CRC Retro Mix #49

Clearance Rack Classics Retro 80s and 90s Dance Mix by DJ Tintin

1. Heartbeat City - The Cars
2. All Roads Lead To Rome - The Stranglers
3. I Die: You Die - Gary Numan
4. Auto Music (Razormaid! Mix) - Our Daughter's Wedding
5. To Cut A Long Story Short (12" Version) - Spandau Ballet
6. Fun City (12" Mix) - Soft Cell
7. 8:15 To Nowhere - Vicious Pink
8. Telecommunication - A Flock Of Seagulls
9. New Life (Remix) - Depeche Mode
10. Devil Inside (12" Remix) - INXS
11. Still Angry - Book Of Love
12. Today (Extended Version) - Talk Talk
13. A Forest (Tree Mix) - The Cure
14. The Metro (Extended Version) - Berlin
15. Take On Me (Tony Mansfield 12" Version) - A-ha
Notes and other random things:
So, hello again! Nice to make your acquaintance. Good to finally carve out an evening to record another podcast. I swear, these days I blink and three or four months go by. I suppose, relatively speaking, the same could be said for this episode as it is officially the shortest podcast in CRC history, clocking in at just under one hour. "So, Mr. DJ Tintin," I'm sure you're saying to yourself, "for all my patience waiting for you to give me some new tunes you reward me with LESS music???" It seems that way. You still get the requisite 15 songs, but many of these were single or album versions as opposed to remixes. That's the only defense I have. BUT, look at this artist and track list! Those of you looking for some stuff you haven't heard before may have just hit the mother lode. The Stranglers? Our Daughter's Wedding? Not exactly household names. "Fun City", "Heartbeat City", "Still Angry"? Not exactly the songs anyone would recall off the top of their heads by Soft Cell, The Cars or Book Of Love, respectively. But enough justification. On to the bands ...
So, why were the 80s so great? A loaded question to be sure. But ask yourself how many bands in recent memory could have a member, who owned a hair salon, rent out a space above said hair salon, form a band, get discovered by Bill Nelson of Be Bop Deluxe fame, decide upon wearing women's clothes for a video shot in three days on a shoestring budget and become superstars thanks in some part to a fledgling music network called MTV and a now-famous hairstyle? Such was the fate of A Flock of Seagulls, a band that certainly helped alter my musical trajectory and, with the song I Ran (So Far Away), created one of the most iconic and lasting songs of the decade. THAT is the greatness of the 80s - the fact that music was not yet paint-by-number. There was room for experimentation. Sure, you had to be marketable, but the definition of marketable was fluid. And the rules were fluid. As long as someone in the know heard something they liked or saw a creative spark it was sometimes enough for a label to take a chance on you. Spoken like someone who thinks the music they grew up with is the best, I know. But I ask again: could that backstory exist today? Perhaps, but I just don't see it. As for the song in this podcast, "Telecommunication", it is sort of a cult hit at this point and probably an accidental one at that. "(It's Not Me) Talking" was the first single release by AFOS in 1981, but it was the futuristic lyrics and "wall of sound" energy, later praised by uber-producer Phil Spector, that propelled "Telecommunication" into the clubs and into hearts of new wavers. The tune still sounds cool and futuristic even today and reminds me of a moment in time when musical possibilities were still limitless.
"No sequencers were used" reads the liner notes of Our Daughters Wedding's first EP, "Digital Cowboy". Layne Rico (electronic percussion / synth), Keith Silva (vocals / synth) and Scott Simon (synth / saxophone) wanted everyone to know that their electronic wizardry and sleight of hand was due entirely to coordination and skill and not programming and triggers like many of their contemporaries such as Depeche Mode and OMD, two groups to which ODW was often compared after their switch over from punk rock and guitars to new wave and synths. And while the group, who sang about lawnchairs and made frequent appearances on MTV with Martha Quinn in the early days of the network, somewhat ironically dismissed DM and OMD as being too "gimmicky", the group did score opening slots for some of the giants of the day including Duran Duran, Talk Talk, Iggy Pop, The Psychedelic Furs and U2. They even worked with famed producer Colin Thurston to record the aforementioned EP. Not bad for a US-based band who suffered the slings and arrows and broken beer bottles of misfortune hurled at them for using electronics on stage at a time when punk was still king. But even skill and deigning to employ sequencers could not save the group from a dust up with their label, EMI. According to Scott Simon, the LA office killed the momentum of their full-length album, Moving Windows, which was released in 1982, because a label exec had a personal issue with one of the band's representatives. The track here, Auto Music, is a Razormaid! mix of the lead track to that first and only full-length. The sweet electronic bass line you hear came about from Simon and David Spradley, the producer for Moving Windows, "jamming one morning in our Union Square loft."
