This week brings us three heavy-hitters from the UK, all of which were massive successes on college radio and gained a fair amount of airplay on the US Pop charts during their career. Plus, we discover a mystery artist with a fairly mysterious sounding song.
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Episode 5 – May 1987 (98 downloads )TRANSCRIPT
And welcome back to 120 months. We are doing a month by month retrospective on MTV’s 120 Mines, which, if you’re not familiar, was a show back in the late ’80s and 90s, where MTV would actually play more underground artist, artists that initially maybe started off in college radio, the Indie Rock alternative vibe, if you will, but basically bands that they did not play a lot in their normal rotation. So we’re kind of going through, and each of us picking a song from a particular month.
Today we are on May of 1987. And we talk about the video, we talk about the song, we talk about the band, maybe a little of all of that mixed in. And then at the end of the show, we pick a mystery song at that none of us had heard before.
There were a lot of really obscure bands that made their way onto 120 minutes that even have passed our notice over all these years. And so we’ll check out one today. That’s pretty interesting.
I’m here with Scott Mobley and Keith Porterfield. My name is Michael Miller. We’re going to start off with, we actually, I mean, we are we’ve got heavy hitters today, man.
The first four episodes, we’ve had, you know, some bigger bands that made their way to 120 minutes. But I would say today is probably across the board, like the biggest of all the, like you added up the albums sold from each band that was on the show. I think this would be the biggest one and maybe the biggest one for a while. because I all three of these bands were pretty big time.
I am kicking it off with Erasure in the song Sometimes. Sometimes But you truth is hard thing inside Yeah Ooh, sometimes It’s the broken heart desires. Raser, one of my favorite bands, I would say maybe in my top ten, just straight up artist of all time.
Like, I love, love, love, errasure. I’d have to make that list and see if they made the top ten, but they’d be up there. Certainly one of the best synth pop bands out there and one of my favorite of the 80s and early 90s, for sure.
Like when I talk about OMD back in the January episode, I will say that this is one of my favorite bands, but this is not one of my favorite songs by that band. But as it turns out, it’s kind of considered one of their alltime classics, and I actually happened to look at Apple Music, and it’s the number three stream daser song, at least according to their kind of, I don’t know if those are exact rankings in terms of listenership, but it pops up as number three on the list of songs from erasure. So maybe a lot of other people feel differently about it than I do.
It’s not that I don’t like the song. I think it’s a solid track, but Erasure has an amazing catalogog and like some of the other stuff that they do a little later on in their career, I think is is better. But this is so this is pretty early on.
This comes from their second album. The Circus, if you’re not familiar with Erager, it’s a duo, and has been since its inception, and has not changed over low these many years. It is Vince Clark, who originally was a founding member of Depeche Mode, and if that’s sounds a little weird, if you, you know, are like, well, Depeche Mode, you know, they have a different sound, not when Vince Clark was in the band.
Like, go back to go back to 1981 Depeche Mode, listened to Just Can’t Get Enough in some of those other tracks off there. It is the bleepy, bloopy goodness that you would recognize from Vince Cler’s early output with Depeche Mode. his output with Yaz or Yazoo, depending on where you live lived and and what time period you encountered that particular band and earlier erasure, they all, you know, he obviously gets much more complex and more lush with his arrangements and production, but there’s definitely a through thread from early depeche mode to Yaz to earlier erasure and even into later erasure. So Vince was well established by the time erasure forms in85,86.
And I think should be considered one of the pioneers of Sinth Pop, for sure. I mean, he’s right up there with any other big names that you might throw out because he was there at the cusp of the 80s. And, you know, unless you’re going all the way back to like craft work and maybe Devo and into the late 70s, I mean, he’s right there at the dawn of this type of music.
So he leaves Depeche Mode. I’m not going to get really good into the wheres and why words of that, but I think he probably wanted to go in a little bit different direction. And he forms Yaz, or again, or Yazoo, with Allison Moye, an absolutely amazing singer, and they pump out several all time classic dance tracks, since pop tracks, during their time together.
And they still occasionally, I think, do live shows together sometimes as like we reunion shows and stuff. And then she goes on to a solo career and he puts an ad in the newspaper, which I found really amazing that this is how him and Andy Bell hooked up, because imagine so Andy Bell is not really particularly famous at this time and he’s just working odd jobs and he responds to a newspaper ad. And I have to think that he may have been, if he knew anything about UK music, a little shocked to find out that it was Vince Clark, that that placed this ad in the newspaper.
It’s like, I would have thought that that went down differently, but that’s how it went down. Andy Bell is like Allison Moyer, an amazing singer with a frickin’ amazing range, in Vince Clark Clark correctly chooses him to be his partner, and for the next 40 years, they basically start cranking out music together. and it is solid. You know, they have a very, very solid career, an amazingly solid career.
I don’t think I really have to go too deep into Eraser’s catalog or talk about, I think most people are familiar with Er eraser. So if you’re not, man, start from the beginning and start working your way through at least their greatest tattoo albums, because they are wonderful. The video.
Okay, I’m actually going to let Wikipedia describe the music video first. They are the professionals with this kind of thing. The music video for the song showcases erasure on a building rooftop.
Clark playing a resonator guitar and bell singing as they weave through white sheets hang from a laundry line. Near the end of the video, rain starts to fall on the duo. Nailed it!
Got it in one. I can’t top that. There is a cat that appears twice.
And at one point, the top half of a trumpet appears, I think, at the bottom of the screen. That otherwise is a perfect description of that video. I don’t, I don’t know who planned it.
I didn’t even look into who directed it because it’s. Not important. Not important in the least.
I will say, if you want to watch eraser videos, there are dozens that are infinitely more interesting to watch than sometimes. These guys make some crazy wild videos, and this is not one of them even a little bit. So remember, this is the beginning of their career.
They haven’t quite found their vibe yet. They will make some outrageously weird videos in the future, but again, this is not one of them. You will notice Vince Clark jamming away on a what is called a resonator guitar on the Wikipedia page.
So that got me thinking, I’ve heard this song a lot. I never once thought, ooh, acoustic guitar jam. Yeah.
So that got me kind of in a weird, like, what’s going on here? And then I went back to the Wikipedia page for this song again. I kind of skipped over this the first time.
Chris Gerard from Metro Weekly writes, it remains one of their signature songs, talking about sometimes. It has the classic erasure sound of the acoustic guitar, providing rhythm over the electronic beat. So then I had to go back to, I watched the video again and and I’m thinking, am I hearing like a remix?
Did I not understand which version? I went to Apple Music and listened to the album track. And if you really listen, the little accented bit at the end of each bar has a buried sound of a acoustic guitar in it.
It is there. It’s only on that kind of like end of the line hit. It’s buried under at least two other synthetic instruments.
I’m not convinced the acoustic guitar is not just, you know, like, like a sample. It is there. It is it’s not nothing like what you see Vince Clark doing in the video.
Don’t get me wrong. He is jamming away on my guitar and that is not happening in this song. But I did take the time because I wanted to, I felt like we’re doing a podcast.
I need to get better at doing the research and answering these questions people are going to have. Is he playing the acoustic guitar in the song? I Sure.
Sure. You say so. Yeah.
I mean, yeah, it’s there. But yeah, what a weird video. I don’t it yeah, what he’s doing is it’s he’s grooving on it.
He’s jamming away the guitar. It’s a cool visual, I guess, because nothing else about the video is particularly cool. It’s literally them walking through laundry.
So I don’t know. What are you going to do? I guess I guess an all-time classic eraser song, but again, not one of my favorites.
So maybe you guys can weigh in in the comments or you guys literally right now on the podcast and tell me how you feel about the song. But I love a erasure. I don’t hate the song.
I don’t love the video. But if I was going to introduce erasure to someone, there’s probably at least a dozen songs I would pick before this one, but I wanted to talk about them because I don’t know if they’re going to pop up again on 120 minutes, so I don’t know if I would have another opportunity. And I don’t want to sell the band short.
They are freaking amazing. And they go listen to drama, listen to Star, listen to Blue Savannah, listen to chorus, listen to How I Love to Hate You. All those songs I think, are better than sometimes.
But that said, it’s still a fun song and it was it’s always fun to dive into a little erasure. Yeah, this song is perfectly fine. It’s Some perfectly fine synth pop, and the video is perfectly fine.
It’s some perfectly fine synth pop. I will, if you’re interested in what it would look like if Andy Bell worked to enter away wet t-shirt contest, I would highly recommend this video because you’ll get to find out. for me, that is Erasure’s career. Erasure is, to me perfectly fine scent pop.
I don’t I think, have the love for erasure that you do, Mike. They’ve got some great songs. You know, little respect is a classic.
You mentioned some of the ones off Wild, like drama and Star. Those are fantastic songs. O Lam Moore is a great one.
So they’ve got stuff I like. But after the mid 90s, I completely checked out on this band, I was going and doing a little research myself, getting ready for this and looking at their discography. I had no idea that they were still cranking out albums.
