The Encyclopedia of New Wave

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E V A W W E N

YC C N E THE

OF A I D LOPE

E V A W W E N

YC C N E THE

OF A I D LOPE

asale C d l a r

by Ge d r o w e For n a p z s el Buk i n a D by

STERLING and the distinctive Sterling logo are registered trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. Š 2012 by Daniel Bukszpan Cover design by Phil Yarnall Interior design by Phil Yarnall and Allison Meierding

This book is dedicated to my sister, Claudia Bukszpan Rutherfor d, who handed down her new wave tapes to me when I was a lad and introduced me to this music.

Without you, my life would have been silent.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Acknowledgments

ISBN 978-1-4027-8472-9 (paperback)

Thanks to Rosy Ngo for giving me a high bar to aim for; to Jessica Jones for being the person I most wanted to crack up when I wrote this; and to Nathaniel Marunas for giving me this opportunity. All three of you are the reason I get to tell my son that daddy writes books.

Thanks to Hjordis Linn-Blanford and Don Blanford for helping with research, my mom and dad for always being in my corner, Jeffrey Marshall for keeping me grounded, and Dylan Hundley for her invaluable reminiscences and recollections. Thanks also to all my friends who took my unscientific polls and to Tim and Valborg Linn for logistical relief.

Thanks to the incomparable Laurie Dolphin and the rest of the design and editorial team who did a fantastic job putting the book together; to Katherine Furman for her late-inning editorial support; to Phil Yarnall for his spot-on design treatment; to Stacey Stambaugh for finding the best ever photos; and to Allison Meierding for painstakingly putting in place all the splats that follow.

Most of all, this book is for my wife, Asia, for your undying love and faith in me, and for my son, Roman, for helping me get the mail. I love you both more than anything.

ISBN 978-1-4027-9999-0 (ebook) Distributed in Canada by Sterling Publishing c/o Canadian Manda Group, 165 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6K 3H6 Distributed in the United Kingdom by GMC Distribution Services Castle Place, 166 High Street, Lewes, East Sussex, England BN7 1XU Distributed in Australia by Capricorn Link (Australia) Pty. Ltd. P.O. Box 704, Windsor, NSW 2756, Australia

For information about custom editions, special sales, and premium and corporate purchases, please contact Sterling Special Sales at 800-805-5489 or specialsales@sterlingpublishing.com.

Manufactured in the United States of America 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

www.sterlingpublishing.com

th warm iates d a . r 8 s 7 n 19 e Car of th don i n Lon casek Ric O d humor i oo and g

Cy Curnin of the Fixx takes a m concert in oment duri 1983 to po ng a Los A nder if he whole mus ngeles shouldn’t ic thing an just drop d become this a haberdas her.

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lung-shri sle, Jane Wiedlin) take in the The Go-Go’s (l-r: Belinda Carli .

1981 in le ertib conv a in air Los Angeles

impersonation Joe Jackson does his Elton John .

1979 in y, Jerse New , in Asbury Park

s t n e t n o C

12 foreword

15 introduction

18 A a-ha - Aztec Camera

30 B The B-52’s - Kate Bush

52 C Cabaret Voltaire - Cutting Crew

70 D Dead or Alive - Ian Dury

84 E Echo & the Bunnymen - Eurythmics

94 F Falco - Fun Boy Three

G Peter Gabriel - The Go-Gos 106

116 H Nina Hagen - The Human League

I Icehouse - INXS 124

J Joe Jackson - Howard Jones 134

K Kajagoogoo - Kraftwerk 144

L Cyndi Lauper - Lene Lovich 156

M Madness - The Motels 162

N The Nails - Nu Shooz 178

O Oingo Boingo - OMD 190

192 P Robert Palmer - Public Image Ltd

Q Q-Feel 208

9 R Les Rita Mitsouko - Romeo Void 20

S Scandal - Suicide 2 1 2

T Taco - The Tubes 246

U UB40 - Ultravox 262

V The Vapors - Visage 266

W The Waitresses - Wire 270

X XTC 278

Y Yazoo - Young Marble Giants 280

Z Ze Popes 284

best of new wave lists 286

new wave timeline 292

bibliography 296

index 297

photo credits 304

N

Foreword

ew wave. What was so new about it? As the ballyhooed

countdown to 1980 approached, there was a coked-up excitement in popular culture that rivaled the booze-filled abandon of the 1920s and the explosive, drug-driven culture and music wars of the Vietnam era. There seemed to be a naïve expectation by at least some in the creative community that the mid-century American vision of a bright future driven by technology and innovation might actually come to fruition. Domed cities, flying cars, a cure for cancer, and low maintenance sex à la Brave New World—or at least

a scalable version of such promise—drove many a young new waver’s fantasies. New wave’s newness was mostly a repackaged vision of the future promised in America’s post–World War II exuberance. A future that had since been buried by harsh political and economic blows dealt globally and domestically, might now finally be delivered.

The new wave juggernaut was a music marketer’s wet dream.

Almost any act that was releasing material could be wrapped in new wave’s glitz. Diverse music styles and content raging from insipid to bizarre were flambéed with the same neon-colored graphics; Claude Montana–inspired, big-shouldered jackets; tight pants; zippy, retro, James Dean-style hairdos; and plenty of icy synth lines to complement the highly caffeinated consumer crowd. In many ways, the new wave style was a return to the 1950s, with a large measure of the Jetsons thrown in to pump it up a notch.

Unlike the messy business of dealing with English and American punks’ nihilistic, grimy, class-conscious realities, new wave artists were mainly clean-scrubbed, camera-ready chipmunks ready to jerk and twitch as the TV cameras rolled.

There was plenty of this herky-jerky, robot action going on, and while Devo may have become synonymous with that description, the Knack, Talking Heads, Television, the B-52s, Blondie, Joy Division, Gary Numan, and many other artists exhibited major symptoms of the disease. It was a disease that felt good and fit the nervous, deconstructed, angular rhythms and unexpected chord changes so prevalent in much of the best music at the time.

Even with all the aggressive packaging and glitter, there were true innovators and pop music milestones reached in the new wave era, and this book is as close as you are likely to get to that Day-Glo rocket ride. So get ready for a devolved, Technicolor tour of the well-scrubbed, and occasionally scruffy, performers in this, the only Encyclopedia of New Wave.

—Gerald Casale, Devo Fo January 2012

under

FOR EWO RD 13

A

n Duran’s Simon Le Bon

No, teenage girls of 1985, Dura will never run away with you.

14

FOREWOR D

Introduction

unfashionable, then there’s a lot of current hit music that needs s someone who was a teenager during the 1980s, it’s very some explaining. Rihanna had a number-one hit with “SOS,” which strange to be in my forties and see terry cloth headbands sampled Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love,” and rapper Flo Rida had a make a comeback. This woefully unhip piece of clothing recalls number-one hit with “Right Round,” which sampled Dead or Alive’s images of Olivia Newton-John’s video for “Physical” and Loverboy’s “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record).” Jay-Z sampled “Forever drummer Matt Frenette. The headband was something I assumed Young” by Alphaville. Slim Thug sampled A Flock of Seagulls. Girl for decades was rightly abandoned in the Reagan decade, and like Talk sampled Blondie and the Human League. Are you beginning to the Space Shuttle Challenger, it would disappear into the ether, see a pattern emerging? I know I am. never to be seen again. However, damned if those plushy elastic things haven’t been appearing on the heads of hipster young With the advent of new wave’s comeback, it’s high time to define adults lately, most of whom were still in diapers when people what it actually is, as it seems like there are as many answers to who were not Björn Borg had the audacity to wear the terry cloth that question as people who asked it. For the most part, new wave sweatband as a fashion statement. is a form of pop music that emerged in the late 1970s, emphasizing a straightforward The return of new wave music has been songwriting approach and relying heavily a surprise to me for the same reasons. on synthesizers and other electronic Since about 1990 or so, it seemed that equipment. It reigned primarily in the United grunge, alternative rock, and gangster rap States and the United Kingdom during had effectively destroyed it. Sure, disco most of the 1980s and was also frequently had been declared dead and buried, too, classified as being experimental, as in the only to make a comeback once the backlash music of Art of Noise. Not all the new wave and hostility had mellowed into nostalgia. bands and artists stuck to this exact time And there had been a few overtures to new frame, and not all of them used synthesizers, wave in the 1990s by bands such as No keytars, or hexagonal drums, but that’s the Doubt, which had latched onto the genre’s basic idea. Good examples of iconic new perkiness as a response to grunge. And what wave bands include A Flock of Seagulls, Gary office Christmas party would be complete Numan, and Duran Duran. Bands like the without that gal from marketing doing her Pretenders, Blondie, and the Knack, none of karaoke rendition of “Take My Breath Away” whom were particularly fond of synthesizers, after a couple of cocktails? But other than also fall under the rubric of new wave. Back that, it did not seem likely that new wave’s in the day, they were considered new wave popularity would rise again. In fact, the io of Missing Persons Future crazy cat lady Dale Bozz . pioneers. Like anything else in life worth mere suggestion that it might was more joke performs in Los Angeles in 1982 exploring, it’s complicated. than prediction.

And yet here we are. I write this introduction in January 2011, and So why is it necessary to define what new wave is, anyway? one of the highest-selling artists right now is the keytar-playing Shouldn’t all music stand on its own merits and not be Lady GaGa, whose outfits are heavily influenced by new wave pigeonholed into some crassly reductive marketing category? fashion—particularly Dale Bozzio of Missing Persons. Anyone Ideally, yes. However, when my colleagues and I began the process denying the connection either is too young to remember or is lying of selecting bands for this book, we realized a lot of what’s through his or her teeth. And if new wave music is hopelessly popularly assumed to be new wave is not, in fact, new wave, at

15

whose primary sound was a wash of keyboards with guest vocals by least not as we are defining it. U2, we decided, were arena rock and ’Til Tuesday’s Aimee Mann. If you listened to Yes, you heard a band hence not new wave. The Bangles were guitar pop, not new wave. produced by Art of Noise member Trevor Horn. And Yes guitar player Pat Benatar was rock, not new wave. This was not an easy process, Trevor Rabin even performed on Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” and at one point there was a heated exchange regarding the thorny single. So really, you didn’t have to listen to new wave for it to find matter of “Should we include Rick Springfield?” My colleague won its way onto your turntable. that round, and so the man that wanted “Jessie’s Girl” does not appear in this book’s august pages.

The generation discovering new wave today didn’t live through all Things remained contentious when I told people what I was this and don’t share these experiences, so while they may love its revival, this book will working on. I was asked if Hall & Oates would appear in the book. certainly clue them Huey Lewis and in to what they’re the News. Van listening to and why it Halen. Michael resonates with them.

Jackson. Starship.

