An eclectic mix of styles from our three choices this week, plus one of the most unlikely mystery bands of all-time just happens to be our mystery video for the month.
And welcome back to 120 months. I’m here with Scott Mobley, Keith Porterfield, and we are working our way through MTV’s 120 Minutes, the 1st decade. We are each picking a song, talking about the video, talking about the song, talking about the band, just reveling in the beauty that is mid-1988 music in this episode.
Then at the end, we do a mystery song that none of us have heard or seen before, and man on man, are we hitting these out of the park lately with the mystery songs? Cannot wait to talk about this one. Might be one that you’re familiar with.
I wasn’t. I’m a better person for it. So I can’t wait to dig into it, but we have some other business first.
First of all, just kind of set the table for May of 1988. The billboard hits at the time. Number one was George Michael.
One more try. Number two, Johnny H. Jazz.
You remember those guys? Number three, anything for you, Gloria Estefond, and the Miami Sound machine? One of the one of the coolest pop band names of all time, honestly.
Miami Sound Machine is a really underrated name for a band. Number four, this one cracks me up because I remember this. I remember this person.
It’s Naughty Girls Need Love, too, by Samantha Fox. Keith, you remember? Not only do I remember when I was a kid, around that age, I had a poster, a big poster ever up on my wall.
Okay. I was about to say Samantha Fox. If you don’t remember Samantha Fox, she was, you know, in the days before you could just go online and look at any girl anytime, any anywhere.
She was the poster girl and like, you could go to Spencer’s gifts probably, if I’m guessing, in the mall or a place like that, and she was one of a handful of models because like, there wasn’t that many. And, like, she was legitimately famous for basically just being a, like, literally a poster girl. And she recorded an album, I think, an entire album and this song and maybe one other song, actually.
I mean, we’re talking number 4 on Billboard. There was a 2nd single. I was trying to remember what it was, but what I do remember about that 2nd single is it’s just naughty girls need love too with different lyrics.
Like, it’s almost… Virgin 2? I do kind of remember that Yeah.
Yeah, I should have looked that up. But anyway, number four, which is A, crazy and B, again, really paints the picture of what is happening on like pop radio at this time compared to what we’re talking about here. And number five, and another shout out to Keith for saying, you know, don’t underrate these guys foreigner.
I don’t wanna live without you. So perfectly gets on. Number six, always on my mind by Pet Shop Boys.
I’m really amazed by the chart success that Pet Shop Boys had during this era because we talked about another Pet Shop Boys song being the Dusty Springfield one earlier in the year. So like they were doing really well in the U.S. charts at this time. They were doing better on the U.S. charts than their contemporaries.
They were doing better than Depeche Mode and better than Erasure at this time, you know, down the road, those 2 bands would march ahead of them, I think, but especially Depeche Mode. But yeah, at this time, the Pet Shop Boys were the British Electropop band, at least in the US. They were killing it.
Yeah, really interesting. Number seven, Daryl Holland, John Hart, John Oates, Everything Your Heart Desires. I don’t really remember that one, but I remember those guys, obviously.
Rick Astley together forever. White Lion Wait, which was actually a song that I liked a lot at the time. Very, very fine hair metal right there.
Very good hair melon, probably pretty heavy rotation to MTV at that time, if I remember. And then number 2 is a song that I actually love and is, I just played this for my wife a couple weeks ago because I was like, I don’t think people remember this song and it’s really a shame because it’s amazing. Piano in the Dark by Brenda Russell featuring Joe Esposito.
Man, love, love, love this song. It is so good. And no one remembers a song.
Yeah, look it up after the after the podcast. Piano in the dark, Brenda Russell. It is as good as top 40 radio got.
I think during that, I mean, I really do feel pretty strongly about it. I don’t really know what happened to her, and I don’t even remember the featuring Joe Esposito part, but I remember recording that off of Casey Case. Like, I liked it that much and I was probably only 15 at the time.
So, yeah. Anyway, piano in the dark. Check it out.
So that’s the landscape. We are talking about this show on MTV where not only were you not hearing pop top 40 stuff. Not only were you not necessarily hearing all the stuff that was on MTV rotation.
It was all the stuff that you maybe heard on college radio, if you were lucky enough to have a college radio station, or probably you had never heard. And you tuned in this one time a week to hear this stuff. So we’ve got 3 excellent choices from May of 1988 and we are kicking things off with Scott.
So this week I chose the song equals MC squared by Big Audio Dynamite? Time’s out, there’s too hard no reality. Force out, mind, blood, magic, imagery on home.
And, again, this is a band that I was mildly familiar with, but I didn’t know a ton about, and so I saw this as an opportunity to kind of dig a little deeper. So if you didn’t know, big audio dynamite is a project started by Clash League guitarist and co-singer, Mick Jones. Jones was fired from the clash in 1983.
And then he sort of floated around for a little while. He was briefly in general public. And then he formed a band called Top Risk Action Company that played a lot of shows and stuff and maybe recorded a few demos, but never really released anything officially.
Then he forms Big Audio Dynamite, which recorded 4 albums from 1984 to 1990, and then reformed as Big Audio Dynamite 2 in 1991 with all new members. And then finally, as big audio in 1994 with another all-new band, and they called it quits in 2010. Mick Jones is still a working musician.
He mostly guests with other bands now. And there’s a long list of them, but the most notable one to me was guerrillas, which he’s been on and off member of for a little while now. Big audio dynamite is really known for being the sort of cool hybrid of a bunch of musical styles.
There’s hints of dance music, honk, reggae, touch of hip hop. And then, of course, there’s Jones’s background is a punk, but other than his vocals, this really doesn’t sound like a clash knockoff. One of the great things about the Clash was that there were obviously 2 very different people leading the charge in that band.
You had Joe Strummer who wanted to be the harder edged punk band and then Jones wanting to do this. And so when they were willing to work together, which was for a fairly short time, they produced some really great and really influential music. The version of the Clash without Jones sucked, and they disbanded after one album, and big audio dynamite, while certainly not as enduring or influential as the Clash, certainly managed to be a thing for a good chunk of time.
I just always thought it was interesting that, when a big band breaks up and we get to hear what the individual members were really wanting to do outside the constraints of that band, and that’s something that might come up later in this very episode. So this song, uh, equals MC squared, is from their 1st album, um, that album is called This is Big Audio Dynamite. was released in November of 1985. So at this time, this is not a new single.
