12. The Party's Over - Talk Talk

Purchased : September 1982





Tracks : Talk Talk / It's So Serious / Today / The Party's Over / Hate / Have You Heard The News / Mirror Man / Another Word / Candy





Marcello advises avoiding Received Opinion and I'm certainly doing that here when I declare this to be one of my favourite LPs of all time. Not even the band themselves seemed very fond of it. The main sculptor of its sound, keyboard player Simon Brenner was ejected from the band when they finished touring it. When I saw them in Leeds in 1986 they didn't play a single song from it.





But no matter, it was the perfect LP for me at the time it was released. I wrapped myself up in its melodramatic gloom and despair, singing it over and over again to myself in all too frequent moments of solitude. I'll use the italics button to distinguish my contemporary interpretations from what I discern now with my head in a different place.





It actually took me a while to tune in to Talk Talk amid the howls of derision directed at EMI's "next big thing". Their first single "Mirror Man" got little airplay and didn't stand out for me; I was more impressed with the next one "Talk Talk" though still inclined to listen to those dismissing them as Duran wannabes. It was their appearance on the little lamented "David Essex Showcase" with third single "Today" that made me sit up and take notice. OK, it's not hard to stand out from the likes of Philip Jap and Toto Coelo but I thought "Today" was a great song, full of atmosphere and drama. Then Jim Reid in Record Mirror (not a writer I normally had much time for ) did a piece on the band which really sold the album (contrary to the review by Simon Ludgate which was a hatchet job).





It starts with the original single version of "Talk Talk" (it was re-mixed for a second more successful crack at the charts in the autumn of 1982). Like "Enola Gay" it starts with a few seconds of electronic percussion then Brenner comes in with a mighty chord closely followed by Lee Harris's crashing drums and Paul Webb's questioning, somewhat elusive , fretless bass. Then Mark Hollis enters with his protesting "Heys" He's got something to say and Brenner backs out to give him some space. For all the accusations of plaigiarism aimed at the band no one before or since has sounded like Hollis, his adenoidal angst laced with punk aggression. The lyric puts us back in Martin Fry territory with Hollis being given the runaround by a girl who can talk her way out of trouble but you suspect that he won't be able to break away. His denunciation "All you do to me is talk talk" as Brenner returns to the fray is desperate. Brenner switches to piano for the third verse and he and Harris build up a storm behind Hollis's accusations until once again we break into the chorus and this time it never stops until the song fades out. The cycle continues ; there is no escape.





For me it was about the shallow ,fragile relationships that had to pass for friendship in those last two years at school. You'll talk to me but won't go on a walk with me or let me influence your lives in any meaningful way.





The second track "It's So Serious" is the only one I found a bit disappointing, I think
because the melodrama is in the lyrics rather than the music. Brenner keeps to the same arpeggio throughout the verse then switches to synth washes for the chorus and middle eight but eschews the big blocking chords used elsewhere on the LP. The lyrics are full of images of depression "a child without a toy" " a cloud before my eyes" but the chorus melody is actually quite uplifting.





I didn't like the song enough to project myself into it





Then it's "Today" with that cold wind of synth leading into a sparse soundscape of chattering syndrums, a buzzsaw synth pulse, unyielding mellotron phrases and Webb's bass apparently struggling to hold the melody line. I think we've gone a stage further here and Hollis is singing about full-blown mental illness and being incarcerated for it. The video with its long corridors of doors gives another clue. Harris's manic crashes at the end of the song could signify someone thrashing around in a straitjacket as Hollis's final "a dream away " becomes an echo.





The "it" of "Today, it's a dream away" is the Travelling Society, now defunct and unrevivable. The world turns; you've got to "move about as values change".And if the new world is unappealing or unfriendly to you then you must retreat to your cell and brood.



Then we come to the title track, still one of my all time favourite recordings. It starts in sprightly fashion with Brenner's restless arpeggios sitting on top of Harris's jazzy drum patterns (we start to hear the fruits of Hollis's infatuation with jazz) and the occasional bass note from Webb to move things along. Hollis sings a couple of verses seemingly resigned to the march of time. Then it moves up a gear, Brenner turns on the mellotron and Hollis demands "Take a look at the kids !" and speaks of a crime. This person has done something as a result of their despair; this could soundtrack one of those melodramas about plastic surgery gone wrong. One more verse and chorus then things get really Gothic. Harris shifts the song into rock mode and Brenner plays some big minor chords. Hollis wails for relief from "this punishment" and demands to know what his crime is. Eventually he disappears into the mix and we're left with a simple glockenspiel melody underneath the unrelenting mellotron chords.



Not much re-interpretation needed here. The party had ended for me. One factor in the destruction of the Travelling Society was my insecure prodding and poking of my friend Michael to test the limits of our friendship - "this crime of being uncertain of your love". The punishment was this aching sense of loss and isolation and the fear that at 17, my best days were already behind me.



Side Two starts with the uncompromising "Hate" which is Harris's chance to shine. It starts with Brenner's doomy chords and Webb's singsong bass then Harris comes in first with cymbals then with two overlapping drum patterns in the midst of which Hollis screams "Hate". Here the despairing man is preparing to lash out "My foes beware, I'm tired of losing grace" though by the end of the song there is a sense of pulling back from the brink "I've found out I don't need hate". Harris never lets up and the middle eight begins with a drum solo a rarity in eighties pop and a reminder that these guys always went their own way.



My "hate" was focussed on the group of friends surrounding my love rival at school blaming them for distracting me from the necessary maintenance of my own friendship base. This song is my raging at them but the resolution is true too. He was actually a decent guy and some part of me was still capable of recognising that.



"Have You Heard The News" is a guilt-ridden song about causing some unspecified harm in an accident perhaps caused by reckless behaviour. One thinks of Lee Hughes or Amanda Knox here. Webb's fretless bass is the star here reflecting the restless torment of the narrator though Brenner is also impressive on the piano.



A less comfortable fit here as I patently didn't do Michael any harm. He just shrugged me off when he started work and perceived me as an irritant that his life would be better off without-"I'm so disposable you can throw me away " It was necessary to cast him as the true keeper of the flame of the Travelling Society and me as the sinner who'd wandered from the path but in reality we both did. Unfortunately I went up a blind alley - "What a fool I've been " and wanted to retreat but that wasn't possible.



"Mirror Man" next and it makes more sense in the context of the album rather than as a lead off single. Hollis's Mirror Man is a conforming narcissist who secretly admires a bohemian girl "the star of the road " (which grounds it nicely in suburban Southend) though after a middle eight full of dread some nasty fate (drugs ? ) seems to have befallen her -"See the state she's in". One of the more synth-y tracks, Brenner here deploys synthetic string sounds that are the equal of anything on "The Lexicon Of Love".



Shortly after I bought this my love rival started going out with the object of our mutual affections and she became less prissy, perming her hair and drinking the odd pint. Although that change actually preceded her going out with him this song became about her being corrupted by him.

