In this episode, we dip our toes into the playlists of February 1988, where we find one of the architects of “shoegaze”, a goth powerhouse and an early ’80s classic one-hit wonder.
And welcome back to 120 months. We’re doing a deep dive on MTV’s 120 minutes. We’re walking through month by month.
We’ve been picking some songs that are on the playlist from that month talking about the bands, talking about the songs, talking about the video, taking some tangents into things unknown, and having a lot of fun with it. It’s been a really fun show so far, and we appreciate you joining us. I want us to do a quick shout out to 120 minutes.org.
They are compiling all these playlists on their website. They have links to the YouTube video. So it’s really cool.
You can go in and see what played in a particular month and sometimes down to the week on 120 minutes and link right to the videos and kind of re-experience some of that music from, yeah, almost 40 years ago. 38. We’re in 1988.
So yeah, we’re 38 years on from then. And what was going on in February 1988. That’s something that we are going to start doing and kind of setting the table for the music landscape.
So the billboard charts in February of 1988. Number one was expose, seasons change. Number two, Pet Shop Boys in Dusty Springfield, with what have I done to deserve this, which is, ah, like, it’s so, it’s encouraging, especially when you hear the rest of this list.
It’s encouraging to see that on, like, the U.S. charge at number 2, because it’s a great song. Yeah, I didn’t realize that. Charted that high.
That’s great song. Yeah, I didn’t either. Number three, Tiffany.
Could have been. Number four, George Michael, father figure, number five, Eric Carmen, Hungry Eyes. number six, foreigner. Say you will.
Number seven, the ever popular Patrick Swayze with that song from Dirty Dancing. She’s like the wind. Remember that one?
At number eight, now, an all-time, all-time, all-time, classic Rick Astley, never going to give you up. And then 9 and 10 were both songs I’d forgotten about. Number 9 is Paul Carrick with Don’t Shed a Tear.
I went back and listened and when I listened to it, then I remembered it. It triggered like a memory. Number 10 is from a guy named that went by Roger. song is called, I want to be your man.
I do not remember that at all, and I listen to it, and I still don’t remember it. Suffice to say, besides the Pet Shop Boys song, and maybe if you wanted to squint a little George Michael, like, there’s still a lot of pretty straightforward 80s pop on this list. Don’t sleep on foreigner, man.
Do not sleep on foreigners. guys, I’ve got so many good songs. My teenage self would like to give a shout out to Tiffany. Not musically, but no, I will be the 1st to admit to having a crush on Tiffany, because I was 15 at this time, so yeah, she was kind of right in that wheel house of, if not musically.
Although, I, you know, I kind of liked her cover of, I think we’re alone now, if I’m honest. Anyway, that’s the music landscape that we’re talking about right now. MTV had 120 minutes where they went beyond what they played in their regular playlist and played a bunch of songs that absolutely were not on the US charts at this time.
I’m with Scott Mobley, Keith Porterfield. We’re going to talk about a few of them right now, kicking it off with the vapors and turning Japanese.
The song is obviously not from 1988. This was recorded in January of 1980 and is about as classic of a one-hit wonder track, I think, as there is an 80s pop.
It’s, it’s one that I’m kind of only familiar with in the, in the realm of like a novelty song or like, even in, even in, when I discovered it, which would have been probably 94, when I was doing retro radio, I really don’t remember it from before then or hearing it like, I certainly didn’t hear it in 1980. And it’s, I mean, it is kind of a novelty track, but it’s really not. I mean, it’s it’s what they did.
It’s a post-punk new wave jam for sure. And it’s very much like what this band was all about and was somewhat successful in doing, at least in the UK. A little bit about the vapors.
They were founded in 1978. They were actually discovered by the Jams bassist while they were playing around in Surrey, UK, I believe, and ended up kind of meeting the guy and the guy started kind of giving him that a little bit of help, the kind of help that, you know, that a young band needs, especially back in the day before the internet or whatever, where you really couldn’t get exposure without getting a boost a lot of the time. So they ended up opening on the Jams tour in 1979.
That got them signed to United Artists, and they started recording music. Their 1st single was named Prisoners, came out in late 1979 and really did not do much. It’s okay.
Not great, but not a bad track. And then turning Japanese was actually their 2nd single released in January of 1980, and it did quite well. Number 3 in the UK, top 10 in like in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, I believe.
And only number 36 in the US, which is probably why even as like a kid, I don’t, I didn’t run across it. I was a little young and I don’t think I was, I think unless it was like a huge, massive top 10 hit, a lot of music probably wasn’t getting to me in the tiny little town in Colorado that I lived in. So, but it was a minor hit in the US and definitely a bigger hit in the UK.
So that kind of established them. And that unfortunately was about as far as they really got. They ended up recording a full album, Nuclear Days came out in May of 1980.
So this is after turning Japanese had kind of already hit the charts and had started to fall. It is on that album. The next single also from that album was called News at 10.
Fantastic song, in my opinion, better than turning Japanese, but really kind of just ended up in like the mid 40s and 50s on the UK charts. It just didn’t really like get to that next level, the way turning Japanese did. Uh, they kept recording right into 1981.
They released a new album called Magnets and a single called Jimmy Jones, which was lyrically about Jim Jones and the Jim and the Jim Jones Kool-Aid Massacre that I’m sure you’re aware of. Also, a song I think that is better than turning Japanese in my opinion, but also didn’t go anywhere. And then the band broke up in 1982.
Like, that was kind of it. They did 2 albums, 3 or 4 singles, one massive hit, and then that was it. They’ve started.
I think they got back together in like 2016 and now they’re doing like the nostalgia tour, but ultimately this band really just lasted like 2 or 3 years and kind of came and went. I have to say, going back and listening to these guys for the 1st time, I had never heard of Vapor song besides turning Japanese, except maybe maybe if there was another one in rotation at KTXT, it would have come by and I just don’t remember it. But going back and listening, they’ve got several really good tracks.
I mean, if you like turning Japanese and you like late 70s, early 80s, you know, new wavy post-punk kind of stuff, they are great at it. That’s what they do and they did it really well. I think news at 10 and Jimmy Jones are both really good singles.
They’re a little quirky, maybe a tiny bit repetitive. What, you know, we’ve had this conversation over and over again. What makes us one song hit and one song not when they seem like they’re in the same basic realm, who knows?
Turning Japanese, I guess, had like a little bit of that hook for being, you know, memorable because of the lyrical content and they had that the quote unquote Japanese motif in the guitar riff, which is actually a Chinese motive, but I don’t think anybody was really paying attention at that point. Maybe that was like the little hook that it needed to catch on because there were a lot of bands doing this in, you know, the late 70s, early 80s. But these guys were doing it as well as anybody else.
And going back and listening to them, I have to say I was really, I was really impressed. I guess elephant in the room, if you could call it that, turning Japanese often thought in America to be a reference to, I guess the people in the US thought it was like a UK reference to pleasuring yourself, and it is, in fact, not. And it actually doesn’t mean anything.
The lead singer has been quoted as saying that it could have been turning Lebanese. It could have been turning government cheese to call back to our last episode. Anything that fit would have worked there.
He just used that as kind of like, it’s almost a little bit like losing my religion where it’s like kind of just a phrase that means in this case, like going a little nuts, going a little crazy because you lost your girlfriend, basically, is what I gleaned from it. I really did some research to see if, you know, if that was like, if he was trying to retcon that or what the story was. And by all accounts, that’s it.
It just, it fit, it didn’t mean much. And then that little guitar riff was really supposed to just be the intro to the song. They ended up incorporating it before each verse, so that gave the, gave the song a little bit of a quote unquote Japanese, you know, motive to to hang your hook on musically.
The video obviously takes that one step further, maybe one step too far in a few moments, but that kind of reinforces the Japanese thing, but it really wasn’t about much, but just going crazy because you lost your girlfriend. I mean, that’s really it. Mentioning the video, it’s not a terrible video.