They’ve got something like 18 or 9 19 albums out. Yeah, I had no idea that that was the case. But yeah, these guys have been going strong the entire time.
But like I said, it’s just not, it’s just not my thing. But they’ve got some good songs. This is not one of them, in my opinion.
It’s not a terrible song, but it’s not a bad one either. But yeah, I just can’t say that Erasure is really a band that I get into a whole lot, and this song did not, you know, going back to revisiting it, I had heard this song before, but going back and and revisiting it did not change my opinion about that. So, yeah, you know, if you, if you’re into that sort of thing, if you really like the synth pop, they are probably the masters of it.
But for me, this was this is not a song that I really, I’m going to go run out and buy and listen to and, you know, be my gateway into listening to a lot more eraser. That’s just not what this band is for me. They’re fine when they pop up occasionally, but, I can’t say that I’m a huge eraser fan.
Well, I have, I’m kind of in between you guys, I guess. Maybe I lean a little bit more towards being a big fan of these guys. I always loved Erasure.
In fact, back in our younger days in in the 90s, when we were all in college radio., there was always an ongoing debate about, you know, since Vince Clark had been in Depeche Mode, you know, which was better erasure or depeche Mode. I am solidly on the erasure side of that. I will admit that this era of erasure, if you sort of draw the line of Vince Clark’s work, you know, you start off with something like Just Can’t Get Enough by Depecheo, which is, you know, exactly as you described Dave, you know, beep boop, boop poppy syn pop song.
And then what he does with Yaz is is definitely that. This early eraser stuff is definitely that, but it starts to get a little better better and better as it goes, I think. And if you listen to, I know The Innocence is considered Erasure’s, greatest accomplishment.
I don’t love that album as much as some other people do, but the three or four albums that follow it, namely Wild and Chorus, and I say, I say, those albums are brilliant. And they are not beboo beep pop synthy stuff. Like the song drama is one of the most lushly produced things ever.
Depeche Mode would be an awe of how that song is produced. So I think it’s fair to have that opinion of them at this point in their career.. But Erasure is going to get a whole lot better than this as they move on.
And if you, if you’re not familiar with that era, like I would, especially those two albums, Chorus and and Wild. If you have not heard those two albums, that is erasure at their absolute peak, and it’s pretty brilliant. As far as video goes, well, on my notes, I just wrote down that damn guitar with a question mark.
This was very common in this era, to have these guys that were not having anything to do with guitars, have playing guitars in their videos. And I don’t know, I guess they thought people just wouldn’t notice. Most people are probably probably didn’t.
I remember her about this same time. Depeche Mode put out their album, 101, the live album for the Rose Bowl Show. And inside of that liner notes of that album, there’s a picture of two of the guys in Depecheo DiM goes, one of them, and I forget who the other one is It’s not Gan.
It’s one of the other guys. And they both have acoustic guitars around their necks, and the caption says, tuning up. It’s like, for what?
You don’t play those things. Anyway, so that I wrote that down. As far as the video goes, yeah, you know, these videos, this is very common at this time, just like point the camera at the two guys, have them kind of bopping around or whatever.
And you kind of go, well, you know, it was early MTV in that area, but this is five years after Thriller. This is, you know, like, they were making good videos at this time. And so it also tells, it kind of tells me that it was about how much money the studio was willing to give you for a video.
And this era of erasure, you know, they are not an established band. This is on one of their first couple albums. The studio probably said, here’s a few bucks.
Go make a video. You know, we’re not giving you the money to make a Capital V video here. We’re going to make something simple just to go with the song.
The only other thing I was going to mention was you mentioned the transition from Yaz into erasure. I always heard, this may just be urban legend. I don’t know, but I certainly didn’t research it..
But I was always under the impression that the reason Andy Bell was hired was because he kind of sounded like Alison Moyer. And they have a very similar voice. And hers is a little richer, I think, but his is also fantastic.
But I always heard that that was kind of the thing. But I think what you’re talking about with how their videos get better and how they sort of become their own entity or whatever is when I think Andy Bell breaks out of that and starts becoming his own person. He starts leaning into his sexual identity a little bit.
He becomes a little more, a little more Madonna and a little less, you know, this guy in this video. If you ever saw him live, he was very theatrical, almost like a, well, you know, like what Lady Gaga does now, that kind of thing. At this point in their career, he’s not leaning into that at all.
He’s trying to be safe and acceptable, I guess, to audiences at this time. He breaks out of that a few years after this, and that’s when I erasure becomes erasure, I think. Oh, boy, does he?
Yeah. So anyway, I know that was a lot of thoughts on this, but I I really, I like this song. I think more than you guys do.
It’s certainly not. I don’t know if it would make my top 10 erasure songs, but it’s a good one. It’s very hooky, and I like that.
You know, it’s one thing I always liked about Erasure is they have undeniable hooks, and that’s, and I think this song certainly fits into that. But yeah, if you like this, I would give this stuff after this a listen. Everybody loves The Innocents, except me, apparently.
So listen to The Innocents. And then the two albums after that are just masterpieces, in my opinion. Allow me real quickly to come to the defens of Depeche Mode, because if we’re having those two square off against each other in the ring, I’m into Depeche Mode’s corner every day of every hour of every day of every month of every year.
That is not even a little bit close to me. I am much bigger. And I’m not a big Depeche Mode fan, but I’m a much bigger Depeche Mode fan than I am erasure.
And I think Depeche Mode goes through the same thing. You know, their early albums are very much more, you know, just on the electronics. There’s a little more guitar, certainly more guitar than you hear in erasure.
But they also change their formula up a little bit and get a little more lush production and arrangements and that kind of thing as well. So, yeah, nothing else there than other than if we’re talking about that particular debate, allow me to come in heavily on the side of depeche Mode. I don’t know what it is about Depeche Mode that I like them.
They have probably 10 songs that I think are really good. I just I always found them a little, for lack of a better word, pretentious and just kind of trying to sell themselves as much more than they are. I was always annoyed by that guy who was jumping around on stage and never did anything.
And they’re still touring right now, and it’s just Dave Gaan and Martin Gore. Proving what I have said since the 80s, it does not take four people to make this music. And they’, you know, they’re still out there doing it, and it’s just two of them.
That’s all it ever was, I think. So I don’t know. there’s just things about them that bother me. I always found their music a little pretentious.
I found them falsely deep. Like people would go, oh, the lyrics to that song are so deep. No, they’re not.
You know, come on. Everything counts in a large amounts. It’s not deep.
So I don’t know. They just always kind of rub me the wrong way. And I, like I said, I am a sucker for a good, hooky pop song.
And we’re going to get to some more of those later, I think, in this show. But that’s why Eraser always just kind of won me over more than Depeche Mode. But there’s nothing wrong with Depeche Mode.
I don like them. I just, they’ just, I just don’t think they’re as good as this. I just don’t.
I mean, honestly, I love Eraser. I love Depeche Mode 2, and I, I never really thought about ranking and or kind of pitting them against each other. I think Erasure wins a little bit in my boat, but they’re pretty close.
I actually really do like Depeche Mode quite a bit. I have a feeling they might pop up in this show eventually one of us might pick one and we can maybe dive in even deeper on Depeche Mode. And what we like and don’t like, I, you know, I, they do follow a kind of a similar trajectory, particularly in terms of production.
And this goes back to what you said, Scott. If you are into music production or into dance music or, I don’t know, even just kind of as a, if you’re a fan of of kind of the inner workings of music, if you go back and listen to Vince Clark’s output from 81 through, say, 95, you can really trace the evolution of his production technique and the evolution of technology in music making because he has better tools at his disposal as he goes, he knows more, obviously, he’s learning, he’s getting better. And he goes from very metric, bleepy, bloopy, you know, just can’t get enough to songs like Always on, I say, I say, I say, or the track on that.
Yeah, or Blue Savannah or drama like you pointed out. Just layers and layers and layers where you don’t even know exactly how he got, where did you get the sample from? Where is that?
What is that instrument? How is he, if you’ve ever done any music production at all or any kind of audio production, you know how hard it is to get something to sound lush, but also still clean and listenable without it just turning into mudush and blah. Like if you’ve ever heard Be here now by Oasis, you will know what happens when you try to layer too much crap on top of too much other crap.
It just all turns to crap. I mean, that’s a big band with a big budget that could not pull off the kind of lushnness that Vince Clark manages to pull off in some of his albums. So just an aside for any aspiring music producers, Vince Clark is a great, he’s a great example and not just because he’s really good at it, but because he has left a trail that goes right from the beginning all the way through, I mean, the present day.
So you can really watch how he progresses with his, with the production on Honoration in particular, but also, you need to pick up to his early Depeche Mode and Yaz to get the first bit of it. And then, yeah, it just, every album, he gets, it gets better and more lush and more complex and, and just more listenable and delightful. And I think, you know, him leaving Depeche Mode is is a good thing.