"Another Word" is unique in the Talk Talk canon in not having Hollis's name in the songwriting credits. It was written solely by Paul Webb and with its references to "soldiers" "graffitied walls" and "the riot" seems to have been inspired by the Troubles , the title perhaps suggesting that a different Word of God operates in Belfast. The vocals on the track remind me slightly of The Jam with Webb sharing the first line of the verses in the manner of Bruce Foxton. His backing vocals also sound very similar to his fellow bassist. Musically it's the most simplistic track based on Brenner's sequencer pulses with little ornamentation and surprisingly no bass guitar at all.

I was getting into dodgy territory with this one imagining that it painted some post-apocalyptic scenario. To the hurt and excluded this becomes attractive, have a cataclysm to shake up the natural order of things and hope to come out on top like Will Patton's photocopier salesman turned military dictator in "The Postman". It's the desire the Jehovah's Witnesses have exploited for decades. I was very prone to this way of thinking for the next couple of years , starting a novel on those lines until a good fairy at university compared it to Adrian Mole and thereby punctured the bubble.

The final track "Candy" is the one which most hints at their future direction with its slow dragging beat, Webb's fretless bass squalls and Brenner's jazzy piano fills (which make his sacking seem unjust). There are also points in the song where Hollis adopts the slurring vocal style also being employed by David Sylvian and Gary Numan at this time and which would predominate on their last two albums. Until now I've assumed Candy was an adulterous lover being chastised but listening to it again it may actually be a drug "When I tried to turn away, to feel new again", "surround myself with excuses" et al.

As a stranger to both girlfriends and drugs I couldn't do much with this one.

Today it tends to be damned with faint praise, interesting because of what they went on to rather than on its own merits. I don't care. I love it !

11. The Lexicon of Love - ABC

Purchased : July 1982



Tracks : Show Me / Poison Arrow / Many Happy Returns / Tears Are Not Enough / Valentine's Day / The Look of Love / Date Stamp / All Of My Heart / 4 Ever 2 Gether / The Look Of Love (Part Four)



I've long regarded this purchase as the real start of my album collection. It took place while the record was still at number one in the charts (a rare occurrence in this story) and was bought with regular pocket money. No longer dependent on gifts and windfalls , the collection grew steadily over my last year at school and, barring the odd financial hiatus, has done so ever since. But that's the silver lining. The money was freed up by the demise of the Littleborough Travelling Society in which was bound up the last of my childhood friendships (a tale told in more detail on sister blog clarkechroniclerswalks.blogspot.com ). The last ever LTS event took place just a month before this album arrived. So it was born out of pain and the next few entries (especially the one immediately following) reflect that.



But back to ABC. I already know that this is one of Marcello's favourites but it will take him some time to get to it on his own blog. For this is the "New Pop" album par excellence, lush, stylish, technologically advanced, knowing and of course a major commercial success to a degree that, say, Scritti Politti and the Associates rever quite managed. To its detractors and there are some; it is cynical and ugly, the sound of clever white boys repackaging the best of Motown and Philly without the soul.

Although they are often tagged wrongly as New Romantics, ABC came out of the Brit-funk movement of 1981 hitting the charts at the end of the year with the rather raw "Tears Are Not Enough". The leap from that to the next single "Poison Arrow" was quite astonishing, the vital new ingredient being the input of producer Trevor Horn and his team who had impressed with their work on a couple of singles by Dollar but this is the work which would seal their reputation.

Now Dollar were just the two pretty faces that The Buggles lacked so the question arises, how much of ABC is there on this record ? Well the words and vocals are indisputably Martin Fry's, his pale approximation of Tony Hadley's vocal style being one of the easier points to attack on the record. David Palmer has been much in demand as a drummer since leaving the band after this LP and there's no other credited so one presumes it's all him. Mark White is credited with guitar and keyboards but there isn't that much of the former and after J J Jeczalik on the Fairlight and Anne Dudley on the piano have done their stuff it's unlikely much of the keyboard work is White's. Steve Singleton, the archetypal underemployed sax player is barely heard throughout. On the other hand bassist Mark Lickley's work is retained on the first three singles despite being sacked for commitment issues after "Poison Arrow" and being clearly inferior to session man Brad Lang who appears on the other tracks.

This is a very homogenous album. Despite boasting three top 10 singles plus a buffed-up version of "Tears Are Not Enough" it is best heard as a whole. While not a concept album in the "Tommy" sense, there is a unifying theme as Fry explores the nature of love as both participant and observer using customary tropes in both language and music to express himself. Horn uses serious musicianship in the shape of Dudley and advanced synthesiser technology in the form of Jeczalik's Fairlight (there are no real strings on the LP at all ) to bring the vision to life.

Jeczalik is heard straightaway with a little overture before "Show Me" begins in earnest with a bendy Bernard Edwards bass line from Lang and solid drumming from Palmer. It owes a lot to Chic. The verses are two part- the first being urgent and personal, the second laid back and observational with "strings" swelling in the background. The chorus sees Fry demanding some sign of love from his girl while referencing the Motown classic "I Second That Emotion" which goes to the heart of people's objections to this record. Can you make "authentic" pop music if you're that self-conscious about the process ? The line "She might look pretty but there's make up on her face" seems provocative in this context.

"Poison Arrow" follows next, a perfect pop single that left the world of Beggar & Co and Funkapolitan far behind. This is an entirely personal song with Fry in the same boat as Joe Jackson on "It's Different For Girls" , humiliated when he sought commitment. Even so the Stupid /Cupid rhyme has of course been used before on a Brill Building classic. The climax of the song is the devastating "I care enough to know I could never love you " delivered in appropriately deadpan tones by one Karen Clayton (unfortunately forgotten in the sleeve credits).

"Many Happy Returns" belies its greeting card title. It seems to be about an office romance gone wrong though the lyrics become less focussed as the song progresses. There's maybe a sly nod to fellow Sheffield act Heaven 17 in the "axis /fascist" rhyme. It begins with White's teasing guitar riff and Fry's introductory verse before Palmer's drums and White's power chords turn it into a rock song. Fry sings the middle eight in a weak falsetto before giving way to Tessa Webb (soon to become session royalty as Tessa Niles ) for the final chorus. There's then a jazzy organ solo to round things off before four crashing chords from Dudley signify the end.

Then we're into the re-worked "Tears Are Not Enough" where the roles are reversed and it's Fry who's doing the rejecting. The sound has been considerably filled out with extra horns and Dudley's elegant piano and the striking percussion only break on the single has been replaced with a dainty harpsichord line possibly influenced by The Stranglers' recent success with "Golden Brown".

The mighty "Valentine's Day" follows with its huge drums and blaring Fairlight intro. A short interlude of xylophone and piano underscored by Lang's fretless bass precedes Fry's entrance with the line "When the postman don't call on Valentine's Day" as the synthetic strings swell up to meet him. Musically this is the most dramatic track of all with Jeczalik using the same Fairlight sound used to such heart-stopping effect in the outro to Dollar's "Videotheque" but I don't think Fry's lyric matches up to it. "That umbrella won't work on a rainy day" is unnervingly reminiscent of Alanis Morrisette's "Ironic". But worse than that is ending each verse with the nonsensical "Don't ask me I already know". And the last couplet which includes the words dancing lessons in order to rhyme "millionaire" with "Fred Astaire" is both clumsy and corny.

