An Alternative History of "Pop" Music: Part 2, 1982 -

[Johnny Yesno]

Boredoms - Jup-Na-Keeeeeel



https://youtu.be/j3f1TPVEiVc?t=1404

THIS IS PSYCHOALPHADISCOBETAUDIOAQUADOLOOP SOUND. HUH ? JAM SUCKER-HUCKER. OK. DON'T CHECK THIS SOUND. GET OFF your DEA DASS & DANCE ON THE BOLLOCKS, WEBS & WIGS.

[famethrowa]

The B-52's - Deadbeat Club

Don't know the song too much, but it has that lovely chorusy jangle of the late 80s, much like REM or Crowded House, the sound of metal cassette tape, played on a compact sized boombox in yer teenage bedroom.

[Brundle-Fly]

Up Jumped Chair Legs - Rebby Sharp. Released on Shimmy Disc in 1989.





This track haunted me a good'un back in '89.

Whither Rebby Sharp?, She was from the woods of Virginia, slinking together raw solo hack avant-garde songs infused with traditional Appalachian strains. Fiddle, guitar, and banjo providing irascible mirth and shockproof substance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAYY1X4FL6E

[jamiefairlie]

Inspiral Carpets - She Comes in the Fall

https://youtu.be/gJdVDw_TR5s



Taken from their third Peel session recorded on 17th August. This version made it into the Festive fifty (just) at number 50. The studio version would be included on their debut album, Life, in 1990.

[daf]

Don't know the song too much, but it has that lovely chorusy jangle of the late 80s, much like REM or Crowded House, the sound of metal cassette tape, played on a compact sized boombox in yer teenage bedroom.

Might have been a slight influence, as although he's not on the track, Michael Stipe pops up in the video. (It wasn't a single in the UK, but reached #30 in the US as the fifth and final single extruded from the album)

[Oz Oz Alice]

Tin Machine - Prisoner of Love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw4AArFcdsA

In 1989 Bowie teamed up with Reeves Gabrel and Tommy Wiseau to form a terrible rock band, supposedly inspired by The Pixies Surfer Rosa but somehow I don't believe that. The first Tin Machine album however was intermittently great and this and I Can't Read are highlights of it for me: this feels like a song he may've written for Iggy somehow, and I'd like to have heard him do it.

[Better Midlands]

Dionne - Come Get My Lovin'



Amazing vocal house anthem from the 1989 M25 rave scene produced by mysterious Canadian Andrew "Komix" Komis who died from leukemia in 2008.

Released on Citybeat (which spawned XL) it reached #69.

I don't know how much of this below is true, there's very little information about him to be found.

Irrepressible con artist Andrew Komis, otherwise known as The Mighty KOMIX, was a high school dropout turned infamous Toronto DJ turned house music impresario turned would be mogul with appetites to rival Harvey Weinstein and the brains and the balls to match. A creative genius by all accounts who dreamed of going long in order to become legitimate, he would also prove to be a darkly endearing sociopath who ultimately couldn't get out of his own way.

KOMIX begged, borrowed, and stole from everyone he knew, including those closest to him over and over again, as part of his brilliance was to surround himself with a circle of reputable friends who loved him despite his monumental character flaws. He was a master of appropriating the winning elements of their lives while playing one against the other in ways that preyed on collective greed and kept alive the fiction his life had always been. Like all champion fabulists, he made the preposterous seem plausible by believing his own stories. People naturally wanted to believe them as well because he so desperately wished his elaborate lies to be true.

Only in his bizarre death at 41 would his house of cards finally collapse and leave all who had trusted him in the lurch. And what a house it was: private wine collections and film libraries, gold mines in Arizona, African diamond deals, Broadway musicals in Macau, Swiss bank accounts, real estate around the world, scripted and unscripted TV series, restaurant chains, boutique hotels, talent agencies, infomercials, Indie films, P&A funds, and FCC broadcast licenses—all suspect to be sure—along with a dozen false identities and millions swindled from friends for no apparent reason other than to compulsively piss away on pussy and petty indulgences like Cuban cigars, the latest consumer electronics, and retro Adidas tennis wear.