And how could they Apparently, to a truly know all that new lot of people, the wave music meant definition of new and embodied? They wave is “anything didn’t see new wave that happened when it made the leap between January 1, from “the strange new 1980, and December thing” to “the next big 31, 1989.” I can’t thing” to “the thing say I blame them, everyone’s doing” to though. New wave “the thing nobody wants was the prevailing to remember.” To them, sensibility of the new wave is just music 1980s, and no matter that doesn’t sound like what kind of music the same Nirvana tunes you liked or however Gerald Casale (left) Alan Vega of Suicide, flanked by they were listening to you dressed, it was of Devo. and Mark Mothersbaugh (right) during their teen years. everywhere and a part Not sounding like the same old thing is a big part of what made new of everything. Even if you thought you hated new wave, you listened to new wave, whether wave popular the first time around, and old farts like me remember it fondly. As will the neosweatbanded hipsters partying to it today. you realized it at the time or not. Rush, in that decade, was a band

—Dan Bukszpan

16

’t rip off any Gary Numan says that he didn him. from David Bowie. We believe INTRODUCTION

of his look INTR ODU CTIO N 17

e m o c s u e k a m o t trying e r e w y e h t k n i h “I t the label’s t u o b a T, E K R A H —MOR T EN ” . y a g t o n s a s acros ntily clad women a sc re tu a fe to , o e” vide

a-ha

Years Active: 1982–2010 Many rich cultural treasures have sprung from the snowy climes of Norway, including the prose of Henrik Ibsen, the sonatas of Edvard Grieg, and the exterior shots of the ice planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Against this formidable backdrop, a-ha was formed in 1982. Consisting of keyboard player Magne Furuholmen, singer Morten Harket, and guitarist Paul Waaktaar-Savoy, the trio relocated to London, where producer John Ratcliff discovered them.

Under his tutelage, they produced their 1985 debut album, Hunting High and Low. The album took the number-one spot on Norwegian album charts, reached the top ten in the United Kingdom and the top twenty in the United States.

The immediate success was due in no small part to the video for “Take on Me,” the album’s first single. Mixing live action and animation through the miracle of rotoscoping, the video depicts a desperate scenario. We see a young lady sitting in a coffee shop,

18

THE ENCYCLOP EDIA OF

NEW WAVE

flipping the pages of a comic book featuring Harket in a motorcycle race. Suddenly, comic-book Harket reaches his hand through the page to invite the woman into his world. They dance and fall in love, but there is trouble in the parallel universes, which is resolved by the video’s end, when cartoon Harket reenacts the last five minutes of Altered States by slamming his body against the walls of the woman’s home until he turns human. Freed from the tyranny of the page, Harket can now enjoy the third dimension just like the rest of us and do things like laundry, grocery shopping, and going to the bathroom.

The single, “Take on Me,” became an international numberone hit, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and making a-ha the first Norwegian band to do so. They also performed on Soul Train at this time for some unknown reason, maybe for being Scandinavia’s answer to Earth, Wind & Fire? Ultimately, the album became one of the most popular of 1986, taking its place alongside such megasellers as Paul Simon’s Graceland and Whitney Houston’s debut and eventually going on to sell eleven million copies.

The band never again replicated this success in the United States.

They had a minor hit with “Cry Wolf” in 1986, and they performed the title track for the terrible 1987 James Bond film, The Living Daylights.

But otherwise, the band faded from

original plans for

memory in the United States, where they remain consigned to nostalgic countdown shows on VH1. In the rest of the world, however, the band remained popular all the way through the 1990s and into the new millennium.

In October 2009, the band announced that after selling thirty-five million albums and fifteen million singles worldwide, they were finally calling it a day. They would go out on one last world tour, calling it “Ending on a High Note,” which would end with three shows in Oslo in December 2010. And now, they most likely are spending their days dreaming of the Valkyries and hanging out with Thor while jamming out to some way awesome synthpop tunes.

the “Take On M

MEMBERS: Magne Furuholmen (keyboards, harmonica, vocals); Morten Harket (vocals); Paul Waaktaar (bass, guitar, piano, vocals) DISCOGRAPHY: Hunting High and Low (Warner Bros., 1985); Scoundrel Days (Warner Bros., 1986); Stay on These Roads (Warner Bros., 1988); East of the Sun, West of the Moon (Warner Bros., 1990); Memorial Beach (WEA International, 1993); Minor Earth | Major Sky (Warner Bros., 2000); Lifelines (Warner Bros., 2002); How Can I Sleep with Your Voice in My Head [Live] (Warner Bros., 2003); Analogue (Universal Music Group, 2005); Foot of the Mountain (Universal Music Group, 2009)

The smolde ring Morten Harket of aof Norwegia ha in 1984, n girls ever turning the ywhere into hearts quivering pl ates of lute fisk.

a-ha

19

ABC

Poised to make further strides toward world domination with Years active: 1980–1 991; 1997–present their next album, ABC just needed to overcome the small problem of British dance-synthpop band ABC people not liking and not buying started out in 1977 as Vice Versa, an Beauty Stab (1983). Two singles opening act for the Human League. were released—“That Was Then but Once singer and synthesizer player This Is Now” and “S.O.S.”—both of Martin Fry joined saxophonist which made the UK top forty album Stephen Singleton and guitarist Mark charts. However, the band decided White, they rebranded the band in not to release remixes of either 1980 as ABC. The newly christened single, a major act of heresy in the band made their first mark on the United Kingdom at the time. The UK singles chart in 1981 with the band poured salt in the wounds of song “Tears Are Not Enough,” which long-suffering UK record buyers by propelled the band’s 1982 debut releasing a 12-inch version of “That album, The Lexicon of Love, to Was Then but This Is Now” that was number one on the UK album charts. absolutely identical to its 7-inch Produced by Trevor Horn, the album counterpart. Its sleeve even bore boasted three hit singles in “All of the warning “This record is exactly My Heart,” “The Look of Love (Part the same as the 7-inch version. The One),” and “Poison Arrow.” The choice is yours.” album regularly appears on best-of By 1985, ABC was whittled down lists, such as Q magazine’s “100 to just Fry and White, who released Greatest Albums” list from June 2000 the album How to Be a…Zillionaire! and The Observer Music Monthly’s Although it featured the band’s first “Top 100 British Albums” list from US top ten single, “Be Near Me,” June 2004. the album fared no better than its

predecessor. In 1987, ABC released Alphabet City, which featured “When Smokey Sings” and gained some better reviews from critics.

However, it wasn’t enough to stop the slow but steady commercial slide that had been in effect since Beauty Stab. After Abracadabra (1991) barely caused a blip on any chart in any nation-state anywhere, the duo took a long break.

Fry revived ABC in 1997 with a new album called Skyscraping, which did well enough to convince the singer that there was still some kind of market out there for ABC’s brand of music, so the group released a live album in 1999 and a greatest hits package in 2001.

In 2004, ABC experienced their biggest moment of mass exposure in two decades as the subject of VH1’s Bands Reunited show,

Adam Ant

Years Active: 1976–present (Adam and the Ants and Adam Ant)

which attempted to get the lineup responsible for The Lexicon of Love back together. While drummer David Palmer returned to bash the skins anew, Stephen Singleton and Mark White would not be coaxed out of rock-and-roll retirement, leaving Palmer and Fry to reunite triumphantly…well, almost. Since then, the band released the Traffic album in 2008 and have come together to perform the now ubiquitous 1980s package tours.

MEMBERS: Matt Backer (guitar); Richard Brook (drums); Andy Carr (bass); Martin Fry (vocals); Lily Gonzalez (percussion, vocals); Rob Hughes (saxophone, vocals); Steve Kelly (keyboard); David Palmer (drums); David Robinson (drums); Stephen Singleton (saxophone); Mark White (guitar); David Yarritu and Eden (visual effect) DISCOGRAPHY: The Lexicon of Love (Mercury, 1982); Beauty Stab (Polygram, 1983); How to Be a...Zillionaire!

(Mercury, 1985); Alphabet City (Mercury, 1987); Up (Mercury, 1989); Abracadabra (MCA, 1991); Skyscraping (BMG Ariola, 1997); Lexicon of Live (Koch International, 1999); Traffic (Vibrant Music, 2008)

eton, Mark White, David Palmer) ABC (l-r: Martin Fry, Stephen Singl zine in Los Angeles. photographed for Interview maga le to contain his enthusiasm. unab ly clear is , right at er, Palm David 20

THE ENCYCLOP EDIA OF

NEW WAVE

“I really knew I wanted to

be Adam, because Adam was the first man.

Ant I chose because , if there’s a nuclea r explosion, the ants will survive.”

—ADAM ANT

One of the first British new wave artists to see major mainstream success in the United States, Adam Ant sported a distinct style and sound that separated him for the rest of the pack. Gaining fame as the lead singer for Adam and the Ants, it wasn’t long before he went solo and hit the big time across the pond, thanks to exposure from the then upstart television station MTV. The channel put him into high rotation, where his buccaneering Geronimoinspired look carefully crafted by designer Vivienne Westwood made teenage girls swoon. He became famous in the living rooms of Peoria in short order and eventually racked up thirteen top twenty singles in the United Kingdom and twelve top twenty hits in the United States.

Adam Ant was born Stuart Goddard in 1954 to a chauffeur and a maid. An only child whose parents divorced when he was seven years old, he lost no time getting into trouble, at one point smashing his headmistress’s office window with a brick. Fortunately, he channeled his energies into the arts and even got as far as studying graphic design at London’s prestigious Hornsey College of Art. But before he could graduate, he dropped out to pursue music instead.

In 1975, Goddard joined the band Bazooka Joe as a bassist, which is unremarkable except for the fact that the group had an embryonic version of the Sex Pistols open up for them.

Two years later, rechristened as Adam Ant, he formed the band the

n as better know .

81 ie Goddard, sl 19 Le in rt s le ua St nipp with erect Adam Ant,

ABC - ADA M ANT 21

Ants in May 1977. With a revolving door of musicians, the Ants played several gigs opening for the punk icons X-Ray Specs and soon after changed their name to Adam and the Ants. In January 1978, the lineup consisted of Ant, drummer Dave Barbe, guitarist Mary Ryan followed quickly by Johnny Bivuac, and bassist Andy Warren, and it was in this incarnation that they debuted on BBC Radio 1 with John Peel. The very next day the group recorded the songs “Deutscher Girls” and “Plastic Surgery,” both of which would appear on the soundtrack album to the movie Jubilee, a borderline-unwatchable film that was notable for cameo appearances by the Slits and Wayne County.

After a solid year of touring around the United Kingdom, the group was signed to Decca Records.

By this time, Barbe and Bivouac had come and gone and were replaced by guitarist Matthew Ashman and drummer Dave Barbarossa. This lineup recorded the single “Young Parisians,” but Decca clearly had no idea what to do with Adam and the

22

THE ENCYCLOP EDIA OF

NEW WAVE

Ants and dropped them in 1979 before they had even recorded an album. The independent label Do It Records snatched up the band and then released Adam and the Ants’s debut album Dirk Wears White Sox that same year. The album was a minor cult hit but came nothing close to the commercial success that Ant had in his sights.

Believing that only a true carnival huckster could market Adam and the Ants properly, Ant hired Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren.

McLaren obliged, and his first act as manager was to fire the entire band and get them to join Bow Wow Wow instead.

Now with a completely new lineup, Adam and the Ants would take on elements that would define their later success.

The group now had two drummers, Terry Lee Miall and Chris “Merrick” Hughes, and their twinpercussion approach became a vital element in the band’s sound.

Also, their new guitarist, Marco Pirroni, took a strong role in the band, cowriting all the music with Ant. It was this version of the group that landed a major label deal with CBS, who released the Kings of the Wild Frontier album in 1980. The album reached the top of the UK charts in January 1981, and also spawned such hit singles as “Antmusic” and “Dog Eat Dog.” Adam and the Ants were now the de facto leaders of the new romantic movement. Both Decca and Do It Records reissued the group’s previous releases to far greater effect than they had been able to manage for the original ones. The band, however, was already busy preparing a new album, Prince Charming. This latest offering was released in November 1981 and had two more singles that topped the charts, “Stand and Deliver” and “Prince Charming.”