It’s a few years old at the time. Best I can tell from the playlist on 120 minutes around this time. They were also playing a Joe Strummer solo song and Big Audio Dynamite did have a release coming up.
Their 3rd album called Tighten Up Volume 88 was on the way. So this was either, you know, here’s what the guys in the clash are up to or big audio dynamic has a new album coming out, some combination of that, but what it’s worth, the song is almost 3 years old at this time. So I had heard this song before.
It wasn’t one that I was super familiar with. According to a little research. Its lyrics were inspired by the films of Nicholas Rogue.
Of all the films they mentioned is inspiration. There’s about 7 of them. I had only seen 2 of those movies, and I didn’t catch the references.
So, that’s apparently what inspired the lyrics to this, but I didn’t hear what they were, what they were going for. It seems that once again, we have found a song that has a really solid groove, but is in desperate need of a chorus that it never gets to. That’s really my only negative, though.
I’ve always liked Mick Jones’s voice. He has that kind of bratty British punk thing that I’m always sort of attracted to. And I love the little keyboard part that’s kind of drifting throughout this entire song.
It kind of floats through the whole thing and comes and goes. It’s really, it’s really cool. I just wish you kicked it up a notra 2 where the chorus should be.
But that’s a mild complaint. I really liked this song. This was a big hit for big audio dynamite.
I hit number 11 in the UK and number 37 on the US Dance Club chart. This video, not really anything to talk about. It’s a performance video with a lot of random footage edited into it.
If there’s more to say about it than that. You guys are welcome to pick up the ball there. I just didn’t think this video was much of anything.
I did want to mention that my real experience with this band was in 1991. when they became Big Audio Dynamite 2 and released the album The Globe. The 1st that was the 1st album as BAD2, and it had the song Rush on it, which was a pretty big hit. It was number one on US Marvin Rock charts and, you know, charted very well around the world.
So I bought that album not knowing anything about the history or the pedigree of this band. I just really liked that song. I still think it’s a great album.
This week I did a lot of digging into some of the big audio dynamite albums that came before that. Nothing really grabbed me as much as that album did. So maybe I’m more of a fan of Big Audio Dynamite 2 than I am of this band that we’re listening to this week, but I did really like this.
So that’s equals MC squared by big audio dynamite. Yeah, I know the song was familiar with it. It’s funny that, you know, we talk about big audio dynamite, big audio.
I just always think of these guys as big audio dynamite, whatever, whatever incarnation Mick Jones is calling it at this point. They’re just big audio dynamite in my head anyway. But I remember playing this song on retro radio.
I liked it. I’m not a huge, you know, fan of these guys. I not real familiar with a lot of it.
I know some of the songs. Rush, like you mentioned, is a really good one. The Globe off that same album is good.
Bottom line off the same album with E equals MC Square is really good. The funny thing about this song to me is that for these guys, for what I know of these guys, which, again, is not a whole lot. This song’s really straightforward.
Like most of their songs are very, or again, the ones I have heard are very much studio concoctions, you know, they’re like pieced together in the studio. Um, and I’ve always kind of wondered about these guys like when they go live, you know, do they rearrange the songs completely just so they can play them as a band? Do they do they try to copy what they do in the studio on stage?
I don’t know. I’ve never really seen them. But for these guys, at least what I know of them, this is actually a really straightforward rock song.
This sounds like a song that they could just have gotten into the, into the studio and just, you know, try to get best takes on. And it’s good. Like I said, I really, really like it.
You’re right. It doesn’t really have a chorus, but I, it’s funny because I never even really thought about that when I was thinking about this song when I was listening to it because I just, I liked the rest of it so much that I just guess I kind of glossed over that. Yeah, you know, aside from it being, to my mind, just different from everything else that I’ve ever heard from these guys.
I think it’s a great song. The video, like you said, not a whole lot to get into here. I did like the workman’s coveralls on the band.
Like, it looks like they’re kind of like down in some tunnels under the city, maybe in the subway or whatever, all wearing their workman’s uniforms. So, uh, I like to think, you know, they sent a crew down there to do a repair job and instead they spent their day rocking out. That’s my takeaway from the video.
But yeah, man, I’ve got nothing, nothing negative to say about this one. I really love this song. Really good point you make about the sort of like studio trickery that comes with this band later on.
I didn’t really think about that, but especially like with the big audio dynamite 2 incarnation. They added a full-time DJ at that and, you know, listen to this on Rush. It’s got a ton of, you know, you know, cutting and scratching in it and what whatnot, you know, which was a big part of this.
I didn’t really think about that, but you’re right. Yeah, that was when I came in to Big Audio Dynamite. was like you kind of in, probably in 91. Oddly enough, so that was right as I was starting to discover all this kind of music, so I wasn’t super familiar with with too many bands that weren’t, you know, like Depeche Mode or REM or, you know, those guys, like bands that were kind of lesser known were still lesser known to me.
And I was working at Champs Sports in the mall. Actually, we had, and we would get these cassettes, you know, that you put on the in-store system and they would loop and loop and loop. And there was like 3 that were basically just like pop top 40 stuff, but there was one that was like a little better and it had some a little bit of like a alternative what was kind of becoming alternative rock at the time, but Rush was on there.
And I had no idea who it was because they didn’t, you know, it’s not like they announced who the bands were or whatever. It was just, I would just hear it once every, you know, 70 minutes or however long the tape was. And I liked it a lot.
So when I got to KTXT and started DJing college radio, I discovered, oh, Rush, by, oh, it’s big audio dynamite, the name of the band. Okay, and then I started working by the way backwards. So I really, really liked a lot of what they were doing, but I came into them kind of thinking of them as this half band, half DJ dance kind of outfit as opposed to not realizing who Mick Jones was or even making that connection until much later.
So that was kind of interesting, but I, yeah, E equals MC squared is not my favorite big audio dynamite song, but I definitely like it a lot. Probably the bottom line is my favorite, but Russia is right there as well. And then The Globe, and they’ve got a couple, a handful of other, like, album tracks and stuff that are really good.
So you can’t go wrong with with checking them out. That’s the kind of band that maybe some people have let slip by and not, you know, known a lot about or maybe you just heard like the one song. So I would recommend it.
The video itself, like you guys said, it’s pretty unremarkable. I was trying to figure out, were the clips? I swear I saw Donald Sutherland in a couple of those clips.