That’s because Depeche Mode goes off and does what they do. And I think, you know, I know I kind of shared an opinion here that I, you know, will shout for the mountaintop. I know I’m in a minority on that.
Depeche Mode is more popular than erasure and maybe right rightfully so. It’s just, I think Vince Clark going off and doing his thing and Depeche Mode doing their thing gave us two very unique and very good bands. If they stay together, then we don’t get Depeche Mode.
We get, just get erasure, you know, calling them. A mode. Yeah, we.
We just keep getting more of depeche Mode, and they sound like erasure does now. So I I don’t mean to slag on Depress Mode at all. I really don’t.
I just remember back in the day, this being a debate and me always kind of just leaning on the side of erasure. I just, I love a good hook and Vince Clark is very good at it. And I just, I just kind of like their vibe more than I like Depeche modes, but that is not to take anything away from what is most people’s favorite electronic band.
I think you’re right. I think Vince Clark leaving was what had to happen for Depeche Mode to become Depeche Mode. And we’ve been talking a little bit too much about Depeche Mode, not enough about erio, which is the actual band we’re talking about here.
But yeah, yeah, I absolutely think that it, if it hadn’t gone down the way that it did, we would not have gottenten either of these two bands, it would have been a third, you know, thing that was completely different. Even though I’m not a huge erasure fan, I like the fact. I agree.
I like the fact that we get both of these bands out of that rather than just one thing, you know, and they do kind of go on divergent directions. But they’re both good. You know, even, I know I’m coming off as slagging off erasure too much, maybe, but I don’t dislike erasure.
I just, I’m just not as big a fan, I think as either of you guys are. Well, this was, I don’t want to say this is the most boring video we’ve seen yet. It’s up there.
It’s We’ve seen a couple pretty boring performance videos. Up next, I can definitively say this is not the most boring video that we’ve seen. This is one where we may end up talking more about the video than the song because we could talk about the band for 30 years, but But that is Keith’s next choice.
So for this one, for this month, I chose the video for The Cures. Why Can’t I Be You? And so anybody that’s listened to this podcast knows I’m a huge Cure fan,, I will promise our listeners the same thing I promised Mike and Scott, which is that I won’t always talk about the cure every time they come up on this playlist.
But I probably will talk about it again at some point down the road. So just get ready for that. But today I had to.
I had to do this because this video for Why Can’t IBU is absolutely my favorite cure video of all time. It is quite possibly my favorite video of all time. This video is a thing in and of itself.
And we’ll get there just a second. First off, let me talk about the song a little bit. Why Can’t I V?
It was the lead single off the album, Kiss Me, Kiss Me Kiss, which came out in 1987., It is it’s very much a pop song, kind of a, I hate to say bubble gum pop, but it’s kind of the cure of take on bubble gum pop. There’s fast strum guitars and lots of horn hits in there. The synthesizer horn hits.
It was a mild hit for him. It went to number 21 on the UK singles chart. It got as high as 54 on the Billboard Hot 100 here in the States.
So it did okay for them. You know, they had bigger singles that would come out later on, but this was the first one.. But it is chiefly for our purposes today, chiefly important for the video.
The video is directed by a guy named Tim Pope, and Tim Pope directed a lot of videos back in the 80s and 90s. And he did direct videos for a lot of different artists ranging from David Bowie and Neil Young and Rush all the way to people like the Psychedelic Furs and Susie and the Banshees and the duh. So he was all over the map.
He He would do videos for all kinds of different artists, but he was really known for doing music videos for The Cure. Between 1982 and 1997, he did almost every video that the Cure produced during that time. And by my count, I was reading on Wikipedia and it said that he had done 37 videos for The Cure.
I’m not entirely sure the Cure have 37 videos. So by my count, he gets 23 videos for The Cure, which is still an awful lot for one band and one director. There was just something there in the synergy of Tim Pope and the Cure working together that worked in a way that I don’t know that any other director and band video combo has worked.
They did some absolutely classic videos. You may have seen some of them, some of my favorites for the song Close to Me, in which Pope shoved all the band members inside of a wardrobe. And then you get an exterior shot.
I don’t know if we have a stock footage or if they actually tossed a wardrobe off a cliff, but you get a shot of this of a wardrobe falling off a cliff all the way down into the ocean.. And then you cut back into the interior of the wardrobe. And it’s the guy’s lip syncing and performing the video inside this cramped wardrobe as it fills up with water.
It’s a really great video, an odd choice. I don’t know how they came up with doing this, but by the end of it, they’re all soaking wet, floating in water. You know, it’s a neat one.
That’s my favorite cure video. Yeah, it’s a really good one. It’s really good.
There’s also the video for Lullaby, which kind of takes the nightmarish to the lyrics of lullaby and translates them to the screen. There’s spider webs all over everything. And Robert Smith, I have it particularlyly ghoulish makeup on it.
It makes him look like this terrible character, the Spider-Man. That’s the protagonist of the song Lullaby. So he did a lot of different things with him.
This one, however, why can’t IBU is my favorite? And it’s my favorite, but for the reason that it is completely out of character for these guys. What they did was, what Pope got him to do is he had to cure make a choreographed dancing, multiple cop costume change video like you might think of like, you know, some pop act, like a boy band type video that they would do.
And these guys cannot dance even a little bit. It’s hilarious. And also, of course, the w going about the production of this videos that there was lots of booze and other stuff flowing on the scene at the same time.
So that may have kind of contributed to the quality of the dancing. But yeah, during the choreographed dancing scenes, these guys are running into each other and they’re barely pulling off the moves. And in a lot of the other scenes in the video, Smith is at the forefront singing, and the guys are dancing in the background and they all look like they’re having having some sort of attack of some sort.
They’re all spasming around. It’s much more just odd emotions than it is actual dancing. So it’s, like I said, it’s one of my favorites for that reason, that The dancing parts of it are hilarious.
The other thing they do are, like I said, like outfit changes, costume changes. But instead of like matching outfits that the whole band wears, like, like I said, like a boy band type situation they are like Halloween costume type costumes. Like Smith spends most of this video dressed up like a bear with the end of his nose painted brown, like look like a little bear nose there.
You, you’ve got Boris Williams dressed up like a vampire for part of this, and you’ve got Simon Gallup wearing like a crow or maybe a magpie bird suit through a lot of it. Got Lawrence Tollhurst in a B costume for a lot of it, and they changed costumes throughout. Smith also appears in like a safari outfit with a pith helmet on.
So, yeah, it’s it’s just funny. It’s just a funny video. The dancing is funny.
The costumes are funny. It was obviously done with very much a grain of salt. You know, like they knew that they were making kind of a an outrageous, funny video.
And so like I said, it’s one of my favorites. absolutely one of my favorite videos of all time. It does have one absolutely huge glaring problem with it. And if you watch the video, you’ll see it within the first five seconds.
And that is one of the outfits they have Lawrence Tollhurst wearing is they have him in blackface. And, you know, I’m not going to attempt to defend that at all. It is something that absolutely would not get done into today’s world.
All I would ask of people is to remember that this was 40 years ago. Blackface was certainly wasn’t being done in a serious way in those days, but it was not uncommon to be used as kind of a comedy trope in those days. You know, like, ha ha, there’s this thing we used to do.
And it was terrible and awful, but we can laugh about it now. That has kind of passed as well. I don’t know that that’s something that anybody is going to think of as a comedy trope or something they want to laugh about.
And so, you know what? If you watch this video and you see that and it’s a deal breaker for you, I can absolutely understand that. If you want to turn it off in those first few seconds, I get it.
I would just say that I don’t think there was any ill intent there. I don’t think it was meant as anything other than, you know, just what are these outrageous ways we can get dressed up in this, in this video. But it’s distastef.
I will be the first to admit that is distasteful by today’s standards. And like I said, if it turns you off and you don’t like the video because of that, I get it. For me personally, you know, if I can look past past that, this video is just fun.
It is just so much fun. It’s the dancing and the costume changes and the guys knocking into each other. At one point, Tollhurst has this big, like pap mache, Humpty Dumpty kind of outfit on. and all the other guys are pounding on him and knocking him around.
It’s just fun. It’s just a fun video. Like I said, my favorite cure video of all time.
And if you can get by the Lawrence Tollhorst and Blackface thing, I think you’ll really enjoy it. So that’s Why Can’t I Be You by The Cure, played back in May of 1987 on 120 minutes. So I remember this video from when it came out, and I don’t know if I saw it on it.
I probably was not watching 120 minutes at this time. If I was, it was sporadically at best. I think MTV was playing this video in regular rotation, at least for a minute.
And this was the first time I remember seeing the cure, like, I think I had heard of them before, but like Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, was the first time I really like got into the cure. And I remember that having the thought at that time, this is either the greatest video ever made or the worst video ever made, and I can’t decide which it is. 40 years later, I kind of still have the same thought, although I think it’s great. I really do.
