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

[jamiefairlie]

And Also The Trees - Slow Pulse Boy

https://youtu.be/1lPNn2MMclo



Formed in 1979 in Inkberrow, a large village in Worcestershire, with a lineup featuring two sets of brothers: Simon Huw Jones (vocals), Justin Jones (guitar), Graham Havas (bass) and Nick Havas (drums). They released their debut single in 1983 and this is taken from their second album, Virus Meadow. They went on to release 14 albums, the latest of which was in 2016.

[daf]

Richard Thompson - A Bone Through Her Nose



Opening track on the album 'Daring Adventures' - released in June 1986

In 1985 Richard Thompson signed with PolyGram and received a sizeable advance. He and Nancy Covey married at an alcohol-free wedding that included a who's who of roots-music performers who Covey knew well from the Los Angeles music scene. After their wedding, Thompson moved his home and working base to California.

 

In 1986 he released Daring Adventures, which was recorded in Los Angeles and produced by Mitchell Froom. Daring Adventures, with a rich sound, markedly different production and use of American session players, was perceived by some as evidence of Thompson's increasing "Americanisation". Perhaps more significantly, the album continued the trend, begun with Across A Crowded Room, of Thompson's songs moving away from the seemingly personal material and towards the character sketches and narratives for which he has since become famous.

Fun Fact : In once shared a room at the London YMCA with Thompson's Northumbrian Pipe maker in the late '80s (Hello Alan Ginsberg!) [no, not that one!]

[poodlefaker]

The Flatmates' guitarist ran the record label iirc, which must've helped getting their stuff released. Fair enough, I suppose; Alan McGee put out plenty of his own bollocks on Creation, as did Daniel Miller on Mute.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

But The Flatmates were actually pretty good.

[jamiefairlie]

Yeah, they were (more to come next year!)

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Felt - Ballad of The Band



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcQs4sng8CU

No need to introduce this lot, as they've been featured in the thread several times already. Stuart Murdoch is a big fan, he idolised Lawrence, and you can clearly detect the sound of early Belle & Sebastian in this particular song.

Not vocally, of course. Lawrence sounds like Lou Reed, whereas Stuart was indebted to Donovan and Nick Drake, but the music is a B&S blueprint.

[jamiefairlie]

Half Man Half Biscuit - All I Want for Christmas Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit

https://youtu.be/ay4KUtQgI10




The B-side to "The Trumpton Riots" and perhaps one of the finest song titles ever. The lyrics are also a work of art, perfectly capturing the thwarted toy-based ambitions of a 70s childhood.

There was one in a gang,
Who had Scalextric,
And because of that,
He thought he was better than you.
Everyday after school,
You'd go around there to play it,
Hoping to compete for some kind of championship,
And it always took about 15 billion hours to set the track up.
And even when you did, the thing never seemed to work.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

This particular portion of the thread must be an absolute nightmare for people who don't like twee indie-pop. But it's 1986, and our alternative pop history was dominated by That Sort of Thing.

[Better Midlands]

Carl Bean - I Was Born This Way (Better Days Mix)



This accapella introed remix by Bruce Forest & Shep Pettibone of Carl Bean's 1977 gay anthem originally released on Motown is probably the most uplifting thing ever.

Bruce Forest: "Ok, Carl Bean, funny story. It was around 1985. I was already playing the Motown 12" when I got a call from my pal Eddie O'Laughlin, who owned Next Plateau records, asking if I knew the track, and should he reissue it. I suggested he do so. A few weeks later he asked me to come by the office and pick the right master from a box of 1/2"s he had received.

I opened the box, and started rooting through 1/2" tape, and at the bottom...found the multitrack. After breathing into a paper bag for a few minutes to calm down I asked Eddie if he would mind if I "borrowed it" to see if anything interesting was on it. Sure, take it he says. (!!!) I run home and call Shep. "OMFG, I have the Carl Bean multitrack! Let's call Arthur (Baker) and get a night at Shakedown." (Arthur's studio back then.) We managed to get a free night (maybe five hours total, on a manual desk, so all the studio work was done in that short time. Redid the drums, added percussion, and a sampled finger snap...(don't remember if it's Shep's or me) but kept the original bassline, with a doubled (pretty much just for the low end) synth bassline underneath to give it some meat. We worked like maniacs and didn't bother with edits...we just cut reel after reel of 1/4". Dozens of them. We knew we would edit it at Shep's apartment eventually.

