18 Dazzle Ships - Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

Purchased : 5th March 1983





Tracks : Radio Prague / Genetic Engineering / ABC Auto-Industry / Telegraph / This Is Helena / International / Dazzle Ships (Parts ll, lll & Vll) / The Romance of the Telescope / Silent Running / Radio Waves / Time Zones / Of All The Things We've Made

This was the first of a number of albums purchased from Oldham. I think the original impetus was my friend Anthony mentioning a good record stall at the market. I first visited early in February with Helen and also noticed that the HMV shop had a chart return machine on the counter suggesting it would be a good place for discounts and special offers. Oldham also offered an interesting journey as it involved changing trains at Rochdale.

The title (and indeed Peter Saville's cover design) refer to the camouflage paint employed by the navies in WWI to break up their ship's lines and make them more difficult to attack. It's a fairly appropriate metaphor for an album which was attempting to disguise a bad case of writer's block by raiding the vaults for outtakes and re-usable B-sides and filling the gaps with sampled sounds in a way that prefigures Roger Waters' solo career. It only partially worked; the contemporary press seemed prepared to accept its claim to be the new OMD album but a lot of their fans were disappointed and second single "Telegraph" failed to make the Top 40. With three big hits from "Architecture And Morality" (not featured here for a long time because Helen had it on tape !) they were on the verge of superstardom but this put an end to that. Thereafter they were liked but not loved with a hit and miss track record in the singles charts

That doesn’t mean I thought it was atrocious then or think that now. It’s a bookend to the first stage of the band’s career (1979-82) during which they made their most exciting, rewarding and enduring music. Thereafter they became a more conventional pop band with variable results but didn’t inspire the same affection. As the actual songs on this album date come from the same period they are all pretty good. The sampling stuff, very obviously indebted to Kraftwerk’s “Radioctivity” and Pink Floyd, is superficial and doesn’t seem like more than an afternoon’s work.

It kicks off with "Radio Prague" which is just a recording of the call signs from an East European radio station. Comprising mostly of a Purcell-like brass fanfare it actually works quite well as an introduction to "Genetic Engineering" the only Top 40 hit on the album.

It originally featured in a 1979 John Peel session so must have been considered for the first LP. Beginning with a neat call -and - answer percussion routine on a typewriter, the main keyboard refrain -which does sound very similar to the theme from "The Magic Roundabout" - then comes in followed by a pro-science mantra spoken in quick alternation by McCluskey, Humphreys and, in optimistic American tones, Humphreys' wife Maureen. Then Malcolm Holmes's bass drum kicks in together with a thrashing detuned guitar and a child's Speak and Spell machine (perhaps a cheeky nod to Depeche Mode ?) starts spewing out words like "butcher" and "engineer". Above this cacophony McCluskey sings in semi-hysterical fashion of the future prospects of this new science. It wouldn't have disgraced their first LP (it's much better than "Dancing" for example) but it's not one of their best singles either.



Then we have "ABC Auto-Industry" which starts with McCluskey on a loop chanting "ABC" then answering himself with "1-2 -3". A thick bass drum starts pounding and a man who sounds a lot like Brian Cant starts reading out some key phrases associated with auto-production while the chants are speeded up to sound like Pinky and Perky. The key phrase "Frankenstein's Monster" is repeated amidst Kratwerkian bleeps. There's no real song here and it soon outstays its welcome.

Next up is "Telegraph" a song from the "Architecture And Morality" sessions. A xylophone-like synth goes up and down the scales while a synthetic flute plays the main melody. It's an attractive song about the impact of the telegraph but what makes it challenging and may well have accounted for its poor showing as a single is McCluskey's unhinged vocal performance. The subject matter doesn't seem suited to such rage; towards the end there's some actual screaming and you wonder what exactly they're trying to do with it.

A warm female voice redolent of Radio Four then announces "Music for your tape recorder" and Holmes is let loose for once to play a hard rock beat on the slight "This Is Helena" which is basically an instrumental with recorded interjections from the eponymous announcer and a brief snatch of stadium noise.

