Images in Vogue pondered taking their synths to England to make their mark on the new-music scene

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON APRIL 23, 1983

By Steve Newton

“I think the reason it’s been called new music,” says Images in Vogue synthesist Joe Vizvary, “is because there’s been so much emphasis on old music, like with the Doors and Led Zeppelin. If people who were programming that on radio and listening to that at home would have been listening to the development of music from, say, 1975 on, this would not be new, this would be standard.”

Whether new, standard, or–as it’s now being called–modern, the music that Vancouver’s Images in Vogue plays is unquestionably popular. The group’s independently produced EP, Educated Man, sold out every copy after its release last year, and was nominated for Best Independent Release in last month’s Tribute to West Coast Music.

And if things go as planned, Images in Vogue will move into Mushroom Studios May 8 and start setting down tracks for another EP, this time with major-label backing via a recording agreement with WEA Music of Canada.

The members of Images in Vogue are synthesists Vizvary and Glen Nelson, singer Dale Martindale, percussionist Kevin Crompton, bassist/synthesist Gary Smith, and guitarist/synthesist Don Gordon.

Before coming together as Images in Vogue, several of the members played in other Vancouver bands. Vizvary was in a group called MV that did the club circuit for a year and a half. Smith and Gordon played in Pinups, and Nelson, the band’s newest member, was in the Mobile Clones and e, an arty synth band that developed a strong local following before disbanding late last year.

Despite the group’s recent advances in popularity and recording opportunities, the members of Images in Vogue were actually giving some thought to leaving the country at the band’s inception two years ago. Says Gordon, “It was a situation where you’re doing something that doesn’t seem to be relevant to the local scene in any way, shape, or form. Meanwhile everything looks great in England when you’re reading the newspapers–synth bands everywhere and modern music and all this.

“And it was in the back of people’s minds that we should move the whole operation over there. In the long run it was probably a good thing we didn’t, because we would have been one of another 50 thousand bands that were all trying to do it.”

Though Images in Vogue have suppressed the urge to try their luck on the other side of the ocean, they have tried it on the other side of the country, backing up Depeche Mode in Toronto recently. And according to Vizvary, there are some socio-musical differences between the east and west “new music” scenes.

“There’s a difference between here and Toronto in that here the music scene is more related to just the modern art/fashion/thinking scene. It’s closer to the university, just because it’s a little smaller, and people who aren’t in music are still interested in it and take part in what’s going on.

“But in Toronto, if someone’s an artist they concern themselves with art functions. They don’t really go out to music events. And musicians and university students have their own little cliques among themselves.

“It’s just that Toronto’s so big there’s so many that can support each other inside their own little groups, whereas here everybody’s got to come together.”

And come together they do. Followers of new music came together at Images in Vogue’s one-night show at the Luvafair last week, with the new-wave/mod-sixties look–the anti-establishment haircuts and colours, the anything-goes approach to dressing up. Does the fashion scene have a lot to do with this new music?

“I think as a band we’re image-conscious,” says Gordon, “but I don’t think we necessarily follow trends like, ‘Oh this is the latest thing; we’ve got to go for it’. There’s an individual identity developing.

“And that applies,” adds Vizvary, “to different people. Some people are more interested in looking fashion-conscious, and others just want to look stupid. To some people it doesn’t have anything to do with it–they just dress a certain way because that’s all that’s around.

“If we didn’t play anywhere, and if we didn’t have to at least dress half-decently to go onstage and present ourselves, then some of us would be living under blankets most of the time. The music would still be the same.”

And what about the music? The question was put to Gordon and Vizvary of whether or not the human dimension is missing in music that’s as technical as that of Images in Vogue.

“I think it depends a lot on the band,” says Gordon, “it varies a lot. I think we’re much more human than some of the other electro bands. It’s in the way you write songs. With some bands the technology controls them to a degree because they say, ‘Well this is the limitation of what I’m dealing with.’ They deal from the machines that way as opposed to writing songs. There’s a difference.

“I remember we were in the club the other day and some guy was talking about the difference between bad modern music and some of the other stuff, saying that the bad modern music just tends to be hypno. They get a beat going and they just get this drone and that’s it, as opposed to sitting down and using the technology to bring out the good aspects of the song.”

Says Vizvary: “I think that’s a misconception of a lot of people when they look at synthesizers. We’re just musicians, and what we’re playing on is really irrelevant to what we’re trying to put across as musicians. Because I’m not a guitar player, is there a human element missing? Does a guitar make me human? I don’t see how that really can relate to synthesizer music, although some people are trying to present it that way–like Gary Numan for example. But that’s just his way of presenting synthesizers: it’s not intrinsic to the synthesizer to be nonhuman.”

Whether the synthesizer is “nonhuman” or not is a matter of opinion. Obviously those who play them don’t seem to think so. The fact is that they’re a definite moving force in today’s music.

And what about tomorrow’s music?

“There’s no way,” says Vizvary, “that we can predict what new technology there is going to be. We know what there is now, and for the next couple of years, but ten years down the line? There’s no way we can even guess what kind of equipment there will be and what music it’s going to make.”

Maybe not. But if you keep a close eye on Images in Vogue you might get a teeny idea of what it’s going to be like.

To read over 100 of my interviews with local Vancouver musicians since 1983, go here.