In the face of all this success, Ant decided to strike while the iron was hot and disband the group, resurfacing as a solo artist. He managed to hang onto Pirroni, who stayed as his songwriting partner.

Together they crafted Ant’s first solo album, Friend or Foe, which had hit singles in “Goody Two Shoes” and “Desperate but Not Serious.” The album was his biggest hit yet in the United States, and the singles all made major headway on that side of the Atlantic as well. The success parlayed itself into an appearance in a television commercial alongside Grace Jones for Honda scooters.

Adam Ant had reached his commercial peak by this point, and although he released two more albums, Strip (1983) and Vive Le Rock (1985), their sales were a case study in the law of diminishing returns. Neither album could be called a commercial failure, but Ant sidelined his music career to focus on acting for a few years.

He appeared on the English stage and on American television, most notably on The Equalizer and Northern Exposure.

The pull of music was too strong, however, and in 1989 he recorded Manners & Physique for MCA and in 1995, Wonderful for EMI Records, who picked up Ant after MCA dropped him and refused to release his 1993 album Persuasion.

Although Ant was not packing

in the shrieking fans like he did in 1982, Wonderful sold and the tour was well attended. However, unbeknownst to fans, and possibly to Adam Ant himself, he would not make another album or perform live for many years.

Ant was set to join the “Here and Now” 1980s nostalgia package tour in January 2002, but became unable to do so when he was arrested for throwing a car alternator through the window of a Camden pub and threatening its patrons with a starter pistol. In 2004, in a UK television show about Adam Ant’s career called The Madness of Prince Charming, it was revealed that he had been a longtime sufferer of bipolar disorder.

Since then, Ant wrote his autobiography, Stand and Deliver, which was published in 2006. At a 2007 live reading, he performed a few songs, the first time he had done so publicly in eleven years, and in 2009 he announced that he would be returning to the recording studio for the first time since the album Wonderful (1995). As of this writing, however, nothing certain has emerged regarding any future recordings, but Adam Ant remains the definitive dandy pinup boy for new wave music.

MEMBERS: Ant, born Stuart Leslie Goddard (vocals); Matthew Ashman (guitar); Dave Barbarossa (drums); Johnny Bivouac (guitar); Paul Flanagan (drums); Leigh Gorman (bass); Merrick, born Chris Hughes (drums); Terry Lee Miall (drums); Kevin Mooney (bass guitar); Jon Moss (drums); Marco Pirroni (guitar); Mark Ryan (guitar); Lester Square (guitar); Gary Tibbs (bass guitar); Andy Warren (bass guitar) DISCOGRAPHY: Adam and the Ants: Dirk Wears White Sox (Columbia, 1979); Kings of the Wild Frontier (Epic, 1980); Prince Charming (Epic, 1981). Adam Ant: Friend or Foe (Epic, 1982); Strip (Epic, 1983); Vive le Rock (Epic, 1985); Manners and Physique (MCA, 1990); Room at the Top (MCA, 1990); Persuasion (Unreleased, 1992–93); Wonderful (Capitol, 1995); Live at the Bloomsbury (2008)

The Alarm

Years active: 1981–1 991; 2001–present This Welsh band specializes in fistpumping acoustic anthems for the downtrodden, stirring lamentations for the subjugated, and howling dirges for other miscellaneous people who have had bad things happen to them. Regularly brutalized in the press as a third-rate U2 with pretentious music and naïve lyrics, the Alarm command a loyal following that kept them in the public eye for more than a decade and helped them move several million units.

The group was originally formed in 1981 by guitarist and singer Mike Peters and drummer Nigel Twist, who had played in a band with the very inspiring name the Toilets. This moniker didn’t last long, and it would take a few more name changes before Peters and Twist would team up with Eddie MacDonald and Dave Sharp to form the Alarm. The band was signed to IRS Records in 1982 and things began to move quickly. They opened for U2 on the 1983 War tour and released an EP that same year. The band’s first full-length LP, Declaration, came out in 1984. The album was a top ten hit in the United Kingdom and spawned successful singles in “68 Guns” and “Blaze of Glory,” the former having a video that featured the band hanging out in a train with a nun, and the latter of which is not to be confused with “Blaze of Glory (Theme from Young Guns II).” The following year’s Strength, which featured the single “Spirit of ’76,” was similarly successful in the UK and also broke into the US top forty album charts.

To promote the band’s next album, Eye of the Hurricane (1987), they scored an opening spot on a

tour with no less an artist than Bob Dylan. In 1989, the band released Change in both an English version and a Welsh-language version called Newid. The album contained the group’s biggest US radio hit ever, “Sold Me Down the River,” but despite this and the album’s titanic popularity in the Arkansassized nation of Wales, album sales were disappointing. After releasing their final IRS album, Raw, in 1990, the foursome performed at Brixton Academy the following year. At the end of that show, Peters announced that he was leaving the band, which was news to his bandmates as well as to the audience.

After the group went their separate ways, Peters spent the 1990s pursuing a solo career, but he found that he simply couldn’t resist the temptation to perform under the Alarm name again.

Enlisting the help of musicians from Stiff Little Fingers, Sisters of Mercy, and Gene Loves Jezebel, he did just that, and the Alarm released In the Poppy Fields in 2004.

Since then, Peters’s band has released

Peters, Nigel Twist, The Alarm (Eddie MacDonald, Mike . Might they be about Dave Sharp) in New York City in 1984 Sheep’s Meadow? the in on toke to ie doob a up to twist

three more albums under the Alarm name, as recently as 2010 with Direct Action. And since 2008, Sharp has been performing in AOR—Spirit of the Alarm, basically a tribute band that focuses on material from the original group’s 1980s repertoire.

MEMBERS: Craig Adams (bass); Steve Grantley (drums); Eddie Macdonald (bass); Mike Peters (vocals, guitar, harmonica); Dave Sharp, born Dave Kichingham (guitar); James Stevenson (guitar); Nigel Twist, born Nigel Buckle (drums) DISCOGRAPHY: Declaration (IRS, 1984); Strength (EMI, 1985); Eye of the Hurricane (21st Century Records, 1987); Electric Folklore: Live (IRS, 1988); Change (IRS, 1989); Raw (EMI, 1991); In the Poppy Fields (Snapper, 2004); Under Attack (EMI, 2005); Guerilla Tactics (Twenty First Century Recording Company, 2008); Direct Action (Twenty First Century Recording Company, 2010)

ADA M ANT - THE ALA RM 23

Alphaville Years active: 1982–present

Hailing from Germany, the technopop band Alphaville did not sell well in the United States, and their most famous song, “Forever Young,” was released as a single not once, not twice, but three times in the land of Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi and still failed to break into the US top forty album charts.

However, if you have attended a high school graduation at any time between 1984 and last Tuesday, then this song has earwormed you irrevocably and irretrievably, and it will chase you from locus A to locus B for all of your waking hours until you finally perish.

Marian Gold and Bernhard Lloyd formed the group in 1982 in Munster, Germany. The duo joined forces with Frank Mertens, and together the three of them wrote the song that would define them for all eternity. They released their debut album, also called Forever Young, in 1984. In addition to the title track, the album also featured “Big in Japan,” which became a hit song across Europe and also charted high in South America and South Africa.

While the single “Forever Young” had not ranked high in the United States, Alphaville hoped their stateside fortunes might change when they caught wind of a tantalizing bit of news. “Gloria” songstress Laura Branigan was set to feature a version of the song on her upcoming album, Hold Me (1985). The band rereleased the single to capitalize on this event, but sadly it failed to light up the sky with incandescent brilliance.

Branigan, however, had huge

success with it, and would perform it as an encore at every concert appearance until her death in 2004.

Undeterred, Alphaville released it as a US single yet again in 1988 to coincide with the release of their Alphaville: The Singles Collection compilation, but it stalled at the number sixty-five spot, which, on the bright side, was the highest the song would ever chart in the United States. Neither being featured in the 2004 film Napoleon Dynamite nor being heavily sampled in Jay-Z’s “Young Forever” in 2009 helped brighten Alphaville’s commercial prospects, even though “Forever Young” has been reissued internationally in 1989, 1993, 1996, 1999, 2001, 2005, and 2009.

When the members of Alphaville weren’t busy flogging the same song to death, they actually managed to squeeze out a few albums and singles here and there. Their 1986 album, Afternoons in Utopia, yielded the single “Dance with Me,” which

Alphaville (l-r: Bernhard Lloyd, Marian Gold, Frank Mertens) in scenic Lake Garda, Italy, in 1984.

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was a hit in Europe and South Africa. Their follow-up album, The Breathtaking Blue (1989), featured moderately successful singles in “Romeos” and “Mysteries of Love,” although the singles might have done better had there been videos to accompany them. Rather than go that route, the band took the unorthodox approach of hiring nine different directors to shoot segments for each of the album’s songs and turning them into a film, Songlines, which nobody saw.

Since then, the band released Prostitute in 1994, Salvation in 1997, and the limited edition CrazyShow in 2003, in addition to a live album in 2000 and a remix album in 2001.

Although Marian Gold is the only original member left, Alphaville is still together and tours to this day.

Reportedly, they have signed a deal with Universal Records

and are working on material for a new album. When they do, maybe they should rerelease “Forever Young” as a single.

Altered Images perform on BBC telev ision in 1982, just before the release of the Pinky Blue album.

MEMBERS: Ricky Echolette (keyboards); Marian Gold, born Hartwig Schierbaum (vocals); David Goodes (guitar); Jakob Kiersch (drums); Martin Lister (keyboards); Bernhard Lloyd, born Bernhard Gößling (keyboards); Frank Mertens, born Frank Sorgatz (keyboards) DISCOGRAPHY: Forever Young (Atlantic, 1984); Afternoons in Utopia (Atlantic, 1986); The Breathtaking Blue (Atlantic, 1989); Prostitute (WEA, 1994); Salvation (Metropolis, 1997); Stark Naked and Absolutely Live (SPV, 2000); Forever Pop (Warner Bros., 2001); CrazyShow (Gema, 2003)

Altered Images

Years active: 1979-1983; 2002 Altered Images was one of Scotland’s most high-profile contributions to the new wave scene. Founded by drummer Michael “Tich” Anderson, guitarist Tony McDaid, and bassist Johnny McElhone, the group was fronted by singer Clare Grogan, whose voice and delivery were so unswervingly chipper that one can almost see the members of Shonen Knife, an all-female Japanese band, telling her to cheer down.

The group was formed in 1979 when the band members were all still very young; Grogan herself was only seventeen years old at the time. Still, they were canny enough to send their demo to Siouxsie Sioux, who responded by inviting the band to tour on Siouxsie and

the Banshee’s Kaleidoscope tour.

Altered Images’ profile was further boosted by two performances on the BBC’s influential Peel Sessions, and soon after the band was signed to Epic Records.

The band recorded their debut album with the Banshees’ bassist Steve Severin as producer as well as Generation X and Buzzcocks producer Martin Rushent, who was enlisted by Epic to ensure that the band emerged from the studio with a radio-friendly product in hand.

The strategy paid off, and the group emerged in 1981 with the album Happy Birthday. The title track immediately shot to number two on the UK singles chart.