I mean, if you, I’m putting aside, like, any tintial racial connotations, which I don’t, I didn’t see anything other than maybe one little moment that was, like, offensive offensive, uh, these days. Who knows? I mean, it’s everybody gets offended by everything.
But like, it wasn’t too in your face offensive, but maybe it would race in my eyebrows today. I don’t know that you would make this video today, but it wasn’t over the top crazy. What I think saved this video, and this is going to come back around when we talk about Scotch Choice later, is this video was shot on film.
And the way it was shot and the way it was edited means that it holds up way better than it has any right to and way better than I think it would have if it had been shot on video. And that is just a perceptual thing that I think is true of TV shows. I think it’s true of music videos for sure.
Again, we’ll talk more about this when we talk about a video that wasn’t shot on film that probably should have been. But like watching this now, it feels like it holds up. It feels more artistic than it really is.
The lead singer has a boatload of charisma and that certainly doesn’t hurt. But like, I really think shooting this on what I imagine with 16 millimeter film gives it a little bit more of a timeless in it. A timeless quality and it also film always puts a little bit of a remove between the viewer and the content where that video has that almost too real feeling film kind of removes that and puts a little bit of a lens there.
And I think it works to make this video a lot more tolerable than I think, again, if it had been a crystal clear like shot on video thing, I don’t think it works as well. But for what it was, I think it was fine. The song itself is a classic.
I don’t think I need to talk too much about it, and maybe you guys will have more to say about it. But again, I think some of their other work is actually better, but I can see why this one was the big hit. Kind of a shame maybe they didn’t do more, but that’s just, that’s just the brakes.
And I’m curious to see. I know you guys know this song, so I’m curious to see what you thought about it on a revisit. I love this song, man.
I have loved it for years and years. I did know this one as a kid. You said, you know, you’d only heard it when you got to KTXT.
I actually had this as a kid on a cassette tape, one of those old K-Tell, uh, because compilation cassette tapes, like there were the precursors to the, you know, the now, this is music or whatever, those compilations that started in the 90s. But back in the 80s, there was a, I don’t know who put them out. They were called K-Tell.
I don’t know if that’s the name of the company or whatever, but they used to put out kind of compilations like that with a lot of top 40 music on there. They probably were only one label, but I don’t really know. But I remember having this song on one of those little K-Tell compilation cassette tapes.
And so I’ve known this song forever. I do think this is the 1st time I saw the video. I’m not sure that I’d ever seen the video on this before.
And I liked it, and I think you’re right that it looks good. holds up well having been shot on film. I will say that, you know, kind of return to our conversation that we had about the Depeche Mode video for Never Let Me Down again versus the cucumbers video for a couple episodes back. This very much was kind of on the cucumber side of that.
I mean, this was a very 80s video, you know, just kind of the vibe of it and, you know, the way it was set up and everything. And so we were talking about, you know, at what point do you stop doing that or start doing it ironically rather than doing it, you know, as kind of your actual video? This was very much, this was seriously done.
This was the video. It just kind of had that 80s feel to it. Um, but I liked it.
I thought it was cool. And like you said, I think it really does hold up well. A couple of things I did think we’re interesting about that.
You kind of mentioned one of them, which was when I was looking this up. They were calling it the Oriental riff, was the way that was described another way that I saw that I liked was the Chinaman lick. I don’t know that we should probably call it that.
Wow. The Oriental Riff or quote, the Chinaman Lake, unquote. So, and it was described as being a musical phrase used in Western culture to represent Asia.
Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, you’re right. That’s exactly what that was.
So I thought that was funny. And then the other thing I thought about this video is that when I saw the guy, the singer with the Samurai Sword, I determined that if at any point in my life, I ever have to sword fight somebody. I want it to be that guy because it doesn’t appear that he’s ever held a sword before in his life, not that I’m a martial arts expert or anything, but this guy looked like he was probably a serious danger to the crew slinging that sword around.
So if it ever comes up, if I’m ever forced to sword fight somebody, I pick him. That’s the guy I wanted to take on because I’m pretty sure I could take him. But yeah, no, man, I love this song.
Great song. And I like the video. So, yeah, fun for sure.
I had a flashback to Star Wars kid with the lightsaber video from like 10 or 15 years ago of just kind of like flailing around and I think that those 2 might have a have a good run at it. Yeah, yeah, not a swordsmith. So I remember this song from when I was a kid too.
I had a friend when I was probably, God, I had to be nine, I guess, when this was out. And this kid had like, I guess his parents would take him to a record store and just by like every 45 that was on the shelf because he just had everything in stacks of 45 singles. But there were 2 that we probably burned a hole in him and I. And the 1st one was Gary Newman’s cars, which to this day is one of the jammiest jams that I were jammed.
And the other was this song, turning Japanese by the vapors. I was trying, you know, you were talking about this song being the hit versus the other ones maybe being better and not being the hit. And you did mention that this is not, in its purest sense, a novelty song, but I think it is the novelty of it that made it a hit.
At least for, you know, me when I was nine, 10 years old. We thought it was funny. You know, we didn’t we didn’t know what it meant.
And, and, you know, I will admit, I was this week years old when I found out that it wasn’t about, you know, pleasuring yourself. We didn’t know that at the time either. We just thought it was funny.
Like the phrase turning Japanese was funny. The song has this, has the funny little Asian riff in it and, you know, the whole thing was just kind of, I guess novelty isn’t the right word, maybe just clever is the right word, but it just kind of stuck with us. We just liked it.
Going back and listening to it again was great. This song’s just a jam. It just is.
It’s a fantastic little pop song. And I didn’t get to dig into any more of the vapors. Like I, you know, you saying that they’re, uh, they have some other songs that are better than this.
I actually am kind of curious to hear that because I love this sound. I love that sort of early 80s new wave slash post-punk thing that, you know, them and the knack and, you know, bands like that we’re doing. I always kind of dug it.
So if there’s more of it, I’d like to hear it. The video, you’re right about it, maybe being a little less aged because of the film versus video, but it definitely has some 80s stuff in it. I loved the guitarist jumping up in the air and then freeze framing as the as the riff kicks in at the beginning.
That was perfect. And there is some mildly problematic stuff in it, but nothing that I think is horribly offensive. I wouldn’t tell anyone not to watch it.
It’s, you know, just know that it’s of a different time and it was trying to be funny and silly. It’s not trying to offend anyone And I think if you go at it from that perspective, it’s fine. There’s really nothing wrong with the video.
But yeah, um, you know, great song. I had a lot of fun watching this again and really kind of took me back and this is this is a fun one. I enjoyed it.
It’s worth mentioning that, you know, this video was shot in 1980. So a lot of the cliches and the things that became associated with relatively inexpensive, relatively cheesy now to us. 80s videos came after this, you know, so were people influenced by these guys. I don’t know about that necessarily.
I don’t I don’t know that they cast a long shadow on, you know, the music world in general, but like, it very much is of its time, for sure, a lot of the things that you see are going to get repeated, you know, throughout the 80s in videos over and over and over again, until they finally just got wore out to the point where, again, you started to have to either do it ironically or find a different way to do your video. But I do think that they were a little bit more on the cutting edge side of of even, you know, people weren’t even necessarily always making videos in 1980s. So there’s that.
And then probably out of necessity, the fact that they put it on film definitely helps it. I, again, it’s, it’s a perceptual thing that’s really hard to put your finger on, but I just guarantee that the same video shot on, on video or on film would play differently, you know, especially now, and I keep saying this, but I will explore that. That point again, hearing a little bit.
You mentioned that, you know, the video has a more like real quality and that’s part of it. It’s also a simple way to describe it is depth. The film has a depth that video doesn’t have.
It’s like you’re, it detaches you from it more somehow. And it’s hard to describe like in layman’s terms, but it’s, it just has this sort of, we’re like looking at a portrait versus looking at a photograph kind of thing. It just has more of a richness.