That's over very quickly and a macabre snatch of reportage about an atrocity in Nicaragua leads into "International" which, by contrast, McCluskey sings very carefully in his lowest register. The lyrics are quite vague but appear to be a criticism of the international community - "There we sit on a line wasting fortunes at a time". Like "Maid Of Orleans" it's in waltz time and would have fitted very neatly on "Architecture And Morality". The middle eight has a lovely melody picked out on the mellotron before a last impassioned verse which appears to be about a female infatuation with Hitler then a closing melody which veers , perhaps deliberately, very close to "Ten Green Bottles". It's the album's best track.

Side Two commences with "Dazzle Ships" itself which is just a sampling of ship noises ending annoyingly with a sonic boom which continues to sound into the beginning of "The Romance of the Telescope" a sombre ballad which previously appeared as the B-side to "Joan of Arc" and is very clearly a product of the same sessions with its stately mellotrons and Holmes's miltary tattoos on the latter part of the song. Here the band actually address the lack of easy answers in their songs- "Someone promised there'd be answers if we stayed around".

Next up is "Silent Running" a slighly more uptempo song with similarities to "She's Leaving" from "A & M". There are no obvious links to the eco-warning science fiction film of the same name the lyrics being typical sub-Ian Curtis fatalism. It's pleasant enough but a bit vapid.

A splurge of white noise leads us into "Radio Waves" the only uptempo song on this side. It is a re-recording of a song from their earlier incarnation as The Id and very obviously takes its cues from Kraftwerk's "Radioactivity". This takes us right back to their earliest recordings like "Electricity" and their childlike joy at the wonders and potential of technology. The warm synth melodies and sense of humour in the couplet "Over Reagan's head, under Moscow's bed" are a reminder of this side of the band.

It's always tempting to skip over "Time Zones" a tiresome montage of various speaking clocks like an update to the intro of Pink Floyd's "Time" without the song to follow.

Fortunately there is a good song to conclude the album. "Of All The Things We've Made" was originally on the 12 inch of "Maid of Orleans" and sees them stripping the sound down to one snare drum, an atonal one-note guitar thrash and a single sad keyboard melody. The lyrics are sparse, simply a lament for the failure of something that "always worked before today". It's quite affecting, especially in hindsight with the relative failure of the LP commercially forcing them to rethink their approach.

Something ended here even though the band didn't, which made this a fitting purchase for the ebbing tide of my school days. By the time of their next release -which I loathed - I was at university and we were all learning new ways of making our way in the world. That's why despite its flaws I still hold this LP in great affection.

17 All Mod Cons - The Jam

Purchased : 27th January 1983

Tracks : All Mod Cons / To Be Someone / Mr Clean / David Watts / English Rose / In The Crowd / Billy Hunt / It's Too Bad / Fly / The Place I Love / A Bomb In Wardour St / Down In The Tube Station

After a year in which my album collection had more than doubled this was the first purchase of 1983. It was bought in Manchester on the way to an entrance interview at Preston Polytechnic at their soon-to-close Poulton-le-Fylde campus. Now that we were into the new year it was beginning to sink in that my school days would soon come to an end and a new chapter in life would begin whether I wanted it or not.

Of course by this time The Jam were dead and gone though you wouldn't think it from looking at the singles chart which had filled up with their back catalogue opportunistically re-released by Polydor. This was the one I expected to like the most since it was home to one of the greatest singles of all time, "Down In the Tube Station At Midnight" which was perhaps dangerous thinking. It's also the one Received Wisdom has put forward as The Jam's contribution to "The Canon".

As an album it had a fraught gestation. Their previous sophomore album "This Is The Modern World" had bombed and a first attempt at a third, apparently made up of mostly Bruce Foxton compositions, had been rejected by the record company as not up to scratch. Foxton has subsequently played down the idea of a lost Jam album in the vaults saying much of it was eventually re-cycled over the course of their career. One can't help think that this period cemented the power relations in the band ; Paul Weller got over his writer's block and there's not a Foxton song in sight on the finished product.