The United Kingdom’s influential New Musical Express voted Altered Images the best new band of 1981, and they returned to the studio with Rushent alone to craft the poppierstill Pinky Blue album. The new offering placed high on UK album charts and had three successful singles, but the group, which had formerly been the darling of critics, was now pilloried by those same

journalists with accusations of selling out. In fairness, they had a point. The band had consciously aimed for a more commercial sound, and they had even sunk so appallingly low as to record the Neil Diamond song, “Song Sung Blue,” for the album.

Anderson left the band after the release of Pinky Blue, and second guitarist Jim McKinven left with him. Steve Lironi was recruited to take up the slack for both, and the group ditched producer Rushent for Mike Chapman, who was fresh off of making Blondie a household name with their album Parallel Lines. Chapman crafted one of the band’s biggest-selling singles in “Don’t Talk to Me About Love,” and then teamed up with David Bowie producer Tony Visconti for the 1983 album Bite.

Bite performed well enough on the charts for a brief period, but it was clear that if the ride was not yet over, it would be soon.

Altered Images squeezed

AL-

out one last tour and then quietly broke up. In 2002, Grogan dusted off the Altered Images name for a nostalgia package tour with the Human League and ABC. “Happy Birthday” has stayed in the public consciousness, appearing in the 1984 Molly Ringwald vehicle Sixteen Candles and also being performed by the Ting Tings on the acid freakout children’s television show Yo Gabba Gabba.

MEMBERS: Caesar (guitar); Michael “Tich” Anderson (drums); Clare Grogan (vocals); Jim McKinven (guitar); Steve Lironi (producer, multinstrumentalist); Tony McDaid (guitar); Johnny McElhone (bass guitar); Jim Prime (keyboards); David Wilde (drums, saxophone) DISCOGRAPHY: Happy Birthday (Portrait, 1981); Pinky Blue (Diablo [UK], 1982); Bite (Sony Music Distribution, 1983)

25 ALP HAV ILLE - ALTE RED IMAG ES

PHAVILLE - ALTERED IMAGES

Animotion

Years active: 1983–1990; 2001; 2005; 2008–present

Animotion was an American band originally based around keyboard player Paul Antonelli, drummer Frenchy O’Brien, bassist Charles Ottavio, and vocalist Astrid Plane.

These four had previously played together in a band called Red Zone, and after adding guitarists Don Kirkpatrick and Bill Wadhams, the new band was complete. After signing to Polygram Records, they released Animotion in 1984, and hit the jackpot in 1985 when a song from the album, “Obsession,” was released as a single. Written by “Love Is a Battlefield” songwriter Holly Knight and Michael Des Barres, who is famous for being that guy Pamela Des Barres was married to, the song quickly became a Billboard top ten single. It was followed by “Let Him Go,” which didn’t achieve those same dizzying heights but made the top forty album charts nonetheless.

Antonelli and O’Brien left the group, and “Obsession”-mania eventually came to an end. The band soldiered on into 1986 with a new album, Strange Behavior. Although the album underperformed in comparison to its predecessor, it did well in Europe and South Africa on the strength of the single “I Engineer,” and Animotion spent the rest of the 1986 and 1987 on the road with Depeche Mode, INXS, and Simply Red. During the recording of the third Animotion album, Ottavio, Plane,

THE ENCYCLOP EDIA OF

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Years active: 1983–1990; 1998–2000 The Art of Noise was not a band so much as a bunch of people who enjoyed screwing around with the latest studio technology to see what kind of bizarre soundscapes they could come up with. Comprised of arranger Anne Dudley, producer Trevor Horn, programmer J. J. Jeczalik, engineer Gary Langan, and music journalist Paul Morley, the group created mostly

instrumental music that relied heavily on digital sampling. Anyone who’s been to a nightclub in the last twenty years has heard plenty of music that’s been generated that way, but at the dawn of the 1980s, this was new technology, which was mainly used to embellish studio music. It had never been the star of the show before.

The group started in London in a decidedly non–new wave fashion.

Horn, who had been a member of the Buggles, had briefly joined Yes for one album in 1980 as lead

singer. Though that union fell apart, he returned as the band’s producer to craft the 90125 album. In 1983, Horn’s engineers, Jeczalik and Langan, had sampled an unused drum pattern from a 90125 session and fed it into a sequencer and then layered various nonmusical sounds over it. The song, for lack of a better word, was played back for Horn. He loved what he heard, and the three of them decided to build a band whose whole aim would be to create music that way. Horn recruited Dudley and Morley, and the Art of

Noise was born.

In September of 1983, the new group released their first EP, Into Battle with The Art of Noise, on Horn’s own ZTT label. The release was an immediate hit on US dance charts, and the track “Beat Box” became a favorite among breakdancers. According to Dudley, their popularity among black audiences, combined with the group’s decision to remain faceless, resulted in a widespread assumption that the Art of Noise was a black group. Apart from “Beat Box,” the EP also featured

JJ Jeczalik (foreground) with Art

of Noise, live in 1986.

MEMBERS: Paul Antonelli (keyboards); Jim Blair (drums); Paul Engemann (vocals); Don Kirkpatrick (guitar); Frenchy O’Brien (drums); Charles Ottavio (bass guitar); Astrid Plane (vocals); Kevin Rankin (drums); Cynthia Rhodes (vocals); Greg Smith (keyboard); Bill Wadhams (vocals, guitar) DISCOGRAPHY: Animotion (Mercury, 1985); Strange Behavior (Casablanca, 1986); Animotion (Polydor, 1989)

Get a room, you two. Animotion’s Astrid Plane get all handsy with each other in 1985.

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The Art of Noise

and Wadhams decided to bail out, leaving Kirkpatrick as the only original member. Paul Engemann and Cynthia Rhodes replaced Wadhams and Plane, who had served as the lead vocal team on the previous albums.

This incarnation of the band produced a second self-titled album in 1989. Shockingly, nobody bought the album and the band broke up soon after.

However, in 2002, “Obsession” appeared in the video game “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City,” and in 2005, Ottavio, Plane and Wadhams reunited under the Animotion banner once again. They appeared on the television show Hit Me One More Time, where they performed their big hit for the billionth time along with Dirty Vegas’s “Days Go By.” Clearly, the potent stench of magic was in the air, and in 2008, the trio reunited with Kirkpatrick for a West Coast tour.

Original keyboardist Antonelli did not join them because he has a sweet gig composing incidental music for As the World Turns. But if the band’s website is any indication, he’s missing out on some truly memorable performances at Six Flags.

and Bill Wadhams

Animotion - The ART of NOiSE 17 ANIM OTIO N - THE ART OF NOIS 27 E

“Moments in Love,” which remains fodder for remixes and chill-out compilations to this day.

In 1985, Horn and Morley found themselves on the outs with Dudley, Jeczalik, and Langan. There is no official story on who quit whom or why, but there was no love lost between the two camps. In an interview with Melody Maker in October of that year, Jeczalik was asked how involved Horn and Morley were, to which he responded, “It’s difficult to tell. We say approximately 1.73 percent, but it could even be as high as two percent.” He went on to say that he and Langan had conceived of the band entirely on their own and that Horn and Morley deserved no credit for their involvement. “You see, all that has happened is that Gary and I started something, it was taken away, and we have taken steps to get it back,” he explained.

Now whittled down to the trio of

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Dudley, Jeczalik and Langan, the Art of Noise released In Visible Silence in 1986. The album featured a Grammywinning cover of Duane Eddy’s “Peter Gunn” theme, made all the more notable when the group got Eddy to reprise his twangy guitar part for their version. Langan left the group soon after, leaving Dudley and Jeczalik as the lone holdouts.

The duo released In No Sense?

Nonsense! in 1987, and it was the Art of Noise’s densest and most complex work, featuring everything from a boys’ choir to string arrangements. The album was also a hitless wonder that the critics loathed despite sentiment among hardcore fans that it was the group’s creative zenith.

The Art of Noise bounced back in 1988 when they teamed up with “It’s Not Unusual” singer Tom

Jones for a cover of Prince’s “Kiss.”

The single would be their biggest hit yet, and it gave the group’s record company, China Records, an excuse to release a greatest hits compilation. However, Below the Waste (1989) sold poorly and brought the group’s fortunes crashing back down to earth. Dudley and Jeczalik took the band off life support in 1990, and with that, the Art of Noise was pronounced dead.

Almost a full decade later, the Art of Noise moniker was resurrected when Dudley, Horn, and Morley reunited under the band’s name with guitarist Lol Creme on board. Original members Jeczalik and Langan were not included. This version of the group released The Seduction of Claude Debussy in 1999, a concept album based around the works of

the French composer. The album was well received by critics and few could deny that it was a unique and revolutionary piece of work.

However, none of that translated to record sales, and the album died a pathetic and whimpering death in the marketplace. The newly reformed group went down with it, and the Art of Noise disbanded for good at that point. Since then, the band has been the subject of a tribute album, a box set full of unreleased goodies, and another compilation that’s reportedly in the works at the time of this writing.

MEMBERS: Lol Creme, born Laurence Neil Creme (guitar, keyboards); Anne Dudley (arranger); Trevor Horn (producer); Jonathon J. Jeczalik (programmer); Gary Langan (engineer, producer); Paul Morley (art direction) DISCOGRAPHY: (Who’s Afraid of?) the Art of Noise! (Island/ZTT, 1984); In Visible Silence (China Records, 1986); In No Sense?

Nonsense! (China Records, 1987); Below the Waste (Off Beat, 1989); The Seduction of Claude Debussy (Repertoire Records, 1999)

Aztec Camera wows ’em in Brussels in 198 1.

Sole constant memb er Roddy Frame app ears at right.

Aztec Camera Years active: 1980–1995

Aztec Camera was formed in Glasgow, Scotland in 1980 by teenage singer, guitarist, and songwriter Roddy Frame, who enlisted bassist Campbell Owens and drummer Dave Mulholland.

They debuted in 1981 with the single “Just Like Gold” and followed it up with “Mattress of Wire.” On the strength of these two releases, the group landed a deal with Rough Trade Records, who released their

first album in 1983. Titled High Land, Hard Rain, it sold well on the basis of its upbeat, tidy pop sound that was reminiscent of a thoroughly sanitized and Auto-Tuned Elvis Costello.

The album was followed up by an EP, Oblivious, and Knife, a full-length album produced by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame.

Both releases were successful, but the group suffered multiple lineup changes after its release—just as it had after the release of the debut.

By 1987, Frame was the only original member left in the group, and going forward, Aztec Camera would consist solely of the singer and an army of studio musicians. The

record-buying public and college radio fans apparently had no trouble with this arrangement, as Aztec Camera continued to top the singles charts in 1990 with “Good Morning Britain” and “The Crying Scene.”

After Frestonia (1995), Frame made the decision to leave his label and go solo, despite the fact that he had been a solo artist in all but name for the past decade.

While this phase of his career hasn’t yielded any major hits, he remains a respected artist among critics.

And considering that he recorded a folkie version of Van Halen’s “Jump,” you should respect him, too.