And I was wondering if those were from a movie or what. So yeah, so Donald Sutherland isn’t here. Those are clips from one of the movies.
I mentioned the Nicholas Rogue movies that apparently there’s a bunch of them that inspired the lyrics for this, but that one is called Don’t Look Now. It’s kind of a famously notorious film because there is a sex scene in it that many, many people believe is not simulated. That’s kind of its claim to fame.
That was one of the 2 movies that were mentioned that I had seen. The other one was Nicholas Rogue also directed, The Man Who Fell to Earth. The man that fell to Earth, uh, is this um, super drugged out David Bowie movie about an alien that comes to Earth or whatever, and he directed that as well.
So that’s apparently one, another one of the inspirations for the lyrics in this song, and I didn’t, you know, I guess if I sat down and really read them all and dug into it, you could find that, but I didn’t take the time to do that. I mean, like you guys said, it’s a fairly unremarkable video, even with that. Like, if you’re a real film buff.
You might, you know, pick up on it. The only thing I picked up on was Donald Sutherland just because he has such a distinctive face. And I was like, oh, wait, maybe this is from a film or whatever.
And I have to say, this thread is going to run through, I think, all 3 of our choices, not the mystery song choice, but all 3 of these videos are pretty unremarkable that we’re talking about today. I think I think it’s safe to say. None of them really stood out.
The songs are, you know, the bands have great stories to tell, but I will say that, you know, to be fair, to Big Audio Dynamite, they are the only ones who had some fairly unremarkable videos. My choice this week. Let’s active.
Every word means no. Everyone means now. Everyone needs now.
I’m thinking… The things I never come to… Uh, same boat.
You know, the video, although we will talk about one funny aspect of the video, but first, let’s active, brings me like a moth to a flame. I return to the North Carolina drive-in studio scene and kind of the Athens, Georgia, Jangle pop scene. I think this is the, I don’t know, we’ve done 17 or 18 episodes.
This is probably the 12th time that I’ve talked about North Carolina, Athens, Georgia, kind of bad. Not quite, but it feels that way. But man, like, A, this was the time when that was, you know, hit it, those bands were kind of peaking at this time.
So it’s it makes sense that 120 minutes was kind of returning to highlight those bands. And so I apologize if people are getting tired of me talking about this scene, but it is what it is. So, so let’s active, was formed in 1981.
It is led by Mitch Easter, who we have talked about multiple times already because of that drive-in studios and Athens, Georgia Connection. Mitch is probably most famous for producing the Chronic Town EP, Murmur and Reckoning for REM, along with Don Dixon, but also had his own band at the time and was creating a complimentary but slightly different sound from what REM is doing. You know, they, less active is maybe a little bit, a little leans a little bit maybe into the dancier side of Jangle Pop.
Mitch has a little bit more of, I don’t want to quite say a Robert Smith vibe to him, but he’s got like a little bit more of that vibe than, say, a Michael Stipe does that comes out a little tiny bit in his lyrics and a little tiny bit in his vocal performance, but this certainly is of a piece with a lot of what was happening in Athens and of the driving studios. Like, it is Djangle Pop by any definition. and and good, good Jangle Pop, I think. Mitch formed the band originally with Faye Hunter and Sarah Rom Weber, I think is how you pronounce her last name.
She’s the drummer. She was only 17 when she joined this band. It was really interesting.
Mitch and Faye were in their late 20s and met Sarah and she became the drummer. So it was just the 3 of them initially. Unfortunately, Sarah and Faye have both passed away since then, so Mitch is kind of the last one standing of the founding members, but the name Let’s Active came from a Japanese t-shirt that just had, uh, it was, this is something that people still kind of laugh about, but, uh, oftentimes in both Japan and China in a lot of Asian countries, like the English translations get kind of garbled a little bit because the languages are so different, different phrases kind of rise up and become well-known phrases that are, uh, kind of non-sequiturs in English and less active is definitely that.
I think it was, I think it was Faye that went on later on, she was just like, I’m at the point where I’m just kind of embarrassed when people ask me the name of the band because it just doesn’t, you know, it just doesn’t make any sense. It’s a really probably not. I imagine it’s one of those where like, if they had it all to do over again, they probably would choose a different name, but it is what it is.
So, like I said, Mitch did produce the REM albums around this time. And then right after REM was signed to IRS, uh, they recorded, uh, Let’s Active, that is, recorded a six-song EP called A Foot, and that got them signed to IRS records as well. So they were label mates with REM.
An IRS paid for them to cut their 1st video for an actual, I didn’t realize this was the thing. There was a show on MTV that was produced by IRS records. It was called the Cutting Edge, and it was all IRS artists.
I think IRS paid for it and probably kind of like, I mean, I was going to say, probably it was more of a promotional thing than like an actual TV show, but I mean, that was really what MTV was at its heart, right? That’s all music videos are, is just promotional videos. And so it really was just IRS kind of carving out, I think, a 30 minute or 60 minute block and being able to have their artists, you know, showcased because a lot of these bands were not getting the mainstream airplay on MTV, which is why we’re talking about them on 120 minutes as well.
So this video was produced for that. It’s a very, very simple concept of just the three, 3 of them, Mitch, Faye and Sarah on a white set. They’re just playing the song, and then there’s puppies.
Oh, there are adorable puppies. Why are there puppies? Well, we’re not exactly sure, but the concept was originally to have full grown dogs just kind of running wild through the studio, and they were going to be like, the dogs were going to be kind of like messing them up and and causing trouble, and it was going to be kind of the, that was going to be the vibe of the video.
But they couldn’t get dogs. But for some reason, they were able to get what, 2 or three, I think, adorable puppies. And so a solid 30, 40% of the video is either Mitch or Faye.
I’m not sure if the drummer really gets on it too much, but singing the song literally to these puppies, holding the puppies, playing with the puppies. Uh, it’s as delightful as it sounds. It really it makes no sense.
And it’s, you know, I don’t know if it’s the greatest concept for a video ever, but it warmed my heart. And Mitch Mitch said later on in his career, he was like, that video changed the worldview of our band for eternity. I think people saw, let’s active as this like warm, fuzzy, cozy band, largely because of this warm, fuzzy, cozy video.
And I think that’s, I think that’s great. Why not? Because Mitch is a warm, fuzzy coat.
Mitch is awesome. I did have the pleasure of meeting Mitch. We interviewed him for 35,000 watts, the story of college radio.