Had KOMIX harnessed the self-discipline to channel his enormous energies into productive ends, it is hard to imagine all he might have accomplished. An autodidact to the very core, there was no subject beyond his grasp wherever there was an easy angle to be played. But, alas, such great gifts are often born to compensate for even greater demons. Going long just wasn't his story. His short life, however, spanning from a broken home and the streets of Montreal to Toronto, Manhattan, London, Hollywood, the Sony boardroom, and beyond, is worthy of more legend than mere legacy.

[daf]

Kate Bush – Deeper Understanding



Featured on the album 'The Sensual World' - released in October 1989

Kate Bush : "This is about people... well, about the modern situation, where more and more people are having less contact with human beings. We spend all day with machines; all night with machines. You know, all day, you're on the phone, all night you're watching telly. Press a button, this happens. [...] And this is the idea of someone who spends all their time with their computer and, like a lot of people, they spend an obsessive amount of time with their computer. People really build up heavy relationships with their computers!"

The song features backing vocals by the Bulgarian vocal ensemble Trio Bulgarka. The three women in the trio are Stoyanka Boneva from Pirin, Yanka Rupkina from Strandja and Eva Georgieva from Dobrudja. Their diversity of regional backgrounds has enabled them to create a unique sound to their music.

 

Kate Bush : "I've never worked with women on such an intense creative level, and it was something strange to feel this very strong female energy in the studio. It was interesting to see the way the men in the studio reacted... Instead of just one female, there was a very strong female presence."

[jamiefairlie]

King of the Slums - Leery Bleeder

https://youtu.be/wqUsyglbDxs



Formed in Manchester in 184 by Charlie Keighera (vocals, guitar) and Sarah Curtis (electric violin), initially as Slum Cathedral User. This song was the b-side to the "Vicious British Boyfriend" E.P, their fifth single. This particular version was recorded for a Peel session in April 1988.

[jamiefairlie]

Kitchens of Distinction - Prize

https://youtu.be/UCNtcPrdx8g



An English three-person alternative rock band formed in Tooting, South London, in 1986. They released their debut single, "The Last Gasp Death Shuffle", in 1987 and this is the follow-up (the better demo version is included here). They released four albums before splitting in 1996.

[jamiefairlie]

The Field Mice - Sensitive

https://youtu.be/0WgiLhrK3W8



Second single, it reached number 26 in the Festive Fifty.

[Brundle-Fly]

Stealing - Tackhead.  Released on World in 1989.





As Momus once sang in 1989 on on the track, Shaftsbury Avenue;

Appearing in the West End:
Tottenham Hotspurs with Rolex handshakes
And crocodile suntans
JAPs and prunes, cops and robbers
Touts with faces like the phantom of the opera
Chinatown pimps and handshake whores
And Tackhead caps at the Astoria doors

He was right, you were nobody in Soho unless you had one of those caps. I was nobody.

Tackhead was created when bassist Doug Wimbish, guitarist Skip McDonald, and drummer Keith Leblanc (the Sugar Hill Records house band and one of the most-recorded electrofunk rhythm sections) met English dub master and On-U sound boss Adrian Sherwood in 1984.

First under the moniker Fats Comet and then Tackhead, they recorded experimental 12" singles using a sampler as a real instrument, mixing dub, funk, and industrial music. In 1989, vocalist, Bernard Fowler joined the band, taking it into a less underground direction. Tackhead was also a backing band for Mark Stewart and Gary Clail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO-5nKOJW7I&t=64s

[gilbertharding]

Hey - teenie boppers, stick hoppers, failed poppers, snot gobblers! It's the Dandelion Adventure!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_erUjHaZJq4



Dandelion Adventure were an indie band founded in the mid 80's based in Preston, Lancashire. The group had a slightly different lineup overtime but finally had members, Ajay Saggar, Mark Standing and Mark Wareing, who were all fans of the Membranes. Despite being based in Preston, the group consisted of members coming from various parts of northern England, including Ajay Saggar who was living in Lancaster. The band split sometime in the 90's, with Ajay Saggar (who appeared in Dinosaur Jr's Freak Scene video) moving to the Netherlands and forming Donkey and later reuniting with Mark Wareing and others under the Common Cold group. Mark Standing later formed his own record label, Pumf Records And Tapes.

