Gary Numan - She's Got Claws

I love 1981 - pt. 16

Wooaahh! .. this one ripped its way into the charts 30 years ago like there was no tomorrow..and indeed there wasn't really as it more or less disappeared as soon as it came.
Numan's return to vinyl and to the charts was a brave change of style, adopting a more funky attitude to his tardemark "colder" electronic sound of previous oeuvres. A shock for fans? Perhaps, but it the music was accompanied by a change of "look" which most followers seem to take to straight away .. baggy trousers, clean white shirt fixed at the top by yer mum's brooch, topped with yer Dad's trilby and Bob's your Gazza.
But back to the music She's Got Claws featured a much more refined sound aided by Mick Karn's trademark bass which had already been giving that touch of class to Japan's records for a good few years. The sound would also characterise the ensuing Dance album, which took a lot from more refined bands like Japan, and not just by stealing the bass player. He even revisted in his own track Metal, turning it into a sarcastic and somewhat bitter commentary of the "new romantic" scene, renaming the track Moral. Not entirely fair, as such artists were already catching up with him and indeed in many cases overtaking him.

Dance was Numan's first not to be accompanied by a tour, and Gazza probably disillusioned many with his new approach, but it was also arguably his last great creative album. We wouldn't see or hear Numan as interesting as this for a long, long time.

Which one's Pink?

Get ready for a Pink Floyd revival onslaught from now until at least the end of the year, and beyodn, as loads of re-issues of the band's back catalogue are planned in various formats under the Why Pink Floyd? banner, as well as a new compilation CD A Foot in the Door.

UK music monthly MOJO celebrate the band (again) in their October issue (out now?!?!) with big feature and a double CD with cover versions of tracks off Floyd mega-albums Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here all by contemporary artists most of which we've never heard of, save for The Orb and the mighty John Foxx and The Maths.

Read the story about Foxx and Benge's cover of Have a Cigar in an exclusive interview on the Metamatic website. You can listen to the CD track in this youtube clip, although MOJO have since announced that they got the wrong version out (doh) and you can download the correct one free from their site here.

The Human League - Hard Times/Love Action - Soft Cell Tainted Love / Where Did Our Love Go?

I Love 1981 - pt 15
In which Britain experiences it's first major synth-pop summer and the 12" single with extended dance mixes finally takes on as a mainstream musical art form.

The Human League first advertised theirs as featuring "a disco mix and odd mix, two separate very long versions of both songs". Major ground breaking here in more ways than one. Firstly it features the B side Hard Times before the A side Love Action, and secondly the B side is a kind of instrumental variation on the A side picking up only on the female 'hard times' vocal parts from the main song. Easier to listen to than explain.
The opus is a combination of The Human League's new style dance music with meaning and the late Martin Rushent's production skills who helped them achieve their distinctive sound not least by introducing them to the Linn drum machine. Lyrically, Phil Oakey is the tough Northern bloke (albeit with jewellry and make-up) who comes out with his hard times story "I've been a husband and a lover too..I've lain alone and cried at night...I feel the pain..." but ultimately gives in to, er, temptation, the 'love action' transmitted by.... who? The Daily Mirror published a gossip style story about his broken marriage and his affair with one of the girls (or both? ..can't remember) and we were even treated to a photo of his shock-horor-probe pierced nipple! Love Action ( I Believe in Love) is classic League of course and the one that got them to number 3 and well and truly on the road to fame (and we still haven't had Don't You Want Me yet).

Although Soft Cell were very much in the synth-pop catchment area their electronics were a tad more minimal and seedy compared to the League's lush production. No matter though as their cover of two Motown numbers remains a classic in its own right to this day. Again it's a 'segue' type long mix cleverly bringing together the two songs in a new style electro-dance bonanza which meant DJs could rest for a bit while the punters danced on.
Like The Human League's "instrumentals" 12" B side, theirs also fetaures a dubby trippy instrumental mix which became the blueprint for so many dub/dance crossover re-mixes for years to come. Tainted Love became a number 1 single in 17 countries and even broke the US top 10 in 1982. Famously however the duo made relatively little money from sales of the single as both sides were cover versions, leaving many royalties to their original owners.
Not bad going though for the archetypal odd couple (see Sparks) Marc Almond and Dave Ball who had recorded it as a make-or-break single for Phonogram. Northern Soul from Leeds for the new electronic age. Beep beep!

OMD to play Eric's Club re-opening

That's according to the local press.

Let's hope it's in a better state than this..

Tubular Bells by the Brooklyn Organ Synth Orchestra

Benge .. if you're reading, I know you're gonna love this.....

Wilde shots

Following in the footsteps of greats such as David Bowie, John Lennon and, er, Andrea Corr, the ever fancy-able Kim Wilde will also be releasing her very own covers album "Snapshots", featuring fourteen of her fave songs from the past thirty years or so.
I was of course curious to find out the tracklisting, and found that thereby hangs a funny tale!
Kim's official site wanted to reveal the chosen tracks to the eager public three at a time, starting with East 17's "It's Alright" (which I've never heard..is it the same as the Pet Shop Boys' song?), The Cure's Inbetween Days (excellent choice!) and About You Know (ah-ah--oo-oo...). However, those hard working Teutonics at amazon.de made eine kleine cock-up and accidently published the whole tracklist on their site . .oopz, ja! Now it's there for all to see as well as on wikipedia and other sites.

Further choices from Kim include Black's Wonderful Life, the Buzzcock's Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone), Erasure's A Little Respect and Mike Oldfield's To France, so could be a bit of a cracker.. (a bit like Kim really). Final track is David Bowie's Kooks, which I'd never heard before. The Kooks got their name from it, apparently

Any road, here's Kim (phwoooar) in 1980-something with a spot of Water on Glass.

