The Human League - Boys and Girls

I Love 1981 - pt. 4
Apologies in advance if you'll be reading quie a lot about this band in the I Love 1981 series, although actually it was really was The Human League's year so it can't be avoided.
We start off with their first 'post split' single Boys and Girls, which - oooh the irony - didn't feature the newly recruited girls at all, except for the front cover and a few publicity shots. Male exploitation of female as marketing tool? Well, maybe, but Phil & Adrian's discovery of Susanne Sully and Joanne Catherall at a Sheffiled disco ("they were dressed as Gary Numan or something") turned out to be the boys' best move since leaving their day jobs.

The song is still very much 'old style' gritty analogue electronic fayre and rooted in the more industrial Travelogue sound (you'll find it on the CD re-issue in fact). It had been premièred on the tour at the end of 1980 and it was decided to release it as single (also in nifty limited edition gatefold sleeve, fact fans) as the band were still pretty broke and owed Virgin quite a lot of money.
It still failed to become the Top 10 smash hit that Oakey still hankered after however, reaching only no. 48. Boys and Girls a pretty weird affair: sort of a sing-song chorus and clever clever verse but you couldn't really dance to it and, to my knowledge, was played only by John Peel (possibly Kid Jensen ) on the radio (I know, I stayed up late one night and taped it and the spooky Tom Baker B-side off Peely). But it was still a necessary and vital stepping stone towards better things .. better watch the calendar-y-aaar.

Duran Duran - Planet Earth

I Love 1981 - pt. 3
Although relative latecomers to the "new romantic" hit-makers clique, after Spandau Ballet, Visage, Ure-Vox et al, Duran Duran were always poised to become one the biggest sensations of 1981 and indeed for much of the decade and beyond. After undergoing many Beatles-esque personell changes, the band first got on to the intercity from Brum to London in 1979 to make their first demo tapes for EMI. Simon Le Bon soon ousted the dourly named Andy Wickett as lead vocalist in 1980 (although Stephen Duffy was famously their first vocalist) and thus the Duran Duran formation as we know it was born.
Much clubbing and a support slot to Hazel O'Connor ensued before they finally got round to recording their material proper in London in December 1980. "I remember two things about recording "Planet Earth". Staying in a horrible hotel in Fulham where I got very sick, and John Lennon dying", recalls John Taylor.
Planet Earth as a single finally saw the light of day in February 1981. Although Duran Duran were already causing quite a stir with a full page feature in NME and Richard Skinner Radio 1 sessions, bizarrely Duran's first scheduled television appearance on Feb 24th was cancelled because of Prince Charles and Lady Diana's engagement announcement (Princess Di would confess her love of the group some years later). On Feb 27 Noel Edmonds' Multi-Coloured Swap Shop broadcast a performance of Friends of Mine and Girls on Film. By the time they finally made it to TOTP, boosting Planet Earth's trajectory into the charts, they had already begun their first national tour.

Wherever they performed, be it on Cheggers Plays Pop or at Leicester Polytechnic, frilly blouses, sorry, shirts and floppy fringes abounded with Le Bon's flamboyant style as lead vocalist perhaps slightly giving them the edge over the rather more dour rivals Spandau Ballet.

Oh yes, the track itself was also good too, with it's well-balanced mix of proper guitars (including John's bass much to the fore) and rock-drums, with Nick Rhodes' electronics sweeping to and fro to make it sound 'modern'. It also had the catchy 'bah-bah-bahh-bah bah bah bah-baaahh' sing-along bit which made it excellent radio, club and live gig fodder, and the line "I saw you making patterns rhyme like.... some New Romantic looking for the TV sound" was at once an auto-celebration and a tongue-in-cheek stab at the genre.

That said, the single reached a relatively modest no. 12 in the charts, held back by such significant top-tenners as Shakin' Stevens, Kim Wilde and, er, Tony Capstick And The Carlton Main Frickley Colliery Band. The follow up single Careless Memories fared even less well, just scraping into the Top 40 in May.
But there were even better times to come...

Absolute Scrit

..and talking of bands that were-famous-in-the-eighties-and-are-now-making-a-comeback, Mr. Greene Gartside aka Scritti Politti is back on the modern music scene with a couple of new tracks and a compilation album of past recordings just to show us how good and massively underrated Scritti were back then.

Gartside (né Paul Julian Strohmeyer, pic. left) started the band in the late 70s as a kind of radical left-wing collective (their name probably inspired by Antonio Gramsci's Scritti Politici) and in 1978 released their first single "Skunk Skank Bologna" (named after the notoriously left-wing Italian city where student protest etc were talking place) on their own "St Pancras" label. Skunk was much favoured by John Peel on his late night radio show and the band soon got a deal with Rough Trade.
After initial success on the independent scene (playing alongside bands like Gang of Four, Joy Division, etc.) Gartside suffered from panic attacks and the like and had to withdraw from the music scene, only to return in '81 with the more mellow sounds of "The Sweetest Girl" and the "Songs to Remember" album the following year.
An even more radical change in sound and style came with the more US-funky-cum-synth-based sounds of Wood Beez, Absolute and The Word Girl in the mid eighties, all going Top 20, and the album Cupid & Psyche wich reached number 5 in 1985. Success at last for good-lookin' Gartside and assorted pals.

