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A LIVING FANTASI Being a pop star these days sounds like a good idea. You can make wacky videos, get in all your favorite artists to help you design your record sleeves, and there's ABSOLUTELY NO NEED TO TOUR!! No more slogging away around the country, slumming it in the back of a Transit and switching on to automatic the second you get on stage. Now you only play live when you want to throw a party. Live life to the fullest!! With all these ultra-bright pop smarties bouncing around the charts, you probably reckon life has never been so good. The end of the big bad record companies and nasty rock n' roll!! What a shame, then, that it's still two-thirds myth. The lovable lads and lasses are still getting bounced like they're nobody's business, there's still lots of good old fashioned hyping and the enormous advances we're always hearing about are being recouped as quickly as they're doled out. It's hardly surprising, though. Exactly the same thing happened with punk after the initial defiance of the Sex Pistols. But a few more people have got through the net this time. It was Spandau Ballet, of course, that led the way. Then came the shrewdly managed Blue Rondo A La Turk and now there's Hazi Fantasi. Hazi Fantasi are quite simply going to be enormous. They've got looks, they've got wit, and most importantly, they've got suss. The story of Jeremy, Kate, and Paul is a good one. It's got punchlines, worth, and wisdom. It will undoubtedly be written in many different ways, and each time your eyes will pop! It's not unbelievable: it's just so neat! Let's start with the appearance of naughty Jeremy.... One day Kate, who's from Wigan, was doing a photography session. It wasn't particularly exciting, but there was this curious lad, who had appeared from nowhere, carefully putting irons in everyone's hair. He was obviously good at his job- a fine craftsman and a patient worker- for he took such a long time to do each head. It wasn't til later that Jeremy was exposed as an imposter. And he never did get his picture published. But these are the things that dreams are made of and, with Jeremy's past grounding in the hectic creative glow of the Blitz arena (he was a DJ at Billy's and one of the hardcore with Rusty Egan, Steve Strange, and Chris Sullivan) it was only a matter of time before something exciting happened. In fact, it was a matter of Paul. Paul Caplin. Paul was at this time playing in a band called Animal Magnet. But the attractions of Jeremy and Kate were becoming too much for him. He had in fact been playing around with different ideas of Hazi Fantasi for some time with Kate. At one point there were nine people involved. But now there was just the three of them and Paul rather fancied that they were going to be GI-NORMOUS!! Actually, Paul does know because, apart from being the songwriter, he's also the Pied Piper.... Although they have yet to tie themselves to a record company -although the slobbering is becoming indecent!- Hazi have already made a video. In the video, which can be called "Shiney Shiney", "Good Times", or anything you fancy, Jeremy and Kate prance around, dance around, and laugh aloud. Jeremy pulls nasty faces from under his enormous black hat and dreadlocks and Kate dresses, undresses, poses, profiles, and giggles. The two of them are simply uncontrollable demons- latter-day Pucks that delight in and with their mischief. But as they skip merrily down some steps a third figure appears. With a fiddle. This man has curly black hair, knowing eyes, and a bewitching smile. Like the other two he begins to skip merrily. But there's a difference.... This man is LEADING the dance. Before he began his many musical dabblings, Paul Caplin instaled computers for Standard Telephones And Cables. He also completed a doctorate in Mathematics at Cambridge. But like all right-thinking people, Paul has discovered that it's the simple things in life that are the most fun- and the most interesting. "I had written so many complicated songs with Animal Magnet that when I started working with Hazi Fantasi I just made it, almost as a principle, that the songs were going to be as simple as they could be. I just pretended I was writing nursery rhymes. I'd wanted to do something like this ever since I first heard Boney M and realized you could write tunes like that and they were good!!" Hazi Fantasi songs are very simple musically. It's possibly one of their greatest charms- and it's certainly why they stick in your brain. The anti-American influence in the lyrics is Jeremy. He writes nearly all the words but despite his mistrust of our friends across the water he admits a morbid fascination for Meat Loaf. The sight of this uncontrollable hulk of blubber lumbering around a stage almost makes him flip. Jeremy is perhaps the most disruptive side of the triangle. Paul is definitely the business man. The last time I saw him he was busy on the phone buying two new companies for Hazi and his own video excursions. A lot of people seem to want him to make their videos. It's also Paul, in association with manager Graham Ball (who also handles Blue Rondo A La Turk) who has secured the extraordinary amount of studio time that Hazi have had to play with so far. Hazi Fantasi are, like Visage, a complete video and pop package. They write songs, design clothes, and make videos. The Hazi Fantasi phenomenon was due to appear on your screens a few weeks ago, courtesy of "Riverside". Unfortunately there as a bit of double dealing and a curious couple called Mirror Mirror appeared instead. Kate: "It made a mockery of the idea of a video band. Their image was lousy!" It's true. Theirs was lousy. And Hazi Fantasi's is provocative. White boys and girls with dreadlocks. It's not just the image that fascinates them. Ask them about music and you'll get an earful of Gasper Lawal, Fela Kuti, and African hi-life, although Bow Wow Wow's also popular with Kate. Actually, Bow Wow Wow's music is fairly indicative of Hazi's maverick moods. Certainly the last thing you'd ever call them- if you really must call them names- is doom-mongers. Paul: "I'm very sick of doom. There was a whole couple of years of it, that feeling of romanticism in wandering amongst the atomic ruins and being noble when the world is collapsing around you. "But I don't think the world is ending- it's just beginning and the world that's coming is much better that the old one." Hazi Fantasi will most definitely be part of this new world. Kate: "We want to be Dollar- with dreadlocks!!"
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