MEMBERS: Yolanda Charles (bass guitar); Bernie Clarke (keyboards); Rob Cremona (keyboards); Mark Edwards (keyboards); Roddy Frame (vocals, guitar, harmonica); Craig Gannon (guitar); Patrick David Hunt (drums); Steve Jordan (drums); Clare Kenny (bass guitar); Will Lee (bass guitar); Tony Mansfield (keyboards); Rob Mounsey (keyboards); Dave Mulholland (drums); Campbell Owens (bass guitar); David Palmer (drums); Paul Powell (bass guitar); Malcolm Ross (guitar); Dave Ruffy (drums); Gary Sanctuary (keyboards); Gary Sanford (guitar); Kevin Smith (drums); Jeremy Stacey (drums); Gary Tibbs (bass guitar); Frank Tontoh (drums) DISCOGRAPHY: High Land, Hard Rain (Sire, 1983); Knife (Phantom Import Distribution, 1984); Love (Sire, 1987); Stray (Sire, 1990); Dreamland (Sire, 1993); Frestonia (Reprise, 1995)

The ART of NOiSE - Aztec Camera THE ART OF NOIS E - AZT EC CAM ERA 29

The B-52s Years active: 1976–1985; 1989–present

The B-52s were unlikely candidates for mainstream success. Their kitschy sound was equal parts surf music and the theme from the 1960s television sitcom The Munsters, and the sky-high beehive hairdos of their female members decisively put them at odds with the Stevie Nicks fashion sense that was prevalent during the late 1970s. But

d, ith Stricklan Pierson, Ke th their ilson, Kate W wi y y ck pp Ri ha : -r 80, un The B-52s (l ilson), in 19 der, Cindy W Fred Schnei hy. bowling trop

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they found mainstream success, or it found them, as they stayed true to their style, sound, and eccentricity.

The group consisted of singer and keyboard player Kate Pierson, singer (well, let’s say vocalist) Fred Schneider, drummer Keith Strickland, singer Cindy Wilson, and her brother Ricky Wilson on twangy guitar. Taking their name from the slang term for Pierson and Wilson’s soaring bouffant hairstyle, the band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1976 after a night of drunken revelry led to a spur-of-the-moment jam session. But while the band may have formed on a lark, their unique sound came together quickly.

With the help of Atlanta’s DB Records label, the B-52s released a two-thousandcopy run of their first single, “Rock Lobster,” in 1978. It quickly sold out, thanks almost entirely to word of mouth. Warner Bros. Records snapped them up and hired legendary reggae producer Chris Blackwell to make their first album. Aside from featuring a rerecording of “Rock Lobster,” the selftitled debut also included

THE B-5 2s

31

Bananarama Years active: 1979–present

Sara Dallin, Siobahn Fahey, and Keren Woodward formed Bananarama in 1981 in London.

Dallin and Woodward had been friends their entire lives, and Dallin and Fahey met at journalism school, where they bonded quickly over the fact that they dressed like total freaks. The three became fast friends, and as passionate fans of punk rock, the decision to form a group together was natural, even if their rise to become one of Britain’s most famous pop groups was an utter surprise even to themselves.

Taking inspiration from the Roxy Music song “Pyjamarama” and the children’s television show The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, the group dubbed themselves Bananarama. With the invaluable assistance of former Sex Pistols members Paul Cook and Steve

Cindy Wilson of the B-52s serenades a pac ked house of sweaty yahoos in 1980.

such classics as “Dance This Mess Around” and “Planet Claire.” It went platinum, and the new “Rock Lobster” single became a staple of bar mitzvah party dance floors everywhere.

Their follow-up, Wild Planet (1980), reached number eighteen on the Billboard 200 chart and went gold. The group’s run of successful albums continued through the early 1980s, but they were dealt a major blow in 1985 after the recording of Bouncing Off the Satellites, when founding guitarist Ricky Wilson died from AIDS-related complications at the age of thirty-two. Reeling from the loss, the B-52s stepped out of the spotlight and went on hiatus.

The group returned in 1989

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with Cosmic Thing. Rather than replace their old guitarist with a new member, Strickland instead stepped out from behind the drum kit and took over as guitar player.

During the time away he had been writing new music, much of which formed the basis for the new album.

When it was released, Cosmic Thing confounded expectations, far exceeding anything that they had accomplished before and reaching number four on the US album chart.

The album was successful in large part due to the single “Love Shack,” which reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100. Its follow-up, “Roam,” reached number three as well. Cosmic Thing eventually became a US top five album

and achieved multiplatinum certification.

The group only released one album in the 1990s, Good Stuff (1992), but they remained active throughout the rest of the decade, recording a single for the 1994 live-action movie The Flintstones and achieving the pinnacle of cultural success by contributing a song to an episode of The Simpsons. Finally, after sixteen years, the group released the Funplex album in 2008, which debuted at number eleven on the Billboard charts, showing that even after a decade and a half, the public had lost none of its affection for this groundbreaking, original, and engaging group.

MEMBERS: Zachary Alford (drums); Sterling Campbell (drums); Paul Gordon (keyboards, guitar); Kate Pierson (keyboards, vocals, maracas); Fred Schneider (vocals, cowbell, toy piano, glockenspiel); Keith Strickland (drums, guitar, vocals); Cindy Wilson (vocals, tambourine, bongos); Ricky Wilson (guitar); Tracy Wormworth (bass guitar) DISCOGRAPHY: The B-52’s (Warner Bros., 1979); Wild Planet (Warner Bros., 1980); Whammy! (Warner Bros., 1983); Bouncing off the Satellites (Warner Bros., 1986); Cosmic Thing (Reprise, 1989); Good Stuff (Reprise, 1992); Funplex (EMI Europe Generic, 2008)

Jones, who hooked them up with a recording facility for cheap, Bananarama recorded a demo of the Black Blood song “A.I.E. (A Mwana),” which caused Demon Records to snatch them up instantly.

The song gained enough attention to attract Decca Records, who signed the band and would serve as their home for the next decade.

After a successful collaboration with Fun Boy Three in 1982 on the song “T’ain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It),” the group released their first album, Deep Sea Skiving, in 1983. The album contained several hit singles: “Shy Boy,” “Really Saying Something,” and “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.” The follow-up, Bananarama (1984), was another success, featuring the song “Cruel Summer,” which would appear in the epic Pat Morita film The Karate Kid, which was the moving story of a man getting his car waxed by a teenage boy. The album also featured one of the group’s best-known songs, “Robert DeNiro’s

Waiting (Talking Italian),” which is one of the chirpiest and most upbeat songs ever written about a rape victim.

Bananarama also appeared on the Band-Aid charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” even though you would never know it from hearing the song. One can, however, see them singing the words “feed the” in the video.

In 1986, the trio released a cover of Shocking Blue’s “Venus,” which became an international number one hit. The song was produced by the Stock Aitken Waterman, who had helmed Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record).” As they had done for that song, “Venus” was laden with a heavy dance beat and an army of synthesizers, an indication that the group’s sound was moving more into this territory and away from the lighter pop of yore. The next album, Wow! (1987), confirmed that this was the case.

After this album, Fahey left the group, unhappy with the direction of the new music. She was replaced by Jacquie O’Sullivan, who made one album with them in 1991 and then left. Rather than replace O’Sullivan, Dallin and Woodward chose to remain a duo. However, it was clear that at this point that their star was fading, and subsequent albums were released to decreasing sales. Still, the duo soldiered on, even reuniting with Fahey on a few occasions and releasing new albums. Most recently, they released Viva on the Fascination Records label in 2009, which was well reviewed and sold a decent amount of copies. So suck it, haters.

MEMBERS: Sara Dallin (vocals, bass guitar); Siobhan Fahey (vocals, guitar, keyboards); Jacquie O’Sullivan (vocals); Keren Woodward (vocals) DISCOGRAPHY: Deep Sea Skiving (London, 1983); Bananarama (London, 1984); True Confessions (Razor and Tie Music, 1986); Wow! (London, 1987); Pop Life (Collectibles) (London, 1991); Please Yourself (London, 1993); Ultra Violet (Curb, 1996); Exotica (Sony Music Distribution, 2001); Drama (Lab/Universal International, 2005); Viva (Polydor, 2009)

Bananarama (l-r: Sio bhan Fahey, Keren Wo odward, Sara Dallin) get their recommende d daily allowance of freshly shucked steamers in 1981.

THE B-5 2S - BAN ANA RAM 33 A

Toni Basil Years active: 1964–1983

There’s no getting around it: Toni Basil was a one-hit wonder. She has enjoyed, and still enjoys, a long and illustrious career as a choreographer, a capacity in which she has worked with clients from David Bowie to Tina Turner to Bette Midler. Despite her considerable accomplishments as a choreographer, dancer, and

director, most people only know her as the lady from the “Mickey” video with all the cheerleaders.

Toni Basil was born Antonia Christina Basilotta to a family of entertainers in Philadelphia.

Her father had been an orchestra conductor and her mother had been a comedian and an acrobat. She got into show business early, dancing professionally as a kid.

Her career as a new wave singer started as an outgrowth of her choreography work. “Mickey,” the song, was recorded in 1980 as a vehicle for the cheerleader-centric video, which Basil choreographed and directed. By 1982, the video was put into high rotation on MTV, becoming one of the fledgling station’s most popular selections while the song rocketed up to the number one spot on the Billboard charts.

Despite this success, Toni Basil only recorded two albums. The first was Word of Mouth (1982), which featured “Mickey” as the leadoff track; the second was Toni Basil (1983). She occasionally works as a recording artist since her last album, releasing the single “Street Beat,” which was a huge hit in the Philippines. But if you’re waiting for that third Toni Basil album to come out, it’s “a pity you don’t understand” it probably isn’t going to happen.

DISCOGRAPHY: Word of Mouth (Chrysalis Records, 1981); Toni Basil (Chrysalis Records, 1983)

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uld o c o h w d l o f an o m a h s e h t e k .” a m s i “Rock is li r a h c s i th h i w d n a m m o r actually c the legwarme he age of t in m is n a m RPHY, on sha —P E T E R M U

Bauhaus (l-r: David J. Haskins, Peter Mu rphy, Kevin Haskins, Daniel Ash) in 1982, when you could wea r a mesh shirt and you bandmates would stil r l be photographed wit h you.

Bauhaus

Years active: 1978–1983; 1988 The genre known as goth would not exist without the band known as Bauhaus. With their tense sound, haunting overture, and jagged rhythms, they managed to turn the poppy synthesizer into a brooding hellcat and inspire a whole subculture thirty years after they hit

the scene—for better or worse, you be the judge.

Bauhaus started in 1978 when guitarist Daniel Ash asked an old school friend, Peter Murphy, to join him as the singer in a new project. Ash also enlisted his former bandmates in the Craze, brothers Kevin and David J. Haskins, on drums and bass, respectively. After only a few weeks together, the newly minted Bauhaus recorded their first demo. One of the songs

was the brooding “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” which was released as a single in the summer of 1979. Unlike anything else going on at the time, the song took everyone by surprise, including the critics who reviewed it and the BBC Radio 1 DJs who played it. Bauhaus signed to the 4AD label and recorded their first album, In the Flat Field. The 1980 album received mostly bad reviews, but the record-buying public didn’t give a shit and the album made it into the

lower recesses of the UK pop charts.

After moving from 4AD to the label’s parent company, Beggar’s Banquet, Bauhaus released Mask.

Their sophomore effort featured “Kick in the Eye,” the only Bauhaus single to break the US top forty dance charts. Despite some grumbling among their early fans that the band was using a slightly more commercial sound, it was still a dark affair, which was not going to be played at children’s birthday TON I BAS IL - BAU HAU S 35

parties any time soon. The album peaked on UK charts at number thirty, and Bauhaus were determined to chart higher next time. They did just that with a cover of David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust,” which reached number fifteen on UK charts and helped propel their next album, The Sky’s Gone Out (1982), to a highest-ever peak of number four.

The group then appeared at the beginning of the vampire movie The Hunger, starring none other than David Bowie.