It’s highly entertaining. But, you know, I doubt anyone clutched their pearls when you said that there were lots of drugs and alcohol involved in this because that is obvious from frame one of this video. In including its Inception was probably, there was a lot of involved.
But it’s’s a little offputting because it’s so r-fi and so kind of kind of weird when you first watch it. But the the you watch it, and the more you get into it. It really is a clever and fun video.
But like I said, it’s just a lot of fun. I wouldn’t get hung up on anything in this thing as, you know, trying to be anything more than just what it is. And as far as like, like even the blackface thing, like that, that was, like you said, at that time, we were looking back at that with a, you know, can you believe we used to do this kind of thing.
Now it’s kind of, the pendulum swung the other way, but I wouldn’t let that. I wouldn’t let that hang you up on this video at all because I promise you, I can’t, I don’t want to speak for these guys, but I can say with relative confidence that they had no intention whatsoever of that being what people might take it as now. This was just an attempt to get in a room and have some fun and film it, and that’s exactly what they did.
So, yeah, I love this song and I do I do love this video. But going back and watching it again after these years, obviously, I just was taken back to that moment where I was like, what is this? And then all of a sudden kind of the switch flipping and going, okay, this is, I get what this is.
It’s It’s goofy and fun. And I think that’s all it wants to be. And it’s very good at it.
It’s funny to think about seeing this at the time it came out, because I feel like my enjoyment of the video and and my interest in what they’re doing and how they is because of my knowledge of what they normally do. Like I think, and I think that’s, this video is going to play differently if you already know the cure. It’s particularly as like, you know, if you’ve seen lullaby as your first, if that’s your knowledge of the cure, and then you see this because it’s, you know, it’s completely different.
Not that their videos are all, you know, like, like Keith was saying, close to me is kind of a fun video where they’re falling down, you know, and, and like, just like Kevin and those, you know, there’s not, it’s not like they’re all dark, gloomy, whatever, but the cure has a certain image and this definitely plays against that and they’re playing against type, you know, I guess, as they say, a little bit in the video. And so your knowledge of that, I think, may influence your enjoyment of it, at least in those terms, or at least your understanding of who they are and why they’re doing that particular type of video. Because if you, if this is the first time you’ve ever seen the cure, you’re going to get a really weird first, you know, that’s, you’re kind of starting off on a weird foot, kind of musically too, but but certainly like video wise, that’s an odd, an odd way to start.
Yeah, this video, all of our videos are cool to me. I think like I said for the idea of what they did with Tim Pope, for some reason, that group in Timpope just worked really, really well together. I think the idea behind this video was always, it was to kind of, you know, bust up the image, like you say, you know, if you if you’re used to seeing the C as a Doom and gloom band and you see this, Smith was always, especially, you know, after the three early albums that he did, 17 Seconds Faith and Pornography, you know, the band had really gotten a reputation for being just this dour doom and gloom outfit.
And then after that, he did singles like,Let’s Go to bed and the Love Cats. And he did that specifically just to destroy that image. He was like, I don’t want to be pigeon holed as being this guy, so I’m going to do these other things just to kind of completely tear down the image of the band.
And I think that’s kind of what this video is. This video is, you know, if you see the cure in concert, they are a great live band. They sound fantastic, but they don’t do anything other than stand in front of their microphone or Smith in front of the microphone.
They’re other guys in their spots and play play their instruments. There’s not a lot going on. They are not an animated, you know, dancing around kind of band when they play live.
And even there are videos that are, they’re not, you know, even the performance videos are more just kind of like them in in odd places, playing the song or whatever. So this, I think, was done just as kind of a way just to kind of completely blow up that image of the cure and and have them do something that was so out of character that, you know, if you thought of them as being the doomy and gloomy band and saw this, you were going to, you know, have that reaction where you were just like, what exactly am I watching here? What is going on?
And I do think that was done on purpose. And I think it was as much Pope’s idea as it was the cure’s idea, because he has said after the fact that he said, I can’t remember what the exact quote was, but was something like he could die a happy man after getting them to dance in a video, you know? So I think a lot of it was just him trying to kind of poke a little fun at the band and then being cool with it.
But the beauty of it is, we got this video out of it, and it is fantastic. I agree. You know, that’s really interesting to hear that that Smith kind of wanted to break away from their image a little bit.
And I guess it kind of works in the sense that those songs are that. They are, you know, they are not your typical, you know, gothy, gloom and doom killer that, you know, most people picture or whatever, but I don’t know, ironically, if you ask anybody like, what’s the cure’s two best albums? Most people are going to say disintegration and pornography, the two glumin doom albums.
So, you know, they broke out of it temporarily, I guess, but they still kind of kept kind of kept being that band, I guess, you. Well, that’s always been an aspect of what they do. It’s just that they’ve done other things as well.
And I think they tend to get pigeonholed by that one aspect, but if you look at the entire career, yeah, they’re actually all over the map. It’s just that they have some fantastic pop songs they always have, you know, They’ve always had great, great poppy songs. It’s just’s just not what they’re known for, you know, and then you to, you get to 89 and disintegration comes out and they just like lean into that gloom and doom as hard as they can and make what it’s arguably their best album.
So I don’t know. It’s interesting, though, that they, that Smith felt the need to sort of bust that mold. And it’s good that he did because it gives us a much more diverse catalog of music than we may have gotten if he just kept recording pornography over and over again.
And they’re fully capable, and he’s fully capable of writing really, really, really great poppy songs. I mean, just like Kevin and In Between Days are two of my favorite 80s, you know, tracks, period. And this video makes me like the Cure more.
This isn’t my first time seeing it. I saw it, I, you know, I was roommates with Keith, so obviously I’ve seen every cure video. So, yeah, I, you know, I’m fully, fully up to date on the cure catalog from my time living with Keith.
But like, when I saw these videos for the first time, because I didn’t, I didn’t know their catalog as well, and certainly not their video catalog as well, you know, back in like the mid 90s when I was kind of really discovering the cure for the first time. This made me like them more that makes them seem more human, more approachable, more willing to like laugh at themselves. Those are all qualities that I like because I love the Doom and gloom stuff.
I love disintegration. But it’s nice to know that a band can stretch out and not take themselves too seriously and can have have fun. And it really did change my perception of kind of like Robert Smith and just the cure in general to see this particular video and like close to me because it does, it has a whole other dimension to them that even if they’re not your favorite songs or maybe, you know, if you do lean into other stuff, it’s just cool to see people also just be able to have fun.
Like you don’t have to live your life in one lane the whole time. And that’s kind of what I dig about this video. I’ll just go ahead and put in my two cents, like the blackface thing, obviously, you know, it hits you right off the bats, unfortunately, like the right away.
Right there. You know, having lived in Europe now for a while and understanding a little bit more about the culture here, I will also say that not only was it 40 years ago, but I don’t think Blackfeet Face has quite the connotation that it did in dozen years US. It’s certainly now, I think people in the UK and in Spain where I live understand that it’s not great.
But I will say that like right now in Spain and on January 6th, they do the Three Wiseeman, King’s Day is like a big holiday here. It’s like Christmas is a holiday, but the Three Kings Day maybe is the bigger holiday here in Spain. Two of the kings are traditionally white, one of the is traditionally black, which I think is nice because that’s, you know, they’re kind of trying to acknowledge that it was a diverse thing.
But oftentimes when they do a parade, the black king may or may not be played by a black person. Maybe, yeah, someone in blackface. Still to this day, I’m not, you know, is it now where people are a little more uncomfortable with it?
I think for sure that’s true. In the UK, I would imagine you would not see anybody doing blackface. I was wondering, also, is he playing a particular character?
Like, is that supposed to be the Black Pete character, who’s also kind of like a Christmas character in the UK that often was played in blackface particularlyly, you know, 70 or 80 years ago, that would have been super common, I think, to see. But regardless of all that, I, you know, it’s not to make excuses. It’s not to say like, oh, this is something they, you know, maybe they shouldn’t have done it even then.
I don’t know. But I do think that in the UK, 40 years ago, it just did not have the kind of connotation it does in the U.S. today, I’ll say, for sure. And I don’t think that there was even an ounce of, of racial, you know, animosity behind them doing that.
That’s the important fact. The important point to make, I think, is that whatever you think of the blackface, you, or you think, you know, I can almost guarantee you there was no ill intent in them doing it. It was It was not that.
No, I think it was just something that they thought they thought was funny. You know, they thought it was going to be funny. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So, yeah, I don’t think there was a legally. I don’t think it is a remote kind of statement, if that’s, you know, if that that’s fair to say.
Because how would you make a statement of anything in this video? Yeah, exactly.. You really don’t have to watch much of the video.
It’s just not there, you know. All right. So now we’re going to move on to yet another massive UK band.
Maybe not as massive as Erasure and the cure, but still, they they should be, if they’re not. But I mean, they probably are a fantastic band. And this is also going to be kind of our first double shot.