Side Two begins with "The Look Of Love" , the biggest hit and probably their signature song. Fry has once again been abandoned but still has faith in the ideal of love. The track is dominated by syrupy strings although White's Nile Rodgers choppy guitar is prominent in the chorus. There's a spoken middle eight where Fry actually namechecks himself, perhaps picked up from another Sheffield singer Phil Oakey with his "This is Phil talking" line in "Love Action" . In some ways this LP is the successor to "Dare" , taking the idea of putting state of the art technology to pure pop one step further.

The next track "Date Stamp" is probably my favourite with Fry successfully nailing his all too topical metaphor of love as commerce for the whole song and Horn finding the crunching bass sound that would give him his biggest hit of all 18 months later. It also boasts the most effective use of a cash till as instrument since Floyd's "Money". Another reason to cherish this song is the prominent part given to Tessa Webb whose warm-hearted rebuke of "Love has no guarantee" cuts right through Fry's carping and when he joins in with her on the last chorus it seems like she has won the argument.

"All Of My Heart" is many people's favourite but not mine. For me it lacks drama in its medium-paced stateliness. Essentially Fry is mourning a lost love though the second verse suggests a more casual compensatory hook-up which doesn't work out because "skip the hearts and flowers, skip the ivory towers " and sex is lacking something.

"4 Ever 2 Gether" which pre-dates Prince's use of numbers as shorthand is a strange song which points to the way they would go on their next LP with its big rock chords , thunderous Padgham-esque drum break and preference for analogue synth rather than Fairlight string sounds. It begins with the slowed down vocal phrase "Speak. No. Evil" and a keyboard alarm that recalls the intro to "Echo Beach". The lyric is somewhat scizophrenic with the verses talking of rejected marriage proposals and the chorus proclaiming the strength of the bond.

Then we're just left with the "The Look of Love Part 4" a short instrumental reprise featuring harpist Gaynor Sadler which had the misfortune to be adopted as the sign off tune for Gary Davies' "Bit in The Middle" Radio One show for the rest of the decade. Still I don't suppose they minded the royalties.

I have to come down on Marcello's side on this one. It is a great LP even if you don't buy into the whole "New Pop" concept. ABC never managed to follow it up though the speedy fragmentation of the band can't have helped. We will eventually come to its flawed and fascinating successor but I lost interest when they became a cartoon band. When they re-emerged with "When Smokey Sings" in 1987 a facsimile of the "Lexicon" sound they conceded the point themselves.

10. Atom Heart Mother - Pink Floyd

Purchased : May 1982



Tracks : Atom Heart Mother ( Father’s Shout ; Breast Milky ; Mother Fore ; Funky Dung ; Mind Your Throats Please ; Re-emergence) / If / Summer 68 / Fat Old Sun / Alan’s Pyschedelic Breakfast ( Rise And Shine ; Sunny Side Up ; Morning Glory)



This was the second and final purchase from my friend Francis who left school that summer to work for the local council instead. It is the first album in my story to be “from the past” since “Tubular Bells” . Pink Floyd , The Moody Blues and Kraftwerk were the bands whose back catalogue I deemed worth exploring since they were cited as major influences on the current bands I liked around this time and I enjoyed what little I’d heard from them – in Floyd’s case this was “Another Brick In The Wall”, “Breathe” , “Money” and “Interstellar Overdrive”. As well as that there was an alluring mystique around them - the individual members were personally anonymous, they hardly ever released singles and they’d made an album nearly ten years before which had never stopped selling since. So when this one, their first number one in 1970, was offered to me for £2 I jumped. I think it’s the only quadrophonic LP in my collection.



Now first of all, Marcello has already got to this on Then Play Long but I’ve purposely not read that yet so that this doesn’t become a riposte to him.



This isn’t going to be an easy review and probably not a very long one either. How much can you say about an album that’s been regularly rubbished by its creators, with an instrumental track that takes up the whole of one side and that you know is basically a jam with no coherence or meaning ? Even the title came from a random delve into a newspaper. Does it say anything about its time other than that middle class white boys in the early 70s were prepared to waste their pocket money on patently self-indulgent nonsense to fulfil their need for something weightier than bubblegum pop ?



Let’s start with the facts then. This is Pink Floyd in their transitional phase from the UK’s primary psychedelic pop band to world-conquering stadium rock act. It was the follow up to the bloated, often unlistenable, double LP “Ummagumma” and the band had well-documented difficulties in completing it to the extent that they called in avant-garde composer Ron Geesin to give some structure to the sprawling twenty minute long title track.



“Atom Heart Mother “ itself is split into six different parts according to the sleeve but there are no timings given so it is a matter of conjecture where 2-6 begin and where 1 to 5 end. Please feel free to disagree with my interpretation. "Father's Shout" starts with a minute of a brass band tuning up before drums and bass kick in followed by a series of sound effects, horses neighing, cars revving up and then a motorcycle speeding up. This is followed by a sad cello melody while Rick Wright doodles around in the background. Then Dave Gilmour comes in for the first time with a languid guitar solo which eventually gets louder and starts competing with the brass. The part ends with a quiet organ part.

"Breast Milky" which I would guess is largely Wright's work sees the John Aldiss Choir come in first with a female soloist then more female voices before the males join in. It is wordless, ethereal and brooding,Wright's doleful chords hinting at a deep unease. Towards the end Mason's drums come in to no real purpose marring for me the best part of the suite.

"Mother Fore" begins with a bassline before Gilmour retuns with some echoey guitar and Wright shows off some of his jazz chops.This is the simplest part and gives the first airing to their trademark 70s sound.

Then the choir return with some unintelligible chanting which I take to be the start of "Funky Dung". There's a brief return to the brass refrain from the first part and then what sounds like a dialling tone on the organ. This is the worst part as we're now treated to a passage of horrible atonal noises and shrieks which just reek of self-indulgence. This goes on for two minutes during which someone says "Here is an important announcement" which thankfully heralds the end of this nonsense.

"Mind Your Throats Please " isn't much of an improvement, a minute or so of backwards production tricks before another interjection "Silence in the Studio".

"Remergence" then revisits some of the earlier moments, Waters' bassline, the cello solo, two competing guitar solos before finally the brass band and choir return for a final resolution before a lingering final chord.

The other side sees a pocket version of the "Ummagumma" concept where each member gets their own song to work on although the others have to help Mason out with his. It begins with Roger Waters' "If" (no relation to the Kipling poem) which has attracted comment for being a rare moment of introspection from the (over-) politicised bassist. Like many of his songs it begins with a simple acoustic strum and his hoarse whisper . Some of the lyrics are just nonsense "If I were the moon I'd be cool" but there's also some hints of self-criticism "If I were a good man I'd understand the spaces between friends". Gilmour and Wright add some colour after the first couple of verses and Mason joins in softly towards the end but can't disguise that the song is melodically dull.

"Summer 68" is Rick Wright's contribution , an unsympathetic song about an encounter with a groupie based around a jaunty piano riff. Wright starts grumpily interrogating the girl after the fact about how she feels " before you leave to greet another man ". There's more than a hint of misogyny in there. The song has instrumental choruses where the brass band returns to some effect. After the second one the music slows down and reduces to just acoustic guitar and piano and Wright gloomily intoning "Goodbye to you, Charlotte Pringle's due " (that's a fictitious name by the way) before another blast of brass brings it to an end.