Despite the movie being eaten alive by critics (Roger Ebert called it “agonizingly bad”), the band’s appearance in it gave the film a classic status among the goth subculture, a status that it still enjoys to this day.

After recording their fourth album, Burning from the Inside (1983), which included the haunting “She’s in Parties,” the band decided to break up for no particular reason and embark on various different projects. David J. collaborated with the British musical group the Jazz Butcher and released some solo material, and Murphy formed Dali’s Car, but then went on to release eight albums as a solo artist, which charted well. Ash and Kevin Haskins joined forces with Glenn Campling, who had formerly been one of Bauhaus’ roadies. Campling and

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Ash had worked together briefly in 1981, and together with Haskins they became Tones on Tail. This group showed great promise on their lone album, Pop, and on several EPs, but by 1984 it was already over. Ash and Haskins had decided to put Bauhaus back together.

Sadly, the Bauhaus reunion was done before it started when everyone but Murphy showed up at the first rehearsal. The other three members decided to play together anyway and dubbed themselves Love and Rockets, mostly abandoning the goth sound of Bauhaus in favor of something that, at times, could be said to “rock.”

This group enjoyed a few years of stability, releasing four albums between 1985 and 1989, and on their self-titled fourth album, they had an actual, real, live, no-fooling

hit on the US singles chart of all places with the song “So Alive.”

Love and Rockets had achieved more commercial success than the legendary band from which it originated, and after a brutal tour schedule they retreated from the limelight for a few years. When they came back in the early 1990s, it was with an electronic, almost ambient sound that their label, RCA, wanted no part of. The label dropped them, but hyperbearded producer Rick Rubin was there to catch them. The group signed to American Records, making them the labelmates of the Black Crowes and Johnny Cash, and released Hot Trip to Heaven in 1994 and Sweet F.A. in 1996. They released one more album, Lift (1998), on Red Ant Records, and after that Love and Rockets was no more.

Since then, the trio reunited

g Bauhaus (l-r: Peter Murphy, Daniel Ash), in 1981, sweatin Tier 3.

City’s York New at row front the over all makeup pancake

with Murphy on several occasions, performing again as Bauhaus. This return to active status included a 1998 world tour, a full North American tour in 2005 and 2006, and finally, after almost twenty-five years, a new Bauhaus album, Go Away White, in 2008.

Anyone thinking that this heralded the dawn of a new age for the band was sorely disappointed when it turned out that they had disbanded for good after the album’s release, without even so much as a short tour to appease their long-suffering fans. In an interview with the SuicideGirls website, Kevin Haskins was intentionally vague about the reasons for the split, referring to an “incident” and making circuitous analogies to physics experiments that nobody understood.

Bauhaus may have left a mess when they ultimately disbanded for good, but that doesn’t take away from the legacy they left behind. The group invented out of whole cloth an ominous and hypnotic sound that had no obvious predecessor and that subsequent bands would only copy, badly.

MEMBERS: Daniel Ash (guitar, vocals); David J. Haskins (bass guitar, vocals); Kevin Haskins (drums); Peter Murphy (vocals) DISCOGRAPHY: In the Flat Field (4AD, 1980); Mask (Beggars Banquet, 1981); The Sky’s Gone Out (Beggars Banquet, 1982); Burning from the Inside (A&M, 1983); Go Away White (Bauhaus, 2008)

Berlin

Years active: 1978–1987; 1998–present Berlin was a band from California that is in no way affiliated with the eighth-most-populous city in Europe. The group consisted of bassist John Crawford, guitarist David Diamond, drummer Rod Learned, guitarist Ric Olsen, and keyboard player Matt Reid. Vocalist Terri Nunn rounded out the group, and in 1980, they released “A Matter of Time,” their debut single on IRS Records.

After signing to Enigma Records, the group released Pleasure Victim in 1982. The album featured “No More Words” and “The Metro,” both solid tunes with popular videos.

The album also contained the song “Sex (I’m A…),” which contained many risqué lyrics about the smell of love, sliding in wet delight, and other such activities. Radio stations banned the song for its candid descriptions of bodily fluids, but that certainly didn’t hurt the album’s sales at all. Pleasure Victim went on to achieve platinum status, something no other Berlin album would do.

In 1984, Berlin released Love Life, which was a commercial disappointment compared to its predecessor. Two years later they released the album Count Three & Pray, which contained their biggest hit, “Take My Breath Away.” The song had been featured in the movie Top Gun, and the single was mega-, super-, ultrapopular, reaching number one in both the United States and the United Kingdom as well as winning both an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. One would think that the high exposure the song received would have been a boost

to the group’s fortunes, but it turned out to be exactly the opposite. The single may have sold half a million copies, but people stayed away from the Count Three & Pray album that it called home. After all, why would the consumer buy the Berlin album when the way awesome Top Gun soundtrack featured the song and also had both Kenny Loggins and Loverboy on it?

Count Three & Pray failed to sell like hotcakes, and the band broke up in 1987. Since then, “Take My Breath Away” has been an enduring presence in popular culture. Jessica Simpson covered it in 2004, and it also appeared in the 2006 film Borat. Nunn got the band back together in 1998, and they’ve been touring and recording on and off since, most recently in a summer 2011 tour with INXS. MEMBERS: Carlton Bost (guitar, vocals); Rob Brill (drums); Toni Childs (vocals); John Crawford (bass guitar, synthesizer); David Diamond (keyboards, guitar); Rod Learned (drums); Virginia Macolino (vocals); Terri Nunn (vocals); Chris Olivas (drums); Ric Olsen (guitar); Matt Reid (keyboards); Chris Ruiz-Velasco (guitar); Dave Schulz (keyboard, vocals); Mitchell Sigman (bass guitar, keyboards, vocals); Dan Van Patten (drums, synthesizer) DISCOGRAPHY: Information (IRS, 1980); Pleasure Victim (Geffen, 1982); Love Life (Geffen, 1984); Count Three & Pray (Geffen, 1986); Voyeur (Imusic, 2002); 4Play (Majestic Recordings Inc., 2005); Terri Nunn & Berlin: All The Way In (Fuel 2000, 2009)

weren’t even , when they rlin in 1984 es anymore. at Be m ts nd on ba fr r d) he (foregroun spotlight on of ts at Terri Nunn w ree to waste th bothering BAU HAU S - BER LIN 37

Big Audio Dynamite

Big Country

After his very unpleasant dismissal from the punk rock band the Clash, guitarist and singer Mick Jones wasted little time getting back into the game. After a blink-and-youmissed-it tenure in General Public, he formed Big Audio Dynamite, hoping to continue in the experimental vein of the last couple of Clash albums, Sandinista! in particular. Jones’s partner in the new group was musician and filmmaker Don Letts, who had DJed at London’s legendary Roxy and is often credited with introducing dub music (a subgenre of reggae) to the UK punk scene. He also appears on the cover of Black Market Clash, which introduced the back of his hat to millions.

Big Audio Dynamite’s self-titled debut was released in 1985 and featured the single “The Bottom Line.” In the same year, the Clash’s “back-to-basics” album Cut the Crap was released.

Big Country was a Scottish rock band that made their guitars sound like bagpipes. Consisting of singer and guitarist Stuart Adamson, drummer Mark Brzezicki, bassist Tony Butler, and guitarist Bruce Watson, they created a dynamic sound that drew equally from modern rock and from traditional Scottish folk music. Formed in 1981, the group released their first single, “Harvest Home,” the following year. The single broke into the UK top one hundred, but its follow-up, “Fields of Fire,” was a top ten hit, priming the pump for the full-length debut album that was to follow. The Crossing hit it big, selling a million copies in the United Kingdom and going gold in the United States. Stateside, they received heavy airplay for the single “In a Big Country.” The video for the song also made frequent appearances on MTV, propelling the song to top forty status in the United States. No further Big Country songs or albums would ever be that big.

Years active: 1984–1998; 2011

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Big Country’s Stuart Adamson perfo rms in Liverpool in 1986, clad in a suit that was the envy of nobody everywhere.

Years active: 1981–2000; 2007

The difference between the two releases couldn’t have been more striking. The Big Audio Dynamite debut was hailed as a fresh and vital listening experience, faring well in the band’s native United Kingdom and performing none too shabbily stateside. On the other hand, the new Clash album was a tired, embarrassing rehash of past glories that sucked so bad it probably sold about three copies, one of which was to Joe Strummer’s mother.

Strummer, who had ousted Jones from the Clash, realized his error and mended fences with him. He would go on to contribute production and songwriting assistance on Big Audio Dynamite’s follow-up album, No. 10, Upping St. It was a refinement of the debut’s approach and was equally successful on both sides of the Atlantic. However, after Megatop Phoenix

(1989), Jones was left holding the bag when every single person in the band not named Mick Jones left all at the same time. This included Don Letts, Jones’s original collaborator and a central pillar of the group.

Losing him could have been a deathblow to the entire effort, but Jones simply replaced everyone, renamed the band Big Audio Dynamite II, and kept on truckin’.

As it turned out, the changes didn’t negatively affect Jones’s fortunes at all. The Globe, the first album that the new lineup released, yielded a top forty hit in the United States with “Rush.” This would be the group’s highest charting single in its long and turbulent existence.

In 1994, Jones changed the name of the group yet again, this time simply to Big Audio. This version of the band released one album, Higher Power, before Jones renamed the band Big Audio Dynamite yet again.

With the circle thus complete, the group released F-Punk in 1995, which sold poorly. This prompted their label to shelve the next album,

Big Audio Dynamite (l-r : Greg Roberts, Don Let ts, Mick Jones, Leo Wil Dan Donovan) in the orig liams, inal incarnation, which reformed in 2011.

whose songs have trickled out piecemeal over the Internet in the intervening years.

Since then, Letts intimated in an April 2010 interview with Billboard Magazine that he and Jones were discussing the possibility of reuniting under the Big Audio Dynamite banner. “Time has shown that a lot of the things we were dabbling in back then have come to manifest themselves today,” he said. “So hopefully we’ll get to do some more.”

MEMBERS: Michael “Zonka” Custance (DJ, percussion, vocals); Dan Donovan (keyboards); Darryl Fulstow (bass guitar); Nick Hawkins (guitar, vocals); Mick Jones (vocals, guitar); Chris Kavanagh (drums, vocals); Don Letts (sound effects, vocals); Greg Roberts (drums, vocals); Ranking Roger (vocals); Andre Shapps (keyboards); Gary Stonadge (bass guitar, vocals); Leo Williams (bass guitar); Bob Wond (drums) DISCOGRAPHY: This Is Big Audio Dynamite (Columbia, 1985); No. 10, Upping St. (Columbia, 1986); Tighten Up Vol. 88 (Columbia, 1988); Megatop Phoenix (Columbia, 1989); Kool-Aid (CBS Records, 1990); The Globe (Columbia, 1991); Higher Power (Columbia, 1994); F-Punk (Radioactive, 1995); Entering a New Ride (Internet-only release, 1997)

Despite critical accolades, the band’s 1984 single “Wonderland” reached a flaccid eighty-six on the Billboard Hot 100, even though it was a UK top ten, so go figure. A similar phenomenon occurred with that year’s album, Steeltown, which debuted on the UK charts at number one and spawned three top thirty singles, but stalled at number seventy in

the United States. Unfazed by their reception in America, the group toured extensively in 1984 and 1985, opening for Roger Daltrey and Queen, who were stadium acts in Europe but couldn’t get traction in the United States either. This trend persisted throughout the 1980s, with the band only really fucking up on the 1988 album Peace in Our Time, which was consciously tailored to US audiences and succeeded in pleasing no one.