I don’t think of 120 minutes had done. This may be their first double shot as well, which is something that we’ll find out if they do more of this in the future, but this is Scott’s choice for the week. So, you, this is the double shot on this playlist, and it is the band XTC.
You know, I would say, you know, you said that maybe it’s popular. They’re certainly not as popular as the other two bands we talked about it. And I think criminally, so.
We’ll go a little bit into that, and there’s some whys there. But so just a little quick background on XEC And since we are talking about two videos, I’m going to kind of get us to the first one. We can talk a little bit about it, and then we’ll move on to the one that’s probably going to take over this conversation.
So XDC forms as a band in 1972. They don’t call themselves that band. They kind of start as like a glam band, I guess, is the best way to describe it.
This is, you know, in 72, we didn’t use the term punk yet, but they were certainly influenced by bands like New York Dolls and the Stooges and things like that. They name themselves XTC in 1975. There are two core members of this band, the first is Andy Partridge.
He is, and we’ll get more into this. I’m sure this guy is just a pop genius. There is no other way to describe it.
As a songwriter, as a lyricist, this guy is as good as it gets when it comes to pop music. The other core member of the band is Colin Moulding, who is more interested in sort of pastoral and symphonic music and a little more mellow stuff. And they both write songs, they both share vocals, things like that.
So when you hear an XDC song and you go, wow, that’s upbeaten poppy and light and fun and has clever lyrics. That’s Andy Partridge. If you hear something that’s a little mellower, a little more, you know, introspective, slower, that’s going to be Colin Molding.
But they’re both kind of equal partners in the band. They get their recording contract in 1977 with Virgin Records. They put out a couple of albums that are best described, I think, as that sort of bratty British punk of the late 70s.
Think early Joe Jackson Elvis Costello, that kind of stuff. Maybe a hint of a clash, maybe a hint of madness. There’s a little ska in there, too.
They get really no traction out of any of that. And then in 1979, they record the album Drums and Wires. This is the album that has the songmaking Plans for Nigel on it, which was their first big hit.
So fun fact number one about XTC. The songmaking Plans for Nigel has what they call a reverberating drum in it, which is where you basically hit the snare drum and it goes off into the distance. They are considered the pioneers of that.
This song is considered the first time that that was in a major popular song. It becomes the signature drum sound of the 1980s. And I don’t think that XDC gets a whole lot of credit for that, but they are considered the ones that sort of created that. or at least Wow.
At least who ever produced the album is credited with, you, creating that. I say, I think Phil Collins often gets some credit for that, but that would have been like sort of snare drum sound that became the 80s drum sound. This is where many, many music historians say that it started is the songame Plants for Nigel.
So fun fact there. That song games a little traction. They’re getting a little attraction in the UK, the album charts a little bit.
The next album after that is called Black Sea. It’s not as popular overall. It doesn’t do a lot, but it has some fantastic songs on it.
This is where you’ll find Respectable Street, Sergeant Rock, generals and Majors. Like this is where they really start to sort of sound like they’re going to sound. The album doesn’t get much traction.
So then we get to 1982, and they release the album English Settlement. And this is where you will find the song that we’re talking about here first. This is Senses Working Overtime, which is just a perfect pop song.
I don’t know any other way to describe it. One, two, three, Sens Time to take a difference ever let you ever spell All the things I talked about before about Andy Partridge, about his sort of clever wordsmith kind of moniker, and just the great pop hooks and great pop song It’s all right here in this song. This is, to this day, XTC’s highest charting UK single.
It reaches number six in 1982. And the album also charts fairly high, and it is to this day, their highest charting UK album. That is not true in the U.S. There’s a better one coming later.
But so this is kind of their signature song in the UK and it comes out in 1982. So we’re about five years past that when the MTV airs this and there’s a there’s a Y there too. But so just to briefly talk about the video for senses where working overtime, it’s, you know, it’s shot in the studio sort of live performance video.
There’s really not a whole lot to talk about with it. I do love that every time the song goes one, two, three, four, five, they cut between the five musicians. I can just see some guy in an editing Booth going, I’ve got it, guys.
This is what we’re going to do. Yeah. They they’ just really clever.
So anyway, so anyway, I just, I wanted to do, before we go further, I kind of wanted to dep pause here and let you guys sort of chime in on On Senses working overtime and the video and just kind of give us a chance to break that up. I absolutely love the song, and I have since the first time I heard it. It’s got such a great dichotomy between a very quirky verse and then a very just write down the pipe pop chorus, which they, you know, which is a lot of XDC, actually. like they’re very good at like kind of throwing you off beat, but then coming back with something that just pulls you right back into like pop.
And this is like the classic example of this. If you only listen to the first 30, 45 seconds, I forget when the first course kicks in, you’re like, wait, this was a hit? This is, because it’s it’s got a, it’s a little offbeat, it’s a little syncopated, it’s got a little bit of a quirky vocal.
And then that one, three, four, five hits, and then boom, you’re right in the middle of just an absolutely perfect popc, like, like top notch. I think that’s the bridge between what they were doing and what they end up doing. is that, you know, they’ve become this undeniable pop band right after this and maybe kind of on this album. Before that, they’re still kind of doing the bratty ska slash punk, whatever.
This song is kind of both of those things. mixed together. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. If you’ve heard, making Plants for Nigel is also one of my favorite XCC songs. If you’ve heard that, it has that same kind of quirk to it, all really more all the way through it.
So it does make sense that this kind of is a bridge between that type, that of what they were doing and then what they will do, which is just to knock out pop song after pop song and do it really, really, really well. Yeah, video is unremarkable. A little slow motion thrown in, which is nice, just to make it up a little bit.
Again, I see how I got going, wait, I’ve got it, guys. Yep, yep. Just, hey, what if we, but yeah, no, they are not breaking any ground with this.
This is definitely not the cure dancing around to choreograph goodness in costumes. This is just, yeah, straight up, straight up video, but but a wonderful song in a really good introduction to the band. I used to play this song a lot on retro radio back in the day when I was doing the 80s retro show at the college radio station.
And this was the one that I always got requested. I played it a lot because I got requested a lot. You know, I’m not a huge ITC fan.
I don’t dislike them at all. In fact, I really like them. I just have never taken the time to go down the rabbit hole with them.
But I used to always try to sneak in this one, or, I should say respectable street or generals on Majorsors or making plans for Nigel, before I got a request for Sensus Working Otime so that I wouldn’t have to listen to Sensus Working Overtime every single week. But that said, this is such a great song. I didn’t mind playing it.
I certainly didn’t mind hearing it again this time. I really like, I think, you know, you make a good point about the really nice pop chorus versus the kind of the off kilter verse. I like the XDC off-kilter kind of stuff, like a Respectable Street, which is kind of the entire song is kind of that weird little off kilter feel to it.
That’s actually my favorite all-time XTC song. So I like that aspect of it, and I think the song does work really well and that it blends right into the beautiful pop chorus right after that. So yeah, I like this.
I don’t have a whole lot to say about it. I will say that my favorite line in the song is all the world is football shaped. It’s just for me to kick its face.
Yes. I feel like that. Yes.
That is my feeling about the world on the regular bases. I think after we go through this next little part and we talk a little bit more about what I know is Michael’s favorite hero of this band and mine too, but I want to touch on briefly later. But I think you see that wonderful lyric writing in this song, and you mentioned that lyric is great.
I just love that this song is about how the world is bombarding me, and I don’t know if I can take it, but And it’s done in such this light, fluffy, fun way, you know, my senses are working overtime, trying to tell the difference between a lemon and a lime, you know, but it’s really about how life is beating down on him, you know, but it’s done in just such a clever and fun way. And we’, you know, there’s a a song we’ll talk about it in a little bit, I think, that has the same sort of qualities. But getting back into this, you know, and onto the second video, so there’s a couple of albums between, that one and what’s Coming.
The album, though, that this next video is on is from their album, Skylarking, which comes out in 1986. So Skylarking is bi accounts, considered XTC’s best album. I do not agree with that.
I think it is way too mellow. I like XDC’s poppier stuff, and I personally love the album Oranges and Lemons, which we’ll get too shortly. This album is widely considered their masterpiece.
I’m not 100% sure why. To me, it is, like I said, way too mellow. It’s supposed to be a concept album.
I would challenge anyone to tell me what that concept is other than it’s a bunch of songs about people frolicking around the woods and whatever sort of a Midsummer Night’s Dream sort of thing. But there’s not really any story to it or anything like that. It gets no traction when it comes out.
It’s not, it barely charts in the UK It doesn’t chart in the U.S. at all. However, the first single released from it is a song called Grass, which is unremarkable about. But the B side of that single is a song called Dear Gone.
Dear God, sorry to disturb you, but I feel that I should feel better than clear We all need a big reduction in a amount of tears All the people that you in in your image Si fighting in the street’Cause they can’t make opinions about The album flops. There’s no traction anywhere for the album, but college radio DJs here in the good old US of A start playing Dear God, and it becomes a massive college radio hit. On the strength of that, they make a video for it, which is what we’re talking about here.
