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peteryoung
[ part 2 ] [ part 3 ] [ part 4 ] [ part 5 ]
Tubeway Army, Replicas, 1979
When I used to see Tubeway Army play punk at underground gigs in Reading in the late 1970s, Gary Numan used to swear blind he'd make it onto Top of the Pops one day. It was a very different Numan that finally achieved that ambition with 'Are Friends Electric' – androgynous, emotionless and scarily robotic – but when he did it became one of those memorable TOTP moments. Here was a man who didn't just read Philip K. Dick, he lived it. I played this album to death for a couple of years though was never drawn into the androgynous and rather goth Numan scene, as every other album he did was only 20% there for me and I lost interest around 1983. 'Replicas' is the weakest track, but 'Are Friends Electric' is still as good today as it ever was.
The Human League, Dare!, 1981
In their early days I never quite 'got' The Human League; there was something about them I didn't quite trust, (though later I trusted Heaven 17 even less) and their coolness smacked of artificiality. Then suddenly Dare! was revealed as a genre-defining album of joyous and uplifting pop that came from the heart, leaving behind any post-punk New Romantic angst: all you had to do was enjoy them and leave the sulking to lesser bands. They may have written better songs later in their career (well, not that many) but it was one of those albums that captured the future promise of 1980s British music: there was a direction, and this was the direction.
ABC, The Lexicon of Love, 1982
It's hard to underestimate the impact this album had on the British generation who first heard it: The Lexicon of Love was simply Passion Itself. Every song had the elements of what positive 80s British chart music stood for, Trevor Horn's production was rightly hailed as flawless, and Martin Fry reckoned he could define the rest of the decade with a string of equally stunning albums. You actually believed he could do it, too. But this was to be hubris, this was Icarus flying too close to the sun. ABC's second effort Beauty Stab was a confused disappointment, the band fell apart, and Fry fell victim to Hodgkin's Disease. I listen to this album now with thoughts of what might have been; The Lexicon of Love was a rarely-witnessed document of musical perfection that was a privilege to have experienced fresh and new, but in retrospect it should have been obvious: ABC shone so bright they could only burn out twice as fast. It was fleeting, but it was so worth it.
Simple Minds, Sparkle in the Rain, 1983
It is an abiding regret that I never saw Simple Minds live, at the time they did Sparkle in the Rain. 'Waterfront' soaked the airwaves, 'Speed Your Love To Me' was epic, and 'The Kick Inside Of Me' is still kicking. Without us even noticing, Simple Minds were cunningly moving into the rockier end of the Britpop scene, and Sparkle in the Rain was a kind of declaration in that respect. Now we all knew where they wanted to go, though not everyone approved. This is something of a bridging album, probably the last they did before becoming a clichéd stadium rock band, a move which produced some good songs in their own right but lost Simple Minds their unique strangeness. This was also an album that could make you feel so damn self-conscious singing along to but ultimately you couldn't care less, even if their lyrics did make even less sense than The Cocteau Twins.
Tubeway Army, Replicas, 1979
When I used to see Tubeway Army play punk at underground gigs in Reading in the late 1970s, Gary Numan used to swear blind he'd make it onto Top of the Pops one day. It was a very different Numan that finally achieved that ambition with 'Are Friends Electric' – androgynous, emotionless and scarily robotic – but when he did it became one of those memorable TOTP moments. Here was a man who didn't just read Philip K. Dick, he lived it. I played this album to death for a couple of years though was never drawn into the androgynous and rather goth Numan scene, as every other album he did was only 20% there for me and I lost interest around 1983. 'Replicas' is the weakest track, but 'Are Friends Electric' is still as good today as it ever was.
The Human League, Dare!, 1981
In their early days I never quite 'got' The Human League; there was something about them I didn't quite trust, (though later I trusted Heaven 17 even less) and their coolness smacked of artificiality. Then suddenly Dare! was revealed as a genre-defining album of joyous and uplifting pop that came from the heart, leaving behind any post-punk New Romantic angst: all you had to do was enjoy them and leave the sulking to lesser bands. They may have written better songs later in their career (well, not that many) but it was one of those albums that captured the future promise of 1980s British music: there was a direction, and this was the direction.
ABC, The Lexicon of Love, 1982
It's hard to underestimate the impact this album had on the British generation who first heard it: The Lexicon of Love was simply Passion Itself. Every song had the elements of what positive 80s British chart music stood for, Trevor Horn's production was rightly hailed as flawless, and Martin Fry reckoned he could define the rest of the decade with a string of equally stunning albums. You actually believed he could do it, too. But this was to be hubris, this was Icarus flying too close to the sun. ABC's second effort Beauty Stab was a confused disappointment, the band fell apart, and Fry fell victim to Hodgkin's Disease. I listen to this album now with thoughts of what might have been; The Lexicon of Love was a rarely-witnessed document of musical perfection that was a privilege to have experienced fresh and new, but in retrospect it should have been obvious: ABC shone so bright they could only burn out twice as fast. It was fleeting, but it was so worth it.
Simple Minds, Sparkle in the Rain, 1983
It is an abiding regret that I never saw Simple Minds live, at the time they did Sparkle in the Rain. 'Waterfront' soaked the airwaves, 'Speed Your Love To Me' was epic, and 'The Kick Inside Of Me' is still kicking. Without us even noticing, Simple Minds were cunningly moving into the rockier end of the Britpop scene, and Sparkle in the Rain was a kind of declaration in that respect. Now we all knew where they wanted to go, though not everyone approved. This is something of a bridging album, probably the last they did before becoming a clichéd stadium rock band, a move which produced some good songs in their own right but lost Simple Minds their unique strangeness. This was also an album that could make you feel so damn self-conscious singing along to but ultimately you couldn't care less, even if their lyrics did make even less sense than The Cocteau Twins.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-27 08:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-27 08:16 am (UTC)Thanks. I love it when people post about music that means a lot to them. I invariably learn something :)
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Date: 2004-07-27 08:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-27 08:52 am (UTC)'Human League tried it, but by not smiling enough, and by having only one half-way decent tune, they came across like a surly, washed-up ABBA.'
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Date: 2004-07-27 09:00 am (UTC)And I'm saving Haircut One Hundred for part 2.
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Date: 2004-07-27 09:07 am (UTC)Me too. I think Martin Fry knew what he was talking about when wanted his musicians to understand "the meaning of a clean white shirt".
no subject
Date: 2004-07-27 09:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-30 01:22 am (UTC)