To cut a long story short, Spandau Ballet are good. Go buy their records. Seriously, though, Spandau Ballet seems like a perfect name for a slick and sophisticated band who helped spearhead the New Romantic movement, an era of glossy images and high fashion that gave rise to groups like Duran Duran and Visage and others. That is until you remember that, like other groups, SB had their roots in the punk scene and that their name was Allied trench warfare slang for corpses whose bullet-riddled bodies twisted and danced on barbed wire as they were hit by German gunfire. Perhaps they would have been better off going with The Cut or The Makers, both previous band names. But, the name Spandau Ballet stuck as did the amazing voice of Tony Hadley, the Kemp brother's guitar prowess (Martin and Gary), Steve Norman's saxophone riffs and John Keeble's percussive underpinnings. That classic lineup produced a string of Top 10 hits (10 to be precise) including "Gold", "Only When You Leave", "True", "Chant No. 1" and the song in this podcast, "To Cut A Long Story Short", the groups' debut single, which reached #5 in the UK. Speculation surrounding the song is that it pertains to a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after being drafted, but getting no explanation why he must join the war. This song apparently inspired Vince Clarke (Depeche Mode, Yaz, The Assembly) to write DM's third single, "Just Can't Get Enough" which, as a side note, is currently being used in a Wal-Mart advertisement. I did NOT see that coming!
What more can be said about Gary Numan that hasn't already been said over the course of four decades by the music press? Probably nothing, so I'm not even going to try to break new ground. But, in case you missed it, Gary did just drop his 18th solo album, Savage (Songs From A Broken World), this past September and it instantly shot all the way up the album charts to #2 in the UK and #1 on the UK Indie charts. Call it a love of the man and his music or an indictment of the current music scene, but for a guy who goes down in history as the first artist to secure a #1 song using an all-electronic approach with the highly-coveted and frequently-covered "Are Friends Electric?" way back in 1979, the fact that Gary is still making music that questions, challenges, lifts, destroys and defies convention is impressive. Despite the lofty charting position of the new album and its predominant use of electronics, it failed to register on the Billboard Electronic charts because, according to a Billboard executive, “Sonically, the Numan album just does not fit in" with Billboard's perception of electronic dance music. Seems a bit ridiculous, but Numan is no stranger to such disinterest or indifference on the part of the music cabal. In fact, even during his heyday, "Are Friends Electric?" was perched atop the British charts for three weeks before any radio station would add it to their playlists. The song in this podcast, "I Die: You Die", which appeared in 1980 on the Telekon album a mere two years after his Tubeway Army signing with Beggars Banquet, is his rebuke of the music press and their God complex, star-maker/star-breaker tendencies. The track eventually reached #6 on the UK singles chart.
And finally, speaking of the music press, the last band I'd like to mention here had them completely baffled and befuddled for the bulk of their career, or at least until 1990 when Hugh Cornwall left the group. The Stranglers, originally known as the Guildford Stranglers when they embarked as a band in 1974, were comprised of guitarist/keyboardist Hugh Cornwall, bassist/vocalist Jen-Jacques Burnel, keyboardist Dave Greenfield and drummer Brian Duffy (aka Jet Black). Though not one member hailed from Guildford, they were "tweeners" in every sense of the word, dabbling in numerous styles from electropop to soul during the course of their long and storied career. And while many of their successes came during their early punk days, they never quite fit into the punk scene. Ostracized for their relative age, their humorous, often self-deprecating lyrical style contrasted with their often anti-politically correct stage antics, their stunningly fast musical growth and development, and their hit-making skill, which generated 21 Top-40 singles, The Stranglers set themselves apart from their punk contemporaries and gave the press fits as they did not know how to put square pegs into round holes. The track here, "All Roads Lead To Rome" was from their seventh album, Feline. As you can hear, it has distinct new wave overtones, which makes total sense having been released in 1982, but it is certainly a brave departure from their earlier work. And while this track did not chart, it still stands as one of the high points from the Feline album and provides a glimpse into a chameleon-like band that was firmly in transition.
Another episode in the books. Thanks for reading/listening. Enjoy the music!