"Fat Old Sun " is an easygoing English blues song akin though inferior to "Man Ogf The World". It conjures up East Anglian bucolic bliss with Gilmour imploring someone not to break the spell "And if you see, don't make a sound ,pick your feet up off the ground".
It's chiefly interesting now because its themes were revisited in the final Floyd classic "High Hopes" which repeated the use of bells at the start and end of the track.

The album ends with the three part "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" which drew howls of protest from my passengers when I put it on a mix tape. For those not familiar with this famously bad track it features the sounds of their roadie Alan Stiles making himself breakfast in Nick Mason's kitchen, kettles whistling, rice krispies popping and unlovely mastication noises and musing on his preferences. These break up the three pieces, music , "Rise and Shine" a meandering bit of cod-chamber , "Sunny Side Up" a lazy Gilmour blues duet with himself and "Morning Glory" piano-led and more purposeful with some nice Hammond bits towards the end. It ends with a dripping tap which goes on forever if you've got the original vinyl and the right ( or perhaps wrong ) record player.

I was bemused to say the least and it would be over a decade before another Floyd album joined it on the shelf. A friend of mine bought it recently and was so appalled he took it back to the hop on quality grounds. Is it any good ? Well it has some attractive bits but no , if it weren't for the group's later triumphs it would be completely written off as a product of its excessive times.

That's enough. Allow me to pop over and see what Marcello makes of it.

8 & 9 Time And Tide / Frenzy - Split Enz

Purchased : April 1982 (Frenzy came free with Time And Tide)

Frenzy Tracks : I See Red / Give It A Whirl / Master Plan / Betty / Frenzy / Stuff And Nonsense / Marooned / Hermit McDermitt / Holy Smoke / Semi- Detatched / Carried Away / She Got Body / Mind Over Matter / Livin It Up

Time And Tide Tracks : Dirty Creature / Giant Heartbeat / Hello Sandy Allen / Never Ceases To Amaze Me / Lost For Words / Small World / Take A Walk / Pioneer / Six Months In A Leaky Boat / Haul Away / Log Cabin Fever / Make Sense Of It

This was a bit of a gamble since my knowledge of Split Enz's music at the time extended to "I Got You", "History Never Repeats" and "Six Months In A Leaky Boat". I saw an ad for it in Record Mirror offering the free album package for £3.99 and instructed my friend Anthony who visited Manchester's record shops every weekend to get it for me.



As the VFM package only helped it to number 71 in the charts, Time And Tide is the most obscure LP we've considered so far. It also marks a parting of the ways with Helen as it was the first one of my purchases she never bothered to listen to. My brief spell as her tastemaker was over. To be fair to Helen my own ambivalent reaction to these albums wouldn't have encouraged her to give them a spin.




We'll start with "Frenzy" because I listened to that first, reasoning that the current stuff would be superior so best to build up to it.




First, a bit of background. This “Frenzy” is not, despite having the same title and cover painting , the record released as their fourth LP in 1979. Perhaps influenced by The Cure’s reshaping of their debut, this is a re-mixed (by their keyboard player and most talented musician, Eddie Rayner) version which drops some of the original tracks and replaces them with different songs from an earlier recording session which became known, fabulously, as The Rootin Tootin Luton Tapes (not finally released until 2007). All the tracks were recorded during their sojourn in England in the late 70s and mark a turning point in the band’s musical development , toning down their artier leanings in favour of a more mainstream pop direction (as signified by the cover art of the band in casual clothes rather than Noel Crombie’s avant-garde costumes) . They also bear witness to the growing influence of the younger Finn brother, Neil (although Tim is still the predominant songwriter). What it definitely is not is a synth-pop (in the vein of “I Got You”) album which meant I was listening to unfamiliar music with no comfort breaks whatsoever.






It kicks off with the single "I See Red" a slice of New Wave pop somewhere between The Cars and Barry Andrews-era XTC. It's a similar tale of resentment from a dumped lover to future label mate Joe Jackson's "Is She Really Going Out With Him " though the self-pity is more overt, the first verse concluding "poor old me". That goes to the heart of so much of Tim Finn's songwriting ; you're getting the point of view of the loser, the discarded lover, the neglected child, the small man overcome by the cruelties of the world. Here we have the stuff of Eels twenty years early but Mark Everett looks the part whereas Tim Finn is a well-built, good looking guy who pulled Greta Scacchi. His voice (tentatively I'll say it's a tenor) can sound a bit pinched and mawkish on certain songs and it does here. Musically it's dominated by Eddie Rayner's impersonation of Steve Naive on the keyboards before the switch to Tim's beerhouse piano for the middle eight accompanied by a comedy "Grrr" which doesn't do the song any favours. It's a sparky introduction but its themes are better realised on subsequent tracks.






"Give It A Whirl" brings Neil Finn to the fore as co-writer and lead vocalist. The intro sounds quite strikingly similar to Jethro Tull's Christmas single "Ring Out Solstice Bells" then Neil launches into a positivist song about making the most of life -"There's a thrill you'll never know if you never try ". The last couple of lines of the verse start building in a way that recalls "I Got You" (the only moment on the album that does) but then goes straight to the second verse rather than a euphoric chorus. The second time we do get the chorus but it's a disappointing repetitive chant of the title.







"Master Plan" is a better song, written by Tim and sung by Neil. It starts with a hard beat and piano rumble vaguely reminiscent of post-Gabriel Genesis and Rayner's keyboards also sound proggy on this one. In some ways it's a contradiction to the previous song championing the advantages of careful planning "not taking any chances". It ends with a big , drum-heavy chant reminiscent of "Hey Jude" though thankfully not as long.







"Betty" sees a switch to the third person for a sympathetic song about a working class girl who can't do any better than casual sex at the weekend- "leaning up against the fence breathing hard and trying hard to cry". It starts like The Eagles with a steel guitar and acoustic strumming then it's just Tim at his most plaintive with an acoustic for the first verse. Drums and new wave keyboard stabs come in on the (comparitively weak) chorus. The middle eight sees the first real guitar solo on the record before Tim switches to a more general observation "There's always someone left behind, the crippled boy the last in line, the lost soul". I don't know why, despite the obvious compassion, it fails to move me- perhaps it's just the magpie musical mix that's too distracting.






No such problems with "Frenzy" which is pretty horrible. Tim co-wrote it with Rayner and while the keyboard player was the band's most accomplished musician his appearance in the writing credits usually bodes ill. The galloping intro with its buzzing bass and military whistling similar to "Generals And Majors" leads up to a spoken verse in the insinuating vein of B A Robertson's "Bang Bang" about losing control. After the first chorus we are treated to a verse of haka noises and grunts (possibly a Maori translation of the previous verse ?) before a chorus that happily proclaims "everybody's round the bend". It's also the first song to demonstrate their recurring tendency (which Neil carried into Crowded House) to end their songs with a cacophony.







After that it doesn't bode well when the next track commences with a jingoistic dedication to the All Blacks but "Stuff And Nonsense" turns out to be one of their most affecting songs. Combining the self-abasement of Dean Friedman's "Lucky Stars" with the pragmatism of Meat Loaf's "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad" Tim sings the first verse and chorus to just a piano then the strings come in for the second verse. The others join in on the second chorus before a meditative middle eight on the piano and finally the drums kick us into a rousing last chorus to fade. (We will get to Belinda Carlisle's insipid cover in due course).