Back in 1989, your correspondent knew nothing of this, and bought the record on the strength of the cover - which was the inner sleeve photo from Sonic Youth's 12" Master=Dik, with the faces of Joanna Lumley, Mussolini (?), Spike Milligan and the Egyptian dog-god Anubis clumsily added.

https://writewyattuk.com/2016/09/22/beyond-the-dandelion-adventure-having-words-with-ajay-saggar-and-marcus-parnell/

[Norton Canes]

Front 242 - Never Stop!

Released 1989





Alternative pop history: Highest UK chart position 11 | Weeks on chart 6 | Live performance 'The Clothes Show' BBC1 14^th May (Belgian New Beat fashion special)

[daf]

The B-52's – Bushfire



Featured on the album 'Cosmic Thing' - released in June 1989

Following the death of guitarist Ricky Wilson in 1985 and the short promotional campaign for their 1986 album Bouncing Off the Satellites, the group mutually agreed to part ways indefinitely. The group's popularity had declined in the late 1980s and so it was unknown, both to the public and amongst the group, whether the band would record another album in the foreseeable future.

However, this changed in 1988 when, prompted by drummer/guitarist Keith Strickland, the band began to group together and write new songs. Cindy Wilson described this as a healing process for herself and the band after her brother's death three years prior. As the album began to take shape, it became clear that the new songs were of a more mature than those of their previous albums, with themes such as anti-capitalism, environmentalism, and self-reflection and reminiscence being introduced into songs.

 

Much of the album was written in Woodstock and surrounding areas in upstate New York, a place where Strickland and Wilson had relocated to following the group's hiatus, and all four members felt the proximity to nature in these places that was not found in their previous home of New York City aided the creative process to a great extent.

The initial sessions in New York City were produced by Nile Rodgers, who aided the band in the crafting of their songs and of a new, more mature and untimely commercially appealing sound for the album. The rest of the sessions were helmed by producer Don Was in upstate New York, which allowed the band time to greater flesh out more songs amongst their new surroundings, including the future hit "Love Shack".

   

(I originally had Deadbeat Club as my pick from 'Cosmic Thing', but as we've had that one, here - according to Spotify - is the least popular song from the album)

[Astronaut Omens]

Speaking of alternative history, much as I enjoy the KLF's Stadium House and Art Prankster modes, part of me wishes they'd had a modest hit with this early version of 3am and just carried on making album after album chock full of ambienty dance stuff:

The KLF- 3am Eternal (Pure Trance Version)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jzmtN05YjNU

[jamiefairlie]

The Mekons - I Am Crazy

https://youtu.be/dyJWso4YKfQ



Formed in 1976 by a group of University of Leeds art students: Jon Langford, Kevin Lycett, Mark White, Andy Corrigan and Tom Greenhalgh (the Gang of Four and Delta 5 formed from the same group of students). This is taken from their eighth album,  The Mekons Rock 'n Roll, and showcases their mellower folk side.

[jamiefairlie]

(I originally had Deadbeat Club as my pick from 'Cosmic Thing', but as we've had that one, here - according to Spotify - is the least popular song from the album)

I think "Roam" is my favourite from that album but it was a hit so disqualified from inclusion here.

[jamiefairlie]

The Mighty Lemon Drops - Where Do We Go From Heaven

https://youtu.be/Ul6GUFJc_AE



Formed in the spring of 1985 in Wolverhampton. they released debut single, "Like an Angel", later the same year. This is their eighth singel and also featured on their third album, Laughter. They'd release five albums before breaking up in 1992.