The 1990s were not kind to the band. In 1991, their label of ten years, Phonogram, dropped them, and every album they released in the wake of their excommunication was less popular than the previous

one. Worse still, Adamson and his wife divorced when his excessive drinking made him a huge pain in the ass to be around. After moving to Nashville, he released an album under the name the Raphaels and then did two more studio albums with Big Country, neither of which did particularly well.

In November 2001, one year after the band’s farewell tour, Adamson disappeared. He had suffered from depression in addition to alcoholism, and he had disappeared once before while in the throes of both. This time, however, he was gone for almost a full month, leading friends and family to imagine the worst. Sadly, these fears proved to be well founded. In December 2001, Adamson was found dead in his hotel room in Honolulu. He had hanged himself, and his autopsy revealed that his blood alcohol level had been 0.279 percent, just shy of the amount necessary to cause alcohol poisoning. After a tribute concert in 2002, the remaining members of Big Country toured Europe in 2007 to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the band.

MEMBERS: Stuart Adamson (vocals, guitar, keyboards); Mark Brzezicki (drums, percussion, vocals); Tony Butler (bass guitar, vocals); Clive Parker (drums); Simon Phillips (drums); Bruce Watson (guitar, mandolin, sitar, vocals); Alan Wishart (bass guitar); Peter Wishart (keyboards) DISCOGRAPHY: The Crossing (Mercury, 1983); Steeltown (Polygram, 1984); The Seer (Mercury, 1986); Peace in Our Time (Reprise, 1988); No Place Like Home (Polygram, 1991); The Buffalo Skinner (RCA, 1993); Why the Long Face? (Transatlantic Records, 1995); Driving to Damascus (Track Records, 1999)

39 BIG AUD IO DYN AMIT E - BIG COU NTR Y

Blondie

Years active: 1974–1982; 1998–present

One of the most significant and influential bands of the new wave movement, Blondie was spawned in the same downtown New York scene that gave us the Ramones and Television. Blondie managed to achieve mainstream success without ever being perceived as selling out. Their lead singer was the incomparable Debbie Harry, whose look and attitude have been copied so many times that no number high enough exists to count her imitators. And it didn’t hurt that most heterosexual males of the era would have chopped off three of their own fingers to bed her.

Harry and guitarist Chris Stein, who had played together in the Stilettos, formed Blondie in 1974.

Originally called Angel and the Snake, a name that, frankly, sucked, they changed the group’s name to Blondie, not because it was the name of Adolf Hitler’s dog but because construction workers used

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to yell “Hey, blondie!” at Harry when she walked down the street. In 1976, the group released their debut single, “X Offender,” and their self-titled album on Private Stock Records. Both did well, particularly in the UK market, but their biggest initial exposure was in Australia, which came purely by accident. The Australian music television show Countdown was supposed to play “X Offender,” but they made a boo-boo and played the B side, “In the Flesh,” instead. The song was completely unrepresentative of Blondie’s edgy sound, but the exposure helped them break into the Australian market. This gained them both an international audience and the clout that they needed to court a major label deal. In 1977, they got exactly that from Chrysalis Records, then home to such cutting edge new wave acts as Uriah Heep and Jethro Tull.

After reissuing the debut on their new label, Blondie released Plastic Letters in 1977 and Parallel Lines in 1979.

Parallel Lines would prove to be the band’s breakthrough album. It featured three

of the group’s best-known songs, “Hanging on the Telephone,” “One Way or Another,” and their first American hit single, “Heart of Glass.”

“Heart of Glass” dated back to the band’s earliest days, but back then it had a reggae arrangement. The new, 100 percent disco version sold over one million copies, and Parallel Lines would eventually go on to sell twenty million copies.

Blondie released the single “Call Me” in 1980, which is one of the greatest songs ever recorded—FACT. In that same year, they released the Autoamerican album, which featured “The Tide Is High” and “Rapture,” songs that brought reggae and rap to mainstream white American audiences for the first time. After this flurry of activity, the band decided to take some much-deserved time off from each other and work on solo material. Harry released Koo Koo, which reached the top forty in the United States, and Destri released Heart on a Wall, which didn’t. This disparity highlighted an issue that had been the band’s elephant in the room for years—Debbie Harry received about 99.98 percent of the

media exposure that the band got, leaving the other members to fight over whatever microscopic particle of attention may have remained. Gallingly, many people even assumed that “Blondie” was the name of the singer and not the group, despite the fact that the band members all made regular and significant musical contributions.

Upon their return from their hiatus, they recorded The Hunter, which failed to reach the commercial peaks of their previous albums. At the same time, Stein was diagnosed with pemphigus, a potentially fatal skin disease. It was also revealed at this time that their management had completely screwed them, to the point where the band was almost completely insolvent despite years of multiplatinum sales. All the strain proved too much for the band, and they unceremoniously broke up in 1982. This was a tragedy, but it allowed Harry the opportunity to burn herself with cigarettes in the extremely twisted David Cronenberg movie Videodrome.

After sixteen years of solo projects, film roles, and production work, the members of Blondie reunited in 1998. While most such reunions are usually quickie jaunts through the highly lucrative Six Flags amusement park circuit, this reunion was actually welcome.

Their 1999 album, No Exit, returned Blondie to the top of the UK charts, and it gave them the unique distinction of being the only US artist besides Michael Jackson to have a number one album in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s.

a double water-spurting, h wit lf rse you k fuc go you ’t don y wh “Uh, ature dildo—then and only per em y-t bod d, ize tor mo , ber rub , ing pulsat r you have sought.“ then will you know the truth, the answe sex symbol ly being asked what it feels like to be a ated repe to onse resp in , RY HAR IE —D EBB

Blondie (l-r: Debbi e Harry, Clem Burke , Chris Stein, Frank Nigel Harrison) in Infante, Jimmy De 1978. It is not kno stri, wn whether they had on trying to tell peo yet completely giv ple that “Blondie” en up was the name of the band, not the singer .

Blondie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

At the ceremony, former members Nigel Harrison and Frank Infante, who had sued the band in 1998 to prevent the reunion tour under the name Blondie, rushed the podium and demanded that they be allowed to perform with the group.

The band responded by launching into “Heart of Glass,” sans the litigious former members. Two years later, they embarked on a world tour to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the Parallel Lines album, and they continue to tour and record to the present day.

MEMBERS: Clem Burke (drums, percussion, vocals); Paul Carbonara (guitar); Jimmy Destri (keyboards, piano, synthesizer, organ, vocals); Leigh Foxx (bass guitar); Nigel Harrison (bass guitar, piano, organ); Debbie Harry (vocals); Nigel Infante (guitar, bass, vocals); Tommy Kessler (guitar); Eddie Martinez (guitar); Kevin Patrick “Kevin Topping” (keyboards, piano); Chris Stein (guitar, bass guitar); Gary Valentine (bass guitar)

DISCOGRAPHY: Blondie (Chrysalis Records, 1976); Plastic Letters (Chrysalis Records, 1977); Parallel Lines (Chrysalis Records, 1978); Eat to the Beat (Chrysalis Records, 1979); Autoamerican (Chrysalis Records, 1980); The Hunter (Chrysalis Records, 1982); No Exit (Beyond, 1999); The Curse of Blondie (Sanctuary, 2004); Panic of Girls (Five Seven Music, 2011)

BLO NDIE

41

Book of Love

Years active: 1984–1993; 2001; 2009 Book of Love was a synthesizer pop band from Philadelphia. They were mostly female, which was kind of a big deal since men led most of the bands in the genre—see Depeche Mode, New Order, the Pet Shop Boys, and so forth. Consisting of Jade Lee, Susan Ottaviano, Ted Ottaviano (who was not related to Susan, somehow), and Lauren Roselli, the band formed in 1984. They recorded the song “Boy” in 1985, and a copy found its way onto the desk of Seymour Stein, president of Sire Records. Stein liked what he heard so much that he signed the group, and the song soon started making its way up dance charts.

The group released their selftitled debut album in 1986, and the single “You Make Me Feel So

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Good” soon hit the mainstream top forty chart. After a tour opening for Depeche Mode, the group released Lullaby in 1988, which featured a dance version of “Tubular Bells,” better known as the creepy theme music from “The Exorcist.” It also featured “Pretty Boys and Pretty Girls,” a song about AIDS that was released at a time when most mainstream artists wouldn’t touch the subject. After that, the group released only two more albums, neither of which sold particularly well, and then Book of Love broke up in 1993. However, the group reformed for a brief tour in 2001 to promote their I Touch Roses: The Best of Book of Love anthology collection, as well as for a one-off reunion show in 2009 in New York City.

MEMBERS: Jade Lee (keyboards, vocals); Susan Ottaviano (vocals); Ted Ottaviano (keyboards, vocals); Lauren Roselli (keyboards, vocals) DISCOGRAPHY: Book of Love (Sire, 1986); Lullaby (Sire, 1988); Candy Carol (Sire, 1991); Lovebubble (Sire, 1993)

The Boomtown Rats

Years active: 1975–1986; 2008–present

The Boomtown Rats was an Irish band operating out of London, fronted by Bob Geldof. In 1977, Ensign Records released their first single, “Lookin’ After No. 1,” which became a top forty hit in the United Kingdom. One month after the single’s release, the group’s self-titled debut album came out, which was followed in 1978 by A Tonic for the Troops.

This album featured the singles “Like Clockwork” and “She’s So Modern.” It also featured “Rat Trap,” which was the first single by an Irish band to top the UK singles chart.

All of this was small potatoes compared to the band’s 1979 single “I Don’t Like Mondays.”

The song was inspired by Brenda Ann Spencer, a sixteen-year-old girl from San Diego who carried out a Book of Love (l-r: Ted Ottaviano, Lau ren Roselli, Susan Jade Lee) in New Ottaviano, York City in 1991, posing for Janette Beckman.

shooting spree at the elementary school across the street from her home, killing two people and injuring nine. When the police asked why she fired into a crowd of schoolchildren, since that’s generally frowned upon, she famously replied, “ I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day. I have to go now.” The disturbingly upbeat song that it inspired was yet another in the Boomtown Rats’ long string of top forty hits in the United Kingdom, but US radio stations wouldn’t play it, as it was released just a few months after the shootings. However, the song was included on the band’s third album, The Fine Art of Surfacing, which turned out to be their best selling album in the United States, topping out the Billboard charts at 103.

The group began to lose members starting in 1980 with guitarist Gerry Cott. They continued to tour and release albums over the next few years, but the crowds were getting smaller. The band was also finding their affairs slowed down

by Geldof’s activities outside the band. In 1982, he starred in the

Boomtown Rats, in 1978, Bob Geldof (foreground) and the failed to vacuum thoroughly. in the London apartment they

movie version of the Pink Floyd album The Wall, but his time was truly monopolized in 1984 with his involvement in Band Aid, a musical supergroup project that he had established to benefit the victims of the famine in Ethiopia. By the time the Live Aid concert rolled around in 1985, the front man was involved in the charitable effort full time, with

his band effectively sidelined until further notice.

The band performed one last time in 1986 at Self Aid, a benefit concert to raise awareness of the epidemic unemployment plaguing Ireland at the time. At the end of their set, Geldof thanked the audience for their decade of loyal patronage, and the band played “Lookin’ After

No. 1,” their first single, to close out their performance. And with that, the Boomtown Rats came to an end. In 2010, Geldof made headlines again when, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” he told the Daily Mail that it was, in his humble opinion, one of “the worst songs in history.”