Bewilderingly we change gear again to Rayner's brief ditty "Marooned" which is musically clever, his keyboards imitating distress beacons and train whistles and the band's Bez/Eno figure Noel Crombie tapping out morse code on his sticks, but completely throwaway in the lyrical department.







Side Two begins with the most difficult track to assess. I hated "Hermit McDermitt" (ironically it's the only one to feature synths) on first hearing for its nursery rhyme title , smartass rhymes and Tim's in character (think Ray Stevens) vocal but appreciate it more now for how dark it is. To a background of edgy synths similar to Squeeze's "Take Me I'm Yours" McDermitt at first appears a harmless eccentric leaving the rat race behind. Then in the second verse his retreat is revealed to be a result of maltreatment but the third chills the bone. The music drops down to a low buzz as McDermitt declares he's not alone in his resentments and "One day soon we'll all return and kill you in your beds" after which we get increasingly frantic repeats of the chorus with incongruous shouts of "yeah " from the others while Rayner plays descending scales in the manner of Napoleon XIV. Not very pc and as a macabre vision it's outgunned by the extraordinary next track but one.







First though we have "Holy Smoke" the first of two Neil Finn solo compositions and immediately we're in Crowded House territory both musically and lyrically. Neil starts singing straightaway to an acoustic strum then a very George Harrison guitar line catches up in the third line. Lyrically it's the same scenario as CH's classic "Into Temptation" the Catholic boy struck with terror after a sexual transgression. After the second chorus the cosy strum is suddenly interrupted by a rockier section evoking the religious terror. Neil's "It's all I can do " exclamation is strikingly similar to Billy Joel's "There's nothing else I can do" in "All For Leyna". After which the flow of the song continues as before although the drums have become more aggressive.





There was always a sinister side to their music and it finds full expression in "Semi-Detatched" which has become more chilling still in light of the Christopher Foster nurder case. Aginst a rumble of bass piano chords and sung in Tim's lowest register we are introduced to a man at the end of his tether, in pain and bothered by "Debt collectors, slap-dash, noisy children" each syllable painfully stretched out. Then the chorus briefly opens out with Rayner's questioning keyboard line and Tim's "We're semi detached and we'll burn like matchsticks" providing the awful answer. A prowling electric guitar underscores the next verse as things are set in motion and "In my garden cats entreat me "Spare Us" " much as you imagine Foster's dogs and horses doing the same. But it gets worse as Tim supplies the final reason "I think I heard a neighbour say "He'll amount to nothing, he's pathetic " " . You hear those neighbours in the aftermath of every Hungerford or Dunblane parading their good judgement and never reflecting on how their attitudes might have influenced the perpetrator. After two runs through the chorus the drums finally appear also ushering in a searing guitar solo which does the job despite a marked similarity to Dave Gilmour's at the end of "Wuthering Heights". Then it's just the piano for Tim's last run through the chorus ending in an eerie Mmmm.






The rest of the album suffers by comparison. Neil's second song "Carried Away" suggests a familiarity with The Moody Blues "Question" in its song structure starting with fast-strummed acoustic guitars (and Tim's Chas Jankel piano chords) for the first two verses and choruses then it slows down for a more meditative verse with a different melody on the piano before getting going again. Lyrically it's a slight song about sexual excitement ; the only other interesting thing being a "Go Your Own Way " guitar solo.






"She Got Body" is a lightweight Tim love song with an acoustic swing, the points of interest being Tim's Elvis inflections, the call and response backing vocals and a thudding ending similar to Kate Bush's "Sat In Your Lap". "Mind Over Matter" a co-write by the brothers, is a paean to physical training and combines driving hard rock with Crombie's infamous spoon playing. Which leaves "Livin It Up" a brief curiosity from bassist Nigel Griggs which starts with drums like Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" then becomes a punk thrash with a campy Steve Priest- type vocal presumably from Griggs himself. It also mentions The Stones and Steely Dan but to what purpose isn't clear.







It is a very uneven album from a band who seem to take a delight in wrongfooting the listener. For a long time, until at least 1990, I regarded it as the runt of the litter in my collection though I've since purchased much worse . Now it's somewhat rehabilitated though the gap between its best and worst tracks is one of the widest quality gulfs of any record in my collection.







So, with expectations considerably lowered I turned to "Time And Tide". Three years on the band had slimmed to a five piece following drummer Malcolm Green's departure with, for this album only, Crombie being trusted to occupy the drum seat. It's a much more homogenous album than Frenzy with two new elements funk and folk being thrown into the musical mix.





The first of these is immediately evident on "Dirty Creature" with its clipped guitar and prowling bassline showing the influence of Talking Heads as does Tim Finn's stuttery vocal. Although a co-write with Neil and Griggs the song is an extended metaphor for Tim's struggle with depression and as such follows on from "The Green Manalishi ". Anyone who's been similarly afflicted will recognise lines like "Tentacles on the brain, keep me from falling asleep". The condition is also compared to a taniwha, a water-dwelling creature from Maori mythology. The music is inventive too coming to an abrupt halt in the first verse as if they've had a collective panic attack while the middle eight where Rayner plays some ragged piano features background chatter and even the odd Michael Jackson "ow". The chorus is more melodic with Rayner playing soothing synth chords while Tim introduces the first of many nautical meetaphors on the LP by wailing "I don't want to sail tonight ".





"Giant Heartbeat" brings Neil to the fore. Written with Griggs this is less funky built on the sort of questioning guitar lines employed by British New Wavers like The Passions and The Cure . Though the lyrics are quite opaque I am guessing it's about the onset of agnosticism with age "The boy's hand will squeeze the giant's heart" . The song uses a guitar solo and swirling keyboards to emphasise the confusion but shrinks to a cramped guitar similar to the opening of XTC's "Senses Working Overtime" for the key lyric "If anybody's listening, a giant heartbeat is fading."





We stay with Neil for his solo composition the driving rock song "Hello Sandy Allen " inspired by his meeting the world's tallest woman on a talk show in New York, hence the blaring sirens in the intro. The only song across both albums that really resembles "I Got You" , it's a very straightforward account of Neil's favourable impression of her though it signs off with a wry comment on their own long struggle for recognition "Must be when you're number one you don't have to try so hard ". I haven't found any record of what Ms Allen thought of the song.





Back to Tim for "Never Ceases To Amaze Me" something of a more optimistic flip side to "Dirty Creature" the similarity in the music despite the added chattering percussion being slightly disappointing. It's interesting that in the second verse Tim declares "It pays to sell yourself " in exactly the same tone as David Byrne's "And you may find yourself ... " on "Once In A Lifetime". With little melodic content it's probably the weakest track.





"Lost For Words" another co-write by the brothers with Griggs bears some similarities to their producer Hugh Padgham's recent clients, The Police with its sparse abrasive guitar and frantic rhythm and despite the line "tell me sir" seems to be about the disintegration of Tim's marriage -"The damage has all been done and talking is useless". Strangely the middle eight is an extended drum solo which recalls Bow Wow Wow or The Jam's "Funeral Pyre " but Crombie isn't given a writing credit.





