2024 Occasional Albums Thing 010 - Flesh For Lulu “Big Fun City”

Flesh For Lulu’s 2nd album proper was a look back at where they had come from with a pointer to where they were heading. They had been formed in 1983 by singer/guitarist Nick Marsh and were completed when they added former Wasted Youth guitarist Rocco Barker. We’ll get to their first release and Mini-album/12” EP when I track down copies of my long gone originals, but whereas their debut album was a Post Punk/Goth/Rawk’n’Roll hybrid “Big Fun City” shows that among all that they could write a great pop song too.

The opening pair of songs are two of Flesh For Lulu’s very best. The album opens with the single “Baby Hurricane”, all big fat guitars being thrust at you from the hip and a chorus that nags at you (“Baby Hurricane, Don't go walking in the rain, Oh your crocodile shoes are leaking and theres nobody driving your train”). That’s followed by the barely under control, speeding train(wreck) that is “Cat Burglar”, a first person confession about the guy that breaks into your house while you sleep (“Well I'm just a cat burglar, Lonesome rooftop wanderer”), he’d buy that house in St John’s Wood if he could but this is all he knows. It’s a class A banger.

Then the ‘pop” hits. “Let Go”is a jangly guitars break-up song but a great tune which has it’s matching pair over on Side 2 with “Golden Handshake Girl” and “In Your Smile”. Inbetween you gets the Gothy Post Punk of “Vaguely Human” and “Laundromat Kat” but the pop tunes were where Flesh For Lulu were going to find success. After this album they signed with Beggar’s Banquet and released the album “Long Live The New Flesh” which aside from containing the fantastic “Siamese Twist” also featured the ultra poppy “Postcards From Paradise” which landed them a huge College Radio hit in the USA and eventually a contract with Capital Records. Those records are a little too US radio friendly for my liking and I have friends in the US who have never heard these first 3 records and know the band only for their US hits.

Flesh For Lulu split in 1992. Nick and Rocco formed Gigantic in 1996 but that was all over by 1998. Bass player Kevin Mills returned to The Specimen (from whence he had arrived) for a while in 2012, Nick was a member of the Urban Voodoo Machine but sadly succumbed to cancer in 2015 aged just 53. Last year Rocco played gigs with a reformed Wasted Youth. I absolutely adored Flesh For Lulu around these first 3 records and my band at the time was lucky enough to support them in Birmingham in March 1984.

Cat Burglar - https://youtu.be/PpCLPO2h4Ps?si=ivcE4gHTirOU-WxR