Yeah, I remember being a kid and asking my mom one time about different TV shows why some of them looked more real than others looked, and I didn’t know what I was talking about at the time, but, you know, later on, I would realize I was talking about the difference between film and videotape, the, you know, shows that were videotaped. And so, yeah, even as a kid, I was aware of that difference. I just didn’t know what it was until, you know, later in life.
Yeah, and I think even the most, you know, the person that’s least interested in all that still sees it. You may not consciously be aware of it, but you notice it somehow. People definitely, you know, that’s, I mean, that’s the debate about, like, TVs now that have the motion smoothing that can take a 24 frame per 2nd film and make it motion smooth, but people say, oh, well, now it looks like a soap opera, which is kind of the classic way to envision what we’re talking about, you know, the difference between, you know, a Christopher Nolan film and the way a soap opera looks is very stark, just from a, if you just watch 30 seconds of each, there’s a very, very big difference in that.
Soap opera also has to do with the way it’s lit because they just like the crap out of the entire set. There is a difference, and it is something that even if you’re not technically aware of what’s happening, it is obvious to you. And I, it will, in this particular instance, it just helps make this, make this video go down a little easier, I think, for whatever reason, it just, it, it just does.
Like, for me, I mean, maybe I’m overplaying that a little bit and I apologize, but it just, I think it, because it did strike me as I was watching this. This could have been the cucumbers style. It would have felt like the cucumbers video did, but the film has just given it like some grittiness and a little graininess.
And they did do it. They lit it well, the sets were, you know, the way they used the set helped, but, um, anyway, not to belabor the point. Vapor is turning Japanese, everybody’s here.
I’m not even going to say go check it out if you haven’t heard this. If you haven’t heard this, why are you listening to this podcast? How did you find this podcast?
The Vin diagram of people who are listening to this podcast and haven’t heard turning Japanese, I think, are 2 circles. So we shall move on, and we’re going to move on to Mr. Keith Porterfield’s choice. For today, I picked a song called April Skies by the Jesus Mary chain.
I’m going down by myself. I’m going back for my I could believe sacrifice myself to you… And I like the Jesus May chain.
Great band. I’m not, like, an exhaustive fan. I’ve got cycle candy.
I got automatic, and I’ve got one of their hits packages, but pretty much everything on my life. So I, you know, I’ve never really dug too deep into these guys, but pretty much, like I said, everything that I’ve heard by them, I’ve liked, and this one is one of my favorites, April Skies, little background. They’re a Scottish band.
They were formed in 1983, um, largely it is a couple of brothers, Jim and William Reed. They’ve had a bunch of other people play in the band with them. And I looked at that list and I didn’t recognize a lot of the names.
I didn’t like go down and try all of them out, but I did see that Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream, was their drummer for a little while, and Lawrence Colbert from Ride was also their drummer for a little while. So just looking at their past members, I recognize those 2 guys right off the bat. The Reed brothers have said that they wanted to be in a band because they were not happy about all the electronic pop music they were hearing in the early 80s.
And the quote that I liked, I can’t remember which one of them it was that said this. I wrote, I wrote it down, but I didn’t write, which of the 2 brothers said this, but anyway, it was, it was the crap coming out of the radio that made us want to be a band. So, I guess after listening to a lot of English electro pop, they decided that being a guitar band was where we wanted to go.
These guys have got a fairly distinct sound. It’s definitely guitar driven. They are considered to be kind of pioneers in both noise pop and shoe gaze.
Noise pop. I can hear a little more than I can shoe gaze. I also, for me personally, have always thought that these guys kind of had a bit of a retro flair to them, kind of like a 60s pop flair to a lot of what they did just with a lot more noisy guitar laid over the top of it.
And this song, I think in particular, definitely has that kind of a vibe to it. Great song. you know, like I said, guitar driven, the lyrics are fine. J&M Chang lyrics.
You know, these guys are a right fine lyrics. They’re not the great lyricists or anything, but they’re not terrible either. This song is off their 2nd album, 1987’s Darklands.
Darkland’s mainly known because it kind of got away from the noise a little bit, Psycho Candy, if you ever listen to their 1st album, Psycho Candy. It is very noisy. And that’s kind of what it’s known for.
They toned that back a little bit with this album. They also used a drum machine for a lot of this album, which was something that was different for them, and they would do off and on throughout their career. This one album went to number eight, or excuse me, went to number 5 on the UK album chart.
The song went to number 8 on the singles chart. Didn’t chart at all in the US. They did chart in other places in Europe, and I think Australia, New Zealand, somewhere there.
So these guys were bigger in the UK than they were here, but I’ve always had a little bit of a cult following here. The video on this one. It’s got lots of close-ups.
It is pretty, I mean, you know, it doesn’t look like it costs a whole lot to make. It was shot, apparently, like maybe in a warehouse. Um, it’s really dark everywhere, except that there’s a spotlight on Jim Reed the entire time that’s kind of got him washed out, given him like a really bright kind of washed out quality.
And then there are other spotlights that are kind of moving around the whole area and like lighting up other members of the band at different times. It’s fine, just a kind of generic performance video. It does have a few interstitial scenes cut into it, but nothing really to write home about.
And so really, you know, that’s really about all I have. I don’t have a whole lot on this song. I, you know, like I said, I’ve always liked a J&M chain, but I’m not an exhaustive fan on them, so I’m not going to do a terribly deep dive, but this song in particular always has been one of my favorites.
The video is pretty good. Yeah, that’s really about it. That’s April skies, but the Jesus Mary chain.
So I did not intend to do this, but I’m going to tell another, when I was a boy, stories. But I was thinking about, like, when I 1st heard these guys, and I guess it would have been around 85. Everybody may probably remember Spin magazine, but Spin magazine was relatively new at the time.
And when they came out, their their goal, and I guess always their goal, was to sort of be the anti-rolling stone. If Rolling Stone was going to be talking about, you know, you guys got to check out the new Mick Jagger solo album. you know, spin was gonna do the more alternative stuff. And so I liked it.
I always bought Spin magazine. And I bought it one time, I opened it up, and in the middle of it, there was a 2 page ad for Jesus and Mary Jane Psycho Candy. I had never heard of this band.
I had never heard of this album. There was nothing in the magazine that there wasn’t an article about him in the magazine. It was just an advertisement for Psycho Candy, but I loved the name of the band.
I love the name of the album. The ad was cool. And so I went and bought it.
I knew nothing about them. I just, something about it said, go buy this. So I did it.
I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t like it. I just didn’t get it. And I thought it was, I didn’t think it was bad. necessarily.
It just didn’t grab me. And maybe it was too noisy or too different or something. I don’t know, but I listened to it like twice and never really bothered to listen to it again.
So because of that, it would be years later before I really started to appreciate just how great this band really is. I mean, this is one of my favorite bands. And at the time, I just didn’t, didn’t hear it.
So, um, I say all that to say that I think what’s interesting about the Jesus and Mary chain is that they seem so original and so unique and so different and they are those things, but at the core, what they are doing is every tenet of rock and roll music. You know, it’s it’s kind of like, it’s kind of like REM. You know, REM is not reinventing the wheel.
They’re making rock and roll music. Why are they so much better at it than everybody else, though? What is it about them that’s so much better?
And I think Jesus Mary change is the same thing. It’s like, you listen to this song. It’s a perfect example.
This is just like a doo-wop song. It has all the tenets of a doo-wop song. But there’s something about it that’s so unique and so different and so original.
I just think it’s a wonderful sound. I also think. Now, you mentioned, you know, that this is sort of um, considered the origins of noise pop and shoegaze and those things.
It is that. And I think that this is really, you know, this is 88 when this comes out. This really is the blueprint for what a lot of 90s rock music is gonna sound like.
You know, these guys were maybe just a little ahead of their time. So I just found it interesting how 40 years ago this seemed maybe too out there for me or it just didn’t grab me. And then now it just sounds like good rock and roll music.
And the fact that it’s the blueprint for what a lot of rock music became in the 90s. I think these guys deserve a lot of credit for what, you know, became a sort of a signature sound even though it really wasn’t one at the time. So yeah, I’d love this song.
