And then we danced! The early 80s had a lot of entertaining music and these tunes are the kinds of things I was listening to. We'd moved to San Francisco and frequented a club called Echo Beach. These tunes seem like the modern era, thanks to MTV. I didn't get a deja vu feeling exactly, while I was putting this together, but the memories are stronger than any of the previous weeks.
Well, well, well. The things you learn from Wiki! Here's ABC, the British band, doing Poison Arrow. This band was produced by Trevor Horn who was one half of the Buggles. You know, Video Killed the Radio Star. That Buggles album is terrific and if you like that single and don't have the album, get it! Anyway, ABC was some group that was being interviewed by a guy from a fanzine. The group and the interviewer hit it off, they made him the lead singer and then recorded this!
I mentioned last week that the Sex Pistols destroyed the equipment belonging to the other band on the bill. Well, one of the guys in the other band turned out to be Adam Ant! He's had mental health problems in his older age but here he is, in his prime.
The Bananarama girls sure looked wholesome, didn't they? I remember first hearing about them because one of the guys in The Specials liked them. That was Terry Hall, who started a new group called the Fun Boy Three. That group is singing backup on this Bananarama tune.
Speaking of having problems when you grow up! Doesn't everbody know about Boy George picking up trash in Manhattan as part of his cocaine bust? And his 4 months in gaol (he really must have an Oscar Wilde fetish) for assault. Gee. Once upon a time he was a cute young boy, sort of.
I like this Cure song because it's so stripped down, almost like a rockabilly tune. Did you know that Robert Smith, the singer, hasn't changed his hairdo or makeup in the quarter of a century since this? And he's now about twice as wide as he was then.
Right...so speaking of Trevor Horn of the Buggles, he also produced Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Rumor has it that this is essentially a Buggles song with Holly Johnson of Frankie singing. It sounds like it. The group received the coveted BBC banning which helped the success of the record a great deal!
Sometimes artists are the last to know if their work is good or bad. I know lots of artists who fall in love with a painting, or a song of theirs, even though there's something missing. And often their "throwaways" are their best work. So Philip Oakey wrote this tune, hated the production, thought the song was so bad that he got the record company to make it the last track on the album. Then he fought with the label when the execs wanted to release it as a single. He called this a "poor quality filler track" and insisted a poster be included with the single because otherwise the fans would feel ripped off by the substandard single. Ha!
Well, yes, not that you mention it. I was listening to a lot of British music at the time. But here's a classic from Los Angeles. Danny Elfman grew up to be one of the most famous composers for the movies. He did all those Tim Burton scores, like "Nightmare Before Christmas". We saw his rock (?) group, Oingo Boingo when they were The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo and were more of a performance art group. They new waved it up and recorded this song which was a hit in L.A.
Soft Cell, doing Tainted Love. Did you know (I didn't!) that this song was written by one of the Four Preps? Yes, the group that was famous for doing pleasant, soft numbers like 26 Miles Across the Sea and I Was a Big Man (yesterday, but boy you ought to see me now)!
Shaharazade and I go out so infrequently these days that it's surprising when I think of how often we'd go to clubs in our younger days. We saw Wall of Voodoo in East Los Angeles at some club whose name I've long ago forgotten. All I remember from that show was the drum kit (lots of unusual noisemakers), the different sound the group had from other groups of the day and one comment by singer Stan Ridgeway. He clearly was trying to say something nice about East L.A. and all he could come up with was "I like your murals".
