It’s a slightly shorter themed week on the blog while WIS is otherwise occupied. This week it’s all about the early 80s student dancefloor. Enjoy!
First Word
So a quick reminder of the premise of this theme. Inspired by Propaganda’s Dr Mabuse in last week’s blog, I packed a box with a selection of my 80s 12 inch singles with a dance beat focus. I then took that box to a hugely enjoyable Vinyl Session in my local pub where I found myself playing a short ‘DJ set’ which seemed to go down well with others who had come to listen and play their records. The songs below are the ones I played, with the exception of the DAF track which is a German substitute for Propaganda. The DAF 12 inch was in my box but never got played. All the tunes come from an interesting period where white so-called indie artists who had built their career in the new wave of punk began to adapt their post-punk sound to incorporate the soul, funk and dance beats more normally associated with black artists.
The Magnificent Seven – The Clash (1981)
If you’re going to catch anyone’s ear when DJ-ing then you need a punchy rhythmic intro and they don’t come more punchy and rhythmic than the first few bars of the fourteenth (count ’em) UK single by The Clash. The journey from White Riot to The Magnificent Seven is a long musical one but, incredibly, it took place in three short years. Not that the band were strangers to black music – the thrash of their early records was punctuated with old reggae and soul covers like Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves, Toots & Maytals’ Pressure Drop and Time Is Tight by Booker T & The MGs. But by the time they reached their sprawling fourth LP Sandinista!, new black acts like Grandmaster Flash had grabbed guitarist Mick Jones’ interest with their rap and hip hop beats. This track was recorded in New York using a bass loop played by the great Norman Watt-Roy of The Blockheads with Topper Headon laying down his trademark precise drumming. Joe Strummer wrote the stream of consciousness words as they put the track down but, as it’s all about the beat, it is pretty much nonsense stuff. All highly enjoyable, though – who can resist “Italian mobster shoots a lobster/Seafood restaurant gets outta hand”. The album was released six months before Blondie’s global ‘white-rap’ hit Rapture and when this track was released as a single after that, it bounced into the UK top 40 with some style. Cheeseboiger!!
Wordy Rappinghood – Tom Tom Club (1981)
If the The Clash were dabbling with the emerging NY rap scene, those from nearer the neighbourhood were also on the case. Having been part of the late 70s CBGB’s scene, but sounding very different to the Ramones, Talking Heads had quickly developed their unique art-rock to take on rhythms from other places. By their fourth record, 1980’s brilliant Remain In Light, the influence of American funk and Afrobeats were all over their sound. During a band hiatus that followed that album, drummer Chris Frantz and bassist Tina Weymouth began the Tom Tom Club as a side-project with Adrian Belew. The name comes from the dancehall in the Bahamas where they first rehearsed. Taking their lead from dance rhythms and rap beats, this track was their first single released on Island Records in the UK in May 1981, a few week’s after The Clash single above. A predictably more literate rap by Weymouth asks the question “What are words worth?” after the frantic tapping typewriter intro. It goes on to contrast its thoughtful, clever lyrics with a nonsense chorus which borrows from a traditional Moroccan children’s song A Ram Sam Sam. A top ten hit duly followed and sticky dancefloors were filled by that bass and those drums.
Slippery People (Live) – Talking Heads (1984)
And talking of Talking Heads, the hiatus that allowed the Tom Tom Club to form was ended when the band got back together in 1982 to record their fifth album Speaking In Tongues. It brought them the commercial breakthrough which had eluded them through their four previous records, which were lavishly praised by the critics. The ingeniously choreographed tour to support this record resulted in Jonathan Demme making Stop Making Sense, what I consider to be the greatest concert movie ever made. From the opening, empty stage guitar and boombox solo version of Psycho Killer to the ending of Crosseyed & Painless with a stage full of energised musicians at the top of their game, it’s a masterpiece. Although not on this single, it’s maybe not surprisingly that the visual standout ‘small man in a big suit’ performance of Girlfriend Is Better is used as the cover photo to promote the Slippery People 12 inch single. But Steve Scales’ bongo playing and the fun David Byrne has with backing singers Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt while performing Slippery People is worth a look too. All the songs released as singles from the movie soundtrack sold poorly, but for some reason this track became a staple on student union dancefloors up and down the country and is looked back on very fondly by those of a certain age!