The Better Days mix was actually the first thing we edited. Hacked it together, brought it to the club and they almost died when I put it on. I've never quite seen a reaction at any club like that. The floor stopped, someone screamed, the place went volcanic - and that was still during the a capella intro. Played it off tape for months..finally we had to edit the rest, which we (very slowly) did, but nothing seemed to work as well as that first edit. Remember we had one 1/4" machine, and we only had the master tapes..no copies, so what we used, we couldn't use on anything else. So, every edit is different passes.

But all in all, it wasn't a huge overdub production like most of the stuff we did back then. Sure, we went to 48 from 24 track, but it had lots of great hidden stuff that the original hadn't used. It's easy when you have a great original, right? And we knew exactly what would work at Better Days, so it wasn't a guessing game to try and figure out an audience. Also, it was never supposed to be commercial...it was just for me to play, really. After Eddie saw the response, he decided to release it, and the rest is history, so to speak....

Dimitri says the reason he puts fingersnaps on Salsoul/Philly records is because it worked so well on our mix of Carl. I think the sound quality is what would be expected in a rushed mix that was mastered off 1/4" tape, but he uses it to test sound systems.

Shep was asked recently about that track, and he said the magic we created in a few rushed hours on a manual desk was something he never experienced before or again.

The funniest thing to me is that of all the mixes, the Better Days mix is the only one without verses: it's just a 10 minute vamp/chorus/coda, but it's the one that gets people nuts.

The best record I ever mixed? Probably not. But it's absolutely my favorite, hands down." 

[Oz Oz Alice]

The Tear Garden - Ophelia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCkNA8K9fdE

Another proclamation from the castle Ka-Spel, next year will certainly also contain an entry from The Tear Garden. The Tear Garden came about when cEvin Key from Skinny Puppy wanted Edward Ka-Spel to add vocals to an existing Skinny Puppy instrumental - this became The Centre Bullet, but my favourite track on the first Tear Garden release is this. I really love the vocal on this.

[Oz Oz Alice]

Gina Desire - Breathless

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

Gina Desire was a catch-all name for several Bobby Orlando productions each using different session singers in aid of the same campy sleaze that emanates from everything he touches. This is the best of them. Here with extra rhythmic heavy breathing and an even more explicit rob from New Order and the Italo records New Order were stealing from than usual in the drum breakdown. It is utterly ridiculous and irresistible.

[daf]

But it's 1986

1986 was always touted as the 'nadir of all pop music' by the music press - which I could never understand as my three favourite bands [Smiths, Elvis Costello and XTC] were all hitting their creative peaks right about now.

[jamiefairlie]

There are times when the charts and great music overlap and times when they separate. I think the mid-80s is one the latter eras. It was the nadir of over-production, massive drums, Fairlight synths and so on. In the indie realm though, it was a fertile time.

[daf]

Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Crimes of Paris



Featured on the album "Blood & Chocolate" - released in September 1986

Elvis Costello : "This is a record of people beating and twanging things with a fair amount of yelling. It was recorded just over six months after the Hollywood sessions for King of America. The Attractions sole contribution to that album, "Suit of Lights," had been made during our least successful and most bad-tempered days in the studio. The air of suspicion and resentment still lingered as King of America was released and we entered Olympic Studios, London, to make what proved to be our last record together for eight years.

   

"I had written most of the songs very quickly using a 1930s' Gibson Century acoustic guitar that had an attractively clanky sound but provided little invitation to intricate harmony or melody. You can hear what it sounds like in the introduction of "Crimes of Paris." When "Honey, are you straight or are you blind?" came to me in a dream, I had to capture it on a cassette player with just the accompaniment of my slapping on the kitchen counter, as there was no guitar to hand. These were not songs that you had to worry about."

   

"Nick Lowe was producing us for the first time in five years and together with engineer Colin Fairley, agreed to an approach that would get the music recorded before the band and I fell out completely. Olympic's control room still contained some of the Bakelite switches and other arcane features left over from the days when it had hosted sessions by Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones. The live room was big enough for a full orchestra, so we filled it with our live monitor system and played at something approaching stage volume. Although it commonly thought that high volume in the studio creates an uncontrollable sonic picture this, approach seemed to suit the material entirely."