A documentary that’s now available on Tubi, by the way, so go watch it. Mitch talks a lot about, let’s active, and how college radio helped, let’s active, find their audience, and Phil Phil shows, you know, they would show up at a town that they were like, man, we’re probably going to get like 10 people, and the venue would be packed. And it was because they got like a couple plays on the college radio station.
And that was before even, you know, they were getting this kind of 120 minutes airplay. So, uh, if you haven’t seen the film, watch it because Mitch is just a delight and he really is a good guy. So they went on to record 3 full-length albums.
They opened for REM on several different tours. So they certainly had a good run. It’s weird that maybe they’re not as well known as they are because they really did get a lot of exposure thanks to their association with IRS and thanks to their association with RM.
But then they ended up disbanding in 1990. And really Mitch went very hard into just focusing on his production career in producing albums. He’s produced records for dozens and dozens of bands, and we’ve talked about that, I think, already in the past, but that was really it.
They got back together in 2014. Mitch and Sarah, and then a couple other people who had played with less active later on in their run, did like a benefit concert, and that was really it. So Less Active is another one of those bands that we’ve talked about a lot that had kind of a good run through out a couple albums, got one or 2 videos on 120 minutes, and then just kind of petered out, you know, for whatever reason, uh, Less Active has that extra interesting bit about Mitch Easter being involved with it, given that Mitch, you know, had such a good history as a record producer.
But an interesting band that I don’t think gets enough credit. I think a lot of people would probably like if they went, you know, if you like REM or you like that vibe. Let’s active is great.
So I’m curious to know, I don’t know what you guys know about the band or if you knew about them before, so I’m here, I’m curious to hear what you thought about it. So I will embarrassingly admit that I knew absolutely nothing about this band going into this. I, other than I, I didn’t know Mitch Easter.
I knew who that was. and I knew that he was involved with this band, and they were somehow connected to Athens. I don’t I don’t think I’d ever heard any of their music. I certainly didn’t know that two-thirds of this band were women.
The only other thing that I really knew was that I never liked this band name. It’s not… It’s not the grammatical weirdness of it.
That’s one thing, but it just, it doesn’t roll off the tongue. It’s it’s not memorable. When you hear the name, let’s active.
I, I, I think I’m going to hear like early 80s bad electro pop. Like that, that just sounds like that, but so anyway, I never liked the name of this band. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that they don’t really like it either.
All that said, I have to say that I loved this song. Loved it, loved it, loved it. This is just a great little early Jungle Pop song.
Super hooky, super catchy, great beat, great sound. I loved everything about it. And the video, well, like you said, it’s nothing too spectacular.
It does feature cute puppies, so I’m certainly down with that. Also got the full approval of my nine-year-old daughter because of the puppies. I really liked everything about this.
This was a really pleasant surprise. So, um, I didn’t get a chance to dig into more Lets Active, but I definitely will. I was very impressed with this.
Yeah, I’d never heard of them either or I’d never heard them. I’d heard of but never heard anything by them. And so, yeah, I liked it too.
Great song. The 1st thing I thought of, the 1st band that popped into my mind is kind of a comp was like the romantics from the early 80s, like the minute I heard that guitar part that kind of popped right into my head. The other thing I thought was kind of interesting about this, is that this song has got really clean production on it.
It’s really crisp sounding and like some of the stuff he did for REM, the production stuff, like murmur in particular is what I’m thinking of, has got a kind of a muddy, you know, all the instruments kind of mushed together kind of sound to it. And so I was a little surprised by just how clean the production on this was because it didn’t really sound like the production on those early REM stuff, or, you know, especially on Murmur, I should say. But yeah, man, I love the song.
I love the video. I love the puppies. I think everybody did.
The one thing I did, a couple of things. My favorite shot in the entire thing is at one point, they’ve got one of the puppies sitting up on one of the drums, and you can see the drummer a little bit in the background, and I think the bass player like leans in and is kind of singing to the puppy, and he gives a huge yawn, like she’s singing to him, and he’s giving a real big yawn there. And then a little bit after that there, you can see the whole band playing and 2 of the puppies are back in the background just laying down, like catching some Z’s or whatever.
So, yes, the puppies were absolutely the MVPs of this video. I hope they at least got paid scale or something for their time because they deserved it. Yeah, that’s that’s what made the video.
But man, yeah, I really like the song. And so, yeah, I definitely probably need to go back and check some more of these guys out. Yeah, you won’t be disappointed.
I mean, this is what they do. This is what Mitch does. You know, he’s he’s a great guitar player.
He has a great year for for pop music and for production. And so, you know, that, if you like this. This is all of that.
And then they were able to, yeah, to continue to put out this type of music for a while. You know, they aren’t a super, super long-lived band, but what they did put out is consistent. They have another.
Yeah, a couple other singles and then like I said, 3 full albums after the EP that are that are very solid. So if you haven’t heard them, go check them out if you like puppies. For God.
Yeah, man. How often do you get to see puppies in a music video? Like, it was amazing.
Yeah they make the video completely. First time I saw it, it’s funny because you don’t, they don’t come in until probably what, like 60, 60 seconds into the video. So you’re like, okay, well, I mean, performance video, great.
And, you know, it is what it is, and then, oh, yeah. Just great idea. I love it when I was gonna say, I love it when a plan comes together.
I love it when a plane falls apart. And the replacement plan is even better than the original plan. And I can’t imagine it would have turned out any better if they’d actually gotten the dogs they wanted. excellent, excellent, excellent, all the way around.
Okay, we are moving on, and we have another somewhat unremarkable video, but a really fantastic song to talk about, and Keith’s gonna take us there. Yeah, so today I’m going to talk about the song Ball of Confusion by the band Love and Rockets. is today confusion That’s not the one today Hey, hey. And kind of like big audio dynamite.
Exactly, like Big Audio Dynamite. Love and Rockets is a splinter group from an older band that’s probably, you know, considered to be more influential. And so that’s actually where I’m going to start.
Love and Rockets is the 3 members of the group, Bauhaus, that were not Peter Murphy. Bauhaus was a band in the early 70s or late 70s, early 80s that basically created the genre of Gothic rock. I don’t really know that that’s something that existed before those guys came around.
Their 1st song is called Bella Lugosi’s dead. and then kind of goes from there. You know, that’s that is a typical Bauhaus song title right there. These guys were all about the theatrics of on their stage shows.