I love this band. I really think, you know, they are much more influential than maybe they even get credit for. And so I really, I was more of a fan of their 1st album and their 3rd album than I was of this album.
So this isn’t a song that immediately popped in my head, but I do love this song. It was great. And I like the video too.
I liked everything about it. You know, I came to Psycho Candy a little later. I had heard stuff by these guys before.
I don’t even know if I’d heard anything on Darklands. The stuff that I 1st heard from them might have been off automatic. And so I got psycho candy after the fact and was also a little put off by it.
So I don’t think that that’s a terribly surprising reaction to it. It’s just, there are some good songs in there, but a lot of those songs are really buried under a lot of that noise. Psycho candy, to me, was a little bit of a harder cell.
You know, it grew on me as the more I listened to it, but I don’t think it’s as accessible quickly as the stuff that would come later. And so it’s not surprising to me to hear that you had that experience with psycho candy because even after the fact, I kind of went through the same thing. It’s probably true.
And I’ve never really made that association that that album is so much noisier than what they did afterwards. You know, but it’s kind of like, you know, I had the same experience with another classic shoegaze album, My Play Valentine’s Loveless, you know, that that album, the 1st time I heard it was like, what is this? You know, like, it doesn’t grab you right away.
And then a couple listens later, you’re like, oh, now, now I get it, you know? And I guess Psycho Candy was kind of the same thing. It was there was so much going on that I just couldn’t hear it.
And like I said, I think I was 14, you know, or maybe 15 when I heard it for the 1st time. I was not, you know, I probably, to put that CD in the player. I probably took out, you know, a poison CD.
So I don’t know if I was ready for something that different at the time. Yeah, this is a band I came to later. That’s going to be a running theme for another year or 2 as we go through most of these.
This one, I discovered Jesus Samaritan because of the pixies. I discovered them, the pixies first. I loved head on, you know, found out it was a cover and worked my way backwards and really loved the Jesus and Mary Chains version, original version of head on.
You know, never, I wouldn’t say I ever became a huge fan, but I definitely have liked almost everything I’ve heard from them, and this song is definitely not an exception. It’s really, really, it’s really good and it’s just, I think if you hear a Jesus Mary Chain song, you know right away. It’s She’s a Mary Chain.
They have a sound. They stick to it. You know, they, like you guys said, there’s variations within that.
They were a little bit more noisy. They became a little more melodic, but I mean, for the most part, Jesus and Mary chain is you’re going to get what you expect from them, but it’s usually really good. It’s really hard to put your finger on, you know, some of the differences between them and other the contemporary bands or bands that like followed in their footsteps.
But there’s just something kind of magical about their vocals and the way they kind of overlay, you know, what is often, you know, pretty can be a pretty noisy backing backing track. Video wise, I did think that, which is the lead singer, he seemed like he might rather be somewhere else a lot of the time in the video just kind of, it’s got, I mean, I’m sure that was the point and he’s just kind of like wandering around. I think that’s kind of the whole shoegaze vibe, you know, that’s, like even the term shoegaze came because they stare down at their feet while they play, you know, it’s like, uh, they seem annoyed by having to provide music for you.
Yeah, it’s like he was taking that, like turning it all the way up, you know, for the video of just being, like, very disaffected and very, like, you know, whatever about, about being in the video, which, which is funny in one way, but I mean, I get the, like, you’re kind of playing a role a lot of the times when you’re doing a video. So I did find that a little bit funny. Yeah, I had a couple notes.
I think this song probably has more impact in 1988 than it does now, if you’re listening to it, because there have been so many bands that have sounded like this or taken parts of what Jesus and Mary Jane did. I think if you go back in 88 and listen to this, you realize like Scott was saying, this was this was replacing poison in Motley Crue and a lot of people’s, you know, CD players or cassette tape players. So it was a big leap and it was unlike what was going on in 88 for the most part, certainly in the main in mainstream music, but even on, and we’ve kind of talked about this dichotomy too, you have mainstream top 40 radio.
Then you have MTV’s main rotation, which is, again, at this time was a lot of pop metal. like that really dominated late 80s MTV. So what they were doing, I think, felt very different then or probably, I, and I don’t know, because I didn’t listen to it then, but my guess is it felt very different then and now maybe it doesn’t have a lot of that same impact, but I think that’s just true of a lot of bands. And I think we’ve said that already several times on the show of like, not the, you had to be there because I think that’s, that’s not fair, but you really, it is hard to kind of remember what the impact of some of this music was.
I actually drew, this is a comparison that I doubt anyone ever has and ever will draw again, but I drew the comparison of my notes to friends, the TV show. It’s like a lot of a lot of Gen Z and stuff just hate friends and like don’t understand the humor. Like, why was this funnier?
This seems so like, you had to kind of be there, you know, you really did have to like understand that like 30 years ago that was kind of cutting edge for a mainstream sitcom. It’s the same for a lot of these bands we’re talking about. They’ve been copycatted so many times and they’ve influenced so many bands that this might, this song in particular, to be like, it doesn’t necessarily stand out as much.
I think if you just listen to it in a vacuum, but if you really think about what was happening in 88 and listen to it in that context, I think it’s more impressive. And maybe that’s just me because this isn’t one of my favorite J and M songs, so maybe that’s that’s me trying to put more importance on it. But that was kind of my thought was like, I don’t know if a kid list, or I don’t know if anybody that maybe just hasn’t heard this song, listened to it today would be as blown away by it as you might be if you heard it in 1988.
I don’t know. That’s just kind of trying to wreck on stuff, but that was one of the my feelings when I was listening to it. You just did a much better job of saying what I was trying to say, which is that, you know, that is it.
It’s, you have to kind of put yourself back then because this was unique to them in 1988. Nobody sounded like this. 40 years later, everybody sounds like this. and that’s why somebody listening to this now is going to go, well, this just sounds like every other alternative band. It didn’t in 1988.
This was a very unique sound. And so I think, you know, that’s they deserve a lot of credit for that. And you just said that much more eloquently than I did, but that’s exactly it.
It’s about the time in which I don’t know about that, but… Mentioned his kind of disaffected look in the video. It reminded me of the mighty limit drops video, kind of the same sort of thing.
But it also, that disaffected is kind of a good way to describe his vocal style. He is he is not a belted out over the top singer on any other stuff. He’s got a very kind of steady, right down the middle.
Well, kind of squall of guitar. You’ve got his kind of low-key vocal in the middle of it. And one of the things I meant to mention it didn’t was that when they 1st started their band, neither of them wanted to be the singer, neither Jim nor William.
And so they flipped a coin and that’s how Jim ended up being the singer. And so maybe that vocal styling is just because he doesn’t really care about being a singer at all. So who knows?
But yeah, he definitely, definitely gave off that kind of a vibe during the video. But I think that is true of all of his lyrics, all his vocals. Yeah, I thought of the Mighty Lemon Drops video, too, because it is definitely given that same vibe. that’s what I said.
I think that was just a thing. It’s like we’re supposed to look like we don’t care. But obviously you do care.
You put in the effort to record music and, you know, make a video about it. Like, that’s not something that just happens. But yeah, but that was a big thing in the late 80s.
Yeah, there’s a bunch of cameras pointed at you. Yeah, but that was just a thing. It was just like the attitude.
It was like, well, we could we could rock or we could not rock, whatever, you know. So speaking of bands and music that maybe were more impactful at the time that they released than they are now. I think this next one also falls in that category, and that one is going to be Scott Mobley’s pick for the week.
So I chose the song This Corrosion, My Sisters of Mercy. Now, pay now, now, the same best commotion to me. Now be down now The same which corrosion shoulder.
Be now The same makes corrosion to you. This is a band that I’ve always loved. I think they’re just the right mixture of goth and new wave and post punk, and maybe a touch of industrial.
They’re a little tough to put a label on, so, you know, I won’t, but I’ve always just kind of liked their vibe. The band, and I use that word fairly loosely. Forms of 1980.