[Brundle-Fly]

Sidi 'H' Bibi - Mano Negra. Released on Virgin in 1989.





One band, I'd have loved to have caught live. Apparemment, ils étaient incendiaires!

Mano Negra were a French band formed in 1986 in Paris and disbanded in 1995. Their music is a mix of punk rock, flamenco, ska, raï, salsa, reggae and African rhythms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-fQHOyeRHM&t

[Oz Oz Alice]

Shavonne - So Tell Me, Tell Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CTc7tXkulA

This freestyle record is, I feel, very ahead of its time with the pitch shifting chopped up vocals that put me in mind of something that could've been released on Night Slugs ten years ago or on one of SOPHIE's productions. Sadly I can't find much about this record but ever since I first heard it it's been a regular feature of mixes made for friends.

[Oz Oz Alice]

Claudia T - Fatal Destination

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtJ6Cm5YBmk

Even in 89 this Italo record would've sounded very dated: the most information I can find about this is that Claudia T was a duo of producer Michiel Van Der Kuy and singer Claudia Robbens whose website touts upcoming music in 2021. She appears to have written her own bio on Discogs, and here it is:

born in The Haque, Holland. I started with singing at the age of 4 when I heard Maria singing Do,Re,Mi in the Sound of Music. While listening to the songs of my mam singing Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald and the classical songs of Maria Callas I felt music became a part of my life. During school I sang in bands and loved to act too. I wrote acts and songs and every friday afternoon I played for my classmates. All kinds of music from classic, country, blues, gospel, soul and jazz made me the woman and singer I am now.
I love to write about the usual things in life, happiness and love. It's a privilege to make songs and paintings to express yourself and a great gift when it can open hearts of people. I found good musicians to work with and to share this inspiration. My first single was with Robby van Leeuwen from Shooking Blue named 'Little fool'. In 1981 I was singing the both ABBA vocals on Stars on 45 a project with producer Jaap Eggermont for which I received a golden record. When I came in that studio I imitated various singers like Karen Carpenter, Shirley Bassy, Barbra Streisand and ABBA. After that project I knew I wanted to write my own songs. During the years after that I was singing jazz in the jazzclubs of The Haque. I was lucky to work with jazz pianist Bert van der Brink, Rob van der Broeck and other musicians.In the last years there was time to find my own style a mix between blues, jazz, folk and pop.

There's no blues, jazz or folk to be found in this however it is a hi-NRG tinged Italo record with ridiculously overwrought lyrics and hyperactive drum programming: just the way I like it.

[gilbertharding]

The Walkingseeds had a good 1989.

They released the Sensory Deprivation Chamber Quartet mini album, featuring guitar and production by The Bevis Frond https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1rdkIV1s1E

And they released the Shaved Beatnik EP, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHUn7A6-g2U

Frank Martin (vocals), Bob Parker (guitar), and John Neesam (drums) had previously worked together as the Mel-o-Tones, releasing a mini-LP and an EP on Liverpool label Probe Plus. They met while students at Liverpool art school 1982-84, as was Martin Dempsey[1] (ex-Yachts), also in the Mel-o-Tones. After appearing as The Corinthians for a few months, during which time they recorded a seven-track demo, they decided on a change of name to Walkingseeds, and debuted in June 1986 with the Know Too Much EP, still on Probe Plus.[2][3] The band's sound was characterised as "psychedelic grunge".[3] Neesam departed and the others drafted in former Marshmallow Overcoat guitarist Barry Sutton and drummer Tony Mogan.

After the Mark Chapman single on their own Moral Burro label, they returned to Probe Plus with their debut album, Skullfuck (the title influenced by a Grateful Dead album cover), released in late 1987. [3] Skullfuck was later cited by Nirvana's Kurt Cobain as an influence.[4] The band worked with Kramer on the second album, Upwind of Disaster, Downwind of Atonement, released on Glass Records in 1989. Sutton departed to join The La's and was replaced by Andy Rowan for the Shaved Beatnik EP. The band drafted in Nick Saloman (aka The Bevis Frond) and brought in Lee Webster as a replacement for Rowan. The Sensory Deprivation Chamber Quartet Dwarf mini-album followed in 1989, and was their last release for Glass. After a split single with Bevis Frond, they moved on to Paperhouse Records for their next album, Bad Orb, Whirling Ball (1990).

