Posted on: Friday, November 1, 2002

MUSIC SCENE
The Fixx is in — again — at Gussie's

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

Members of The Fixx are Rupert Greenall, Jamie West-Oram, Adam Woods and Cy Curnin. They'll be playing here starting Sunday. . . . The Fixx • 8:30 p.m. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday • Gussie L'Amour's • $15 general; $12 advance • 836-7883

The Fixx would've made an impression on '80s music even without a then-new-and-revolutionary marriage of music and television called MTV.

The band was that good. It was as adept at crafting its own quirky brand of "way existential" lyrics (if anyone out there knows what the heck "Saved By Zero" is all about, please e-mail me) as it was at leaving its distinctive mark on the era's icy synth-pop sound. Its biggest hit, the propulsive "One Thing Leads To Another," is one of the decade's overlooked dance classics.

In a phone call last week from New York City, where he was visiting family, lead vocalist Cy Curnin insisted that The Fixx was always manipulating the new medium more than the medium was manipulating the band.

"Like other bands of the time, we realized videos gave us some quick recognition," said Curnin. "But we also knew that having our videos played on MTV wouldn't make us great on stage. We put in a lot of time touring. ... We were never just all about image."

Its founding membership virtually intact — in addition to Curnin, guitarist Jamie West-Oram, keyboardist Rupert Greenall and drummer Adam Woods — The Fixx returns to the scene of its last Honolulu gig in 1998 for a trio of shows at Gussie L'Amour's beginning Sunday.

Though founded and based in Britain, The Fixx was mostly embraced by MTV-fueled music fans across the pond. Their videos buoyed by repeated airplay, "Stand or Fall" and "Red Skies" from the band's first album "Shuttered Room" became minor hits with young American mod-rock fans in 1982.

The next year's million-selling "Reach The Beach" album propelled The Fixx's "One Thing" to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, also notching Top 40 hits with "Saved By Zero" and "Sign of Fire."

Minor hits like 1984's "Are We Ourselves" and 1986's "Secret Separation" followed before the band's popularity declined in the late '80s with synth-pop's fall from grace. After a brief '90s hiatus to pursue interests outside music — Curnin, among other things, took to designing a line of super-sized hats called "Urban Turbans" — The Fixx regrouped in 1998. The band has steadily toured the club circuit — 60 or so dates a year, Curnin says — since.

Not surprisingly, the main audience that continues to follow The Fixx's exploits are former '80s kids — now comfortably thirtysomething and feeling a bit misty for the days of mousse, checkerboard Vans and Haircut 100.

"The teenage girls who used to come see us are now mothers who bring their daughters along," said Curnin, proudly. "And it's all great."

Not that the Briton — who after two decades of Manhattan residency now lives with his girlfriend and new baby daughter in the south of France — wouldn't welcome the Top 40 fix of another "Red Skies" or "One Thing" from the band's upcoming 11th album.

"I'm not going to lie to you. I'd love for us to have another big hit," he said.

But even if that doesn't happen, Curnin insisted The Fixx would go on. And that's no matter how rough off the cuff singing "Red Skies" again and again sometimes makes Curnin want to say, "Enough's enough!"

"We know what our little legacy is in the music world," said Curnin. "And those songs still stand up."