The Comedy of Errors: Dangerous Birds - Smile on Your Face (19 June 1992)

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Peel’s show on 19/6/92 featured a repeat of a session by Come, originally broadcast on 18 April 1992.  He played the session in one chunk.  The first track was called William and Peel dedicated it to his oldest son who, like me, was taking his GCSEs around the time this show was broadcast, “...so has been in a foul mood as you can imagine.”

As a little aperitif to the session, he played Smile on Your Face, one side of a 1982 single by Dangerous Birds, which were one of the earliest bands to feature Come’s vocalist and leader, Thalia Zedek.  Dangerous Birds were an all female four piece hailing from Boston, Massachusetts.  One enterprising soul has put their entire recorded output up on YouTube.  What’s striking when listening to them is how they encapsulate an orthodoxy that I’ve put forward in the past about how as music progressed over the period 1978-1982, it did so while often referencing no further back than the couple of years proceeding it any particular time.  Smile on Your Face features Zedek giving a full-throated punk roar at 1:02 in contrast to her studied Joe Strummer-sneer through the rest of the song. Despite its seemingly sweet, romantic title, the lyrics are paranoid and aggressive.  The smile in question provoking angst for Zedek about whatever perceived hold the smiler has over her.  The “invisible leash” mentioned in the track’s opening lines suggest that Zedek has been trying to get away from a dangerous, potentially criminal situation, which can pull her back in at any time:
“You’ve got something on me, obviously/Just the voices talking over my head again /I’ve got something for you/Despite those bright lights, take you back again.”  The feeling that the song is dealing with danger and illegality is further enhanced by the “Everything I do is wrong” refrain at the end.

There are Post-punk touches throughout as well with surprising key changes and drummer Karen Gickas doing her bit to ensure that the claves reclaim their place in the pantheon of great rock ‘n’ roll instruments.  Having tipped their hats to 1976-77 and also to 1978-80, the band tie the package up with melodic, folk rock guitars and compelling backing vocals that are pure 1981-82 New Pop under Martin Swope’s assured production.

They had the musical chops, confidence, plenty of ideas, the looks, plus an ability to switch between accessible pop (especially in the Blondie-like Alpha Romeo, the track which was paired with Smile on Your Face) and grittier material. With the right push, Dangerous Birds could very well have become mainstream stars, but it seems that disagreement over which artistic direction to take ultimately killed the band before they could be launched to wider attention.  Despite writing 3 of the 4 Dangerous Birds tracks which ultimately saw the light on records and compilations, Zedek decided that she needed new musical surroundings in order to pursue the harder edged sounds she wanted.  This saw her work through the mid and late 1980s with bands such as Uzi and the final iteration of Live Skull before forming Come in 1990.

While prepping this blogpost, I found an extraordinary essay by AJ Morocco from 2016 about an aborted attempt to track down and interview the members of Dangerous Birds and how it allowed them to debunk an urban myth cooked up by the PR department at Come’s record label, Matador as to why the other members of Dangerous Birds: Lori Green (guitar/keyboards/vocals), Margery Meadow (bass/vocals) and Karen Gickas (drums/vocals) had never released any music since the band’s demise.

The complete Dangerous Birds discography 1) Alpha Romeo (written and sung by Lori Green), 2) Smile on Your Face (still as excellent as above) 3) Emergency 4) Catholic Boy - This is all we have and we’re grateful, but if only there could have been more of it...



Videos courtesy of teejay69 and ajmorocco

All lyrics are copyright of Thalia Zedek.