14 posts tagged “new wave”
Yeah, yeah--I know. You ask: Pegritz, where the hell have you been for the last...howevermany months? Did you die? Were you off exploring the Jovian system in a hotwired UFO? Did the post-Singularity quantum computer running your simulated consciousness crash or catch a sentient virus? No, no, and--sadly--no. The truth is far more mundane and thoroughly unexciting. I ran into some weird problems uploading tracks to this site, and thought that maybe I'd exceeded my storage here...but it wasn't that. Not sure what caused the problem, but I got disgusted with it and just stopped using Vox for a bit. Then everytime I wanted to start up again and see if things were running smoothly once more, some bullshit arose that distracted me. Losing my shit job was one of them. But, now that I am a "man of leisure"--that is, a lazy slob living on unemployment benefits, which means I don't have the money to ever leave the house--I've got plenty of time to start smackin' y'all across your faces with some tight jams once again!
I couldn't mention Ultravox in the last post without following it up with two of my alltime favorite Ultravox jams. "Why two?" you ask. Well, why do I always post two jams by the same band?--because they're so fucking awesome they deserve double the love! *Smack* So just shut the hell up, play the music, and get ye some edumakayshun in the glory that was the New Romantic movement. Or, at least, the one band who embodied its ideals the best.
Everyone knows Cutting Crew for their sappy but pretty ballad "I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight," but I think "I've Been In Love Before," from the group's debut album, 1986's Broadcast, is, in my completely unhumble and better-than-yours opinion, a far more intriguing song.
First of all, Cutting Crew is not an easy band to pigeonhole once you listen to anything other than "I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight." Much like A-Ha, a band with whom they share a short of melodic affinity, Cutting Crew's songs range from heartful ballads to darker fare like the "Life in a Dangerous Time," which reminds one strongly of The Fixx's "Red Skies at Night" while very clearly being a totally different song. Cutting Crew is a band whose music both plays it safe--it's all very friendly, melodic pop-rock of that quintessential 1980s variety--but, at the same time, is not afraid to explore territory more familiar to edgier bands. I mean, come one: their name is Cutting Crew, for christ's sake--of course they've got to have some kind of sharpness....
And even in a ballad like "I've Been In Love Before," which sounds like something all the girls would want to dance to at your senior prom, visions of highschool romance welling up in their illusion-filled eyes, there's a hidden blade. Despite the heavy New Romanticism of this song, at its heart it's as hard and despairing as anything by Ultravox. Take a look at one of the verses:
Just one touch, just one look
A dangerous dance
One small word can make me feel
Like running away
You can't say you're in it, no, until you reach the limit
And as the chorus goes, "The hardest part is when you're in it."
Yes, this is a gorgeous song. The beat is deliciously offkilter, like a heart skipping with the first excitement of love...but, oh boy. Beneath the glitz and the soaring melody, there's a sobering message that love ain't all flying naked babies and lugubrious gazes into one another's eyes. This is one of the few honest love songs ever written. And, if you listen closely, even "I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight" isn't a particularly happy-go-lovey song, either. Cutting Crew is, at heart, a bitter band...and despite their glossy coating, inside is a core of pure post-punk angst and snarl. It's just delivered in Nick van Eede's buttery croon so it sneaks in there and jumps you from behind.
Cutting Crew released a number of very good albums, but they really struck gold with Broadcast. If you don't own this album, you are a jagoff. But, hey, please don't take offense--it's real easy to not be a jagoff: the album can be purchased online for as little as four bucks (US) and...ahem, if you're a little less, shall we say, scrupulous, it can be found elsewhere as well (Arrrrrrr!).
I literally cannot express in words--any words, in any language--how much I love the Pulsars. I have to make up new words to describe them: montogrifforous, omnipopulastic, palladonic, robotastic, mechanosome....
I always love it when friends introduce me to music that I end up falling in love with. A fella by the name of Jason Rohm, whom we all called Junior a'cause of his initials bein' JR, introduced me to the Pulsars, and I will gladly take a bullet for that guy in return. We both worked as ad-designers at the Uniontown Herald-Standard, a newspaper now only a year or so away from being defunct. We worked in a windowless room rilled with the toxic emissions of the gigantic photographic processors that developed the negatives of the newspaper pages and and, even worse, had to suffer sonic torture in the form of either endless oldies or country music--because those were the only two radio stations we could pick up in our Zyklon-B-filled bunker. I like oldies, and I like a lot of country...but the oldies station played the exact same twenty songs on endless repeat every night, and the country station only played garbage like Toby Keith and fuckin'...I don't even know their names--those redneck jackasses in cowboy hats who claim to be country these days (note: fuck them). So JR and I would bring in CDs to play on our computers, and massive, noise-cancelling headphones to blow out the sussurus of bad country and coughing all around us.
One night, JR brought in this selftitled CD by the Pulsars. Now, Junior mostly listened to godawful punk and that pathetic punkified "ska" exemplified by shitheads like Reel Big Fish and The Mighty Mighty Asstones, so when he said, "Pegritz, you really need to listen to this CD--you'll flip," I thought he was tricking me. But he said he'd picked it up for fifty cents at a Record Exchange and really liked it...but, more importantly, he thought I would like it even more.