So the interesting part of this is that this album was supposed to be their attempt at sounding more American. Someone at Virgin Record sold them the reason they hadn’t gotten any ground in the U.S. is because they sounded too British. So they hired producer Todd Rundgren to put together this album for them.
It’s basically based on a bunch of demos they had, 20 songs that were laying around from previous albums that he was able to sort of work into this musically thematic thing. And they put out this, what most people consider brilliant album and does nothing, but then this one song sort of takes off. Interestingly, Virgin Records, when they heard the album, said, this is great, we’re ready to put it out, but there ain’t no way in hell we’re putting in this song, “Dear God on it.
You can forget about that.” They said, but we will put it out as the B side for whatever single you put out first. So because it takes off and becomes so popular, they re-release Dear God as a single.
They obviously make a video, which we’re going to talk about here in just a second. This song is heavily debated. It was highly controversial.
And I’ll just give you my brief opinion on this. I have heard this song a million times in my life. I think it’s a beautiful song.
I think it’s very catchy. I love The Bridge. That’s the best part of it.
But to me, it wouldn’t make a top 10 of XDC songs, but I just have never understood why it was so controversial because to me, and maybe I’ve changed my mind on this a little bit, but to me, when I heard it back then and when I hear it now, or when I heard it in between, this to me is describing a crisis of faith that I believe every person has had some time in their life. I think if you cornered the Pope, he would tell you there was a time in his life when he said, I’m not sure about all. And to me, that’s what this song is.
Everyone, no matter what their level of faith is now, has had this sort of crisis of faith at some point in their life. And I always thought that’s what this song was. I never thought there was anything that controversial about it because even the most faithful person in the world is going to have this moment at some point in their life.
And I think starting and ending the song with that child’s voice kind of hits that point at home. This is a debate he’s had in his head his whole life since he was a child. And this is a song about, I don’t believe in God or whatever, but he’s singing it to God.
So I think there is something there about Christis of faith. I’m not sure this is the atheist anthem that people have called it over the years. So I’ll let you guys talk a little bit briefly about the song and the video, because the video, I will say for me, I think it’s a very pretty video.
I think it’s a very avocative video, but I’m not sure what I was supposed to get out of it. Like what the metaphor of the family in the tree is and all that. I’m not sure I understood it.
So I’m interested to see what you guys sort of thought about that the song. Yeah, I’ve never I’ve never seen the video. So I the song I’ve known not quite since when it first came out, I’ve discovered it, you know, maybe, it may have been KTXT, my time in college radio before I discovered it.
But so song wise, I discovered it at a time where I was going through this thing that he’s talking about. So, yeah. So, I mean, at that time, it certainly hit me, you know, pretty hard, vocalized a lot of thoughts that I had in my head that maybe I hadn’t been able to put as eloquently as he does in this, in this song.
Because, I mean, it’s a very concise, like, it’s it’s interesting because it doesn’t, he doesn’t really just hit you over the head with it, but it’s also not inscrutable. I mean, it’s very obvious. It, you know, it’s incredibly clear what he’s saying.
He’s not speaking in metaphor or anything like that. Like, it’s a direct address to God. And it very, again, it very eloquently kind of put into words of music what I had been thinking, you know, during my late teen, early 20th years, because I grew up very in a very Christian household.
And so I, you know, but, but like you said, I think everybody, regardless of where you ended up in that, whether you, you know, held tight to those beliefs or whether you gave them up or somewhere in between, like you, you, you do go through that, I think if you’re any kind of person that has critical thought and, you know, questions things, you’re, you’re you, of course, you’re going to go through those moments. So, so you’re right. I, that said, I, I’m, I never fail to be amazed by what will offend people.
So, so, of course, it offended somebody and of course, it offended record execs because they’re probably the least likely to go on online limb of any type of person out there. So yeah, whatever. It doesn’t surprise me that they didn’t want this on the album, man.
And it doesn’t surprise me that they were dead freaking wrong about it because they should have been the lead single and probably should have been been the first track on the album. But, you know, from a business standpoint, if nothing else. But that be that as it may.
This is the first time I saw the video. I never had seen the video before. Both of these movies.
I had never seen it before. Yeah. I’m not sure I’d ever seen XTC before or what they look like now, which is crazy because I listened to them a lot, but I just never really saw the videos for whatever reason.
So I watched it twice. I was trying to parse kind of what is, what are they trying to say? How does this, is it in a conversation with the song?
Is it just supposed to be totally abstract? I mean, I think it is supposed to be of a piece with the song. I think it’s supposed to..
They’re saying something. I just can’t something in me, but yeah, I couldn’t I couldn’t tell you quite what they were going for either. You know, he kind of attacks the tree during the bridge when he’s got that kind of more angry, faster, verse coming out.
And I think that’s, you know, that that maybe kind of speaks for itself a little bit. But what the family is doing in the tree, the reverse thing, the wedding theme, I you yeah, I didn’t I didn’t really get any of that. So maybe, maybe Keith had more luck than I did.
I don’t know. Well, I will say, I thought the video was good. I thought it was really interesting.
And, you know, I can’t get inside these guys’ heads or anything. I can tell you what I, what maybe I thought was going on there. The imagery of of the tree, of them all sitting up in the tree.
It’s a dead tree. You know, it’s not, or or at least it’s in the in the fall or winter. And so there’s it’s not what.ush and, you know, beautiful and all that.
It’s a skeletal thing that’s holding this family up. You know, India attacks it and brings it down and then they all come down. But if you equate the kind of, the imagery of the tree, the skeletal tree with his, what appears to be kind of his thoughts about religion as being a hollow, he very clearly has a little bit of contempt for the concept of religion and God.
And a lot of people build their lives with that as the foundation. And I think what the video is trying to show is that these people are on a shaky, rotting foundation. It’s not there, and all he has to do is come and attack it and show that he can break that foundation down out from under them.
I’m not 100% certain that’s what’s going on. That was what I got out of the video. I couldn’t tell you for sure.
I think you’re corosive if you’re not right. Because the things in the tree, like like, you know, the obviously obvious image of a marriage is there, you know? And I think maybe that is what they’re saying, is that this foundation, this tradition of marriage is held up by this, this foundation of religion that may or may not be something that we should be celebrating.
I don’t know. That’s interesting. think you might have tapped into something there. If I remember right, one of the shots near, maybe about two-thirds of the way through, he’s a little more distant from the tree and the tree’s like, it’s a little darker shot.
And I feel like the tree kind of almost transmgies into like a cross or it looks more like a cross, which would really drive home that connection between the tree being representing religion, I think, which that part, I think it’s that’s almost certainly, and I but I didn’t get as far as Keith did with the tree kind of holding up that family and it being like kind of the, the, like you said, the skeleton that maybe was was what was, what that family was built on or what their beliefs were built on. And and then obviously he attacks that pretty, pretty clearly that, like that part was, was not, was pretty clear that he was, you know, he’s coming after that tree with those hammers. that part I got. Much like the song, actually.
I think whatever you get out of it is completely up to you. The song is obviously very, you know, it open to interpretation, and then this video is too. But I think they’re both really good.
I I sometimes I get down on this song just because I like other XTC songs so much better than I hate the fact that this, like if you rook them up, this is the first song that comes up every time, and it’s because the controversy around it. And I sort of get frustrated with that, and I, in my head, it becomes lesser than it is, but it really is a good song. And this is a, you know, considering some of the videos we’ve watched, this is a really good video.
I mean, it was really, obviously, they spent a few bucks on it and made it pretty good. But I think whatever, you know, whatever you want to take away from it is completely up to you. I you know, some people see it as this complete, just, you know, dismissal of religion and faith.
And some people kind of see it the way I do do and others, you know, there are arguments out there that it’s actually pro- faith. Andy Parts has said, you people are absolutely wrong. But some people see it as, because it is addressed to God, it’s saying, I don’t understand these things about you, but I still get you, you know, and that’s, you can see it that way if you want to.
Unfortunately, this is, you know, like I said, this is the song that they were remembered for because of the controversy, and I don’t think that’s necessarily fair. But for what it’s worth, it took an album that was all but in the toilet and resurrected it. and led us to where they go next, which I want to just, I know we’re talking about these particular videos, but I just kind of wanted to mention a few things because I find some of this very interesting and fun facty. So backing up just a little bit to 82 when they’re on the tour for the album that had Sens organ overtime on it.
They are about to play a show at the Hollywood Palladium that is sold out. I think I read that’s like 5,000 people. This probably would have been the moment they exploded in America.
Before they go on stage, Andy Partchers has a complete nervous breakdown, Can’t move, won’t play, and cancels the show. They never play live again after 1982. Wow, is that right?
With a couple of mild exceptions that I will get to, but yes, they don’t play live. That could be why we don’t talk about them maybe as much as we should. Cutting forward to 1989, right, Post this album, they did put out an album in between Skarler and the one I want to talk about.
