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Duran Duran, Duran Duran, 1982
A band I almost saw when no one had heard of them, only because they refused to be a support act to UB40 at a college gig around 1980. Rebellion in music was already becoming passé when Duran Duran released one of the definitive MTV-friendly albums of the brief post-Roxy Music 'New Romantics' era of Brit pop, and saw them largely living up to chief architect Nick Rhodes's great ambitions but only in terms of sales: otherwise it revealed a superficial musical vision that meant I never gave them much of a hearing later other than the ubiquitously unavoidable singles. I suspected (and I think I was proved right) that they'd never get around to writing stuff that made as much straightforward sense as the soft-porn 'Girls on Film', reckoning that the oblique non sequiturs of Simon LeBon's lyrics were mostly trite and uninteresting, at least in comparison to the self-contained weirdness of Simple Minds. Hearing this now makes 1982 seem such a long time ago – favourite track then: 'Tel Aviv'. Favourite track now: 'Tel Aviv', still the one that sounds so much more well-thought-out than the rest.
Howard Jones, Human's Lib, 1984
Human's Lib was the kind of album that, if you had any self respect in your local record store, you asked for in a low voice accompanied by a discreet cough. Despite Howard Jones's healthy dash of cynicism he was never cool in the rock n' roll sense, rightly getting it in the neck for being too PC long before anyone else even thought about half the stuff he did (fr'instance not allowing swearing on the tour bus, a trait repeated decades later by, of all people, Scott Stapp of Creed). Like his contemporaries ABC and Nik Kershaw, at least Jones was fresh and positive but he took it to a self-conscious degree that even the likes of ABC couldn't emulate, not that they wanted or ever needed to. All the music bar some percussion was electronic keyboards and rhythm boxes, not especially imaginative but infused with his own lyrical new-age spiritualism that he wanted others to emulate and aspire to; to that extent Jones set himself up for a fall and fall he did, though not in any tragic sense as people just kind of switched off. The two stand-out tracks were the ethereal and Glastonbury-inspired 'Hide and Seek' and the cynical 'What Is Love?' but the first hit was 'New Song', a slice of puritanical nonsense that even Jones himself became entirely sick of. There have been several albums from him since, but one was more than enough for most.
Ultravox, Vienna, 1980
In the context of what went before it wasn't Ultravox's finest hour (that was Ha Ha Ha!), but their breakthrough album was most certainly Vienna. With a b/w photograph of the band by Brian Griffin beneath a challengingly austere typeface, it was one of the most trend-setting album covers of the early 1980s but this fine baptism also became a kind of last rite. Vienna almost drew a line in the sand that you were expected to cross: owning it would somehow give you kudos whether you liked the music or not. The opening track 'Astradyne' sets the tone particularly well, but even though it seems there are barely a dozen chords on the rest of the album Ultravox do get quite a bit of mileage out of them. Midge Ure's guitar now sounds far too samey but at the time it was the edge needed to help distinguish them from lesser neo-pop around at the time. The small tragedy about Vienna was the ultimate fate of the title track when released as a single, being unjustly kept off the British No. 1 spot by a piece of totally unfunny crap that made everyone who was serious about British music cry into their beer. Things weren't quite the same for Ultravox after this; despite a few more hits British pop was moving on in a way that would leave them spiked to the spot, unable to surpass the remote and teutonic vibe of Vienna. It was a small landmark in Britpop that has since been paved over time and again to the extent that it's now mostly ignored by anyone who wasn't around at the time, unjustly so.
Paul Young, No Parlez, 1983
Paul Young's first solo album since leaving the (completely unheard of) Q-Tips hit the UK scene in a rather unexpected way. Anything soul-related was hard to find by British artists outside of the distinctive Northern Soul sound, yet suddenly here was this soulful white voice from a guy who had gained a reputation for doing justice to the songs of his black idols. In spite of several covers (including a half-decent version of Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart') No Parlez was far from being a karaoke album, keeping at its heart the authenticity that he delivered to both his own composition 'Broken Man' and also Marvin Gaye's 'Wherever I Lay My Hat', a version which famously stopped everyone dead in their tracks when they heard it for the first time. The outstanding musician on the album was Pino Palladino whose fretless bass was superior even to that of Mick Karn, but other things about No Parlez didn't work, such as his over-reliance on electronic percussion and an occasional, unfortunate disposition towards cuteness (offset, it has to be said, by the sharpness of 'Sex'). A few more albums saw Paul Young disappear back into the shadows from whence he came, unable to recapture the singles success which No Parlez gave him. He made mostly the right moves at the right time and even though that famous voice is the same he's been patchy ever since, and he's still kicking around in the margins today. Oh, the regret...
