charlie higson
THE HIGSONS
The Higsons were active from 1980 to 1986. Their main creative driver, front man, and singer was Charlie Higson, now better known for “The Fast Show” and increasingly as the writer of the Young James Bond novels.
The Higsons were the best of a pretty good crop of Post Punk and New Wave bands that came out of the University of East Anglia in the late seventies and early eighties, many of whom were featured on the “Norwich, A Fine City” collection. There is a story that the greatest adoptive East Anglian of them all called them onto his show in frank amazement that any bands were active in Norfolk. John Peel championed The Higsons, and they had consistent Indie Chart success from the release of their first single “I Don’t Want To Live With Monkeys” in July 1981, through their excellent debut album “The Curse Of The Higsons” in October 1984, and right up to their eventual demise in 1986. Openly acknowledging a debt to The Talking Heads (something I myself only hear sporadically) The Higsons’s sound has echoes of Joy Division and Iggy Pop (if that isn’t a tautology), with some Ska blended into the mix which isn’t that surprising as they ended up on the 2 Tone label. If you haven’t heard any, download a couple of tracks at random – they’re all good.
The Higsons didn’t really do much wrong, had a loyal following both in London and amongst their many friends and fans from Norwich, and trod the boards with apparently sober professional well-rehearsed and packed gigs. They probably would have achieved commercial success to match their critical acclaim if they hadn’t got their timing exactly wrong. Looking back all those years as Punk descended Rome-like into the parody of Glam Rock it did so much to end, and music scratched around in the New Romantic void created by the death of the high priest of New Wave Ian Curtis, Switch, as we knew Charlie Higson then, seemed earnestly out of sorts with an eighties of big hair and covers. (Ironically this frustration contributed to his first taste of real fame, as the joint creator of “Loadsamoney”.)
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Three years earlier and they’d have been at ease alongside The Clash, and three years after they split The Stone Roses reinvented what was to become Brit Pop. The Higsons might have been another La’s. All we were left with is a most remarkable post-dissolution adieu in “The Attack Of The Cannibal Zombie Businessmen”(1987), a tantalising bazaar of the greatest of never to be hits.
Albums:
The Curse of The Higsons (October 1984)
©JD Shanks September 2009
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