It’s called Sonic Sunspot, and it’s okay. It’s got a couple of good songs on it, but it’s not anything spectacular. In 1989, they put out the album Oranges and Lemons, which has what I think is my favorite song of theirs called The Mayor of Simpleton.
It was released in the U.S. as a single. It was a pretty big hit. And I, like I said, wasn’t into college radio, you know, I was into some alternative music, but I wasn’t into college radio very much and stuff like that.
So I’m not even sure where I heard that song, but I fell in love with it immediately. I went out and bought the album and I fell in love with the album immediately. This Origins and Lemons by XTDC is probably one of my all time favorite pop albums.
It is just cover to cover a fantastic pop album. And the song mayor of Simpleton is probably my favorite song of theirs. And not just just a perfect pop song, but kind of like we talked about with Senses Working overtime.
The idea of this song being maybe a little darker, tonally, but just joyous musically and lyrically. And it’s about it’s a very simple song. It’s about a guy who’s in love with a girl, but he feels like he’s not smart enough to hang on to her.
He thinks he he’s a dummy. He’s kind of that forest gump You know I’m not not a very smart man kind of thing. put into a song. But some of the lyrics in this thing are just fantastic.
My personal favorite is, I don’t know how many pounds make up a ton of all the Nobel prizes that I’ve never won. That’s That’s just fantastic. lyric right. But anyway, so I just wanted to mention that album and so on because, you know, what we’ve talked about up until now is sort of the early part of XDC and really the British part of XTC.
This album is when they sort of bust out in America. The album that follows this is called None Such, and it has the album, The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead on it, which is also a really good song. So they get a little ground in America at this point.
So this is the fun fact part. They do not play live because of Andy Partridge’s issues with that, but they do decide they’re going to go to radio stations and play acoustic sets. And so they go around the country to different college radio stations, rock radio stations, and play like two or three songs, mainly mainly mayor of Simpleton, and Kinging for a Day, which is the other big single off Oranges and Lemons in radio studios.
And they do that all over the country and eventually end up in New York and play three songs live acoustically for MTV. This is credited as when MTV thought of Unplugged. So again, XTC creates something that we all know and love and consider iconic and they don’t get much credit for it.
But apparently, XTC playing three songs acoustically live on MTV, made an MTV executive go, we need to get more bands to do this. And Unplugged was born. So the band breaks up in the early 2000s.
They had a real bad issue with Virgin Records. They kind of went on strike and weren’t making any music. They still play individually live every once in a while, but they kind of just disappeared after that.
So they have a career that starts, starts gaining some traction and then dies because they refuse to play live. They have a second phase of that career that takes off and they start getting some traction and then dies because they can’t make a deal with it their record label and then it all just kind of falls apart. So when you ask yourself the question, why don’t we talk about XDC more than we do?
There’s a lot of factors there. There’s a lot of things that played into the fact that they never got to be the superstar pop band that they probably should have been. They certainly had the talent to do it and a lot of the songs.
So I would just tell people, if this is not a band you’re familiar with, get on Apple Music and just play like the first 10 songs that pop up on their, you know, most popular whatever. You’re going to hear senses working overtime. You’re going to hear making plans for Nigel.
You’re going to hear the mayor of simpleton. You’re going to hear all these songs that we’ve been talking. You’re going to hear Dear God for sure.
I think that’s number one on there. You know, you can kind of get a feel for what these guys do. And if you like it, keep digging, because this is a really fantastic band that I don’t think gets talked about near enough.
So I’ll let you guys chime in on XT tonight.. Man, the not playing live thing makes so much sense. And I think if you’re a younger listener, maybe if you’re just not as familiar with the music world or the music industry, like at that time in the 80s, going out on tour and doing the work and getting in a van or, you know, if you had graduated to a bus and traveling, you know, especially a British band trying to break it in America, but I mean, it’s still applies even in the UK, but certainly for UK bands.
Doing those tours and doing 150 shows a year or whatever is how you built an audience. You couldn’t just put stuff up on the internet. Radio stations can’t broadcast over the ocean.
So like, how do you get, how do you even get college radio kids excited about your music to play on college radio, which you know, most of XTC’s radio airplay in the US probably was college radio, but you still have to get your music in front of those kids who, like us, were going to dig it and like it and want to put it on the air. Well, a lot of times that was because they came to town and played the show and you saw the show and like the band went and got CD and put it on the air. Like that was a thing.
So, man, if they weren’t doing shows after 82, which was is the meat of their career. Yeah, they that’s, they have their first big single and then stop touring. So yeah, but puts the brakes on.
It just does, you know? Yeah, that’s wild to me. I back up everything else you said, go, go check them out.
Listen to, yeah, a handful of their songs. If you like those, then you’re going to probably, you know, dig a big portion of their catalog. If you like guitar rock, if you like British music, if you like pop music.
I mean, there’s, they touch all these basses that I think, you know, a lot of our audience would dig and probably already do and probably already are familiar with XDC, so good for you guys. But if you, if you’re not, go check them out. Yeah, I don’t have a lot to add because I think that was a really thorough breakdown, but I will just say I, yeah, I love this band and they, they deserve to be bigger, but, but now it kind of makes sense as to maybe why they weren’t.
Okay, so three pretty big bands we’ve talked about today, all, you know, fairly well-known and probably well-nown to our audience in particular. So now we get to our mystery song, and it’s theoretically someone that none of us have heard. I think we were able to find someone that none of us were familiar with going into this.
This, however, may may also be the biggest mystery band of the bands mystery bands that we’ve had so far. They actually were relatively big in the UK for a short time. It’s not like they had a big, long, huge career.
Well, it’s take that back. They’ve had a big, long, huge career. They’ve been recording apparently nonstop since like the early 80s and still right up to the present day.
They have a cast of I, I don’t know, 72 different people who’ve been in the band. I didn’t count. That may be a little high, but it was a lot.
They have like 20 albums. So they have been around. But the only thing they they’ve accomplished, quote unquote, on the charts, was one song that hit the charts, the UK top 15 in 1987.
So we’re talking about Spear of Destiny. The specific song is Stranger in Our Town. When I little town it had changed And the people say they’re too late They’re strangers, they’re strangers They’re strangers, and I’ But the big hit that they had was a UK Top Fing hit off the same album was calledNever Take Me Alive.
I have to say, so I I did the deep research and went to at least listen to the one other song. Never Take Me Alive. Not nearly as good as Stranger in Our Town, in my opinion.
I’m surprised Stranger in Our Town wasn’t the hit and not Never Take Me Alive. But yeah, so they got some exposure. They opened for U2 on their longest day concert along with REM and Billy Bragg and the Ramones.
So that was like a big deal. They had sold out some shows. They opened for U2 at Wembley Stadium, which is always a huge deal.
And they were set to play the Reading Festival, which is a giant UK festival that has been a a classic festival for UK bands for a long time. And then he kind of similar to what you’re talking about with XTC. He didn’t have a panic attack or anything.
He had like some sort of like arthritis like kicks in and and it makes him unable to play the guitar. And so they actually canceled the Reading Festival and I don’t know that that played a huge role into them maybe not, you know, using that as like a platform because they were still playing these other big shows, but, but it certainly didn’t help, I’m guessing. And then they’ve just kind of been around.
I don’t know a lot about the band. I mean, again, they’ve, they’ve, they have like kind of the one or two guys who who’ve stuck in the band, uh, the guy’s name. Kirk Brandon is, is basically the main guy and they’ve had just a rotating cast of other people along with him.
So I think he’s probably maybe the one constant throughout all of this. They’ve, again, recorded album after album after album. They’ve had a little success in the 80s and since then, I don’t get the sense that they’ve, you know, really broken through or been that big a deal.
So, yeah, they never came across our radars. The three of us had never heard of them or this song before. The song, the video.
Strangers in our Town. It’s foreboding is the word that I have bolded in my notes here. It’s definitely, it’s an intense song.
Like, I don’t know if you guys checked the lyric or really kind of focused in, but it’s basically talking about the far off year of 1991, where apparently society has broken down and we we’re living in a dystopia now. And the chorus is talking about how there’s there’s strangers in the town. There’s strangers that have come to town.
There’ that can’t be good. They must be up to no good. That can’t be great.
I didn’t dig deep, but it definitely has a Norwwellian vibe. It’s very much so. Yeah, very much like a, yeah, the a lot, a brave new humanity is one of the lines that gets thrown out.
A loss of democracy is also thrown out there. So maybe a little bit of a timely song as well. But certainly like a fear of the new, a fear of strangers, a foreboding dystopian type situation is in the lyrics, it’s in the music, it’s in the video.
I wasn’t able to really dig much more into it, to know, you know, what, if there’s more to that, what they were going for, what they were responding to, if they had kind of a message they were trying to get out that was maybe in conjunction with like something that was going on in present day UK. I’m sure it was something of a reaction to like Margaret Thatcher’s, you know, Britain, British reign in the 80s, almost everything that came out of British. In the 80s. was a reaction to Margaret Thatcher.
