17 April 1986: Presenter: Gary Davies
(10) BIG COUNTRY – Look Away
In a Big Coat
You aren't kidding - Adamson is approaching
General Bomb The Bastards in shoulderpad acreage there. At least this song doesn't have a horrible twee 'bagpipe' guitar solo.
(27) SUZANNE VEGA – Marlene On The Wall
A great song - my sister picked up on Suzanne Vega pretty early so I had access to her debut album. This was originally her debut single , but it only reached #85 on it's first release in November 1985. The next two singles never cracked the Top 40 either (Small Blue Thing reached #65 in January 1986 and Knight Moves didn't chart), so this was a hit outside of the normal album cycle - I smell the cold, dead hand of a Radiio 1 DJ picking it up, but I've not been able to find out the full story. The song was written about a photo of Dietrich which Vega had been given and had framed on her bedroom wall, and how she observed the events in Vega's life
The video is great too - she's cute as a button in it (though does wear a jacket with almost Adamson-level shoulder pads).
(16) JANET JACKSON – What Have You Done For Me Lately? (video)
Another Jam & Lewis banger (they were on fire in this era). with lyrics co-written by Jackson (about her recent divorce from James DeBarge) and was recorded and produced at J&L's Flyte Tyme Studios in Minneapolis (it's got that wonderfully sparse Prince-style sound, with the bassline doing all the heavy lifting). The video was choreographed by Paula Abdul (who is also one of the dancers, wearing ta long white shirt and black belt). She was a friend of Janet, and Janet moved in with her for a few weeks prior to the single's release for an intensive combined dance and excercise regime (the label had told her she needed to lose weight to promote the album - what a bunch of shitehawks).
(28) IT’S IMMATERIAL – Driving Away From Home (Jim’s Tune)
I
I love this song, an audio road movie about driving away from Liverpool (the vocalist John Cambpell was from Manchester, which he references in the lyrics). They had been staples of John Peel's show snce the early 80s, but by this time the band had bee reduced to a duo and had just been signed by Virgin offshoot Siren, for whom they recorded their debut album Life's Hard And Then You Die.
The first single from this album, Ed's Funky Diner, was released at the end of 1985 but didn't chart. At the same time, the band were dispatched off to Milwaukee to record 'Driving' with Talking Heads' Jerry Harrison producing (their label wanted David Byrne, but he was busy with Eno at the time). He envisaged the track as a more traditional Country & Western sound, and had hired in a Nashville session crew to record it. The band weren't very happy with this direction, and ended up working on their own multitrack at night after Harrison had gone home, keeping only Harrison's keyboard parts.
One evening Harrison took them to a bar, and the local band playing noticed that Jim Lieber was in the audience and asked him up to play harmonica with them. Harrison and the band realised that would be a great addition to their track, and asked him to come back to the studio and record some harmonica lines on his way to the airport to fly back to Nashville. The band were so impressed with his contributions they subtitled the track as 'Jim's Tune'.
After the session, the band took the two multitracks back to the UK and started mixing their own version and Siren enlisted Tears for Fears' engineer Dave Bascombe to assist them. When he heard about it, Harrison asked for his name to be taken off the track. When it was released, it got picked up by the Radio 1 playlist ans was shaping up to be a big hit (It was getting more plays than A Different Corner at the time) but Virgin took their eye off the ball and shifted the marketing team to one of their other acts, and committed the cardinal sin of not pressing enough copies, leading to it stalling at #14.
Siren re-released Ed's Funky Diner a couple of months later but it only reached #65, followed by the album in September. After a year of promotional work and touring overseas, the band started on their second album in 1988, which was finally released in 1990 to critical acclaim but commercial indifference, and the band were dropped.
(1) GEORGE MICHAEL – A Different Corner
Hurll doing a 'Nik Kershaw' on George here, cutting to the promo video to liven up a boring studio performance. Listening to this, it strangely reminded me of Jon & Vangelis' I Hear You Now. I think it's the muted plucked lead synth sound that's doing it (though it presumably came from a DX7 in George's case, rather than a CS80)