   

"I played a Fender Telecaster on most of the cuts. This lent a harsher edge to the guitar parts as the intro figure of "Uncomplicated" demonstrates. When the spill from bass channel bled onto the drum microphones, we simply turned down the direct signal in order to rebalance. This accounted for both the murky, booming sound of some tracks and our inability to play at a very low dynamic throughout this record. In fact it often made us sound as if we were playing wearing boxing gloves. But somehow this also became a virtue. The intimate final bars of "I want you" were achieved by switching off each of the instrumental tracks until all that can be heard is the sound of the band's performance bleeding into my vocal mike."

     

"The album title and Eamonn Singer's crude cover painting reflected some intense and uncertain sensations. The record might as well have been a blurred polaroid: a smashed-up room, a squashed box of chocolates, some broken glass, and a little blood smeared on the wall. These were just a few of the images I had in mind. The intimate, if not almost pornographic, tone of "Crimes of Paris," "Poor Napoleon," and "I Want You" were typical of my mood at this time. The album was a pissed-off 32- year-old divorcé's version of the musical blueprint with which I had begun my recording career with The Attractions. My relationship with the band had now soured almost beyond repair. We would soon be playing our last concert together for a great number of years. The final song we performed was an improvised take on "Instant Karma." I'm sure it was supposed to mean something at the time."

[Oz Oz Alice]

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Sad Waters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbpVQUAEK00

Possibly my favourite Nick Cave song from my favourite Bad Seeds album until Ghosteen 33 years later which it holds joint position with (that's quite some consistency). The instrumental sections to me, sound like a river stretching forever that I could watch for as long. Having scanned the credits I believe Mick Harvey deserves a writing credit for having basically played everything on it that isn't Nick's organ and harmonica.

[Phil_A]

They Might Be Giants - Don't Lets Start





The Two Johns' debut single which technically wasn't released until the following year, but it is on their debut self-titled album which did come out in '86.

They Might Be Giants (often abbreviated as TMBG) is an American alternative rock band formed in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell. During TMBG's early years, Flansburgh and Linnell frequently performed as a duo, often accompanied by a drum machine. [...]The group is known for their uniquely experimental and absurdist style of alternative music, typically using surreal, humorous lyrics and unconventional instruments in their songs. Over their career, they have found success on the modern rock and college radio charts. They have also found success in children's music, and in theme music for several television programs and films. The duo has been credited as vital in the creation of the prolific DIY music scene in Brooklyn in the mid-1980s.

[daf]

The Singing Hotpots – We're Off To Button Moon



Released in 1986 - reached #23 on John Peel's Festive Fifty - did not chart

Button Moon was a British children's television programme broadcast in the 1980s on ITV. Thames Television produced each episode, which lasted ten minutes and featured the adventures of Mr. Spoon who, in each episode, travels to Button Moon in his homemade rocket ship. All the characters are based on kitchen utensils, as are many of the props. Narration was by Robin Parkinson, and incidental music was written by Peter Goslin.

   

Button Moon was originally conceived by Ian Allen as a stage show for Playboard Puppets in 1978. Allen adapted it into a TV series for Thames two years later. The first series of thirteen programmes was transmitted in 1980. A further six series of thirteen programmes followed, making a total of ninety-one different adventures. The show's theme tune was composed and sung by the A Very Peculiar Practice actor Peter Davison and his wife Sandra Dickinson - who had previously released the self-penned single "A Big Star in Hollywood" in 1975.

     

Oddly, neither were credited as writers on the 1986 single by The Singing Hotpts - which was largely based on the theme tune - so either their compositional contributions have been slightly overstated . . . or they got totally shafted!

[Johnny Yesno]

Skinny Puppy - Chainsaw



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

From their second album Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse, which was the first album with Dwayne Goettle who replaced Bill Leeb when he left to focus on Front Line Assembly.

[famethrowa]

Blimey, Tristan Farnon with a Fender bass! I never knew.

[jamiefairlie]

Blimey, Tristan Farnon with a Fender bass! I never knew.

Dr Hoo..k

[daf]

Blimey, Tristan Farnon with a Fender bass! I never knew.