They are still around today. However, between 1980 and 1990, they recorded only 3 studio albums. Each one has a completely different lineup on it.
There’s only 2 consistent members. And I’m going to say that I’m taking this from Wikipedia because it’s going to sound ridiculous and it is, but I’m going to say what Wikipedia said. The 2 core members are Andrew Eldridge, who is the vocalist and songwriter, he’s the guy you see in this video.
And he was their drummer. Until in the early 80s, he hired Dr. Avalanche, a drum machine that he considers a member of the band. So this is from their Wiki page as well.
During one of the Sisters of Mercy’s mini hiatuses, Eldridge and the doctor formed a side project called the Sisterhood. The reason I think it’s interesting to point that out, how the drum machine is treated, and in their wiki bio in other places, is a core member of this band, is that I think it helps to get to the bottom of maybe why this band has such a limited output, and why we don’t hear the same people on any 2 given albums. While nothing says this explicitly, you get the vibe pretty quickly when you’re reading about this band that Eldridge is just kind of a dick, and he’s extremely difficult to work with.
I mean, the fact that no one’s ever worked with him twice probably should tell us that, right? So the scissors of mercy or Andrew Eldrich and Dr. Avalanche, the drum machine. Stop recording music in 1990.
Because of difficulty with the label, is what it says in their bio. I think it’s probably difficulty with Andrew Eldridge. He apparently owed the record label, which was East West Records, 2 more albums.
And he gave them one. It was a series of techno drones with him reading like this bizarre nonsensical poetry over the top of it. So he turns that into the label.
They decide not to release it and they basically say, you know what? Um, you’re good. You’re out of your contract.
And they just let him go. He has never signed another recorded contract since 1990. apparently he’s been offered them. He just doesn’t sign them.
So he does still tour, him and Dr. Avalanche, and with others rotating band members throughout the years. Nobody ever worked for long. Um, but they just do to her as sisters of Mercy, and he plays songs that have never been recorded at the live shows.
I’m not sure I feel about that. Like, to me, that’s a whole lot like, you know, a couple times in my life, I’ve been gone to seeing a band and they’re like, we’re going to play our entire new album and it doesn’t come out for 2 weeks, you know, and you have to sit through that. you know, stuff you’ve never heard. That’s what this is to me, is him just playing songs no one’s ever heard.
So anyway, that’s the story of the band. So this song that is called This Corrosion. It’s from their 2nd album, which is called Floodland.
It’s kind of album is pretty much considered their masterpiece. Their 1st album had been more sort of guitar driven. It was more of a band, a little more of a collaborative effort.
The band wrote the whole album and then Eldridge came in, finished the lyrics and vocal lines and stuff like that. That incarnation, the band included Wayne Hussey, who we discussed about before an early episode talking about Mission UK. After that album, he breaks away informs the mission or the mission UK in the US.
Apparently, the lyrics to this song are supposed to be some sort of jab at Hussey. Eldridge says, he wrote this vocal line in the style, like to mimic him and make fun of him for leaving the band. I’m not sure you get any of that out of it listening to this song, but maybe he did.
Maybe he thought, you know, oh, he’s picking on me. don’t know So Floodland, essentially, was an elder solo album. It’s much more programmed, electronic than the previous one. And it featured 2 songs that were produced by Jim Steinman.
This is one of them. If you don’t know Jim Steinman. He is a songwriter and producer that was responsible for all of meatloafs stuff.
He also wrote Total Eclipse of the Heart for Bonnie Tyler. He wrote, it’s all coming back to me now for Celine Dion. So he’s known for these big, operatic, lush, soundscape kind of things with big hooks and big vocals.
I don’t think that this song really sounds much like those things other than I mentioned other than, you know, you can definitely hear some of his touches, like the massive choir that is singing background vocals on this thing. It’s apparently 40 people were in this choir. You know, if they did that now, it’d be done like digitally.
It would be done with effects, but he hired a 40 person choir. Also, on the LP version of the song, it’s almost 11 minutes long, that’s not what we listen to here, which is also kind of a Steinman thing. Honestly, there’s no reason for it to be that long.
This song doesn’t have, you know, it doesn’t have like movements, like a meatloaf song does, where there’s a clear like operatic beginning, middle, and end. This is not bad. It’s kind of the same thing for 11 minutes.
While I’ve been a champion for album versions over these shortened video versions in the past. I’m not going to say that here. The video version of this is perfectly fine.
And, you know, there’s definitely Sisters of Mercy songs. I like more than this one, but I think this is a pretty good place to start if you’ve never heard them. It’s a big song and it’s not always what they do, but the vocals, the rhythms, the guitar riffs, that kind of funky electric bass, the very, very clean and purely a rhythmic Dr. Avalanche. does a nice job on this.
It’s all pretty on par for Sisters of Mercy. So this video, I think it’s just great. It’s so 80s, it’s almost like 80s to a fault, like it’s making fun of itself, but I loved it for that.
You know, it’s one of those 80s videos where they’re going for the kind of dystopian Hellscape, and, you know, there’s zombies or whatever running around in fire everywhere, and, you know, burned out cars, whatever’s all floating around in there. You know, but for what it’s worth, I think it works for the song and I think it works pretty well for the time in which it came out. And, you know, for what it’s worth.
The guy apparently is a big time ass, but Elders is a cool looking dude. You know, he has a, he has a cool sort of 80s goth vibe about him that works in this. I also wanted to mention, the video also highlights the woman that’s playing bass.
That’s Patricia Morrison. She was a member of the bags, a big famous LA punk band. She joined Sisters of Mercy for this album and this album only. don’t even think she did the tour.
But they make nice use of her in the video. She has a good look for it. And they make it look like she’s doing some of those backing vocals.
I don’t think she is. So, you know, anyone listening to this with any regularity knows, I’m kind of into fighting bands that influenced other things, kind of digging back to see where things started. I’m not sure this is 100% that, although I do think this is an influential band when it comes to sort of that blend of electronica and rock and punk and whatever, the sort of hybrid stuff that comes more a little bit after this.
There’s also a lot of things they’re doing here that other people were doing at the same time. You know, Eldridge kind of sounds like Peter Murphy, which is, you know, not a bad person to want to emulate, but he definitely has that sort of low bear its own. His voice isn’t as rich as Murphy’s, but it’s got the same sort of timber to it.
The production of this song, I think, you know, a while back, a few episodes, we listen to, uh, the does infected. I think this kind of has that same sort of production style, like with the big chorus, with the, the, all the voices and everything in the chorus, all that. So it’s not like this was completely unique at its time, but it just sort of, I think, drove forward what was happening with this, especially British music at this time, sort of finding that hybrid of rock and goth and punk and new wave and electronica all kind of coming together.
And this is kind of the sweet spot for it. So this is just a good song from a band that I’ve always kind of dug. I don’t think this song was new to either of you guys, but I just wondered, you know, how I did it this time.
Right off the bat. I love this song. And I always have loved this song, and this is actually one of the few alternative bands that I did discover pretty much contemporaneous when when they were actually recording.
I had a friend in high school who, and I think I mentioned this before, I introduced me to a few bands that started steering me away from like the pop metal, you know, the poison, the Motley Crew, the Def Leppard, and into other stuff. And those cassettes were ministry, 9 Inch Nails, and Sisters of Mercy was one of the other ones. And this one was probably the most accessible, kind of speaking to your point of they weren’t necessarily doing something so crazy out of the box.
Like, this felt pretty accessible as someone who liked, you know, Metallica and stuff like that. Like, it’s not a huge leap to kind of, to kind of get into this vibe. And it was actually the song more off of floodland, I believe, that got me into.
I have to think that’s a Jim Steinem song. It just has to be. I didn’t know that he was involved with this, but I mean…
I would be shocked if it wasn’t more because that is everything you would expect from a Jim Steinem song. It’s operatic. It’s got movements.
