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An Alternative History of "Pop" Music

Started by jamiefairlie, August 15, 2020, 09:27:00 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

jamiefairlie

Hello and welcome to 1982!

I think this is a good year but I notice a subtle but clear decline from 1981 and, looking ahead, I see this decline continuing steadily through 83 and 84 before bottoming out in 85. Only in 86 so we start to turn this around again.

Still, plenty of great tracks to get our teeth into.

jamiefairlie

The Chameleons - In Shreds

https://youtu.be/3ivQ-mJCiJc



Formed in Middleton, Greater Manchester in 1981. The band consisted of singer and bassist Mark Burgess, guitarists Reg Smithies and Dave Fielding, and drummer John Lever.

This is their debut single and it reached number 42 in Peel's inaugural current year Festive Fifty (he did run an all-time poll this year too, his last before 2000) .

They went on to release three album before splitting in 1987.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: jamiefairlie on January 18, 2021, 07:49:17 PM
I never really got on with US ska, there always seemed something not quite right about it. there's always this lurking doubt that it's just a style they can take on or off depending on their whims, like No Doubt suddenly doing that awful 'Don't Speak' thing,

Bit unfair on No Doubt. They formed in 1986 and Gwen & Co were genuine ska fans, Madness being their key influence. 'Don't Speak' was when they started to go in a different direction. Awful? It wasn't for me but I thought it was a strong enough single and was pleased to see them do well. I saw No Doubt perform in 1990 in L.A. (Oo, get me?) and they were superb. 

Anyway, hello 1982.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: jamiefairlie on January 18, 2021, 08:56:16 PM
The Chameleons - In Shreds
A great song, when it was reissued in 1985 (I think), it was with a b-side, 'Nostalgia', that is even better.

Anyways, I have to post this, obviously:

The Wild Swans' - 'The Revolutionary Spirit'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7z4-tf21Cw

The original line up, somewhat curiously, featured two former Teardrops Explode keyboardists: Paul Simpson and Ged Quinn, who were joined by guitarist Jeremy Kelly. This was their debut single, funded by Bunnymen Pete de Freitas, who also played drums on it, and released on Zoo Records. If you want to know how the single cover looked - see my avatar.

The band broke up not long after, though recorded a Peel session that featured the astonishing 'No Bleeding'. Kelly formed the Lotus Eaters and had a hit single, Simpson formed a duo, Care, with Ian Broudie, though commercial success proved elusive despite some strong songs.

Simpson and Kelly reformed the Wild Swans to record an album of good songs hampered by late 80s production values, before Simpson - alongside Ian McNabb and Chris Sharrock with Broudie producing - made a very good album of guitar pop called 'Space Flower' that didn't get an initial UK release.

#2914
Paulette and Tanya "Sweet Tee" Winley- I Believe in the Wheel of Fortune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8yFXA2bdBY




I already put up a hip hop track by Tanya Winley, - on this tune she's joined by her sister for this harmonized-sing-talking thing.
The groove on this is nicely subtle with a bit of space on it

jamiefairlie

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on January 18, 2021, 09:38:36 PM
A great song, when it was reissued in 1985 (I think), it was with a b-side, 'Nostalgia', that is even better.

Anyways, I have to post this, obviously:

The Wild Swans' - 'The Revolutionary Spirit'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7z4-tf21Cw

The original line up, somewhat curiously, featured two former Teardrops Explode keyboardists: Paul Simpson and Ged Quinn, who were joined by guitarist Jeremy Kelly. This was their debut single, funded by Bunnymen Pete de Freitas, who also played drums on it, and released on Zoo Records. If you want to know how the single cover looked - see my avatar.

The band broke up not long after, though recorded a Peel session that featured the astonishing 'No Bleeding'. Kelly formed the Lotus Eaters and had a hit single, Simpson formed a duo, Care, with Ian Broudie, though commercial success proved elusive despite some strong songs.

Simpson and Kelly reformed the Wild Swans to record an album of good songs hampered by late 80s production values, before Simpson - alongside Ian McNabb and Chris Sharrock with Broudie producing - made a very good album of guitar pop called 'Space Flower' that didn't get an initial UK release.

Yeah, that's great. Always found the production to be a problem though as the song loses some accessibility due to it.

jamiefairlie

The Cure - The Figurehead

https://youtu.be/pbrqsNgRa9Y



Opening track of their fourth album, Pornography. That opening drum rhythm set the tone for the whole album, an easy ride it is not.

Jonzun Crew- Pack Jam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXPpng1dQag


Like a cruder, punkier, lo-fi version of something off Kraftwerk's Computer World, this track is the work of a Florida based band led by electro artist Michael Jonzun, but also featuring his brother Maurice Starr, later the svengali behind pop groups like New Kids on the Block.

jamiefairlie

Gang Of Four - i will be a good boy

https://youtu.be/UrOSDInvEkE



From the third album, Songs of the Free, from the grimly political Loiners (people from Leeds, can't say this is not educational!).