So I don’t think I’m going out on all in there, but I’m not going to go super deep because I’m curious what you guys thought about it, but it was, oh, I will say, I really like the song. I think it’s a cool, it’s a cool track. It’s much better than, again, the hit that they had, I think.
And I’m guessing probably one of the better songs from their catalog. But yeah, I’m curious what you guys saw thought about it. Yeah, I had never heard of these guys either.
And so I did the same thing. I went, looked them up a little bit, was surprised to find that they had as many albums as they did. I think they only had 747 prior members, not 75 52, so you’re exaggerating.
Yeah, that number, that tracks, that tracks. Yeah. So yeah, I didn’t know anything about them either until until I’ve listened to this song.
I liked the song okay, but I didn’t think it was great, but I thought it was fine. I liked the video pretty much the same way. I thought it was okay, not, you know, tremendous or anything.
It was hard for me to listen to this song without thinking about the current state of the United States and the kind of immigration hysteria that’s going on here right now. Yeah, and roundups and all that kind of thing, you know, the strangers in our town, we got to get rid of them. And not to get too terribly political.
You know, this is a music podcast, not a politics podcast, but that did immediately leap into my mind. And I think what it shows is that, you know, even 40 years ago, that the fear of the other, the person that’s coming into my place and handling my possessions and eating my food is bad and can’t be good and has to be gotten rid of. And this song was written 40 years ago.
There were probably songs written 400 years ago about, you know, the other and how they are in our area and they can’t be good and we’ve got to get rid of them. And it’s just the whole thing, the song, the video, you know, the video when he gets to the part where the, like, the torch-wielding villagers are chasing this guy, you know, around, and then it cuts to the TV, the other scene. There’s this girl watching TV just laughing about it, just having a great time.
And it’s hard not to think about all the people that are are cheering on all these, this mass dep importation stuff. And so I feel like, you know, regardless of what your thoughts around that are, it’s just, it was interesting to me to kind of draw the parallel between this song that came out in 1987 and things that are happening in the world today and realize that that these things are universal, that the problem, if you want to call it a problem of the other, the outsider, has always been there, and it will always be there. And I don’t know that we’ll ever get rid of it, you know, you may go through ebbs and flows of it, but at some point, this fear that is talked about or brought up in this song always rears its head and probably always has.
And I’m unfortunately, probably always will. And so the song itself was fine. Video was fine.
It put me in a weird headspace, and that’s kind of what I got out of it. So, yeah, I’d be interested to hear what you guys, you, what, you know, Scott, what you thought as well. I had the same thought you did., both things that came up.
My first reaction was, this is something that and I’m not sure what inspired it. It may have you know, like you said, every song that came out of England between 19879 and 1988 was about Margaret Thatcher. But there’s definitely something about maybe a parallel about immigration and, you know, sort of the fear of the invisible enemy that, you know, obviously is, like you said, Keith, has not gone away at all.
In fact, I think maybe it’s just gotten worse. And then I definitely felt like the sort of Ourelian vibes of it too. All that said, I, this song just didn’t do much for me.
I didn’t think it was bad. I just didn’t think it was great either. And I think my biggest takeaway was I just didn’t like this guy’s vocals at all.
Like his voice really railed on me, and I think that took me out of the song. I like the video, I think, more than I liked the song. The only other thing I would add is that I was kind of surprised too, when I pulled up this guy guys’s Winkie page, how popular they were in England.
I never heard of them. I never heard the name, you know, so testament to the, you know, the pre-internet American bubble we all lived in and didn’t, you know, didn’t know these things were going on in other places. Yeah, I just,, I found it very interesting.
And like, and like you, Keith, it sort of sparked something in my brain. As far as like ever listening to this song again, Ioubt I doubt I’ll ever do that. It just, and like I said, not bad, just not good either.
It was kind of just a net zero for me musically. Yeah, it’s not fantastic, but I didn’t hate it. I thought it was okay.
Like I said, it’s better than the one that actually hit the charts. I didn’t go listen to that. I should have.
I should have dug a little deeper money. It’s significantly worse, I think. It’s very empic, which is something I guess a lot of their music was.
It’s more. It’s called Never Take Me Alive. So, of course, actually, my favorite part of that experience was going on YouTube, watching that video and the very first comment is actually from April of 2025 so someone was digging that song.
It was, his comment was, I want this song played at my funeral. And I thought, that’s an interesting choice. Never take me alive.
Well, well, they got him, but we’re going to fight its funeral. Were these guys, I mean, you said they opened for you too. Were they known as being sort of political?
That is unclear. Yeah, I could see Bono going, hey, you guys come open for us. My guess is yes, that they were a little more of a serious fan.
This video certainly is got a political leaning to it. Super, yeah, super. And them, you know, being described as anhemic initially sounds like a musical thing, like other music, but usually bands that are musically anthemic are also pretty, you know, you’d say the same thing about your computer, especially.
Yeah, there are, they’re probably anic for a reason. I wasn’t able to really dig a lot into what their, you know, politics or what their vibe may be other than kind of what we’ve already talked about. But, yeah, the video, you know,, one of the better videos I feel like we’ve seen, it kind of had a, it’s kind of got a little bit of a Hitchcock vibe, a little bit of a Twilight Zone vibe, obviously a pretty big Frankenstein vibe at the end there.
It reminded me, this may be where I got the Orll thing. The video especially reminded me of all that around the time of in the 1980s when they started talking about, you, the prophecy of 1984. There were all these videos like this that were black and white and had this, you know, footage of the working man and then footage of, you, things blowing up and like the woman laughing at the TV.
It was like all this, this hodgepodge of imagery that sort of evoked those Orwellian thoughts, you know, and this video definitely has that. Yeah, I agree. So I don’t know that a lot of our mystery bands, we’ve actually kind of dug, and I think we’ve, at the end of the episode, we’re kind of like, you should go check this out.
If you, if, if not the band, at least go check the song out. Like, I mean, last, last week was like Swinging Pistons, I think, which was, that was like so much fun and a lot of fun. This one, I I don’t know.
I don’t think you’re going to find a lot of people that are just going to, you know, fall in love with it. It’s it’s a little bit of a downer, you know, given really given Keith connection to like our present situation. It’s, yeah, it’s maybe not the most fun song to listen to.
Go listen to Why Can’t I Be You that you’ll have a lot more fun with that. That’s probably a better choice for your weekend listening. But if you do want to maybe dive into it, definitely check out Stranger in our Town.
Don’t, don’t check out the somebody out there that falls in love with this band. I don’t want to discourage anybody. Someone did.
Yeah, just just for me, it was neither here nor there. It’t I didn’t turn it off and say that sucked, and I didn’t, you know, sing its praises when it was over either. It was just kind of a, like I said, it’s kind of a net zero.
But, somebody out there might love this. You know, don’t let me talk you out of it. I said, I don’t like the pesh mode.
That probably pissed half our people up. Yeah, I felt the same way about this one. It’s not at all a bad song.
It’s just not at all a great song either. But yeah, like I said, evocative lyrics, Absolutely. So, you know, here we.
Yeah, lyrics are great. 38 years later. All right. Another great episode, like three, three bands again, that don’t need any introduction, and I don’t think we need to convince you to go listen to the Cure or er or maybe ecstasy a little bit.
So if you’re not a fan of Xstasy, go listen to that. If you want to just go check out a random band that had a little bit of love in the UK and that apparently Bono likes, go check on Spear of Destiny. Just, I mean, Stranger in our Town, one song, maybe go check it out.
But again, we’re not endorsing it, but we’re not, we’re not necessarily saying to avoid it either. I mean, you know, if if it’s good enough for Bono, right, it’s got to be good enough for whatever. But yeah, a lot of fun.
Next time, we will be taking on June of 1987. We should mention 120 minuteses.org is the website that helped that helped us that. They’ve spent years compiling all of the music that appeared on 120 minutes, and we are thankful to them for having that website and doing all that work because it allows us to go and just check it out.
I will say that June was missing, so we’re going to kind of cobble together our episode of June from things that we thought probably did play during June because they played in May and July. And we’ll talk about that next week. But thanks to 120 minutes.
We also talked a little bit about college radio as we always do. And I do want to mention that college radio is the subject of a documentary film called 35,000 Watts The Story of College Radio. You can go find that on Amazon Prime Prime or Google Play or Tubi.
And also, now, if you’re an educator, if you are a librarian, if you’re a professor or a high school teacher, you can get an educational license for 35,000 watts and that way you can play in a new classroom and have non-commercial showings on campus. Anything you want to do like that, you can do now because we have that license available. If you need more information, go to 35,000 watts.com or go to our partner collectiveI films to get an educational license for 35,000 watchs the story of college radio.
Thanks again for listening. Thanks to Scott and Keith for helping me dive into 120 minutes. Next week, June of 1987, we will see you then and enjoy the rest of your week