and soft-ticket gigs like the DuPage County Ribfest with "The Information Society" and "The Singer From When In Rome" while U2 fills stadiums at $325 a ticket.
Life ain't fair, but, damn, sometimes it can be downright cruel.
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the fixx