It’s up, it’s down, it’s fast, it’s soft, it’s what, it’s whatever. And it hooked me. And then I started listening to DeMore Sisters of Mercy and they’re, they’re a great band.
Like, you know, and it’s interesting because they don’t dive too deep into any of those genres that we mentioned. They’re not super industrial. They don’t have, you know, metallic clanking sounds and harsh, harsh, you know, music a lot of the time.
They don’t have really heavy chunky guitars like a metal band would have. He isn’t quite as brooding as like a Bauhaus or Peter Murphy or a goth band might, you know, might be when you think about a goth band in your head, but they take those elements and blend them with just like some pretty straightforward danceable music. And it really, it really works.
So yeah, I love, and this is actually my favorite sister’s mercy song. So I love this corrosion. It a great place to start.
And then you can you can kind of go from there. You’re right about, like what you were saying about the sort of sound. It has that that goth feel, but it’s not as brooding.
It’s, I mean, this this, for what it’s worth, is a catchy song. Like it gets right in your ears, right at the beginning. So catchy.
Yeah. And that’s not common in that genre of music. I think maybe that’s why they stood out.
It’s earwormy, which was not common in goth, you know? Or industrial. No, no, I think it’s great.
I love all the pieces, the course. I saw, I don’t know if this was like a YouTube short or what I saw, but the joke was that every time a goth dies, they join the course of this song. That’s why it’s like this massive, like it just keeps getting bitter and bigger and…
That is fantastic. But yeah, I love it. So the video.
So as I’ve been alluding to, I was gonna circle back around to this idea of film versus video. Obviously, this was recorded 7 or 8 years after the vapors track, this is very clearly shot on video and and it suffers for that. Like, quite frankly, this video, if you put this on 16 millimeter film, and maybe have like Anton Corbin, who directed the Depeche Mode video, we talked about a couple episodes ago, let him direct it, but not even take it in a super different direction.
Like, keep the sets, keep the outfits, keep the whole vibe of it, but just shoot it on 16 millimeter, shoot it handheld and just get a little rougher with it. And this video really works. Because it is cool.
This is one of those, again, where like, a couple years later, this exact video would get clowned on and seen as like a joke and whatever, but in in 87, 88, it was an earnest, you know, here we are, we’re goth, we’re whatever. They weren’t trying to be anything other than just who they were, which I absolutely respect. And it comes across different now than it did then.
But I do think that if you shoot it on film and make it a little grainier, a little dirtier and a little more anti-Corbin, if you want to put a label on it, it would actually probably hold up better today than it does. It feels a little cheesy now. But I mean, I know enough about them and know that they, you know, what they were going for, so I can kind of take myself back there and try to kind of think about what they were trying to achieve with the video.
But he, I mean, he is a cool looking dude. They’re they’re made up and they look, you know, they look really cool. And I think if you saw this in 87 or 88, you would have been probably pretty blown away by it.
I did not ever see the video back in the day, so I only knew the music of Sisters of Mercy, so I didn’t have any visuals to really go along with it, except what was in my head, and that might have been for the best. But yeah, what can I say? Sisters of Mercy.
I mean, I think if you’re turned off by the name of the band, if you’re turned off by, you know, the idea of goth music or whatever, let all that go and maybe try this song out because I don’t think it’s going to be what you expect by the name of the song by the name of the band. Like, it is not at all what you might think it will be if you haven’t heard this before. And then if you like it, go a little deeper because there’s several other songs that are just as good and just as accessible.
You know, you hear the word goth and it evokes something that this is not. It kind of is, but it’s not. And it’s sort of like busts out of all those cages of, you know, this is goth, or this is post-punk, or this is pre-industrial, whatever it is.
And they’re all those things. But it just is just a little different from that. I don’t even want to use the word better because to you it may not be better, but it’s, but all of those things, it’s just not that, you know, and it’s just something different.
And I didn’t, I didn’t know that Jim Steinman got a hold of him for this album. That makes a lot of sense because this sounds so much bigger than this music sounds at this time, you know, in England. So, you know, and I wanted to say on the video.
You’re 100% right. It’s corny, it’s clunky, it’s 80s video. It looks, but I think that’s what I liked about it.
I kind of liked it in the same way I like the, um, what’s that awful Pat Benator video where the girls are dancing around and she’s like, uh, she, there’s a pimp in it and she, she runs away from home and… Thank you, love is a battlefield. Yeah, it’s love is a battlefield.
It’s the so bad. 80s video, you know? But you’re 100% right. Well, before we get off the video, I took exactly one note on this video, and I took it about 10 seconds in, and that was this video looks like what everyone in the 80s thought the future was going to look like.
Like every 80s, you know, whatever, you know, Terminator movie or whatever they talked about the future, this is what it looked like. This is what the people in the 80s thought the future was going to look exactly like this. So, um, so yeah, check it out for no other reason than that.
If you want to know what people in the 80s thought the future was going to be. I don’t know much by the Sisters of Mercy. I’m not as into these guys as you guys either were.
And so 1st off, I have to say, this is not the song I thought it was. Um, I thought I was getting more. I listened to this song.
I was like, that’s not what I thought. And so I listened to some other other songs and the one I thought I was getting was more, actually. So, and I like more a lot better than I like this one.
Now, this song’s not terrible, but I also was not a huge fan of it, I have to say. and I listened to some other stuff too. I listened to Dominion, uh, Flood, both one and two, um, and a couple others just to try to get a little more of a bass with Sisters of Mercy. And I have to say, it’s not bad, but it’s not, it’s not really for me.
It’s a little too over the top, a little bit like, and and I’m a fan of Bauhaus. So like, kind of over the top theatricality in, in, you know, a service of goth is not outside of my wheelhouse completely, but something about this, the little, the theatricality of it was just, it just didn’t sit real well with me. And I remember when we were talking about the mission UK, you know, you mentioned Wayne Hussey from the mission was in this band.
And before we get off it, when, yeah, when Eldridge and Dr. Avalanche released that one song as the sisterhood, they did it specifically to keep Wayne Hussey from using that name. So, yeah, he is exactly what you think he is as far as being kind of a dick about things. But we were talking about, you know, should you start with the mission?
Should you start with sisters of mercy? And both you guys came down on the side of Sisters of Mercy? And I will say after having listened to a little bit of both, I preferred the Mission UK.
And so of the 2 bands, if I’m only going to listen to one, I would actually pick the mission UK before I would pick these guys. So this wasn’t bad. And it was essentially what I expected it to be.
Just it was not the song I was expecting. But I just can’t say that I’m much of a Sisters or Mercy fan. So, you know, anybody out there who wants to go give them a try, absolutely go ahead and do it, but not really my thing.
Um, I did want to add, um, I looked up the, so Jim Steinman, um, did in addition to, he was the main producer on this corrosion, the main producer on more, and then a credited as co-producer on Dominion. So, and those are the 3 big tracks off this album. So there are the 3 big singles off this album.
So yeah, so that that’s theatricality you’re talking about. You can give all the credit for that to Jim Steinman. That’s what he does.
And it’s not for everyone. He is not for everyone. That’s for sure.
So, um, I totally, I totally understand, like, maybe liking the the purity of something like Mission UK over the theatricality of this. For what it’s worth, this works on me at this, you know, but, you know, meatloaf songs work on me too. And total eclipse of the hard works on me.
So, there’s something about that over the top theatricality that kind of works for me. And I think that’s maybe why I like this a little more than I liked Mission UK. But yeah, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with that opinion.
It’s, uh, it’s totally fair to find this a little, maybe a little corny and because, because it is, but it’s, to me, it’s corny in a good way. I mean, more definitely is. I mean, you’re going to hear more and you’re either going to really, really dig it or you’re going to be like, that is way too much.
Like, that’s just, it’s so much, because it is, it is way over the top. But in, in my opinion, like in the best way. But, yeah, I mean, I could totally see somebody being like, okay, that’s nah, that’s a little too far into that, you know, like, I don’t know.
So, yeah, I get it. It makes total sense now that I know who produced it, like that. Perfect.