James Blood Ulmer- Open House
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX2h9enqYJw



On his LP Black Rock, James Blood Ulmer cooked up a mixture of heavy jazz and funk-metal which, yeah, sounds potentially hideous but there is, as you will hear here a bounciness to the proceedings which makes it all very listenable and toe-tapping!

Phil_A

Quote from: jamiefairlie on January 18, 2021, 10:04:15 PM
The Cure - The Figurehead

https://youtu.be/pbrqsNgRa9Y



Opening track of their fourth album, Pornography. That opening drum rhythm set the tone for the whole album, an easy ride it is not.

Unless I'm very confused, the opening track is One Hundred Years, isn't it?

jamiefairlie

Quote from: Phil_A on January 19, 2021, 01:07:39 AM
Unless I'm very confused, the opening track is One Hundred Years, isn't it?

No, you're absolutely correct. I guess I was always used to playing the LP with this side first so got used to it that way.

jamiefairlie

Tears For Fears - The Hurting

https://youtu.be/u1qxiAxDwYc



Title track of their debut album. They went on to much greater commercial success but that need not concern us here.

chveik

Mary Moor - Pretty Day



one of my favourite songs. Barney Wilen plays the saxophone (he collaborated with Miles for the Elevator to the Gallows soundtrack)

chveik


chveik

Guernica - Doryoku No Hime



Jun Togawa's first band. still far from her best, but a promising start. very strange atmosphere, brechtian cabaret music played on dissonant synths

jamiefairlie

The Wake - An Immaculate Conception

https://youtu.be/wod2ij2Q4HQ



formed in Glasgow in 1981 by Gerard "Caesar" McInulty (formerly of Altered Images), Steven Allen (drums) and Joe Donnelly (bass), the latter soon replaced by future Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie. Steven's sister Carolyn Allen also joined on keyboards, and remained in the band thereafter.

The Wake released their first single,  "On Our Honeymoon", on their own Scan 45 label, before signing to Factory Records in 1982. This track is from their debut album, Harmony, released on Factory.

They released another album and a few singles before leaving Factory in 1988 and signing to Sarah records where they released another two albums before effectively disappearing in 1995.

Gregory Torso

Flipper - Sex Bomb




YEAH! booze-addled busted-saxophone-blatted noise rock party anthem. Originally released the previous year as a single but without the yakkety sax, so always preferred this version from the "Generic" album. Used to listen to this at the wrong speed in my friend's bedroom throwing burnt toast out the window into the back of his dad's work van at 3 in the morning.

From San Francisco, Flipper invented The Melvins by slowing everything down to 20 bpm and repeating repeating for ever everything this drug slurry sludge pop. Bassist/shouter Will Shatter died of heroin too much in 1987 but the band kept going long. The double live album Public Flipper Limited is one of the greatest live records ever for audience-bating patience-testing out-of-tune blackout drunk dirge workouts, if that's your thing.


SEX BOMB BABY

jamiefairlie

The Psychedelic Furs - Love My Way

https://youtu.be/qeAzG6yDSYI



Their sixth single, it only reached number 42 in the UK charts but, more pertinently, number 29 in Peel's Festive Fifty.

Gregory Torso

Quote from: chveik on January 19, 2021, 01:39:55 AM
Mary Moor - Pretty Day

Yeah, really love this song. I have it on a comp called BIPPP French Synthwave 1979-85 which has a ton of good squeezbox chansons

Gregory Torso

Ja Ja Ja - Katz Rap




Supposedly "the first rap song by a female on record in Europe" according to wikipedia. Ja Ja Ja was a German band, although appareNtly the singer Julie Jigsaw was from Texas pretending it large to be down with Der Plan.

Great song, never sounded like hip hop to me, but that's what they wrote on the internet, dad -

QuoteGerman Hip Hop began as an underground music scene in 1982 when JaJaJa recorded "Katz Rap" in Ata Tak studios in Düsseldorf. "Katz Rap" by JaJaJa (1982, Ata Tak – WR 14) was the first rap song by a female on record in Europe. JaJaJa toured with a large graffiti canvas she spray painted with the band's name and a giant reptile/dragon/dinosaur. JaJaJa's "I Am An Animal" video released in 1983 featured breakdancing youths costumed as dinosaurs
CITATION NEEDED LADS

Katz Rap (Paula Abdul not included)

Gregory Torso

Pulsallama - The Devil Lives In My Husband's Body




One for the "talking bits in songs" thread.

