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WHO THE HELL... WAS HAYSI FANTAYZEE? by Kurt B. Reighley It's no sin to be an ugly duckling. Before blossoming into slender, orange-haired splendor, I spent years as an overweight youth of indeterminate sexuality, and sported a bowl cut till turning 15. But willfully fashioning one's self into a hideous spectacle, then forcing yourself upon an unsuspecting public - that is another matter entirely. This is a tale of two such fiends: Haysi Fantayzee. If ever a group justified the dismissive term "haircut band," it was this dreadlocked duo. Jeremiah (nee Jeremy) Healy and Kate Garner (aided and abetted by manager Paul Caplin) burst on the UK scene in 1982. Their early singles, "Holy Joe" and "John Wayne Is Big Leggy," seemed designed exclusively to make Spandau Ballet sound remarkably gifted. Their music stitched together elements of reggae and country/western, capped with nonsensical nursery rhymes delivered in baby talk by her, aggravating shouts by him. But songs took a backseat to style in the heyday of the New Romantics, and the latter was clearly the market in which Garner and Healy - who lived together above an abandoned underwear factory - trafficked. "Our visual influences are along similar lines to our musical influences - very Dickensian, hillbilly, Huckleberry Finn-style clothing," revealed Garner. Healy's chum Boy George - who suffered the indignity of witnessing Fantayzee get signed before Culture Club - echoed that assessment in his autobiography Take It Like A Man: "Jeremy and Kate were like Dickensian Rastas, with the emphasis on dick." Yet to consumers hungry for the flavor-of-the-month, Haysi Fantayzee tasted more exotic than Kajagoogoo or Re-Flex. Their insidious "Shiny, Shiny" vaulted into the UK Top 20, and even cracked Billboard's Hot 100 in the US. With seesawing fiddles and Garner's off-key incantation "good times, come to me now" the tune boasted more hooks than a herringbone corset. Fifteen years later it still exerts a horrific ability to lodge in a listener's memory on first hearing. Recognizing their modest strengths, the duo packaged the European edition of their sole album - 1983's Battle Hymns for Children Singing - with a booklet of risquŽ portraits. America had to contend with the music alone, which had already passed its sell-by date before the LP hit stores. "One of the most intentionally annoying records of all time," proclaimed Ira Robbins in the Trouser Press Record Guide. "A few tracks are fine for very occasional listening, but enduring this entire album in one sitting is like having painful dentistry performed by an overbearing three-year-old." Perhaps ceaseless critical slings and arrows stung Haysi Fantayzee, or maybe Healy and Garner simply got tired of fighting over whose hair smelled funkier. After one last gasp, the angular but semi-engaging "Sister Friction," the pair called it a day. Garner issued a solo single, the spaceship-shaped picture disc "Love Me Like A Rocket," to deaf ears, then hung up her oversized Dr. Seuss hats for good. Miraculously, the story doesn't end there. Healy later reemerged as a popular British club DJ (notorious for dropping Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" into house sets). And as a member of E-Zee Posse, he recorded "Everything Starts With An 'E'" and "Love On Love" for Boy George's More Protein label in the early '90s. Garner, meanwhile, is now a well-respected fashion photographer, whose work appears in rags including The Face and Elle. Apparently her stint one the other side of the lens helped prepare her for the career switch. "I realize the insecurities they go through," Kate told People of her symbiosis with famous subjects. "They have to get their hair and makeup done, and they might not like what's being done to them." If the stylist ever considered Haysi Fantayzee suitable role models, I doubt anyone would argue.
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