Gene Find Their Way (early '96)
By Thomas Crowley 
Daily Arts Writer 


So many bands sailing in on the New Wave of New Wave. So many different 
styles. So many different ideas about "How to crack America?" which has 
become the $64 thousand question for Britpop bands and anglophiles in the 
'90s. Some have tried to do it with a single siege (Suede), others with 
sneak-attacks (Primal Scream's original strategy for seeing that their 
single "Rocks" hit big: Mass distributions to those working in the 
trucking industry) . No one has succeeded -- not entirely. Some have 
written off the States as a lost cause, a hopeless slave to the home-grown 
swill that has deplorably had the attention of the American majority for 
years, refusing to let go. And then some make no bones about their wish 
to crack America, confident that it is a goal which can actually be 
accomplished, but accepting of the task's difficulty. Gene is such a band. 

"Oh, it's very important to us," says Matt James, drummer for the London 
foursome, "I mean, what happens in England is that people tend to dangle 
this carrot in front of you and they always say, `Break America and you'll 
never have to work again.' But I think that's the wrong reason to write 
songs and to do it just so you can never work again is ridiculous." 
Matt sets the record on selling records straight: "You've got to do it because 
you enjoy songwriting and that's what we want to be -- we want to be great 
songwriters and I think we're getting better at it all the time." 

Gene are in it for the "long haul" as the skins-man puts it, and are 
willing to put their whole heart and soul into their efforts, with the 
desire to get their songs to as many people as possible. Admirable, seeing 
as how Gene's career got off on a conveniently speedy start. 

"We only played about seven or eight shows where there were two people there," 
explains James, "then people picked up on it quickly, and we've been 
playing to a lot of people from quite early on in our career, which meant 
we had to sort of grow up in public a little bit, but it's worked for us 
in the end." 

Worked it has; the band's two-year performance history hit a new peak this 
past summer when they played the infamous Glastonbury music festival for 
an audience of several hundred thousand. Still, notoriety in Britain does 
not always necessitate notoriety abroad. Like many other English bands, 
Gene have received little airplay in North America, and have gone from 
playing large venues across the pond, to small clubs like Ann Arbor's own 
Blind Pig. Even so, Gene do not find such a drastic transition 
disheartening. 

"I really enjoy doing those show again," says James, "It keeps you on your toes. And it's not easy to do those shows because the 
sound is never as good as in the bigger venues... there's a good vibe in 
those (smaller) venues anyway." 

Formed three years ago from the fragments of a group called Spin, Gene's 
genesis was triggered when James, guitarist Steve Mason, and bassist 
Kevin Miles-- desperate to find a front-man for their band-- approached 
the chain-smoking, raspy-timbred Martin Rossiter in a London club, 

"Thought he looked cool and asked him if he could sing ... a fateful 
experience really!" says James. Gene spent a year in Mason's bedroom 
honing their sound: A blend of Faces-style blues licks and 
start-and-stop/slow-down-speed-up pop elasticity. 
"I think when we wrote `For the Dead', which was our first single, we scrapped all the songs we'd 
written before that and said `This is a really good song and we have to 
have that as a standard,'" says James, "When we wrote that song we knew we 
had stumbled on something good, really soulful and quite contemporary as 
well." Something good indeed. Pianos, hammond organs and strings mediate 
between the band's fusion of energetic Stones and Who rockisms and warmer 
Motown soul. 

Rossiter's lyrics have as much range as their music really; the 
aforementioned "For the Dead" is a consolation/identification to/with the 
despairing -- pardon the pun -- at the end of their ropes. "Left-Handed" 
is an anthem to accompany one's exodus from the closet, "London, Can You 
Wait?" expresses the emotional anguish with which one who has lost a 
friend must cope, "Sleep Well Tonight" is written from the perspective of 
a blood-thirsty knave hungry for mob-violence and "Olympian" relates the 
details of a neurotic infatuation. 
With a tendency to overdo criticism, many in the British music press, 
while praising Gene for their obvious talent, criticized the similarities 
between Martin Rossiter and Steven Morrissey's lyrical versatility and 
vocal delivery, declaring Gene a carbon-copy of the Smiths. While one can 
find trace elements of the Smiths in Gene's tunes, the differences between 
the two bands are arguably much greater than the resemblances. 
Speaking of the media's preoccupation with the bands' similarities, James 
says 

"It's beginning to die down now, the Smiths thing... it did start to 
weigh us down because we felt we had proved ourselves so many times and 
that it was so obvious that there was a lot more the band than one member 
being influenced by the Smiths." 

James is confident that Gene's resilience will quell the media's 
accusations of mimicry: 
"I think as long as we're still around, people 
won't be able to write the same things about us. So if we're still around 
next year and the year after, they can't keep saying `Gene are the Smiths' 
or whatever, because there has to be something else they can say. And it 
happens to a lot of bands in their early years: REM were accused of being 
hippies and psychedelic, and Suede had the Bowie thing. It happens to a 
lot of bands and you just have to be big enough to get through it." 
"There is no turn of phrase, no easy way to say/`I'll find my feet/
I'll choose my own name.'" Their solid singles and debut album are 
perhaps the most manifest indications that they Gene have chosen their 
name, found their feet and are in the process of assuming the posture of 
the Herculean figure featured in the title track. Chances are very good 
that they'll find their own way. 


www.lewisslade.com/genemusic