QuotePulsallama was a short-lived, yet legendary, 12 piece, then 7 piece all-girl bass and percussion band who ruled Manhattan nightlife for a brief period in 1981 and 1982. Their sound has been described as "13 girls fighting over a cowbell." The band often fought with each other verbally and physically in the studio and at shows. The groups rowdy behavior, theatrical stage antics, props and costumes and awkward time signatures were what the New York underground loved most about them.

FUN FACT: This band featured a young Ann Magnuson who went on to find glitz and glamour with Shimmy Disk Kramer in the band Bongwater!

no one can help us but the witch next door

(This video has the word "Tourettes" bleeped out of it, probably for reasons of sensitivity)

jamiefairlie

Colin Newman - Lorries

https://youtu.be/HzxAwQJxaYA



Taken from his third solo album, Not To. A thing of chiming, crystalline beauty.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

R.E.M. - Gardening at Night



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRvA4TFLlEk

Taken from their debut EP, Chronic Town, this typically enigmatic jangler is an early sign that these four lads from Athens, Georgia were something special.

QuoteGardening at Night is said to have been written on a mattress in the front yard of the Oconee Street church in Athens, Georgia. At that point in the band's career, Peter Buck has stated that their musical modus operandi was "three chords and a six-pack of beer."

In the booklet of the 2006 And I Feel Fine... The Best of the I.R.S Years 1982–1987, Bill Berry explains the origins of the song's title:

"We were driving at night after a show (I don't remember where), and I was at the wheel of our old car, with a rental trailer in tow. One of my three passengers aimed a directive at me. Rather than inform me of his desire to evacuate his bladder, he instead suggested that I pull over so that he might engage in the task of roadside 'night gardening.' To four guys in their early twenties this was a glaring catalyst for a new song."

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: jamiefairlie on January 19, 2021, 03:23:24 AMTheir sixth single, it only reached number 42 in the UK charts but, more pertinently, number 29 in Peel's Festive Fifty.
Even more importantly for the band, it made the top 50 in the States, to where they focused their career.

Jockice

Quote from: Gregory Torso on January 19, 2021, 03:20:37 AM
Flipper - Sex Bomb




YEAH! booze-addled busted-saxophone-blatted noise rock party anthem. Originally released the previous year as a single but without the yakkety sax, so always preferred this version from the "Generic" album. Used to listen to this at the wrong speed in my friend's bedroom throwing burnt toast out the window into the back of his dad's work van at 3 in the morning.

From San Francisco, Flipper invented The Melvins by slowing everything down to 20 bpm and repeating repeating for ever everything this drug slurry sludge pop. Bassist/shouter Will Shatter died of heroin too much in 1987 but the band kept going long. The double live album Public Flipper Limited is one of the greatest live records ever for audience-bating patience-testing out-of-tune blackout drunk dirge workouts, if that's your thing.


SEX BOMB BABY

Yay! I love Flipper. Just read in Cosey Fanni Tutti's autobiography that Ted Falconi was a Vietnam veteran. Which would explain a lot.

Speaking of whom....

Chris and Cosey- Impulse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbAauHc1Vcs


Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, former members of Throbbing Gristle, went into full on proto-techno mode on this excellent electronic LP.

Brundle-Fly

Eat Your Heart Out - Hey! Elastica. Released on Virgin in 1982





Briefly, a regular record spun on the sixth form common room hi-fi because the usual 7th-year poseurs had just seen them support Echo & The Bunnymen that weekend. I wanted to smash that stereo by the end of lunch break, but years later took the band to my heart.

Hey! Elastica is what Luke Haines would shout at Justine Frischmann whenever he saw her around Camden were an early 80s synth dance group from Edinburgh, Scotland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce-tPZ6MKTg&feature=emb_logo

Ballad of Ballard Berkley


jobotic

Quote from: Gregory Torso on January 19, 2021, 03:20:37 AM
Flipper - Sex Bomb




YEAH! booze-addled busted-saxophone-blatted noise rock party anthem. Originally released the previous year as a single but without the yakkety sax, so always preferred this version from the "Generic" album. Used to listen to this at the wrong speed in my friend's bedroom throwing burnt toast out the window into the back of his dad's work van at 3 in the morning.

From San Francisco, Flipper invented The Melvins by slowing everything down to 20 bpm and repeating repeating for ever everything this drug slurry sludge pop. Bassist/shouter Will Shatter died of heroin too much in 1987 but the band kept going long. The double live album Public Flipper Limited is one of the greatest live records ever for audience-bating patience-testing out-of-tune blackout drunk dirge workouts, if that's your thing.


SEX BOMB BABY

One of the best bands ever.

I got into them from first hearing Terminal Cheesecake's cover of Sex Bomb on VCL. It's great too, but Generic and Gone Fishin' are two of my all time favourite albums.