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

The Orchids - It's Only Obvious



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiA5zOcHmok

Anyone for more fey Scottish indie pop?

The Orchids are a Scottish band that achieved success with Sarah Records. Starting with a melancholy guitar pop sound on their debut album Lyceum and contemporaneous singles, they moved on to become more keyboard and sample/effects-based for their second and third albums, Unholy Soul and Striving For the Lazy Perfection, possibly as a result of their producer, Ian Carmichael, who was a member of dance band One Dove.

They went quiet in 1994 after their final release on Sarah Records, only surfacing in 1995 to play at the Sarah farewell party. They reunited in 2004 and have since released three albums.

[daf]

Robyn Hitchcock 'n' The Egyptians ‎– Madonna of the Wasps



Released as a single in the US and Australia in April/July 1989 - did not chart

Opening track from the album 'Queen Elvis' which features Peter Buck from Nigel and the Crosses guesting on trad. arr. jangly guitar.

[jamiefairlie]

The Ocean Blue - Myron

https://youtu.be/_VmT5-EroYo



Formed in Hershey, Pennsylvania in 1986. Its original members included David Schelzel on lead vocals/guitar, Steve Lau on keyboards/saxophone, Bobby Mittan on bass guitar and Rob Minnig on drums and vocals. This is from their self-titled debut album.

[Brundle-Fly]

Patience Of A Saint - Electronic  Released on Factory in 1989.





My highlight from the classy debut album. Strange how they just stopped.

Electronic formed around 1988 by Bernard Sumner (Joy Division, New Order) and Johnny Marr (The Smiths) to follow a more "electronic" style of music, blending synthesizers with guitars and rock with contemporary dance music.

Despite huge international commercial success and collaborations with Neil Tennant, the band has been on indefinite hiatus since 1999.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wXQZNC1864

[Astronaut Omens]

MC Lyte- Cappucino
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afPl-lQ-Slw



MC Lyte was the first female rapper to release a full length LP, 1988's Lyte as a Rock. Cappucino, a narrative rap partly about drugs, partly about the risks of dying by being in the wrong place in the wrong time is the highlight of her follow-up, Eyes On This, was graced with one of those videos where every single line gets acted out.

[Astronaut Omens]

Wood Allen- Airport '89
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaK0GihOo-E

Banging medley of then-in-vogue samples by hitmakers Black Box under another name. The screaming vocal is apparently a Deep Purple sample.
The name of this band cracks me up. I bet they thought it was a giggle too!

[gilbertharding]

The hip sound of young Camden, it's Silverfish - Jolene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8jQ5HR2YqM

Silverfish were a UK-based indie rock band, which formed in the late 1980s, and first performed in Camden in 1988. The band split up in 1993.

Their lead singer was Scottish-born Lesley Rankine. The band had a high octane, indie punk metal sound that was set alight by Rankine's distinctive vocals and strongly feminist views. Famous lyrics "Hips, Tits, Lips, Power" from the single "Big Bad Baby Pig Squeal" adorned a popular T-shirt of the time.

The other members of the band were; guitarist Andrew "Fuzz" Duprey; bassist Chris P Mowforth; and drummer Stuart Watson. Founding member Fuzz was a regular "face" at London indie gigs of the time, and is now a regular DJ at the Dublin Castle pub in Camden Town, London. The band stood out from many of their scene-contemporaries with a lineup that was mixed in terms of both gender and ethnicity and a setlist that was more liberally strewn with expletives than that of anyone else. Silverfish were the main focus of the so-called Camden lurch scene, a term invented by the music press to describe the fact that many of the prominent indie bands (outside of the dominant alternative dance and shoegazing scenes) of the time resided in Camden, and that they lurched.[citation needed]