First up on this interestingly sequenced LP is the title track, a short angry song about their recent travails with Polydor that rests on a Foxton bassline shuddering with channelled rage. One minute, nineteen seconds and it's gone.

"To Be Someone" also concerns the rock business but this time it's sung from the point of view of a faded rock star looking back at the good times, a full decade before Prefab Sprout's "King of Rock And Roll". By an unfortunate accident of timing, the rock star most synonymous with the kind of dissolute lifestyle Weller is describing, the Who's Keith Moon died between the album's recording and release. Musically it prefigures their own "Start" by approximating the bassline to "Taxman" and features some very spiky guitar by Weller.

"Mr Clean" is a problematic song. Is he singing this vitriolic attack on a commuter in character or is he really so consumed by class envy he's prepared to advocate violence against the class traitor (all lefties hate their own kind who are trying to advance more than those who were born to privilege) he so despises ? The edgy guitar figure behind the first verse about the object's daily routine hints at trouble to come which arrives in Weller's bellowed declaration "If I get the chance I'll fuck up your life". Having got that off his chest Weller lightens up (and the music opens out) for the last verse with the hilariously phrased "Getting pissed at the annual office do". It's still an uncmfortable song though.

"David Watts" follows, the first Jam song to really grab me not realising it was a cover until much later. The Kinks song gives the other members a chance to shine with Foxton doing the lead vocal and Buckler's ferocious pounding and cymbal crashing driving the song at a frantic pace. There's no real sign they understand the homoerotic implications of the song, just three guys thrashing the hell (albeit in a more disciplined fashion than their earlier covers) out of a favourite track.

Then the LP makes a complete left turn with the "hidden" track "English Rose" not listed on the sleeve or lyric sheet for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained. What were we supposed to do- pretend we hadn't heard it ? Starting with a crashing wave and the sound of a ship's horn it becomes an acoustic ballad with antique phrasing. With Foxton and Buckler absent from proceedings it suggests Pink Floyd's "Grantchester Meadows" or Nick Drake, icons of the Middle England Weller was railing against two songs back.

The band then take another step away from punk by recording a song nearly six minutes long. It's something of a curate's egg the opening chords resembling the beginning section of Wings' "Band On The Run" albeit speeded up by Foxton's bassline. Then it takes its cue from The Small Faces "My Mind's Eye" with Weller re-spinning Marriott's conviction that he has a greater vision than those around him and there are musical echoes too. The second half of the song is a long dare we say proggy instrumental coda that at times sounds strikingly similar to the Stone Roses' "Don't Stop" amidst which Weller starts singing the refrain from their earlier song "Away From The Numbers" perhaps forlornly acknowledging he hasn't quite made that break yet before it finally turns into The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again ".

Side Two then kicks off with "Billy Hunt" an ugly, regressive song that could have come off the first album; in fact the bassline is very similar to "In The City". Sung from the viewpoint of a downtrodden daydreamer taken in by the Charles Atlas ads there's the odd good line like "I remember the first day at my job/Didn't get on too well with the foreman Bob" but its generally unsympathetic with crass references to the contemporary "Six Million Dollar Man" and a really moronic chorus. When the album was belatedly released in the US this track was dropped in favour of the infinitely superior "Strange Town".

Next up is "It's Too Bad" a break-up song which of course had a contemporary resonance at the time I bought the album, the more so as Weller and Foxton sing most of it in harmony. It's a rather cheeky re-write of The Who's "So Sad About Us" borrowing some of it's rhymes and the song structure's very similar . The band made the debt more obvious by putting a cover of the song on the B-side of "Down In The Tube Station".

Then we flick back into acoustic mode with "Fly" although Foxton is allowed in from the second verse and Buckler from the chorus onwards. There's an echo of "The Sound of Silence" just before Weller starts singing and the more aggressive strumming in the later parts of the song resembles "Pinball Wizard" at times. It's another love song although framed by (not very well-expressed) existential angst and it doesn't work very well for me.