So I gave it a listen.
And startled everyone in the office maybe, like, five times by shouting out "THAT'S MY MOTHERFUCKING JAM!" or "THIS IS THE COLLEST SHIT I'VE EVER HEARD!" whenever an awesome song came on. And there isn't a single non-awesome song on this entire album.
I'll write more about who the Pulsars are and why they're so great later, but for the moment, let's just focus on the song linked above: "Tunnel Song." If you live in Pittsburgh, you can find hundreds of Pulsars CDs at the Record Exchanges and other used-record shops because Almo Sounds, the label that released it, sent a hundred billion of them to Pittsburgh radio stations and DJs simply because of this particular songs, which opens with, "Pittsburgh's got a real cool tunnel / Pittsburgh's got a tunnel through a mountain." I advise you, if you do not have this CD and you live in Pittsburgh, get it--it'll be the best fitty cents you'll ever spend.
The song is pure early '80s New Wave mixed with a little bit of modern production. Let's see what we got here....Driving disco-beat/Gang-of-Four drums? Check. Throbbing FM-synthesis bassline? Check. Simple but awesome guitar chords? Chickity-Check. And vocals about how fucking cool tunnels are? Oh, HELL YEAH, check! This is one of those songs that revel in its stupid, nerdy, angular, awkward simplicity--much like something by Wall of Voodoo or Flying Lizards, but less goofy. The lyrics of this song are so simple as to be childish, but that's what makes them so great. We're not talking about "For What It's Worth" or "The Times They Are A-Changin'" here--this is a song about how cool tunnels are...and only post-punk/New Wave could ever truly take such subject matter, wrap it up in an awesome dance beat and robotic bassline and epic guitars and make it sound like a statement about the fate of the entire universe. This song is so catchy the CDC has cultures of it growing in their highest-level contain labs....
Which is why it's a criminal shame that the Pulsars are almost completely unknown save to New Wave fanatics like me. This is a band that demands the love of all those who lived through the '80s or wish they had. And guess what? You can get this CD for as little as ONE FRIGGIN' PENNY at the Amazon.com link above! Seriously. Stop screwing around and just go buy this album. Now. Do it now--you can open up the link in another tab while the song is playing. Jesus christ, quit fucking around and DO IT ALREADY!
After yesterday's self-indulgent miseryfest, it's time to pull things back up to a more positive level...and I can't think of any band better to do that than Men At Work.
You know, I don't think Australia is capable of producing bad music. Men at Work. INXS. Midnight Oil. Icehouse. The list goes on and on and on....Out of all of them, Icehouse is definitely my favorite Aussie band, but Men at Work is definitely next in line--because Men At Work and I go waaaaaaaaaaay back.
In MTV's early days--y'know, when they actually featured music--I got into "Down Under" thanks to its silly, thoroughly charming video. I used to laugh my ass off when I'd see the band's flautist walking around with that damn stuffed koala on a leash! I knew the song had something to do with Australia; even at the age of seven or eight, I knew that "Down Under" was a term used for the eighth continent...but it wasn't until I was older and wiser that I realized that the song works on many different levels. Let's just say that I've been "down under" with a head full of zombie, chundering with the best of them, quite a few times in my life--hell, I've even met a strange lady who made me nervous but nonetheless took me in and gave me breakfast--so I have a better appreciation for the song now than I ever had before. But don't ask me about vegemite. Never had it, never will.
Anyway, Men At Work's Business As Usual is definitely the band's best album, featuring several exemplary songs and most of the hits that made them a household name. I've had this album on vinyl, cassette tape, CD, and now mp3, and I've worn out all of 'em but the mp3 by playing the album on repeat for hours. The reason? The music's just so incredibly good, so well-produced, and Colin Hay's voice and lyrical content are truly inspiring.
"Down Under" is an exemplar of a type of rock music that just does not exist anymore. I'm not even sure what to call it--but it's got a specific sound, heard throughout most of the '80s, that is very recognizable: the songs are all very melody-centered, the guitars are generally clean and undistorted, and the instrumentation is varied. For example, instead of an obligatory guitar solo, you've got a sax solo, or--in the case of "Down Under," a flute solo playing the primary melody. The music was sunny and generally quite upbeat, even when dealing with dark or disturbing topics (like the shuttered paranoia of "Who Can It Be Now?" or the Cold War nuclear terror of "It's A Mistake"). It sounded...timeless. And "Down Under" is the best artifact I can think of concerning that sound. It sounds positively epic, led by Hay's powerful voice, and is so perfectly mixed you can hear every nuance of every instrument.
They just don't make music like this anymore. Oh, sure, there are plenty of indie rock bands striving to recapture the sound...but none of them quite do it. It's not because they don't have the instrument sounds right. It's not because they don't have the melodies. I think the thing they're missing is something a lot more subtle, something that only the Zeitgeist of the early-to-mid '80s had: a combination of experimentalism inherited from the punk and post-punk breakthroughs and good ol' classic songwriting. Today, artists focus more toward one or the other, and rarely seem able to combine both. Eh. Music changes over time. But I still have my favorite eras.