You know, Peter Murphy was famous for coming out in kind of the black crushed velvet tuxedo, you know, kind of with as pale as possible, and with his black hair, all slick back, a real vampire look to him. And I, you know, I was trying to remember this. I saw their reunion tour, uh, in the odds, uh, and Scott, you were there too.
I’m almost positive. They did the bit where they lowered Peter Murphy down upside down to seeing Bella Lugosi’s dead, didn’t they? I don’t I don’t remember, honestly.
Man, maybe they didn’t do it in the show we saw, but that’s something they did in the past in some of their shows. They would suspend him from the rigging of the stage, upside down and lower him down, upside down to seeing into the microphone, hanging upside down. So these guys were absolutely committed to the bit of being a goth band and really created the genre.
They put out 4 albums before they split up. The last Bauhaus album didn’t have a lot of Peter Murphy on it. He was ill at the time, and so he was not involved in that just a whole lot.
And that created some tensions in the band. After the album came out, the last Bauhaus album, they broke up. Um, 2 of the guys that went on to form Love and Rockets, and those 3 are, uh, Daniel Ash, uh, bone voice and guitar, uh, David J with bass, and also some vocals and Kevin Haskins on drums, uh, after Bellhouse 1st broke up, Ash and Haskins formed a band called uh, Tones on Tail, and did a little bit of work there.
And then they made kind of an abort attempt to get Bauhaus back together, and the 4 of them were supposed to meet up and play, uh, just do some jamming to see how it went, and the guys from Welcome Rockets all showed up, and Peter Murphy no-showed them. And so they just decided to jam together, just the 3 of them. And at that point decided, you know what, let’s do this without him.
Let’s make our own band and got back together without Peter Murphy and then that’s what became Love and Rockets. The band name Love and Rockets was taken from a comic book series. It’s not something I’ve ever read, so I don’t know anything about it.
But that’s where that came from. They formed in 1985. Like I said, it was the former members of Bauhaus.
They had 7 studio albums. The 1st one came out in 85, the last one in 98. So they were around for a while.
This song actually was not originally on any of the studio albums. It was released as a single. Later on, it got added to like different, you know, newer editions of their 1st album.
But the 1st 1st edition of their 1st album didn’t have this on it. This was just a single. This already is a cover, which I didn’t, I knew at a certain point, I can’t remember when I found out.
I didn’t know it initially, but I had never heard any other version of it. I’d still, until doing my prep work for this, had never heard anything. So it was originally done by the temptations, which is, you wouldn’t think a band like Bauhaus or Love and Rockets, a splinter band from Bauhaus would be covering the temptations, but here we are.
So I went back and listened to the temptations version of this song and it is fantastic. really, really good. A lot more horns, uh, or a lot of horns that aren’t any horns in the in the love and rockets version, a lot more kind of temptation style, you know, vocal harmonies that work really well. The one thing I was kind of surprised about when I listened to this song, the Temptations version of it is that the bass part in the in the Love and Rockets cover the song is lifted directly from the Temptations version of it.
And the reason that surprises me is because this is a very quintessential David J. bass part. I mean, almost all of David J’s bass parts are really melodic and fluid and extremely repetitive. And that’s what the base part in this song is like.
And so this, when I 1st heard it, I just figured that, you know, David J put his own bass part down on it because it just sounds exactly like something he would play. But no, this is this is actually the base part from the original song. It’s sped up a little bit.
But yeah, that bass part was meant for David J. I don’t can’t believe somebody else played that before he did. This song has been covered some other times, famously covered by Tina Turner.
That’s aside from Love and Rocket’s probably the biggest one. The song was written by a couple of guys, one named Norman Whitfield, one named Barrett Strong. Ball of confusion.
It’s talking about the earth, the planet. It is a ball of confusion. And the lyrics are all kind of, you know, bagging on politicians and consumerism and just kind of the evils in the world.
And it’s just, you know, we ran into this once before when we did the spear of destiny songs, stranger in our town. It’s kind of depressing. When you go back and listen to these songs that are 40, 50, even 60 years old, that have social commentary about the state of the world, and you listen to them today, and they are just as relevant today as they were at the point they came out.
You know, this song could have been recorded yesterday and it would be relevant not to get too deeply philosophical here or anything. It’s just kind of, here we are 50 years later, after this song was originally recorded by the temptations, you know, 40 years after Love and Rockets did it. And yeah, all of the things they were complaining about, all of the ills of society that they’re talking about are still here, still with us.
So way to go. We’ve made great progress in the last 50 years since ball of confusion. The video itself, I should just say before we get off the song.
I’d love the song. This is awesome song. You know, I like a lot of love and rocket stuff.
I only have one of their albums. I have Express. It’s a pretty good one These guys are kind of hit or miss for me, but aside from the fact that this is a cover song.
This is one of the best things they’ve ever done. So if you’re at all interested in Love and Rock, absolutely check this one out. The video, as we mentioned before, is not terribly exciting.
It’s a performance video. It’s in black and white with some color splashed in there here and there, mostly red showing up at different times. The only thing I can really say that I really liked about this video is the fact that sometimes the background is completely white and sometimes it’s completely black and it’ll switch back for them and it gives it kind of a really almost like a stroposcopic effect occasionally when it’s going back and forth and then it just kind of is kind of neat because you get all of the band like suddenly you can hardly see them.
They’re all in the dark and then suddenly it gets very bright and they’re right there out at the front. And so that’s the only really kind of cool thing about the video is how the background kept changing like that. But otherwise, yeah, not a whole lot to ride home about on this video.
And really, that’s about it. I mean, to me, it is a cover song, but it still is like very a very quintessential love and rocket song. If you listen to this song and you really dig it, you’re going to like Love and Rockets, that’s, you know, this is just, this is what they do.
This is what they sound like. And it’s a great example of it. So, yeah, interesting to see what you guys thought.
Yeah, I love the song. I always have since the 1st time I heard it. I think I probably started probably heard this for the 1st time on retro radio before I even started doing the show.
If I’m guessing, um, or maybe in maybe at the kitchen club, like on a retro night, not knowing that it, that it is a cover song, but really digging it. I agree about the baseline in particular. Because, like, if you heard the song and then you listen to like so alive, back to back, I mean, the baseline are just so similar in their vibe, their sound, the, like you said, they’re very repetitive, but they’ve got just a groove.