He was originally planning on a career as a songwriter before acting took over :

Peter Davison : "The truth is I carried on writing songs for many years and I still do from time-to-time, acting always got in the way. It was one of those things that was on the back-burner and if acting gave me up then I would go back to songwriting and dig out these songs and see if I could sell them. I had a music publisher and I had a couple of songs recorded. I still haven't given up on the idea of producing an album, because people might think I'm talking nonsense when I say I've written all these songs so part of me wants to prove it was true. Tragically in this obsession with writing my own songs, in the late 60s and early 70s I never learnt anybody else's songs. I was useless at those parties when people would hand me a guitar and say play a Beatles song or play this, I couldn't play any of them I never learnt them."

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

The Pogues - The Body of an American



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOZHwWFjb30

This track from the Poguetry in Motion EP gained a new lease of life (absolutely no pun intended) when it was used in The Wire during scenes in which the Baltimore po-lice held boozy wakes for their fallen comrades. Those scenes were a work of fiction, in reality they don't actually place the corpses of recently deceased police officers on Irish pub pool tables while getting royally pissed, but that doesn't matter. It all works beautifully within the context of the programme.

[Jockice]

There are times when the charts and great music overlap and times when they separate. I think the mid-80s is one the latter eras. It was the nadir of over-production, massive drums, Fairlight synths and so on. In the indie realm though, it was a fertile time.

It's certainly the year so far in which I bought more of the tracks mentioned than any other.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I was eleven in 1986. I think the only single I bought (or had bought for me) that year was Living Doll by Cliff Richard & The Young Ones. Ever since it's been impossible to listen to Cliff's original version without adding "Fies my soul!" at the appropriate juncture.

[Brundle-Fly]

Rockit Miss USA - Sigue Sigue Sputnik Released on Parlophone in 1986.





First band to bring 'Industrial' to the masses? Explosive debut single, Love Missile F1-11,  but SSS were heavily criticised in the press for being gimmicky/ all style over substance. I suppose they were the Menswe@r of their day? A couple of moderately successful hit singles and then gone.  Their image and album artwork are still striking.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik were founded in 1982 in London by former Generation X bassist Tony James.
Sigue Sigue Sputnik, as a supposed reference to a Russian street gang and meaning, in rough translation "burn, burn satellite" ("sigue" coming from a form of the Russian verb сжигать, meaning burn, and Sputnik referencing the first man-made satellite launched by the Soviet Union in 1957).

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

[poodlefaker]

SSS were supposed to be gimmicky, style-over-substance, as I recall.  It was a Malcolm McLaren-type rock-n-roll-swindle concept. But even the NME got cross about it, iirc. What I don't remember anyone saying about them was that for all the futuristic "next generation of RnR" stuff, all their songs were complete rip-offs of Suicide, a band from 10+ years previous.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

SSS were supposed to be gimmicky, style-over-substance, as I recall.  It was a Malcolm McLaren-type rock-n-roll-swindle concept. But even the NME got cross about it, iirc. What I don't remember anyone saying about them was that for all the futuristic "next generation of RnR" stuff, all their songs were complete rip-offs of Suicide, a band from 10+ years previous.

True, but F1-11 is an absolute banger.

[Jockice]

21st Century Boy was even better.

[Hooverbag Sherlocks]

Radiorama - Vampires
Single released in Europe, 1986





Blackness in the night like a pigeon's on the sky. Noise of chains mystery mania. You've got Limmy to thank/curse for bringing this to my attention/draining vital essence. A indelible slab of chugging Italo-disco dedicated to Dracul, Dracul of frenzy cuss, the enemy of shine, who (inter alia) screeches, screeches all months and days and fought the flies like a knight. All retreated into moon tease, I'm afraid of vambires. Follow up singles eulogised the Yeti and Aliens before they abandoned mythology for humdrum Eurobeat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY_i2_iqV-s

[daf]

Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians ‎– Bass



Featured on the album 'Element of Light' - released in 1986

Element of Light was the fifth studio album by singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock and his second with his backing band, The Egyptians. Most of the album was recorded at Alaska Studios and Berry Street, but two tracks, "The President" and "Lady Waters & The Hooded One", were live recordings made for the BBC, with overdubs recorded on BBC Mobile and at Alaska.

     

The album title derives from the song "Airscape", which has been cited several times by Hitchcock as a favourite among his own compositions, and concerns his favourite beach, Compton Beach on the Isle of Wight, which also provided a backdrop for the cover shots. He was inspired by learning about the erosion of the cliffs, and imagining the ghosts of people who had walked the cliffs centuries ago now suspended over the water.

Another Bendy-bass classic!