Der Mussolini – Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (1978)
So this is the late German substitute, running on the pitch with fire in its belly as Propaganda are withdrawn due to being on last week’s playlist. With a wonderful name that lends itself to the DAF abbreviation, Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft were a Neue Deutsche Welle (electro post-punk) band from Dusselfdorf. They formed in 1978 around drummer Robert Gorl and singer Gabi Delgado-Lopez. In 1981, they released their third album Alles is gut to a great reception in their homeland and creating a cult audience in the UK. They had a very distinct sound using analogue synthesisers to create their music, driven through a sequencer, a device which steps the sound to create a electronic riff. DAF liked to focus on 16 step robotic sequences in their music with live drum patterns and a series of strange vocal tracks across the top of these, often driven by Delgado-Lopez’s fascination with the sounds of words. Der Mussolini is apparently sarcastically making light of oppressive dictatorships (Mussolini, Adolf Hitler and Jesus Christ all get a look in) and serves as a commentary against such regimes. Of course, I have only discovered this over time – back in 1981 on the John St Union dancefloor in Glasgow, I just heard this bloody amazing sound thumping out of the speakers and could not stand still. This is an incredible record – no buts, it just is.
Homosapien – Pete Shelley (1981)
So of all the records I spun on the night, this is the one that got the most reaction, with a number of the youngsters at the event asking what it was. To be fair, they all knew it was the late Pete Shelley’s voice – being the writer and singer on the greatest ever sequence of six consecutive guitar pop singles saw to that. But that was Buzzcocks peak year between November 1977 and 1978 and by the time Homosapien was released in September 1981, the band were no more. Shelley actually wrote the track before joining Buzzcocks and back then his interests lay in electronic music. When he took it into the studio to record it as his first solo single with Martin Rushent producing, he returned to this sound. If you listen to the meticulous detail in Rushent’s synthesiser and drum machine programming on the track, you’ll see why he was chosen for his next job, as the producer of the Human League’s Dare. Shelley was very open about his bi-sexuality at the time and the song is seen by some as a song of hope in the face of homophobia. At one point the lyric says “Homosuperior in my interior/But from the skin out I’m Homosapien too” and some jobsworth in the BBC managed to construe an interpretation of that first line which concluded that it was an “explicit reference to gay sex” and promptly got the record banned. Seems incredible when the whole tenet of the tune is that we are all Homosapiens, however we chose to live.
Ceremony – New Order (1981)
So this was the only record I played last week that didn’t come out of my box. My friend John McT had come down to the sessions to meet me and arrived clasping a few of his 80s twelve inch purchases to add to the fun. I promised I would play one before I handed back the turntables and chose this, the first recording by New Order and the last song to be written by Ian Curtis for Joy Division. The recording captures the remaining members with one foot in their past sound and yet moving forward into what would be their future sound – almost like a parting gift from Curtis. Released on Factory Records in January 1981, it has the high bass, distorted guitar and echoey vocals of Joy Division all still in place. But in Stephen Morris’ drumming pattern there is the beginnings of a rhythm that grew into the sequencer track on top of the drums on the wonderful Temptation single a year later. This would then step up into total indie dancefloor domination with the huge beats of Blue Monday in 1983 and on onwards from there to collaborations with American DJ and producer Arthur Baker, including the sublime Thieves Like Us. Morris’ drums can been seen and heard in the raw on this live film from a Manchester gig in February 1981, about six weeks after I had witnessed their chaotic gig in the freezing cold of the Plaza Ballroom at Eglington Toll in Glasgow. An online setlist tells me they finished with Ceremony that night but the sound system was so bloody awful I’m not sure I could tell. Great tune, though.
Last Word
This was intended meant to be the first of two theme weeks as the blog was meant to be on its travels across the UK. However, vehicular mechanical failure has intervened to truncate said travels and the blog will return to what I laughingly call ‘normal service’ next week. I know its a couple of months away but the blog will be overseas for a good part of November – think of a Dead Kennedys single as to where. If there is anyone out there who fancies preparing a guest slot on a theme of their choice in advance for one of three available weeks, then please get in touch. As you can see, the choose tune/dump brain MO is not rocket science!
The master playlist is lying in wait, ready to pounce once you click that link below….
AR
Week In Sound 
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