Incantado

A remastered edition of Mike Oldfield's Incantations album is re-released this week, complete with some unreleased material and brand spanking new stereo remixing, new cover art and stuff. The best format would seem to tbe the 'de-luxe' edition with 2 CDs and a DVD with 5.1 remasters and some video material too. Details here at the official shop

I've always really liked Incantations since it came out in 1978. It's long (originally a double LP), complex, and just a tad pretentious. Perfect.

Although it continues Oldfield's characteristic mainly instrumental style (save for the Hiawatha recital-singing bit and a few choirs here and there), it's a departure from the more hippy-folky Tubular Bells-Hergest Ridge-Ommadawn mould. In fact its the album our Michael made after undergoing his Exegesis coming out of his shell therapy. He even went so far as to cut his hair, shave his beard off and wear a jacket for the photo on the cover of Incantations,which has sadly been replaced by an iceberg thingy (which is actually shaped like the rock on the original). No matter - the music's ace.

It's also the period he went and did a disco single called "Guilty" which is apparently based on Incantations too, but you can jig around to it and shout 'I'm guilty!' for no apparent reason. Bring it on Mike!

Spandau Ballet - Chant No 1 (I Don't Need This Pressure On)

I love 1981 - pt. 14

And hail the new club culture of Thatcher's Britain with Spandau Ballet abandoning their Baltic tablecloth look in favour of the smarter, sharper zoot suits of London's trendy nightclubs.
It's the summer of 1981 and storming up the charts this week is ver Spands new single, the clumsily titled Chant No 1 (I Don't Need This Pressure On) with a new look and new sound featuring funky guitars, horn (oo-eer) section and expensive doof-doof electronic drums to boot.

Although the preceding Glow had hinted at a slightly new sound, Chant No. 1 was a sharp change of direction for the band who had obviously caught on to the fact that the Blitz style make-up and clothing, and music were out and this was what was going down, Beat Route (geddit?) 'n' all.

As with Depeche Mode's New Life there was also a 12" version with extended mixes of the A side and the B Side Feel the Chant, which, as a variation on Chant No. 1 must make it one of the first "extended remixes" of its kind. Sadly, Feel did not emerge on the recent re-releases in any form. Anyways here's the Chant video but it's Vemo you'll have to go all the way over to YouTube to see it in all its fresh-faced and horny glory.

lyrics in Smash Hits

Happy 18th..

My lovely daughter will be 18 this week, and although she won't care for this much I just wanted to post a track from New Order's Republic album, also 18 this year, which I was listening to quite a lot at the time as my wife had given it to me for our anniversary a few weeks earlier.

I would've chosen either 'Regret' or 'Young Offender' as favourites but the titles hardly seemed appropriate for the occasion. I would also have liked 'Times Change' too if only because it features the line "life will never be the same" which is kind of appropriate after the birth of your first child... although I think the song is about something rather more foreboding. So here's World (aka The Price of Love) which is fittingly summer-y and you can dance to it at your party... perhaps.

Happy Birthday..

FO-TV: Transmission Two

..it's 1981 on FO-TV for this special programme with an electrical / electronic theme

Found Objects Television 2 from Found Objects on Vimeo.

Depeche Mode - New Life

I Love 1981 - pt. 13
It was thirty years ago this month that Depeche Mode's second single New Life was released, beginning it's steady progress into the charts and effectively becoming the Basildon band's breakthrough single. 'New life' and indeed new blood was effectively brought onto the music scene, which notwithstanding the odd post-punk quirk such as Adam Ant, Toyah, Ultravox or The Specials, was still very much dominated by Americano disco - Jacko, Smokey, Odyssey, Champagne et al or Radio-2 friendly MOR homegrown pop-pap such as Shakin' Steves, Bucks Fizz, Elaine Paige, Phil Collins and so on and so forth.
We may think of 1981 as the year of shiny new synth pop but save for The Human League's Sound of the Crowd, already slipping away, and, say, Landscape, the all electronic-pop genre was still pretty much in its infancy and had yet to be embraced by the general public or even the yoof of the day.

That said, Britain was slowly awakening from it's seventies tupor and pop culture was starting to become a little more colourful. "Funny clothes" weren't a problem as we'd already had Spandau Ballet. 'Poofy' haircuts too had already been broken in by Duran Duran, so enter the-even-more-poofily-named Depeche Mode who, like The Human League before them, confounded TOTP cameras with the no guitarist or drummer line-up and did their damn hardest to get the audience to dance along with them, clumsy as they were themselves.

Despite being catchy, danceable and inevitably chantable, the Mode's breakthough single was still very much an uphill struggle, and took a full 8 weeks to reach its peak in August, even then just failing to reach the Top 10. But it was still early days for what was to become one of Britain's biggest music exports. Little did they know that as they famously lugged their hefty keyboards around on London trains to reach the BBC studios (there would be two more TOTP appearances of New Life as well as other pop shows), the Basildon boys (save for Vince Clarke) would one day be playing to crowded stadia worldwide.

True to the band and producer Daniel Miller's innovative form, both New Life and the B side Shout! were among the first ever tracks to be given the extended remix treatment, and issued as a 12" single, a trademark which holds true to this day with their second triple CD remix compilation just out, thirty years on. Operating, generating....

scars are scars

Here are long-lost and quickly forgotten Scottish no-hopers The Scars on OGWT in 1981 introduced by a rather pasty and somewhat bloated Annie Nightingale, bless.
My thanks to Brian at Like Punk Never Happened for reminding me to forget them again.