Like all the pieces just clicked into my brain, like, in place. Steinman writes Broadway show tunes and turns them into rock songs. and that’s what these are, you know? And this is a little less of that than Meatloaf or Bonnie Tyler song, but it’s it’s still that.
It’s still got that huge over the top theatricality of a Broadway show tune, just rocking out while it’s doing it. I wouldn’t have guessed this corrosion was one of his because it’s a lot more straightforward. More certainly fits the bill better, yeah.
All right, it’s time for our favorite part of the show. It’s a mystery song time. This will be a little interesting because due to a pre-production schedule mixup, none of us really knew who picked what and who was doing the song, so we might be a little shy on the deep research, but we all, you know, still obviously listen to it.
We’ve done a little catch up and this is an interesting one. I apparently picked it. I don’t remember picking it, but apparently I did at one point, which is fine because, I mean, all I ever do is just pick one that sounds interesting so that I didn’t really need a lot of lead up to it, but I didn’t do as much research as I normally would, but that said, hey, it was not at all what I expected just from the name of the band.
The name of the band is Age of Chance, and the song is Don’t Get Mad, Get Even. Don’t get mad, get even. Don’t get mad, can’t even Don’t get mad, get even Don’t get mad, get even I kind of thought this was still gonna be, like, in the jangle rock.
Indie rock kind of vibe. I was just expecting, like, I don’t know why. I thought that.
I did not expect it to go. So they are absolutely not that. If you ask Wikipedia, It will describe them as an alternative rock dance band, and I think, you know, it talks about elements of hip hop, of industrial, of electro pop, of, you know, the emerging dance scene.
When I listened to it, the 1st band that came to my mind is like information society, EMF also came to mind, Pop Elite itself, like they’re in that mold, I think, of UK dance music that was coming out in the mid to late 80s, I would say. These guys started recording in 85, so they’re right in that vibe, where it’s some samples, uh, some hip hop influence, but still kind of you, you know, UK British dance music, but with a few different elements that kind of set those bands apart from, say, like Mars, pump up the volume, which we talked about a couple weeks ago, which is more of a straightforward like house track. This is, it plays more like a song, you know, it’s got lyrics, it’s got a verse and a chorus, which a lot of like information society stuff did as well, but it’s got the breakdowns, it’s got break beats.
It’s got samples. So it’s it is kind of a unique genre of dance music, if you want to call it that, that kind of existed in that kind of a short time frame. They’re really, really before or since.
There isn’t a lot of bands like this one or information society. That type of music really, I mean, I’m sure there were elements of it that existed beyond this, but I would say from like 85 to 92 kind of brackets, the bands that were making this specific style of music. These guys really didn’t break super big anyway, even in the UK.
Wikipedia says that they were maybe best known for a metallic cover of Prince’s Kiss, which I unfortunately did not listen to before the show. I’m definitely going to check out after the show. Maybe we’ll circle back on that later because I’m kind of curious to hear that.
Uh, and then it’s like, you know, they they didn’t really have a hit in the UK, and apparently this track uh, actually broke in the U.S. and hit number 8 on the dance chart. So not on the top 40 chart. It obviously didn’t sniff the top 40 anywhere.
But I guess got played in clubs and stuff. I don’t remember this really being a club track, and it wasn’t one that even popped up on my radar, like when I was doing retro radio or when I was DJing in clubs later on, it wasn’t like a classic track that anybody ever asked about. So this is my 1st time hearing it.
Um, and it’s fine. For what it is, like, if you like information society, this is a decent track to listen to. But like, what I did like about it is I never knew what was going to happen from bar to bar.
Like, it takes a couple left turns here and there, so it’s not like a super repetitive track that just kind of keeps beating you over the head. Like, it definitely takes you on a journey, which that was cool. They have a very distinct visual style that was apparently influenced by, so it’s kind of funny when you, in retrospect now hearing this, but they saw a cyclist sitting in a bar one day and like saw his like, you know, skin tight, you know, the skin tight, like cycling shorts and bright neon tops that they wear, apparently they really dug that, and that kind of became a little bit of their style, so they have like that neon, you know, spandex kind of vibe going on in the video to some degree.
Very 80s video, but I will say this video actually may be a little more forward looking than some of the other videos that we’ve talked about today and even in some of the other episodes that we’ve done where we kind of dive into that concept of like a cliched 80s video. There is a lot of cliche here, but they use the projection a little bit, you know, where they’re projecting something like on a screen, which is at least a little bit of a new take that you start to see a lot more of. And there’s a little bit of something to the vibe of the video that feels a little more like early 90s than it does mid-80s.
So I do think that they were, if not super ahead of their time. Maybe a tiny, you know, tiny bit ahead of their time with the video. It doesn’t feel as much of a, it doesn’t feel like super chained to the 80s the way a lot of those videos happen.
It feels more 90s to me, if anything, but not, you know, damming it with faint praise, I guess. But that was kind of what I got from it. It definitely is a song that is, it takes you on a journey.
It has a lot going on, whether or not you love it or not is a different story, but it’s not just the same thing over your head. And the video is an attempt to, I think, at least do something slightly different from what a lot of bands were doing with like the projection and some other things. I mean, that’s all I got.
It’s not one that blew me away. It’s not one that I disliked. It’s not one that I probably will listen to again.
But I’m curious to hear what you guys thought about. Well, it’s interesting. You mentioned the song takes you on a journey because that’s exactly what I was going to say.
I went on a little bit of a journey with this one, because again, like you, like with you, it was not at all what I was expecting. And so the 1st time I heard it, it was like, hey, you know what? This is kind of a cool little dance rock song. you know, this is not what I was expecting.
You know, give another spin, see what I think. And then next time I heard it, I was like, well, you know, it’s fine, but it’s not great. And then then I listen to it again.
It was like, do I like this song at all? And then I listen to it again. I was like, you know what?
Maybe I don’t like this song. Like, every time I listen to it, there was diminishing returns on it. It has no melody.
Aside from his vocals, there’s no melody in the song whatsoever. And so I wasn’t a big fan of that. I did read that they were compared to Papuolite itself.
You mentioned them. And I don’t know a lot of Popolite itself, but we did play the couple of their songs at KTXT. And at the time that I was the music director there, they had an album out and we ran it through a couple of their songs, one of them called RSVP, that I specifically remember us running.
I, yeah, I would take pop would eat, would eat itself over these guys any day of the week. That’s, you know, if we’re comparing those 2 bands. These guys were a pale comparison.
So yeah, it was just kind of strange to me. I think it was the unexpected nature of it at 1st kind of hit me with like, you know, this is not bad, not what I was expecting, kind of okay, but yeah, like I said, every single time I listened to it. I thought, you know, had a little bit of a lesser opinion of it.
And so definitely not something I would run out and buy or anything. Um, if you’re into this kind of stuff, you know, maybe check it out if you like the, the bands that, that Mike mentioned like, uh, information society and pop elite itself, whatever, you know, give them a whirl and see what you think, but, but yeah, I was not overly impressed by this. And you also talked about the look of the video and the band.
The guy, you know, the singer is wearing kind of like a tracksuit kind of looking thing like, you know, that used to see a bunch back then. In the old Marvel comics, there is a group of villains called the tracksuit mafia, like street level thugs that, you know, give the street level heroes a hard time here and there. And so that’s the 1st thing I thought of when I saw this guy out.
So I watched this video, I kept expecting Spider-Man or Daredevil to come crashing through a skylight in the roof and jump down on the bed, wipe everyone out and take them to the police station or whatever, but never happened. So, uh, so I guess this guy wasn’t actually in the tracksuit mafia. But boy, he sure did look like it.
So that was a fashion choice on his part, but yeah, I, you know, this one was okay, I guess, but not something I’m ever probably going to listen to again if I don’t have to. I’m pretty much in the same boat, so I won’t hammer too much of this, but I did want to mention that when you picked this or whoever picked it. I went and I did not know the name of the band.