Duran Duran, Duran Duran, 1982
A band I almost saw when no one had heard of them, only because they refused to be a support act to UB40 at a college gig around 1980. Rebellion in music was already becoming passé when Duran Duran released one of the definitive MTV-friendly albums of the brief post-Roxy Music 'New Romantics' era of Brit pop, and saw them largely living up to chief architect Nick Rhodes's great ambitions but only in terms of sales: otherwise it revealed a superficial musical vision that meant I never gave them much of a hearing later other than the ubiquitously unavoidable singles. I suspected (and I think I was proved right) that they'd never get around to writing stuff that made as much straightforward sense as the soft-porn 'Girls on Film', reckoning that the oblique non sequiturs of Simon LeBon's lyrics were mostly trite and uninteresting, at least in comparison to the self-contained weirdness of Simple Minds. Hearing this now makes 1982 seem such a long time ago – favourite track then: 'Tel Aviv'. Favourite track now: 'Tel Aviv', still the one that sounds so much more well-thought-out than the rest.
Howard Jones, Human's Lib, 1984
Human's Lib was the kind of album that, if you had any self respect in your local record store, you asked for in a low voice accompanied by a discreet cough. Despite Howard Jones's healthy dash of cynicism he was never cool in the rock n' roll sense, rightly getting it in the neck for being too PC long before anyone else even thought about half the stuff he did (fr'instance not allowing swearing on the tour bus, a trait repeated decades later by, of all people, Scott Stapp of Creed). Like his contemporaries ABC and Nik Kershaw, at least Jones was fresh and positive but he took it to a self-conscious degree that even the likes of ABC couldn't emulate, not that they wanted or ever needed to. All the music bar some percussion was electronic keyboards and rhythm boxes, not especially imaginative but infused with his own lyrical new-age spiritualism that he wanted others to emulate and aspire to; to that extent Jones set himself up for a fall and fall he did, though not in any tragic sense as people just kind of switched off. The two stand-out tracks were the ethereal and Glastonbury-inspired 'Hide and Seek' and the cynical 'What Is Love?' but the first hit was 'New Song', a slice of puritanical nonsense that even Jones himself became entirely sick of. There have been several albums from him since, but one was more than enough for most.
Ultravox, Vienna, 1980
In the context of what went before it wasn't Ultravox's finest hour (that was Ha Ha Ha!), but their breakthrough album was most certainly Vienna. With a b/w photograph of the band by Brian Griffin beneath a challengingly austere typeface, it was one of the most trend-setting album covers of the early 1980s but this fine baptism also became a kind of last rite. Vienna almost drew a line in the sand that you were expected to cross: owning it would somehow give you kudos whether you liked the music or not. The opening track 'Astradyne' sets the tone particularly well, but even though it seems there are barely a dozen chords on the rest of the album Ultravox do get quite a bit of mileage out of them. Midge Ure's guitar now sounds far too samey but at the time it was the edge needed to help distinguish them from lesser neo-pop around at the time. The small tragedy about Vienna was the ultimate fate of the title track when released as a single, being unjustly kept off the British No. 1 spot by a piece of totally unfunny crap that made everyone who was serious about British music cry into their beer. Things weren't quite the same for Ultravox after this; despite a few more hits British pop was moving on in a way that would leave them spiked to the spot, unable to surpass the remote and teutonic vibe of Vienna. It was a small landmark in Britpop that has since been paved over time and again to the extent that it's now mostly ignored by anyone who wasn't around at the time, unjustly so.
Paul Young, No Parlez, 1983
Paul Young's first solo album since leaving the (completely unheard of) Q-Tips hit the UK scene in a rather unexpected way. Anything soul-related was hard to find by British artists outside of the distinctive Northern Soul sound, yet suddenly here was this soulful white voice from a guy who had gained a reputation for doing justice to the songs of his black idols. In spite of several covers (including a half-decent version of Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart') No Parlez was far from being a karaoke album, keeping at its heart the authenticity that he delivered to both his own composition 'Broken Man' and also Marvin Gaye's 'Wherever I Lay My Hat', a version which famously stopped everyone dead in their tracks when they heard it for the first time. The outstanding musician on the album was Pino Palladino whose fretless bass was superior even to that of Mick Karn, but other things about No Parlez didn't work, such as his over-reliance on electronic percussion and an occasional, unfortunate disposition towards cuteness (offset, it has to be said, by the sharpness of 'Sex'). A few more albums saw Paul Young disappear back into the shadows from whence he came, unable to recapture the singles success which No Parlez gave him. He made mostly the right moves at the right time and even though that famous voice is the same he's been patchy ever since, and he's still kicking around in the margins today. Oh, the regret...