"Small World" with its rumbling percussion and air of menace recalls another of Padgham's clients Peter Gabriel. A still-topical (apart from the second verse's Cold War references) musing on over-population from Tim it's the best thing on Side One. At two points in the song Tim's frustration breaks out to a furious guitar jangle "wanna shout about it" but his futile protest is washed away by Rayner's Duran Duran synth chords and the soothing fatalism of the line "Small world and it's getting smaller ". Then it's capped by the best moment on the album , the beautifully sung (the Finns are up there with the Everlys) Taupinesque line "Yes and it's a strange place for bringing up your children when there's no guarantee they'll have a future in a small world".





Side Two opens with more whiteboy funk on "Take A Walk" but this time its a Neil song about the push and pull aspects of leaving home and the comforts of the familiar "Heading off down beaten tracks try to get that feeling back ". The harmonies are excellent and Rayner's keyboard washes evoke a sense of wonder and discovery.





Next up we have Rayner's "Pioneer " ostensibly a two minute instrumental but in context it's clearly an extended intro to the following track ; there's the same keyboard motif running through both. One suspects it was a royalty issue particularly as the next one is credited to "Tim Finn and Split Enz" though whether it benefitted Eddie to have a sole credit on the LP or he lost out from not having his name on the obvious single is one for the accountants. On its own "Pioneer" is a bit dull despite the waves and gulls which herald the nautical theme taking centre stage and it threatens to break out into "Chariots of Fire " at any moment.





Instead it leads into "Six Months In A Leaky Boat " one of the band's best known songs and subject to a nonsensical ban in the UK on the grounds that it might undermine morale while the task force was sailing to the Falklands . Wikipedia's Tim Finn entry has it that the song is really about the break up of his marriage but I'm not convinced by that. I think both this song and the next are preparing the ground for his imminent departure from the band - this was his last album as a full participant with them- and the sea represents escape from the compromises of being in a band and indeed New Zealand here referred to by its Maori name Aotearoa. The line "Aw come on all you lads let's forgive and forget, there's a world to explore, tales to tell back on shore" clearly anticipates trouble. Musically the star is Rayner with his swirling keyboards and a striking middle eight which reduces to a fairground organ and whistle before the song starts up again. Tim then adds a mournful coda on the piano with some soft wordless vocal accompaniment.





Then we've got "Haul Away" a Tim solo composition which basically tells his life story in the form of a sea shanty. It's hard not to view it as a valediction. The band are described as an "odyssey" which "motivates me still" ; it of course speaks volumes that he has to say that. Musically this is the most inventive track on the album with the instrumentation changing on each verse from bongoes and glockenspiel on the first verse about his birth to the phased keyboards that zoom from speaker to speaker when he reaches 21. There's an interesting line- "Young men are waiting lapping at my heels" - which you have to think refers to Neil. The last verse refers again to his recent nervous breakdown and ends abruptly leaving you wanting more.



My moody 17 year old self thought that "Log Cabin Fever" was the best track putting myself in the shoes of its reclusive protagonist. Now it seems a bit self-conscious; Neil attempting to write a song with the same psychological depth as the best of his brother's work. It revisits the themes of "Hermit McDermitt" but this time the hermit is despondent rather than angry and wants to "rejoin the human race, see what I'm missing". Musically it builds nicely from the brooding strum it opens with to its rocky conclusion with Hugh Padgham finally allowed to use his famed gated drum sound. There's also what sounds like a Rolf Harris wobble board in there although he's not credited on the sleeve. The middle eight where the hermit decides to re- emerge into the world sounds quite similar to the sunnier bits of Tubular Bells while the hard rocking conclusion reminds me of Argent's "Hold Your Head High".



The final track is the group composition "Make Sense Of It" a guardedly optimistic song with echoes of that other one hit wonder (in UK chart terms) group from the fringes of the English-speaking world, Martha and the Muffins. The guitar riff seems like a truncated version of the deathless "Echo Beach" one , the first chorus begins with the line "When you're driving home from a day at work" and the whole track shares the Muffins' trademark mood of restless unease particularly Rayner's eeerie synth washes which see the album out.








































































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7. Speak And Spell - Depeche Mode

Purchased : late December 1981

Tracks : New Life / I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead / Puppets / Boys Say Go / Nodisco / What's Your Name / Photographic / Tora Tora Tora / Big Muff / Any Second Now / Just Can't Get Enough

The fruit of a spending trip to Rochdale with Christmas money in my pocket this is also the first one that's on cassette as the vinyl version I initially bought kept jumping. It's also the first LP in my collection not to feature any conventional instruments at all.

This was DM's first LP and is dominated by the songs and keyboard skills of the soon-to-depart Vince Clarke. There's a sense that the others are learning their trade in his shadow. It's also an LP that disappeared from public consciousness very quickly. Released the same week as new albums from Adam and the Ants and OMD, it entered the charts at 10 then quickly descended as Clarke's sudden departure left them unable to tour it. The follow up composed by Martin Gore came out less than a year later . So there's a sense in which this is an obscurity, the non-singles quickly forgotten and rarely revisited by the band themselves.

This has led to a lazy misconception that this is really the first Erasure album instead, a collection of bright and breezy dance pop tracks that , personnel aside, has little connection with the dark drama of their more famous work. Certainly, there's little in their subsequent canon that resembles "Just Can't Get Enough" but elsewhere there are plenty of pointers to a heart of darkness beating behind the primitive sequencers.

The LP starts as it had to with the great clarion call that is the intro to "New Life", the stentorian four note motif being answered by a burble of synth noise four times before the beat kicks in. The attractiveness of the melody disguises the fact that this is a song about sex and potentially deviant sex at that. What DM are offering on this album is a commercial take on the music of Blitz favourites DAF (themselves influenced by Suicide) with Clarke adding melody lines to the bare throbs and pulses of the sequencer. They also took cues from DAF's homoerotic image -in the video for "Just Can't Get Enough" they're already wearing the leather - and it's in the lyrics here - "I watched that man to a stranger. You think you only know me when you turn on the light". It's very tempting to think that the word "complicating" in the chorus was originally "copulating". The music is densest here, Clarke adding new melody lines with each verse apart from the third when Gahan sings over just the drum machine. The track ends with a rising harmony of "Aahs" exploding into a riot of synth melody , the best simulated orgasm in pop prior to "Relax". A magnificent and massively underrated single.

"I Sometimes Wish I Was Dead" is more minimalist, just a throbbing pulse and a single melody line for the chorus. It's hard to know what Clarke is saying with the title since this is one of the most optimistic tracks - a reference to his impending departure or clumsy grab at Joy Division gravitas. The song itself is slight and just fades out after a third verse without conclusion.

"Puppets" aims to be sinister with a high pitched note repeating before the bass synth comes in. It doesn't quite get there because Dave Gahan isn't yet capable of evoking menace ; his mumbled whisper just sounds incompetent. When he sings "I'll be your operator baby I'm in control" you suspect you're hearing a bedroom fantasist rather than a genuine Svengali. Clarke's plaintive melody in the latter stages improves matters but you still think Soft Cell could have done it better.