Scritti Politti-Wood Beez

1988's Provision fared less well, although "Oh Patti (Don't Feel Sorry For Loverboy)" from said album remains one of their best known songs. Mixed fortunes followed with a minor hit in "She's a Woman" in 1991 before fading into oblivion as 80's has-beens, although Gartside has continued to write and record since then.

The new compilation - aptly named Absolute - features the cracking new song "A Day Late And A Dollar Short" as well as one other new song 'A Place We Both Belong’ and a collection of past hits and misses. Check out
the rather good unofficial SP website bibbly-o-thek for more details and a short history of the early days here.
Absolute will be available from the usual places from Feb 28th.

Scritti Politti - A Day Late and a Dollar Short

John Barry RIP

It alsmost escaped LiM's attention that film soundtrack composer John Barry passed away a few days ago. He was 77 years old.
Although most noted for his work on James Bond film themes, including the instantly recognisable 007 'riff' (as re-purposed in Duran Duran's View to a Kill, for example) Barry was apparently also a pioneer in using synthesizers alongside the proper orchestra in his compositions, as in the 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service. He continued writing film scores right up until Enigma in 2001.

He also composed many TV themes including this brilliant one for 70's cult-series The Persuaders!, featuring a lead faux(?)-harpsichord and a lovely moogy bass line along with balalaikas and strings. Still gives me the shivers a bit but it's unmistakeable. Thankyou Mr Barry.

Electro-albums ready to go

Some exciting electro-music albums coming up soon with at least four promising albums waiting in the wings:

As already mentioned here godfather-of-electro John Foxx's latest analogue project with Benge (pic. left) takes the form of the first John Foxx & The Maths album Interplay, to be released on 21st March. There's now an official site here and also a remix competition for opening track Shatterproof here. Initial copies ordered from Townsend will be in special deluxe digi-packs. Previewed tracks find Foxx on fine form, still going strong since his Ultravox! days which began way back in 1976.
(Meanwhile we are still waiting for the much needed Metamatic official site makeover).


Sheffield electro-gurus The Human League are also back on the scene. After the long awaited new single Night People, which received mixed opinions and reviews, the new album Credo should be out in March. It's their first since 2001's Secrets and comes some 32 years after The Human League's first long-player Reproduction.
As usual, the band have kept a low internet-profile up to now although an official site has sprung up here and an official Facebook page too.
Live dates continue through Europe and (bizarrely) South America in March and April.


Blackburn duo Blancmange are also re-emerging from the murky depths of the mid-eighties with the brand new Blanc Burn set for release on 7th March. See their myspace page for previews, tour dates and order details. The oddball Lancashire couple released three albums between 1982 and 1985, hitting the singles charts with songs like Living On the Ceiling, Blind Vision and a tongue-in-cheek cover of Abba's The Day Before You Came. It'll be interesting to see what they've come up with this time.


It's not all electro-wrinklies tho as new band Mirrors from Brighton are set to release their debut album Lights & Offerings on February 28th. Check out preview tracks on their myspace page and follow the links to order. It's also worth taking some time to read their excellent blog The World of Mirrors if you can.
I may have posted this before but here's their excellent Look At Me from last year.

PS this post was mostly written just to remind myself of how much stuff I have to order.

Phil Collins - In The Air Tonight

I Love 1981 - No.2
Since Phil Collins' solo writing for the album Duke in 1980 Genesis drummer and vocalist's solo career had been almost inevitable. The album's Please Don't Ask and Misunderstanding were the blueprints to the woeful rock ballads which would dominate his first few albums, fuelled mostly by his evidently very painful separation and divorce from Mrs Collins.

In the Air Tonight (written in 1979) was a rather unusual affair however with a creepy haunting vocal over a creepy haunting drum machine (also used on Duke) and keyboard backing before famously, and appropriately, breaking into a massive crashing drum over half way through, carrying it all along nicely to the end. While it's hard to believe that a line like "If you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand" was aimed at his ex wife, it's an altogether powerful affair, certainly his most famous and perhaps his best song to date.

The ensuing debut album Face Value remains one of my 'guilty pleasures' with sloppy ballads like This Must Be Love and If Leaving me is Easy (that divorce again) fitting in nicely with the blues-y The Roof Is Leaking (B side to In the Air), a re-working of Behind the Lines from Duke and even a brave cover of The Beatles' (read John Lennon's..) Tomorrow Never Knows.

