Another occasional series!
So many 'fortieth anniversaries' this year as, yes you've worked it out right, it's 40 years since that magic year of
1980, the year that the Future really began.
As well as being a crucial year for me as I reached 16 years of age, did O levels, left secondary school, did some proper work for the first time, and moved on to 6th Form college and the Big City, there was some great music too, stuff which really went on to shape my tastes and my life in general.
Luckily I also kept a very interesting and fairly detailed diary in that year, mostly noting down what I was up to, the banalities of routine, school, parents, friends, and of course music which I was hearing, listening to and eventually buying whenever 'pocket money' allowed it!
An important entry came about half way through the year, on 12th July, a Saturday. I'd finished my O levels, left school (waiting to go to 6th form) and was grafting hard out in the fields strawberry picking and crucially earning my own money! Thus I'd saved uo enough to buy my very first radio cassette player. I could now tape stuff off the radio! Revolutionary!
That very same day I also bough both
Smash Hits and the
NME, which featured Phil Oakey of
The Human League, with his characteristic haircut, on the front cover (see pic.) with a group feature and the famous 'consumer guide to synthesisers' on the inside. The band also featured in
Smash Hits (full issue
here) with an interview, the lyrics to Empire State Human and the memorable full page colour pic/poster of the four members looking down into the camera lens (pc. left). I had the brilliant idea of sticking this page onto my bedroom ceiling directly above my bed, so for many weeks I had the Human League watching over all I did on and in my bed (!).
Although I and many others didn't know it at the time, these press articles were a last ditch attempt to get some kind of commercial success for what would be this 'first version' of The Human League who had some critical acclaim but not so many sales, especially in the lucrative singles sector. Their "Holiday 80" EP/double 7"/singles package had failed to chart (some consumer confusion?) even after lead track Rock n Roll had been performed on prime-time TOTP, and Virgin were now trying again with the Empire State Human single release, a track from not the latest but thie debut album dating back to almost one year ago. Alas, we know how it all went, the group split into two in the autumn and the rest is history.
But going back to my radio/cassette recorder/player, NME also ironically enough carried an article about home taping which was 'killing music'. Forty years into the Future and although music has not been completely killed, it's certainly more easily avaiable to all, which basically was what we were aiming at with home taping, be it either with cassette copies of LPs or songs recorded off the charts, fingers ready on pause/rec button as appropriate.