With "Boys Say Go" we have some more mainstream influences on the music. After the rather gauche hooligan chant of the title we get a Hi-NRG disco pulse reminiscent of Sylvester or Cerrone and an overtly gay lyric. Ironically the middle eight's air of respite resembles the one from Bronski Beat's "Smalltown Boy". When one considers that none of DM are actually gay it does have an air of pastiche about it.

"Nodisco" is based around a line lifted from Talking Heads "Life During Wartime" - "this ain't nodisco" . Unlike the Heads though, DM seem aware of the double negative and we plainly are at a disco albeit one playing some rather lugubrious music. There's a recurring filmic metaphor throughout the album and it's here in "I saw you play the part" and "Part one, act one". Is this Clarke's way of keeping an ironic distance from the subject matter ?

A stark, brutal drum machine is the wrong-footing intro to the overtly poppy "What's Your Name" now cited by Fletcher and Gore as their most hated number. It's easy to read this song as a satire on manufactured pop just as it is to imagine Jedward, Chico or some other muppet trilling its chorus of "hey you're such a pretty boy" on the X Factor. But this is 1981 when the top teen idols were Adam Ant and Simon Le Bon who wrote their own songs and owed nothing to any back room Svengali. I think it's more likely a song about rent boys and their clients hidden behind layers of bubblegum like the corny handclaps on the last verse and the "P-R-E-Double T-y" ad lib from Martin Gore making his first vocal appearance on the LP.

Side Two begins strongly with "Photographic" , already released on the Some Bizarre Album and the most aggressive track on this one. The honking synthesiser pulse at the beginning has gained in menace since a very similar sound was used to herald the deadly commercial in "Halloween 3" . It's quickly joined by a more brutal binary pulse and Gahan's morose vocal. The photographer seems to be watching a film (again) of a past love before he dispassionately intones "I take pictures, photographic pictures" over a scattergun synth line. For a moment we seem to be in "Peeping Tom" territory but then Clarke starts playing a minor key line and Gahan becomes mournful again- "The years I spend just thinking of a moment we both knew". He ends by just repeating the mantra "Bright light dark room" as Clarke plays a sad melody leaving him there before the twitchy sounds of the next track start overlapping.

Clarke then takes a back seat as the next two tracks are Gore's first contributions to the DM songbook. "Tora Tora Tora" was a code phrase used by the Japanese in the attack on Pearl Harbour meaning "total surprise achieved" so we seem to be in "Enola Gay" territory again although Gore's writing is opaque. The line "Or just a form of modern art" may be a reference to Roy Lichtenstein's "Whaam ! " painting of aerial combat. The music is the nearest we get to Joy Division with Gahan singing the verses over just the rhythm and Hannet-esque synth noises throughout including a theremin wail on the chorus. The refrain of "I played an American " reminds us that the song shares its title with a 1970 film which may have been the inspiration all along.

Gahan then takes a breather for a couple of tracks. The dubiously titled "Big Muff" is actually a Hi-NRG instrumental then Gore takes the vocal lead on Clarke's "Any Second Now" . On this one the drum machine is switched off and Gore sweetly sings an almost Oriental melody. It's similar in places to Yazoo's "Ode To Boy" only not as good. It ends with Oriental chimes then the nagging synth riff of "Just Can't Get Enough" begins. This song first took DM into the Top 10 as a single and of course has been recently revived by The Saturdays. Even at the time I thought it was a bit vacuous and repetitive and those criticisms still hold good but listening again I note the synthetic brass stabs at the end of each instrumental passage an early use of a particularly eighties trope.

Only "New Life" and "Photographic" (plus the B-side of debut 45 "Dreaming of Me", "Ice Machine" not included here) really qualify as classics from the Vince Clarke period but as a work-in-progress of one of the most interesting bands of the last 30 years it's still worth a listen.

6. Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

Acquired : 23 December 1981

Tracks : Bunker Soldiers / Almost / Mystereality / Electricity / The Messerschmidt Twins / Messages / Julia’s Song / Red Frame White Light / Dancing / Pretending To See The Future


This was Helen’s second album as birthday/Christmas present and followed on naturally enough from the first. I think she knew it was really the one at the top of the wish list even though I hadn’t put it in any order.

This of course was the debut OMD LP, released at the beginning of 1980 after their successful support tour with Gary Numan. At this point neither Humphreys nor McCluskey were, by their own admission, proficient musicians so there is a primitivism to this LP that makes an interesting counterpoint to the futurism of much of the material.

The opening track “Bunker Soldiers” starts with a bald brutal drum beat from Winston their trusty metronome then a simple but insistent synth bassline comes in followed by a wailing synth line sonically very similar to those employed by Numan at the time. In fact the whole song , with its militaristic imagery (though it seems to be an attack on behind-the-lines generals) isn’t too far away from Numan tracks like “Bombers” . There’s little evidence of their melodic strengths here, the chorus being a chant while strings of random numbers and letters are barked out in the separate channels.

They make up for it with “Almost” which is built around a lovely melancholy string synth line. Against that McCluskey sings plaintively of emotional timidity and regret putting me in mind of Lockwood in “Wuthering Heights”. When the song fades out to his repeated refrain of “Happens all the time to a friend of mine” you know he’s employing the classic lie of self defence.

“Mystereality” employs conventional instruments in McCluskey’s bass guitar and Martin Cooper’s saxophone. The song is hung on McCluskey’s stop-start bassline with deliberately confusing lyrics hinting at mental disintegration -“oh reality don’t fool me” - and Cooper’s mournful sax in place of a chorus. The heart of the song is taken up by an elongated but unflashy solo from Cooper after the second verse and when you’re expecting the same after the third the song just stops dead. It’s hard to think of another record where the song structure fits the subject matter so well.

Then we’re into the unbridled joy of “Electricity” their homage to Kraftwerk with its before-its- time warning of fossil fuel depletion. Probably the most un-Factory like single ever released on the label, its memorable xylophone melody and McCluskey’s poppy bass runs are a million miles away from A Certain Ratio’s icy abstractions.

The next track however isn’t. “The Messerschmidt Twins” emerges slowly from what sounds like an electronic approximation of an orchestra tuning up. A bass synth eventually establishes a rhythm while the background noises resolve into a continuous white noise drone that prefigures JAMC. There are no German planes referenced in the song which seems to be an acknowledgement of a partner’s stronger character – “when you’re asking it feels like telling” . It’s an interesting pointer to the bleaker sounds on their next LP but rather lachrymose and melodically weak.

Side Two began with an unexpected disappointment for me. This “Messages” is not the single version produced by Mike Howlett which cracked the Top 20 for them and for a long time was my favourite ever record. Despite the low-key presence of a rhythm guitar which Howllett removed, this version seems plodding and primitive by comparison. It’s still a great song mind you , an emotionally honest account of lovers vying for the last word as they drift apart with McCluskey at his most plaintive. The last few words are wailed over a key change which emphasises the heightened emotion.