And to know that, like, yeah, he didn’t write one of them. that was, it was original, was really interesting. It is, it is very fun to go back and watch the temptations. I watched a live, a video of them performing it live on like a TV show in probably the early 70s.
It looked like early 60s. I love how, I guess what I was surprised by was how political the temptations were, because I don’t think I really associate that with the temptations. And then the way they were delivering, like, and looking at the camera and just, like, I mean, they were kind of being almost confrontational in their presentation of this song, which I really liked.
And like you said, it could not possibly be any more relevant to today’s situation. I don’t think you would have to change a single word of it and it’s still really, really, really unfortunately relevant. I also watched a version that I did not know existed because it’s funny.
I was just talking about this movie the other day. I’ve never seen this movie front to back. The song is performed in Sister Act by the nuns.
I don’t know if you guys got to see that performance of it, but it’s another very interesting take on the song. I’ve seen that movie a few times and I did not I did not make that association. Yeah, I’m assuming maybe it’s sister act two.
I don’t know the difference between the two, for what it’s worth, the song does. Yeah, get performed in one of the one of those films. I think it’s the original, but I, again, I just, I just, I saw the clip pop up on YouTube.
I was like, well, I gotta watch this and see. The one thing I took from the video, and Keith, you might be able to answer this question for me. Daniel Ash has a very unusual guitar technique where he’s overhanding his guitar and kind of like doing a barcord like on the overhand.
Is that something he always does or is that just unique to this particular song, do you know? I really don’t. actually, because, you know, I don’t guess I’ve seen a lot of love and rockets videos or seen them live or anything, so I don’t know if that’s something he does all the time. That it is very much, like a lot of his guitar parts are like the part in this where it’s like a single note just hit over and over. kind of, you know, deal just kind of created a drony noise that he’ll like just change a little bit.
So it wouldn’t surprise me if he played that way all the time, but I’m not really sure. I will say, though, that Daniel Ash was one of the recipient of one of the most backhanded compliments I’ve ever heard in my life from Peter Murphy, of course, because those guys were famously kind of prickly with each other. I was watching, and it was 120 minutes, actually. an episode we’ll probably get to at some point as we go down in the future here.
He was being interviewed by Dave Kendall. It was about the time his solo album, Holy Smoke, came out, and then they were talking a little bit about old Bauhaus, and what, you know, the other guys were doing these days. And I can’t get.
I know if I got the exact quote, right? But it was something along these lines. Peter Murphy says, Danny can still only play those same 3 chords, but he plays them really well.
So yeah, that was a Peter Murphy’s take on Daniel Asher’s guitar playing. I mean he’s not wrong. No, no.
But he does play them really well. We’re talking about the time we saw Bao House live. I wish I could remember if he did that vampire thing.
What I do remember, though, is Peter Murphy walking out on stage at the very beginning and going, obviously talking to this 9 inch nails crowd that probably didn’t know who they were, and he goes, we are Bauhaus. We are British, we are older than you, and we are incredibly good looking. And then they started playing.
Sounds very much like a Peter Murphy quote. Yeah, it was just very Peter Murphy. So I also did not always know this was a cover.
I remember going back and hearing the original, which, like you guys said, is fantastic. It’s one of those great sort of, um, 70s neo psychedelic R&B songs that became a thing around that time. I think Sly and Family Stone or Funkadelic.
And the temptations, obviously, I mean, you know, this isn’t my girl. They’ve been around for a while at this point. And I think they were trying to sort of latch on to what was happening in music.
And a lot of Motown artists did that. But the temptations were one of the one of the groups out of the Motown scene that really lasted a long time and that wasn’t common then. But that’s that song is fantastic.
And you’re right. The baseline is almost exactly the same. I didn’t realize that Anthony Michael Hall played bass for this band when I saw the video, but I can’t.
This is a great 80s take on this song. It’s obviously the same song, but it’s just different enough. It has sort of that 80s like pounding rhythm and it’s a little electronic, but not completely, you know, it gets a little funky with those base bills.
I really, really liked it. I also I thought the video was good too. It had a look that pretty, you know, was pretty commonly used at this time.
For what it’s worth, I think it works for this song and and, uh, the era it came out in. But yeah, I really enjoyed hearing this again. It’s been a while since I since I’d heard it.
So yeah, this was a this was a fun revisit. I really enjoy it. You know, I’m wondering, um, talking about, you know, you don’t really think about Motown as being really, uh, like political, you know, having a lot of political songs coming out of there.
This was a little bit later. I’d have to look at the timeline to see exactly when it when it happened, but I remember reading about when Marvin Gaye released what’s going on or was put into the album together and Barry Gordy didn’t really want to put it out because of the political nature of it and kind of got talked into it. I wonder if, you know, again, I’d have to look at the timeline because I’m not sure that came out before this, but I’m wondering if that kind of kicked the door down for a little more kind of political, yeah, political stuff.
I think you’re 100% right. And I didn’t think about what’s going on being the sort of kickstart of all this, but it may have been. I want to say what’s going on is like 68 or 69.
So… Yeah, I think it’s before this, but I’m not 100% sure before this. Yeah.
And so that would not, I didn’t, I did not put that together. that would not surprise me at all if that was the impetus to all of this. So the R&B music becoming a little more political and also embracing a little bit of the psychedelia that was popular at the time as well. Right.
Yeah, I was going to say, if they’re reflecting what’s happening in society with the civil rights movement and then the Vietnam War, like all this is happening, a lot of music that was coming out was starting to be very, very upfront and political, and I’m sure, you know, there’s no reason why a black artist would be any less likely than anybody else to be like, you know what? We need to, we need to start talking about this stuff, you know, and regardless of what record label you’re on, if you’re Marvin Gaye or if you’re the temptations, you might be able to actually get that done, you know, to go to a Barry Gordy and be like, hey, you know, we want to make this. We want to make a statement.
I’m putting words on temptation’s mouth. I don’t think, you know, maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t.
But I wonder if that, yeah, you know, they’re the society’s moving in that direction. You have a lot of turmoil going on, it makes sense that those artists would want to reflect that. And maybe they were finally able to, you know, to get Motown to sign on to that.
I’m sure it’s an interesting story because that isn’t like when I think of Motown, that isn’t what I think of, but that clearly did happen, you know, later in its, in its life. Boy, we about to change gears now. As we get seriously political and then, ooh, boy, we are about to not even, oh, yeah, we’re on a, we’re going to a different place here.