I did not know the name of the song. And I watched the video and nothing rang a bell, but then I went and did a little reading on them and I saw that they did this cover of Kiss. So I went and listened to that.
It was 5 seconds into it and I went, 0 yeah, I remember this. I knew it immediately. They changed the lyrics a little bit.
And it stuck out right away. So that I had heard. So, you know, whatever, full disclosure Id heard of these guys.
But I had never heard this song. What I found interesting about this is this is, you know, you talked about this is basically a kind of music we’ve addressed before. It’s this brand of British pop that was getting popular in the late 80s, got red hot in the early 90s.
Uh, bands like Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine and Inspiral Carpets, Papa Weat itself, Happy Mondays, EMF, you know, all that stuff. It’s that blend of electro pop, and there’s a touch of hip hop in it, and dance music, and the samples, and the turntable lists, all of that. So I’m listening to this, which obviously came my hair before all of that and thinking, well, maybe this is the beginning of all of that.
Maybe this is where it started. But man, every band I just mentioned is so much better than this. It’s just, this is so generic and boring.
And just, you know, buh. I can see maybe some of those bands going, oh, that’s a clever idea to work the turntables in or, you know, get this hip hop flavor in this electro pop, but I doubt anything about this musically influenced anybody. I mean, maybe aesthetically it did, but not musically.
The other bands we’ve talked about all are way better than this. I did not connect the dots to information society, but that’s a great comp for this. It’s got the same sort of feel and came out about the same time as this.
Other than that, that they came out around at the same time and have a similar sort of beat. What’s on your mind by information society is light years ahead of this, quality wise. I mean, that is a fantastic song.
This is just a, you know, I don’t know even how to describe it. Like you said, it has no melody. It doesn’t even really have a hook.
It’s just kind of doing what it does and and and like you said, Keith, the more you listen to it, the less you get out of it. It just it just keeps going downhill, the more you listen to it. So yeah, this was just not, it’s, when this started, I thought it was going to be cool and it just didn’t, it just did nothing.
I just, I didn’t, I can pretty much say I didn’t like it at all. Maybe it worked better in a club. I mean, that is, it only hit the dance chart.
It did not hit the radio chart. Yeah, and there are songs that only work in clubs. And like we’ve talked about with other things.
Maybe when it came out, it sounded fresh and new and original, you know, because there wasn’t a lot of this at the time, but as somebody who played music in clubs, I’d be reaching for information society before this, 99 out of 100 times. That is a good point. We’re filtering this through having heard since that time, EMF and Spiral Carpets and Happy Mondays.
Yeah, I mean, their 1st single came out in 85. I think maybe from a from a creativity standpoint, maybe they inspired some people. You know, we can use, oh, we can do that and we can mix this with that and whatever.
But I don’t see anybody hearing this musically and going, oh, yeah, that’s the sound. you know, that’s what we need. Because it’s really, there’s really just nothing there. I think it may have been more influential than maybe we realize, because I do think they were a tiny bit ahead of their time with it, but this, but again, yeah, this track just doesn’t quite do it.
And again, there’s a reason why it’s not a classic and didn’t hit the charge the way, like, information society. You know, had at least 2 or 3 big hits in the US with essentially the same kind of music, just done better. But yeah, and you know, I was actually just glancing at the video again.
I think I need to give them more credit for the video being ahead of its time. That video is actually pretty good for 88. Like the way they’re using the projection, and a lot of the visuals are, you’re going to see videos 4 or 5 years on that look exactly like this.
And I am struggling to think, like, if I started working my way backwards from this, would I see a lot of videos that looked like this? Because it really is, it seems like it would fit really well in like 91, 92, but I’m pretty sure the video is actually recorded in 87. So maybe they do get some credit for that.
One thing I just noticed on Wikipedia that I didn’t see before. Channel 4 in the UK actually used the song as the intro music for the American football program. So like, if you were watching American football in the UK in the late 80s, you would have been introduced to it via this song, which is, concerning the courses don’t get mad, get even. hilarious for a sporting event song, but I’m not sure how they use it exactly.
I want to try to look that up, but I thought that was kind of funny. It does have a good beat for, like, bumper music, you know, I guess, you’re using it in that way. The beat’s solid.
You just keep waiting for a hook that doesn’t come. Yeah, not a great hook, and overall, probably not, are certainly not our best mystery track, but maybe not the worst. I’m trying to think back. one or 2 other ones that I may put it below this one, but not a home run, but otherwise, some good music to go check out if you’re not familiar with some of the bands we’ve talked about.
Again, I think everybody’s heard turning Japanese by the vapors, and I think the action item on that one is go check out some of the other vapors tracks. Prisoners to a lesser degree, but for sure, 10 o’clock news or news at 10 and Jimmy Jones are both songs that I think are really, really, like, if you like turning Japanese or even just that style of new wave post-punk kind of music, those 2 are as good as any other tracks that I can think of, I’m really kind of surprised that they didn’t do better. I wonder if those guys got shoeholdered a little bit into the novelty song bucket and maybe didn’t have a chance with those tracks is because they really are.
They’re really good. So check those out. Jesus Mary Chain.
Amazing band, great catalog. You can’t go wrong listening to those guys. Sister of Mercy, I think, is going to be hit or miss, you know, depending on your… tolerance for certain for a few things, I guess.
We had we had a mixed bag on the on this episode and probably a mixed bag from listeners, if you haven’t checked out Sisters of Mercy, but this corrosion is a great place to start. And then our mystery band, Age of Chance. Who knows?
I’m curious to hear the kiss. I’m curious to hear the kiss cover. Be surprised if you didn’t, if you didn’t remember it, because it’s, I forget, there’s a lyrical thing at the beginning where they work their name into it.
It’s like something about the age of chance, is this and that, whatever. They change the lyrics. I mean, it’s definitely Kiss, but they do something.
And the 2nd that happened, I went, 0 yeah, I remember this. So I’d be curious to see if you remember it too. Interesting.
So there you go, folks. Thanks for tuning in. This was February of 1988, and we’ve got March coming up in the next episode, and it’s sure to be a fun one.
Don’t forget 35,000 watts, story of college radio. The documentary film about college radio is available to watch right now on Amazon Prime, YouTube, and Tubi. If you happen to have access to Tubi, listen to it there.
It helps us out if or watch it there. If you happen to have access to Tubi, that’s a great place to watch it ad free, and it helps us out as well. And hey, you know, if you listen to the podcast, I know some of you listen to on Apple Podcasts, let me listen to on Spotify, we are on YouTube now, and even if you don’t listen to the podcast itself on YouTube.
We’re trying to kind of get a better community going to people that are talking about the episodes, maybe debating some of the things we’re talking about, and YouTube seems to be as good a place as any for people to congregate and maybe debate some of the things we’ve said. Maybe you disagree with some of our conclusions on these songs. So even if you listen on Apple podcasts or Spotify, Hop on over to YouTube and like leave a comment, leave a like, and let us know what you think about our opinions, whether you love them or hate them.
I think it’s interesting either way. I’m sure no one is going to agree with 100% of what we have to say, but it’s fun to kind of chat about this and everybody is spread out on like, you know, we’re on Instagram, we’re on Facebook, we’re on these podcast platforms that don’t have a place to really debate. And I think it would be fun to get more feedback from viewers and listeners, to find out what you think about some of these songs and some of the things that we’ve said.
So, uh, we’re kind of trying to get everybody to go to YouTube and at least leave a comment, even if you’ve already heard the episode. So let’s try that out. I’m just going to throw that out there for you this week if you have something to say, go to YouTube, find us there.
And let us, you know, hey, if Age of Chance is your favorite band and you want to stand up for him. This is this is your moment. This is your, hey, that’s that’s a tough go, but hey, I’m not going to judge.
Go to YouTube, let us know why we’re wrong. We would love to have that debate. We’ll be on there and commenting as well.
So let us know what you think. That would be a lot of fun. Thanks for listening again.
We will see you next time on 120 Months.