It’s interesting that it’s sequenced just ahead of “Julia’s Song” a survival from the duo’s days in The Id with lyrics by their singer and McCluskey’s former girlfriend Julia Kneale. It’s an intriguing song anchored by a fat bassline reminiscent of Bruce Foxton with a wandering spindly guitar and ominous minor chords in the background. You would guess that Julia, a trainee psychiatric nurse at the time, might be familiar with “The Wasteland” as the narrative moves from an adulterous businessman to a someone caring for a dying geriatric. There’s also a little dig at McCluskey’s interest in astronomy and a reference to “the rest of the band” which hints at some intriguing power games at the time. McCluskey retaliates by throwing in some vocal tics like rolling the r’s in “burning” or suddenly switching key on “eyes” to suggest he’s not taking it too seriously .

It’s the last highpoint of the album, none of the closing three tracks being their best work. “Red Frame White Light” made a minor impact on the singles chart at the beginning of 1980 but came to define the band in the early stage of their career – ah yes the bank clerks who write songs about telephone boxes. While the title has echoes of Velvet Underground (and expanded versions of this LP include their not-bad-at-all version of “Waiting For The Man” the song comes across as a gawky parody of Kraftwerk which almost certainly wasn’t the intention. There’s some nice melodic touches but it’s not a song that bears much repeated listening.

That’s doubly true of “Dancing” a self-consciously experimental track that the band chose to perform on Old Grey Whistle Test in a curious act of self-sabotage. A Bontempi-beat starts up, there are brief snatches of Mantovaniesque muzak and then a lurching bassline heralds some horrible farty keyboard sounds as if the synths are being detuned. It’s deliberately unpleasant and if that’s the concept - an old people’s dance being gatecrashed by a bunch of sonic terrorists - it sort of succeeds but it’s really one to skip over.


Final track “Pretending To See The Future” isn’t quite as challenging and is in fact the only song on the LP with a traditional verse / chorus structure. However McCluskey sings the verses in a very low key which makes them almost a drone and the minimalist synth backing recalls Suicide or DAF rather than more chart-friendly peers. The title and lyrics reek of the self-doubt that plagued McCluskey in particular in this phase of their career and the confusing final chorus where he sings an indecipherable alternative lyric over himself reflects his agnostic confusion.

It is a flawed debut from a band who weren’t quite sure where they wanted to go, follow temporary mentor Gary Numan into the charts or compete with the likes of Cabaret Voltaire for NME’s approval ? By the time I heard this they’d made their choice and the better tracks on the album prove they made the right one but here you get a glimpse of the alternative which makes it interesting rather than excellent.

5. Duran Duran - Duran Duran

Purchased : October 1981

Tracks : Girls On Film / Planet Earth / Anyone Out There / To The Shore / Careless Memories / Night Boat / Sound Of Thunder / Friends Of Mine / Tel Aviv

I suppose this was a predictable follow-on from the last post. This time it was a joint purchase by Helen and myself from my friend Francis, a rock fan who purported to hate NR which of course prompts the question - what was he doing with it in the first place ? It was bought at a bad time of my life - my best friend was about to give up on me - so there's a tendency to invest it with more melancholy than is actually there in the grooves.

When Duran Duran first appeared on TOTP I'd never heard of them. Obviously neither had Tony Blackburn who introduced them as Durren Durren on the Top 40 show the following week. At this point I concurred with the general view that they were Spandau's poor relations although they were soon to get their noses ahead commercially.

The album starts off with the clicking of cameras and we're straight into "Girls On Film" their first Top 5 hit. The subject matter of course had been covered by Kraftwerk on "The Model" but here Simon Le Bon is excited photographer rather than detatched observer. The oft-cited Chic influence is immediately apparent with Roger Taylor's punchy drumming taking its cue from Tony Thompson and John Taylor getting close to Bernard Edwards's fluidity on bass. Andy Taylor throws in some clipped rhythm guitar then Nick Rhodes comes in on the chorus with his synth chords. It's a heady mix and betrays the source of Duran's eventual triumph over Spandau, all five members contributing to the sound. Like many songs from 1981 (think also "Tears Are Not Enough" and "Favourite Shirts" the middle eight is mainly a percussion break. On the third verse Rhodes introduces an eerie synth line suggesting an unease behind this celebration of glamour and the final line "take me up till I'm shooting a star " has a sinister double meaning less than six months after Mark Chapman.

Their debut single "Planet Earth" follows, a near-perfect pop song. Emerging from a synth chord very similar to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" a Moroder synth pulse and nimble bass figure lead us to Andy Taylor's melodic guitar riff then Le Bon launches into his tale of alien encounters, the only overtly futurist song on the album with a rather unwise mention of "some New Romantic" in the first verse. The ba-ba-ba backing vocals remind us that the band took their name from a kitsch late 1960s film.

"Anyone Out There" could also have been a single. Based around Andy Taylor's clipped rhythm guitar it's the plainest lyric on the album; a deserted lover begins to succumb to loneliness. Le Bon's vocals are sincere and unaffected as they are throughout this LP with none of the histrionic that marred later work .I'm not sure John Taylor's suddenly steely bass in the coda really belongs though.

The artier side of the band (Le Bon and Rhodes) have their moment with "To The Shore" which initially features just the two of them, Le Bon singing over Rhodes's phased synths and electronic percussion. Le Bon extols the sea's potential for re-birth although he gives way to poetic excess - only he knows what "gorging your sanhedralite" means. That line is the cue for the rest of the band to come in. Le Bon finishes with the word "Breathe" followed by a long orgasmic breath and then Andy Taylor is allowed a Santana-lite guitar solo perhaps as a trade-off.

Then we have "Careless Memories" which flopped badly as the second single. This may have been down merely to the album coming out at the same time but perhaps their audience wasn't ready for such a dark and angry song without an obvious hookline. I can't think of any other DD song with such aggressive lyrics. Le Bon's ferocious attack on an ex-lover approaches Joy Division's "Novelty" in its sustained energy though this relies on a synth pulse rather than Hook's bass line for its force. The climax of "Look out look out" over a guitar and synth crescendo is fraught with menace.

Side Two starts with "Night Boat" a brooding song. It starts with a lenghty instrumental passage and two layers of synth working against each other before the rest of the band come in one by one until Le Bon starts singing. There are hints of "Apocalypse Now" with the reference to a yellow river, cricket noises and tribal percussion and more than a hint of foreboding in the chorus of "waiting for the night boat".

The next track also concerns waiting but here we have a man in stasis anticipating the "Sound of Thunder". This is a close cousin to "Planet Earth" but with its disappointingly bland chorus it doesn't make the same impression.

"Friends Of Mine" invents Inxs with its funk rock strut. It's either very personal or completely meaningless as Le Bon introduces the controversial released convict George Davies and the completely fictional Rocky Picture in a surprisingly warm chorus after brooding on false friends in the verses. Andy Taylor is allowed to take it out in Dave Gilmour fashion but is faded out after a few bars.

The album ends on a curveball with "Tel Aviv" a near-instrumental (bar some Hebraic chanting) presumably inspired by Le Bon's sojourn on a kibbutz in the 70s. It's actually dominated by the string arrangement of outsider Richard Myhill (of "It Takes Two to Tango" one hit wonder fame) and is a very strange way to close your debut album.

It's a hard one for me to assess. It's clearly a work in progress - Le Bon hadn't been in the band that long - but there are some songs on the first side that to my mind they never surpassed. Duran Duran will feature again here but I'm still inclined to nominate this one as their best.