We’re sort of changing gears. Yeah, it’s in a way it’s not changing gears, but I think it’s safe to say this song is not political. I don’t think, unless I misunderstood. hope it’s not.
If it is, it’s over my head. But all right, folks, it’s time for the mystery song. As usual, it is not disappointing in the least.
It is the one I was hoping. I didn’t get to choose this week. This is Scott, so Scott’s about to take over, but I will say I was secretly hoping that this was going to be the choice.
And Scott heard my prayer and here we go. So we have talked before about how we pick these things. It should surprise no one that the song, Here Comes the Bubble Men, by the Bubble Men, caught our eye.
I wish that I could say that we’re super clever and pick this because of its connection to the episode, and I can’t say that. We are not that clever. This is just a happy accident.
So maybe we’re just lucky because it kind of seems to keep happening. But as it turns out, the bubble men are the side project of none other than love and rockets, who we just talked about. I listened to the song first.
I was really hoping that this was some sort of extensive side project that ran alongside the Love and Rockets thing, but it really isn’t that. It’s kind of just a one-off that they did in 1988. There were several variations on it, including the bubblemen wrap, the bubblemen wrap, dub, et cetera, et cetera.
It’s all kind of the same thing, just different mixes. I couldn’t find it. And don’t think I didn’t listen to all of them.
I better believe I did. I couldn’t find much more than that about it. So I mean, maybe you guys were able to go a little deeper than I did, but that’s really all I’ve got.
It’s kind of like a 2 sentence blurb in the middle of Loving Rockets Wiki page about the Bowman. It doesn’t go much deeper than that. The reason I do wish there was more of this is because I really liked this.
It’s wonderfully weird and silly. And I was really into whatever this is they’re going for here. It sort of reminded me of the residents a little bit, like kind of an avant-garde thing, and, um, but not so weird that it’s that it’s like off-putting or difficult.
And maybe a little touch of divo here too. The video also is great. It’s super silly and weird, just like the song.
So it’s perfect for it. It’s just the band in B costumes, kind of roaming around and rocking out or whatever. But I just thought it was great.
I mean, obviously wearing the costumes. So maybe we wouldn’t know it was loving rockets? I don’t know, but I mean, obviously everybody figured it out.
As much as I’d love to say, I’m super clever, and I picked this because Love and Rockets are on this episode, that’s not true. We just picked a song at random that had a funny title. And here we are.
That’s the bubblemen. I will give this an A plus for commitment to the bit. These guys, they went for it.
I’m going to have to give it a C on everything else, I think. I don’t think like the song was not terribly spectacular. It sounded to me kind of like something that they were goofing around with before they got ready to really start recording like, you know, we’re just playing around and caught that riff and was like, and then like, okay, well, that was fun.
Let’s get down to business now and really record a song. So, um, so I can’t say that I liked the song a whole lot. I didn’t dislike it either.
Like I said, it’s just kind of a kind of just there for me as far as the actual song goes, but the video is fantastic. That’s, like I said, for, for commitment to the bit, they get the highest marks because, yeah, the whole thing in those costumes, all of them running around in those, in those weird, like, bumbly B type, bubble men outfits, like, at one point, one of them’s riding a motorcycle, wearing that, at another point, one of them’s riding a horse on it. They’re like doing all these different things aside from just playing the song, wearing these ridiculous outfits.
And yeah, this was not something that I even remotely knew existed until we did this. Very, very high marks for commitment to bit. Otherwise, it’s okay.
It’s the opposite of the other 3 songs we talked about where the other 3 like, you know, great bands, great music, so-so videos. This is obviously like the video is kind of the thing here. The song is very, you know, almost throw away.
It’s not terrible. I actually had it stuck in my head today because I’ve watched the video a couple times and I started kind of singing it to myself, but I mean, it is just kind of, you know, the bubble men are coming. That’s like basically it.
I love the outfits. I love, like you’re saying, Keith, I like the mundane things that they are doing, like they’re getting gas. You know, they’re like coming out of the subway.
You know, they’re just walking around in these ridiculous suits. I think the residents is probably a good comp. I thought also of the network, which is a Green Day’s side project where they’re, you know, they’re masked and like it was a mystery for a while.
Like, is it actually Green Day or is it not? Um, and they’re able to obviously, you know, Green Day in this case was doing like a new wave synth thing, so they’re able to do something different from what they normally do, which I’m sure is kind of the point for Loving Rockets, which is clearly very different. My 1st note was like, I almost don’t want this explained to me.
I kind of want it to be this just pure thing that exists in the universe and I don’t I don’t know if I want to peek behind the curtain and know, so maybe it’s good that we didn’t we weren’t able to find a lot about it. I’m also, I have a hard time because of the way I think of Bauhaus and the way I think of Love and Rockets and the way they present themselves, obviously, as a band. It’s hard for me to picture those same guys in these outfits running around, but I’m sure it is.
I think that actually is those guys. Maybe it’s not, but I think, you know, I don’t know any reason why it wouldn’t be, but it’s just, it’s so very different from what, you know, you think of when you think about House of Love and Rockets that it makes me appreciate it that much more than if it was another band that was already kind of silly or whatever and they were doing this. It wouldn’t have the impact it had on me when I found out this was loving rockets because it’s just, it’s just wild.
The other thing that happened while I was watching this was there was this little tiny voice in the back of my head that was like, you have seen this before. Something about their outfits, something about it was ringing a bell, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I couldn’t figure out why.
And thankfully, once again, the YouTube algorithm helped me out with this. This was featured on an episode of Beavis and Butthead. And it is the moment, and I, Beavis may have said this more than once, but this is absolutely a moment that I remember because Beavis says, they’re going to get medieval on my ass.
Because he was afraid of them. He sees this and he thinks that he had a dream about these guys attacking him. So the whole time they’re watching it is Beavis just freaking out because they’re reminding him of this dream where they are kicking his ass.
Butt hips trying to basically talk him down and Beavis is just losing it because he is terrified of the bubble men and he’s afraid that they are going to, in fact, get medieval on his ass. So that, that brought back this, this flood of memories of like, I’m pretty sure that at some point, which I think a lot of us of our age did. We were stoned watching Beavis and Butthead and saw this.
And, you know, Beefs of Butthead, they usually only showed like maybe 60 seconds or 90 seconds. So it isn’t even like they showed the whole video. And I doubt that, you know, I was probably half paying attention.