Just for a change here's the rare demo version of In the Air ....oh Lord, ...oh lord.

In the Air Tonight on Chart Stats

Foxx + Benge = album

The long awaited musical joint-venture between electro-pioneer and guru John Foxx and analogue synth collector and overall techno-anorak Benge finally starts to take (geometrical) shape with a new album announced for 21st March.
Interplay is the title of the album by John Foxx and The Maths, which looks and sounds very fresh and exciting indeed.
Last year's Maths' "single" release Destination b/w September Town was a pleasant enough taster, blending pure analogue warmth with Foxx's sturdy vocals, and now Evergreen - downloadable free with album pre-orders from Townsend - has a nice Spring-time feel to it, with a light synth-pop melody over a heavy bass line and Foxxy in fine form at the mike with a vocal sounding much like he did on mid-80s on tracks like Annexe and Young Man.

Like the music, the cover art by Jonathan Barnbrooke also hints at springtime with a colourful geometric flower shape (yes, also a bit like a 'maths' textbook) and is a welcome departure from Foxx's usual monochrome and darker album designs.

Roll on Spring equinox!

Visage - Fade to Grey

What better way to start the new I Love 1981 series than this seminal single by seminal eighties "group" Visage which finally hit the top 30 in January 1981.
Fade to Grey, penned by Ultravox's Billy Currie, Midge Ure and Tubeway Army/Gary Numan collaborator Chris Payne, was officially released in 1980, and was in fact Visage's second single, the first being Tar which failed to either set the charts alight or stop people from smoking. Group 'leader' Steve Strange merely put the voice and the,er, visage ("face" in French dontcha know) to the song making it into the 'new romantic' track par excellence. Famously he also claims to have had the idea for the French vocal (the words of the verse translated) which were done by one madamoiselle Brigitte Arendt, although our Midge reckons he thought of it first. So there.

Any road up, Devenir en Gris at the time achieved plenty of airplay and was a hit in the discos, setting the trend for the new kind of dance music (and dancing, see right), and sweeping aside the likes of Chic, Gloria Gaynor, Ottowan et al, at least for the time being.

The single hung around the Top 40 for a couple of months despite there being no 'live' TOTP performance, which was more than made up for by the rather tasteful video which was shown a couple of times and sort of paved the way for many of its kind.
New styles, new shapes, new modes...let 1981 begin.

You've probably got Fade to Grey on a thousand 'eighties' compilation albums already but LiM strongly reccommends the debut Visage album to hear it in a more fitting context.

I love 1981, don't you?

Well that's enough about famous people dying...let's think positive and look forward to..1981.

After the successful and most enjoyable I Love 1980 series, due to popular demand Lost in Music's 30th anniversary celebrations of the eighties will continue with I Love 1981, the year when the eighties music ball really got rolling.
Look forward to the rise of the New Romantics, the return of Kraftwerk, the re-birth of The Human League, and the arrival of a whole bunch of new groups of pretty boys with "funny names".
Plus Britain in the grips of a harsh winter, social unrest, a Conservative government and a Royal wedding for the masses. Don't times change....?

Check out our tumblr sister-blog for more fun from '81!

Gerry Rafferty

Another sad death on the same day as Mick Karn's premature passing.
Rafferty's music was a thousand miles away from the mostly post-punk stuff we were listening to at the end of the 70's, although 1978's Baker Street was an undoubtable classic and I even bought the 7" of Night Owl in 1979 which is wonderfully melancholy MOR ditty with some nifty guitar playing. I'm sure he wrote a lot of good songs besides those.


Some things I didn't know about Gerry Rafferty:
1. he was Scottish 2. his father was an alcoholic 3. he married a half-Italian 4. he was reluctant to play live 5. he was an alcoholic 6. he released an album in 2009.
source: wikipedia

Cheers Gerry.

Here's another one of his I've always quite liked:

Mick Karn

I was upset to learn last night that Mick Karn had passed away, hopefully to a better life.
He had been ill for some time, and I am glad to have taken part in the recent "Nel cuore della Musica" fund-raising event for Mick and his family in Italy last September.

One of the things I remember most from the Japan concert I saw in 1983 was Mick's amazing bass playing and the way he glided around the stage like some kind of clock-work doll / robot... both extremely entertaining and a little disquieting at the same time. Much like his music.

Can't find too many words at the moment but here's just a selection of songs from Karn's chequered musical career that have given me pleasure in past years.

Cheers Mick



Alien, with Japan

Canton (live) with Japan

She's Got Claws, with Gary Numan

Wedding List live with Kate Bush

After a Fashion, with Midge Ure

The Judgement is the Mirror, with Dali's Car:

Sensitive:

Buoy, feat. David Sylvian

I Love 1980 - Appendix 8

etc.etc.........