Weller stays in romantic mode for "The Place I Love" although the music has a bit more bite, the guitar riff a simplified version of the arpeggio from future tourmates Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper". Weller extols the virtues of a utopia "with beautiful moss and colourful flowers" then defines it negatively as "not within a yard of those trendy do's where dogsbodies pick you up and graciously give you a lift". At the time this was a baffling lyric but now I understand it to be a reference to The Walton Hop, the disco in Surrey frequented by paedophiles like Chris Denning and Jonathan King.

The romance ends abruptly with the clinking cowbell and staccato bass riff of "A-Bomb In Wardour St" released as a double A-side with "David Watts" but ignored by radio for its violent imagery. Wardour St was the home of The Marquee club at the time and the song is a condemnation of punk violence - "it's not my scene at all".

The violence theme leads neatly on to the song Weller will never, ever better. "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight" draws all the album's threads together - late 70s violence , singing from another's point of view and even romance. It's stunning musically as well prefiguring Joy Division with Foxton's bass the lead instrument. His classic riff , pregnant with menace, emerges from a background of sound effects to kickstart the song. Weller, in controlled hoarse tones, is a man making his way home to dinner with his wife when he is mugged by a group of thugs. What makes it lyrically special is the accumulation of detail, the things the man notices even as he's semi-conscious on the floor -"a British Rail poster read "Have an Away Day, a cheap holiday let's do it today". Weller's contributions on guitar are sparse but very effective especially the ascending chords when the horror escalates as the man realises "They took the keys and she'll think it's me". Even at this juncture Weller can't resist a little dig at middle class values "The wine will be flat and the curry's gone cold" is the man' next thought after contemplating the imminent rape of his wife. One of the top five greatest singles of all time without a doubt.

Coming to the album five years after its release it didn't have quite the impact on me it must have had on contemporaries being such a quantum leap on from their first two efforts. And it was slightly disappointing that none of the other tracks come near to "Down In The Tube Station" though that was always a tall order. Because of "Billy Hunt" and the two acoustic tracks I do depart from the critics and don't think this is the best Jam album. A few entries on and I'll reveal my nomination.

16. Quiet Life - Japan

Purchased : December 1982

Tracks : Quiet Life / Fall In Love With Me / Despair / In Vogue / Halloween / All Tomorrow's Parties / Alien / The Other Side Of Life

This was a bit of a peevish purchase. I went into Manchester with my Christmas money to find that all the discounting on current LPs in HMV and Virgin seemed to have disappeared so I was left with a restricted choice of older albums at mid-price under the "Fame" imprint (I never quite got the concept there ; never watched the series either).

This album was something of a turning point in the band's career. The third of five albums it saw them move away from an uncomfortable glam / new wave hybrid sound to what would soon be termed New Romantic pop. Similarly singer David Sylvian dropped the sneery whine for a lower register baritone. It also spawned their first hit single in the title track, albeit on re-release 18 months later after they'd left the label.

That title track which kicks off the album in its long version remains a masterpiece. It recognises the necessity of moving on though sung from the point of view of someone who's trapped in the past -"as you turn to leave never looking back will you think of me ". This had extraordinary personal resonance at the time particularly as it was re-released just before my enforced quiet life was beginning. It begins with the haunting keyboard refrain rising in volume from a bed of Giorgio Moroder electronics before Steve Jansen's drumming, Mick Karn's sinuous bass and Rob Dean's sparse guitar set up Sylvian's entrance with the pleading "Boys". Richard Barbieri's swooping keyboards lead into the chorus and Jansen's ferocious drumming leads us out again. After the initial chorus Dean throws in a fabulous mournful guitar solo that's over too soon. Sylvian poses the question "could it ever stop ?" and the music reduces to just Jansen and the synthesisers while Sylvian wails before gradually rising again to another chorus where Karn throws in some urgent saxophone to underline the desperation.