I was probably stoned, but, like, that, something about those outfits and those, and that just, like, the tiniest little bell was ringing in the back of my head, and I was so glad that I got to see, uh, the beef and butt head clip, because I think that’s why I would have run. I can’t imagine any other way I would have ever run across this or why I would have known about this, but if you, so if, yeah, if you guys didn’t happen to see that while you were checking it out, search up Beavis and Butthead, Bubbleman, and surely it’ll come up. The clip I saw was recorded off of MTV too, so I’m assuming this was like a later replay of Beavis and Butthead that someone had recorded.
But yeah, that you do, in fact, get to see them, react to this clip, and I highly recommend it because it really… It brings it all home, but yeah, what a fun, silly, stupid thing that exists and I’m glad it does exist. I think I can commiserate with Hope Beavis there.
I don’t think I would want to see those things following me around if I was out late at night. And, you know, I looked behind me and those 3 guys were bopping along there. That would, in fact, be a disturbing scene.
So yeah, we have gotten it right on that. Yeah, ostensibly happy, bubbly creatures, but if you’re at the gas station and look over at night and see them there, you’re probably not going to interpret it that way. It’s going to be interpreted more in a Beavis kind of way.
So hopefully none of us will have nightmares tonight about the bubble men coming to get us, but it is, it is in fact possible. What a great way to end the episode. The connection with Love and Rockets blows my mind, the fact, hey, the fact that we chose it, not knowing that, I think, and we talked a little bit offline about that’s probably why 120 minutes showed it, because obviously they knew about the connection and whatever, but we did not.
And so it was… They played it back to back with a Love and Rocket song. I don’t know if it was this So they probably mentioned it.
And we, um, we haven’t got to the area of so, well, let me just put it this way. So we have been getting these playlists from 120 minutes.org, their website that has painstakingly put these playlists together from people reporting in like, hey, I remember, you know, I have this episode or I remember this episode, and we haven’t really got to the point yet where a lot of recordings of the actual broadcast of 120 minutes, you know, are on YouTube, but I think that is going to happen more in the future where we can actually go back and watch the episode and be like, oh, they talked about, you know, so we can’t say, oh, yeah, Dave Kendall, like, talked about how this was this. We can’t say for sure because that doesn’t exist that we know of for this, but I’m open in the future that sometimes when these things come up, we can actually go and watch the broadcast of 120 minutes that we’re talking about and be like, oh, yeah, they, you know, they did this and that.
And sometimes 120 minutes.org will make notes of like, oh, Dave Kendall interviewed so-and-so, or, you know, they did talk about this, but that didn’t exist for this, so we don’t know exactly, but I’m sure they did tie these together. Like, why would they play him back-to-back if that would be a hell of a coincidence if they played him back-to-back and didn’t. Although it happened randomly for us.
It happened once. could happen again. All right, folks, that’s May 19 of 88. All 3 songs that were our normal choices are really good songs.
If the videos don’t float your boat, I can see that. They’re pretty straightforward, but all 3 songs are really great. Big audio dynamite has a number of songs you should check out.
Less active, same way, if you like Jangle Pop, you’re going to find a number of other songs that are just as good as every word means no. Loving Rockets, man, those Bauhaus and Love and Rockets is a whole thing to dive into. I don’t even know that you need to necessarily be like a fan of Goth or…
Because I wouldn’t consider myself necessarily like, even back in the day, like a goth person or that I was a fan of Goth, but man, they both, both bands, Bathouse and Lovin Rockets have such good, just music. Like, yeah, it’s goth and yeah, it has a vibe, particularly Bauhaus. I think Love and Rock gets a little less so, but don’t be turned off by that.
I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t be turned off by that label. Like, go check it out for yourself and see what you think about, you know, Bauhaus 1st and also loving rockets. Or maybe work your way backwards if maybe it’s easier that way to do it.
Bauhaus is goth. Like there’s no 2 ways about it, but it’s also just really good. Like, yeah, you may not like the whole goth vibe thing, but, but that was just a really great band and, and there is no denying Peter Murphy’s vocals.
Like, the guy is just fantastic. So I’d also steer you his solo stuff. I also think Goth has kind of taken on a little bit of a different connotation than exactly what Peter Murphy and the rest of the guys in Bauhaus were doing.
It’s become kind of a different thing. So you kind of get an idea in your head when you hear goth about one thing and there’s no really other way to describe Bauhaus than goth, but it might not be exactly what you immediately jumps into your head. They are not the sisters of mercy.
Let’s put it like that. They’re very definitely doing their own thing or we’re doing their own thing. Yeah, I think that’s what I was trying to get to, is like goth has changed a lot.
Even between Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy, much less now, 30, you know, years on from that, goth is still a thing, there are people, I think, that tie it back all the way to the roots of goth, which Bauhaus is absolutely at the very, very root of all that. But I do think there’s also people that maybe are only exposed to goth through, I don’t know, walking into Hot Topic or whatever. Or like, you know, it conjures up an image in your head.
And I don’t necessarily think that that image, you know, that you would get today by talking about goth is what you’re going to get if you go back and listen to Bauhaus. Uh, and if you’re not familiar with them. So maybe try it because it’s, I think you’ll be kind of surprised and maybe even delighted. by by early Bahaus.
The bubblemen, the bubblemen are coming. Absolutely. Go check that out like right after the podcast.
You can listen to that. You’re their entire catalog in 20 minutes. 20 minutes. You’ve got the entire the entire bubble man experience.
Yeah, the bubblemen are coming and the bubblemen wrap are 2 different, 2 very different songs, really, in a way, but they give you exactly what they say they’re going to give you. I can’t imagine that many people are familiar with it, but just just go check it out. It’s too funny not to.
It’s, uh, and then and then go watch a Love and Rockets video and try to imagine your head that these are the same people because it’s it’s difficult to hold those 2 ideas in your head at the same time, but it is apparently true. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. Don’t forget about 35,000 watts.
The story of college radio. It’s available right now on Tubi. It’s also available on YouTube and Amazon Prime and Google Play.
Mitch Easter, again, who is in Less Active, and we talked about in this episode is in that film. And it’s a nice little romp through college radio, the history of college radio, so please go check it out. Don’t forget to tune in with us next time right here.
We’ll be talking about June of 1988 on our next episode, and we’d love to have you join us again on 120 months.