Invisible Sex: the defining new wave band who barely seemed to exist
In 1982, director Derek Burbidge dropped the mother of all punk and new wave films with Filmways’ Urgh! A Music War. A concert compilation of the scene’s biggest names, both in the mainstream and on the fringes of the underground, the high production capture of a slew of bands across both sides of the Atlantic stands as a fantastic document of the era’s upending countercultural lightning bolt.
Presented with no context or narration and without ascending order of importance, everyone involved has their shot with a glorious doling out of even prestige. And everybody’s in it. From chart mainstays such as The Police, Jools Holland, UB40, and XTC to Devo, Pere Ubu, Dead Kennedys, and Klaus Nomi, the complete list of performances encompasses a serious breadth of new wave’s rich cohort of MTV stars and countercultural pioneers.
While an essential chronicle of the era, Urgh! A Music War has remained frustratingly hard to watch, only seeing an official home video release in 1985, and has yet to enjoy an official DVD release. Warner Bros had issued DVD-Rs on a made-to-order basis, but the film delivered remained unremastered and for US distribution only.
If we’re lucky, it may arrive on streaming platforms, but until then, we can count on the YouTube community to upload most of the film’s individual performances. When perusing Urgh! A Music War‘s search results, one band may surprise punk’s well-initiated with their bizarre segment and complete lack of familiarity.
Following The Cramps’ ‘Tear It Up’, Urgh! A Music War jumps to Invisible Sex in London, a mysterious ensemble of nine white hazmat-suited misfits with silver masks performing a Devo-type post-punk attack, performing their sole number ‘Valium’. Complete with backing singers/dancers who whip out cardboard guitars and throw them into the crowd in front of a bemused David Thomas, little clarity is gleaned from the strange one-show wonder. The credits keep the band shrouded in cryptic intrigue, listing each member with the pseudonymous ‘Gene’ first name.
Whatever the secret, the Invisible Sex and Urgh! A Music War kept tight-lipped, keeping the movie’s little enigma in the dark well into the 2000s, helped by its lack of accessibility over the years. And yet, in an obscure 2008 Yahoo! post, one fan’s forum question resulted in the closest there’d been yet to an answer.
Operating under the band alias Gene Axe, the surprise commenter was the current guitarist for The Zombies, Tom Toomey. According to Toomey, the future solo Adam Ant bass player Chris Constantinou was in the group as Gene Bananana, but even he reportedly can’t remember who else was involved, even the singer Gene Wow.
Somebody claiming to be the singer reached out to the original Yahoo! group, posting an original photo of Invisible Sex and later setting up a MySpace account featuring live recordings from London’s The Venue. The account and forum were deleted soon after, and said info looks long lost for the foreseeable.
Still, maybe we don’t want to know. Invisible Sex’s weird yet joyous segment on Urgh! A Music War with a bit of luck remains a tantalising slice of punk mythology that adds further to the movie’s enduring appeal.
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