OK, OK...sorry for the lack of jams over the past two days. The shoulder/ribs muscle-spasm plus fibromyalgia combo platter really did me in. Couldn't move my head, couldn't breathe...sure as hell couldn't type. Fortunately, a regimen of Vicodin and Valium finally managed to do the trick--even if they left me a painfree, but lifeless, zombie for a few days. Fortunately, things to be back to normal...i.e., nonstop lowlevel pain, not shrieking stabbing agony.
Anyway, this post goes out to my boy Colin in Tasmania, because he so graciously pointed out to me, a while back, that Icehouse's seminal 1987 album, Man of Colours, was back in print with a considerable amount of extra tracks added. I immediately flipped out and grabbed that (and Flowers and Primitive Man, for good measure) and have spent the last few days listening to the album on repeat. I cannot possibly express how badly I wish the 1980s never ended.
Oddly enough, I didn't get into Icehouse in any major way until 2001 or 2002, largely because my buddy Arcane Matt--the guy who really got me into music collecting--exposed me to more of their work by playing "Crazy," the band's first big hit in the United States (and the first track on Man of Colours), and a couple of other tracks by them one night when he and I were DJing together. I was, like: "Holy shit...'You've gotta be crazy, baby, to want a guy like me?' That's, like, the theme song to my life!" The only song I'd known by Icehouse prior to that night was their big big 1988 hit, "Electric Blue" (also from Man of Colours), which I remember loving back when I was in ninth grade and had a whopping big crush on April Trees. Ummm, OK--back to the point: I didn't really get into Icehouse until fairly recently, and I could kick myself in the ass a thousand times for never having looked into them earlier.
The sound of Icehouse is quite literally The Sound of the 1980s: ultra-clean production, soaring melodies, rockin' guitars and swirling synths, reverbed snares and that huge, orchestral sound that made every song sound like an anthem for some element of your life. On Man of Colours, this sound was most mature. This album features Iva Davies' best songwriting since Primitive Man and probably the best production of ANY New Wave/rock album from the later '80s. Those Aussies really had it going on down there in the late '80s with acts like Icehouse and INXS blowing up the charts even here on the other side of the freakin' Pacific. The lead song, "Crazy," is a heart-swelling anthem that every single geek from the 1980s must realize is His Motherfucking Jam--and, of course, "Electric Blue" (cowritten with that maestro of soulful pop, John Friggin' Oates) is a masterpiece--but the real meat of album actually follows those two major singles. DO NOT let the majesty of those two singles overshadow the rest of the album, especially the moving, brilliant title track.
"Man of Colours" is an entirely-synth-driven song whose understated, mournful synths create a lovely atmosphere for Davies' heartfelt lyrics. The hihat ringing like drops of rain falling against a window underscores everything, and provides a backbone for the gorgeous melody. If this song doesn't make you tear up a little, there's something wrong with you--stop reading this and go away, I don't like you anymore. Though musically somewhat similar to, say, Lionel Richie's "Hello" (only in terms of mixing and production), "Man of Colours" is not an exercise in downbeat schmaltz, but an honest exploration of a nostalgic old painter looking back upon the fading colors of his memories. There's something about the melody and the gentle clarinet line that really calls to mind a world of colors whose vibrancy is beginning to dull with time...a feeling I, in particular--obsessed with the 1980s as I am--seem to feel more and more with every passing year.
You know...there's a lot of good music being made today. TONS of good music. But very little of it seems to pack the emotional punch of recordings like this. Were the '80s some kind of Age of Musical Miracles, or am I merely deifying the decade through the rose-tinted window of memory? Ah, who the hell cares--there was so much good music back then, it ain't even funny. Even when you strip away the personal attachments and recollections, songs like "Man of Colours" are eternal just because they're good songs--and it really doesn't matter when they came out: the world of music is, effectively, spaceless and timeless. The awesomeness of a jam like "Man of Colours" or "Crazy" echoes forward and backward through time and across the entire globe. Whether you came upon it the day of its release or twenty years later is irrelevant: the music's power is always there, no matter when or where you encounter it.
It's really sad that Our Daughters Wedding isn't more well-known than they are. ODW was one of the premiere synthpop acts of the early '80s, and managed to span the gap between the sheer weirdness-for-weirdness'-sake aesthetic of Flying Lizards or Wall of Voodoo and more accessible, pop-driven New Wave electronic acts like Depeche Mode and New Order.
Today's a nice, sunny Saturday--a flip chill winter bastard though clear--and I'm going to hang out with my boys, so today's jam is an ultimate hangin'-with-your-boys track, Adam & The Ants' "Stand And Deliver"!
Today's jam is gonna be a li'l bit ghetto, because I can't find the damn cover art to this album, but so what? You ain't here to look at purty pitchers, are you? HELL NO! Funk the visuals and just bring on the damn jams!