"Fall In Love With Me" is a throwback to their previous glam sound with Jansen's pounding drums driving the song in a similar manner to XTC's "Life Begins At The Top" and Dean's wailing guitar posing the questions. The opaque lyrics could be about a defector from the east wanting a welcome in the west after "pioneering underground". Jansen switches to cymbals for the pleading chorus with Barbieri contributing questioning chords in the background. There's a brief quiet respite before Dean overlays his own work with an icy solo. There's no resolution here, the last line "each bitter moment lingers on" reflected in the restless drive of the music as it fades out.

"Despair" sees a complete volte-face in the music with Jansen and Dean dropping out altogether. A drum machine leads into a slow Eric Satie piano figure accompanied by cello. A minute in and Karn joins in on saxophone. A further minute later and Sylvian, accompanied by Barbieri's echoey chords, comes in black and low with a verse in French which roughly translates as "the artists of tomorrow live in agreeable despair" capturing the allure of the melancholy muse. After his intervention the saxophone takes over again before handing over to Barbieri's mellotron for a move into Gothic territory before reducing to a single repeating piano chord and then the drum machine alone. Detractors of the band would cry "pretentious" but it's powerful stuff.

Side One closes with "In Vogue" a post-coital song with echoes of the contemporary "It's Different For Girls" in Sylvian's doubts that the girl shares his deeper feelings - "I am assured she won't forget". Barbieri's keyboard swirls and Karn's prowling bass evoke dislocation and doubt before rising to the payoff line with Karn's sax accompanying Sylvian's desperate plea that "love's in vogue again" a knowingly flimsy mask for his true feelings. By the second verse he is defeated coming up with the self-deceptive excuse "she's clearly not herself today" before finally admitting "How bitter the morning feels". There's then a lenghty instrumental coda dominated at first by Dean's cold fuzz guitar and concluding with an extended bass chord on the piano, an unarguable conclusion to the affair.

"Halloween" owes a fair bit to Mr Bowie with its Berlin setting but this time we're in the Eastern half of the city with a defeated couple "detatched and broken". Perhaps they were ardent Nazis now living with the consequences of their choices, a ruined house and life behind the Wall , a permanent halloween. Barbieri's doomy chords are a back cloth to a foreground of restless white funk with ragged guitar and Karn's queasy stop-start bass line.

Speaking of Berlin, up next is a song written by another of its serenaders. Theirs is a more sinuous less declamatory take on "All Tomorrow's Parties" than the Velvets' original with Jansen's scattershot playing replacing Moe Tucker's monotonous thump. Dean is given more scope here than on the rest of the album and he contributes both silky lines and fuzztone wailing as the chorus reaches its climax.Sylvian's vocal is cool and detatched throughout leaving the guitar and sax to sound out the warnings that were inherent in Nico's vocal.

Two very strong songs close out the album. "Alien" enthrals from the beginning with Karn's feline fretless bass prompts answered by a rhythm guitar figure before they are replaced by guitar and sax respectively leaving Karn free to get a funky groove going.

The song has opaque references to "nightporters" and "deserts" but the central bleak vision of a deferred romance not delivering the goods, a denial of Jane Eyre if you like, is pretty clear in the devastating chorus where Jansen's fills magnify his brother's turmoil. Dean's guitar solo is good but a little too similar to the one in "Quiet Life" and there's a good production touch on the third verse where Sylvian sings "A voice on the stairs disturbs me" as a distant echo before the rest of the band come back in.

"The Other Side of Life" wrongfoots you as Sylvian starts singing after the first piano chord. It's a wintry song about a relationship decayed to the point of occasional visits from a girl who's found that other side. It starts as a piano ballad but Jansen comes in halfway through the verse and Dean puts down a spiky guitar line at its close. Then strings appear for the mournful chorus and Karn starts prowling just before the false ending. Jansen kicks off the second shorter and bleaker verse where Sylvian is reduced to pleading with the girl for just a wave. One more chorus and that's Sylvian's part done the band telling the rest of the story with the aid of strings and oboe adding different colours to the same basic piano part, "these single occasions" all coming back to the unpalatable truth.

Another one that I should have revisited more often.