Romo

The Romo movement was essentially a derivation of late-1970s disco and early-1980s club music, with an emphasis on the extroverted sartorial style and decadent air of New Romantic-era bands such as Visage and Soft Cell. The name itself was short for Romantic Modernist and was generally pronounced to rhyme with "slow mo", rather than "rommo". Nonetheless, contemporary features in Melody Maker tended to downplay the nostalgic connection with New Romantic, emphasising Romo's newness and contemporary relevance.

"Melody Maker" featured a covertape of Romo bands in March 1996, entitled "Fiddling While Romo Burns". The five bands featured on the tape - Dex Dexter, Hollywood, Plastic Fantastic, Viva and Orlando - were generally regarded as the movement's figureheads. The most successful of the five was Orlando, which released several singles and an album, "Passive Soul", via WEA imprint Blanco y Negro, although no Romo band ever managed to reach the top 75 singles chart. A concurrent tour, also entitled "Fiddling While Romo Burns", failed to attract large audiences.

Romo was championed by "Melody Maker" at a time when the British music press had a rapid turnover of new genres and styles; the movement post-dated the New Wave of New Wave, which had included successful bands such as Suede and Elastica. Romo did not achieve the same kind of success, however, and had faded from public view by the end of 1996, becoming merely a subset of the wider and more successful Britpop movement.

External links

* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1399765,00.html An article in The Guardian which mentions Orlando]
* [http://members.aol.com/blissout/melodymakerrip.htm An appreciation of Melody Maker, with a paragraph on Romo]
* [http://www.the-horse.net/orllive.htm A review of Orlando's last gig]