MEMBERS: Pete Briquette (bass guitar); Gerry Cott (guitar); Simon Crowe (drums); Johnnie “Fingers” Moylett (keyboards); Bob Geldof, born Robert Frederick Zenon Geldof (vocals); Garry Roberts (guitar) DISCOGRAPHY: The Boomtown Rats (Mercury, 1977); Tonic for the Troops [UK] (Fashion Records, 1978); The Fine Art of Surfacing (Columbia, 1979); Mondo Bongo (Columbia, 1981); V Deep (UME Imports, 1982); In the Long Grass (UME Imports, 1985)

The B-52s - Bananarama #43 BOO K OF LOV E - THE BOO MTO WN RAT S

Bow Wow Wow

Years active: 1980–1983; 1997–1998; 2003–2006

Bow Wow Wow was a British new wave group who formed in 1980 when all the musicians from Adam and the Ants were persuaded by Malcolm McLaren to quit that band and form a new one. All well and good, but what about a singer? Well, that thorny issue was resolved when a friend of McLaren’s went into a dry cleaner one day. Wishing only to have his slacks pressed, the friend found himself entranced by the siren song of one Annabella Lwin, a fourteen-year-old employee at the shop who was singing along with the radio. The friend immediately informed McLaren about her, and with that, the unique magic of Bow Wow Wow was born.

The group courted controversy from the get-go. Lwin’s mother felt that her daughter was being treated as a sex object in order to sell the band, an impression that was reinforced when Lwin appeared nude on the cover of their 1981 album. Although no naughty bits were visible on the cover of See Jungle! See Jungle!

Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy, Lwin’s mother understandably shit a brick when she saw the album cover and reported it to the police. The hullabaloo surrounding the photo made it impossible for the band to tour outside of the United Kingdom until McLaren settled the matter by agreeing not to use the photo on UK or US pressings of the album.

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Despite, or perhaps because of, all the controversy, the group scored their first UK top ten hit in 1982 with “Go Wild in the Country,” and they also released “Sexy Eiffel Tower,” a panting-heavy ode to touching one’s own private area. But it was “I Want Candy,” released on the 1982 EP Last of the Mohicans, which earned a permanent place in pop culture, appearing in television ads, fashion shows, and in movies like Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and the 1996 movie Kingpin, the greatest Amish bowling comedy of all time.

By 1983 and the release of When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going, Bow Wow Wow was on their way out. Lwin, who was now all of seventeen years old, quit the band to pursue a solo career, while the remaining bandmates changed their name to the Chiefs of Relief and carried on. Neither the new group nor Lwin herself experienced success that was even a fraction of what Bow Wow Wow had generated, and the band has had to make do with the occasional reunion concert in order to keep their name alive.

hey t d n a w o n r ng ove i m o c e r a s p at, very h ish grou l d g l n o E y f r o e v t l o l l “A it’s a d n a , d i d e w again ch like t i u o m d y t o t t e r d p n a k , loo know u o y , e n o d n t’s bee I . . . . g n i r o b ab.” r d y l l a e r , y l l a e r t n originality s o u , j N I y l W l L a t A L o —ANNABEL would be t

MEMBERS: Matthew Ashman (guitar); David Barbarossa (drums); Devin Beaman (drums); Dave Calhoun (guitar); Leigh Gorman (bass guitar); Phil Gough (guitar); Eshan Khadaroo (drums); Annabella Lwin (vocals); Adrian Young (drums) DISCOGRAPHY: Your Cassette Pet (EMI, 1980); See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy (RCA, 1981); When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going (One Way Records, 1983); Live in Japan (Receiver Records [UK], 1997)

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BOW WOW WOW 45

m l o c l a M n e r a L c M

When Malcolm McLaren died in 2010, obitu aries the world over referred to him as an impresario. In its original Italian, the word is defined as someone who organizes musical events, which is not erroneous in McLaren’s case. After all, he organized events that live in infamy to this day and have been depicted in major motion pictures, such as The Great Rock and Roll Swin dle and The Filth and the Fury. However, that part of his job description only accounts for a small percentage of what he accomplished. He was a recording star in his own right with the hip-hop classic, “Buffalo Gals,” and he was the co-owner with Vivienne Westwood of the SEX boutique in London, which sold bondage gear that later became the foundation for punk fashion. Above all, Malcolm McLaren’s greatest talent lay in his genius for promotion.

McLaren’s first foray into promotion came after a 1972 trip to New York City, during which he became the manager of the New York Dolls.

Today, the New York Dolls are rightly recognized as a legendary group in the annals of punk history. In 1972, however, they kept audiences away in droves.

McLaren took up management of the band after they produced two unsuccessful albums and were on the verge of disbanding. In an inflammatory eleventh-hour attempt to rebrand them, he decked them out in red patent leather outfits and hammer-and-sickle symbols. It didn’t Malcolm McLa 46

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work, and the group disintegrated ignominiously.

McLaren had learned a valuable lesson from the Dolls experience: Go big or go home. As the manager of the Sex Pistols, he began applying this lesson with the skill of a provocateur par excellence. He hired a boat to carry the Sex Pistols down London’s river Thames to perform outside of the Houses of Parliament, and though McLaren was arrested for the stunt, the publicity the group received for it far outweighed the bail money it took to free him.

The Sex Pistols, while a seminal punk band, were not built to last, and they disbanded while on tour in 1978, three months after the release of their debut album. Bad news for the Sex Pistols, but it all worked out well for McLaren, whose reputation now preceded him.

With McLaren now established as a talented promoter, unknown artists hoping to become ascendant artists attempted to enlist his management services. The first artist of the new wave movement to do so successfully was Adam Ant, then the singer of Adam and the Ants.

McLaren took on the new client and poached the

joys of auto -e

rotic asphyx

iation.

Ants for his own purposes, using them as three quarters of Bow Wow Wow while finding new musicians to back the wildly successful Adam Ant. In the short term, Bow Wow Wow was a hit, thanks in part to McLaren’s choice of the fourteen-year-old Annabella Lwin as their singer.

He was more than willing to use her in provocative ways, such as having her appear partially nude on the original, ultimately withdrawn cover of their 1981 album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah! City All Over, Go Ape Crazy. It helped gain attention for the band, but there were unintended consequences as well. Lwin’s mother felt, understandably, that her daughter was being exploited. She initiated a police investigation that landed McLaren in hot water and took some time to get sorted out. He was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing, but it became apparent that his provocative approach to management had its limits.

Perhaps hoping to leave well enough alone after the Bow Wow Wow imbroglio, McLaren turned to recording in his own right, releasing

City.

the single “Buffalo Gals” in 1982. A mixture of early hip-hop and, of all things, square dance calls, the single became a UK top ten and paved the way for Duck Rock, a top twenty album that featured further singles in “Double Dutch” and “Soweto.” He made further attempts at original music, and though some of it made the charts, nothing was as commercially successful as his first few singles. In the next decade, he moved to France and rerecorded “Buffalo Gals” in a new incarnation called “Buffalo Gals Stampede,” which was the last time he hit the charts.

Malcolm McLaren was diagnosed with cancer late in 2009, but didn’t disclose his condition until it became so advanced that he had to go to Switzerland to seek treatment for it. He died there in April 2010 at the age of sixty-four, just two months after his film, Paris: Capital of the 21st Century, had premiered in the United States. The world had lost more than just the Sex Pistols’ one-time manager. It lost a performer, a filmmaker, and a patron of the arts, as well as a publicist, promoter, and marketer for the ages, who had turned trendsetting into an art form.

MAL COLM MCL ARE N 47

Steinbachek, the group hit pay dirt with their first single, “Smalltown Boy.” Sung in Somerville’s unique tenor, the song was a gut-wrenching account of a young gay man leaving his hometown, where he’s subjected to regular gossip merville) So y m m Ji e Bronski, ances ev ar St and frequent pe k, ap he ac r live rry Steinb nsated fo at (l-r: La beatings. The ere compe w s nd Bronski Be ba y when all ga lyrics dressed e. in 1984, nc ia pl ap major with one nothing up, and it was no doubt comforting to many gay listeners who were not used to hearing sympathetic Years active: 1983–1995 depictions of themselves in pop music. The single was a numberThis London synthpop trio one hit on US dance charts consisting entirely of openly gay and reached number three members was groundbreaking on in the United Kingdom. The many fronts. A lot of bands at the song appeared on the group’s time featured gay musicians or 1984 debut album, The Age of projected a gender-bending image, but they stopped short of using their Consent, along with a version of the Donna Summer classic sexuality as subject matter. Not so “I Feel Love.” The inner sleeve with Bronski Beat. Far from shying of the album listed the age of away from the topic, the group consent for gay sex in several put their homosexuality front and European countries. Who says center and used it as the primary nobody ever learned anything topic of their songs. This was an listening to dance music? act of both personal courage and Bronski Beat was dealt with artistic originality, as there were what could have been a major few mainstream acts broaching the blow when Somerville quit subject during the period when in 1985. However, Bronski the group was active. and Steinbachek did the Formed in 1983 by singer unthinkable and simply Jimmy Somerville and keyboard replaced him, recording the players Steve Bronski and Larry

Bronski Beat

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album Truthdare Doubledare (1986) with new singer John Jon, who had never met neither Danny Daniels nor Tommy Thompson.

Armed with the single “Hit That Perfect Beat,” the album charted well enough to end speculation that a Somerville-less Bronski Beat would have no future. However, that speculation turned out to be accurate, as John Jon left the group after this album’s completion.

Bronski and Steinbachek began work on a new album, but before it could be completed their label, London Records, dropped them.

After a few years of sporadic single releases and one-off reunions with both Somerville and John Jon, the group returned in 1995 with new vocalist Jonathan Hellyer and the album Rainbow Nation. This would

Kate Bush Years active: 1977–present

be the last album of original material that Bronski Beat would ever make.

After its release, the band broke up for good, and it was with a sad whimper. However, the band had made a major impact, kicking the door down for all the openly gay recording artists who came after them.

MEMBERS: Steve Bronski (keyboards); Annie Conway (vocals); John Jon, born John Foster (vocals); Jonathan Hellyer (vocals); Jimmy Somerville (vocals); Larry Steinbachek (keyboards) DISCOGRAPHY: The Age of Consent (London, 1984); Hundreds & Thousands (Polygram International, 1985); Truthdare Doubledare (London, 1986); The Album (ZYX Music, 1993); Rainbow Nation (ZYX Music, 1995)

Nobody sounds like Kate Bush.

She may have influenced a host of significant artists, from Tori Amos to Bjork to PJ Harvey, all of whom have charted unique courses for themselves as musicians but none

The Buggles Years active: 1977–1981

The Buggles consisted of singer and bassist Trevor Horn and keyboard player Geoff Downes. Formed in 1979, the duo had met while working as session musicians, and they struck gold that same year with the single “Video Killed the Radio Star.” The song hit number one internationally, but it gained a permanent place in pop history when MTV went on the air in 1981 and played the song’s video as their maiden selection, a prophetic choice if there ever was one.

Despite their new wave credentials, it turned out that both Downes and Horn were huge fans of the 1970s progressive rock group Yes and were asked to join as bona fide members for the Drama album and tour of 1980. The album went well, but the tour was a complete disaster once it hit the United Kingdom.

Audiences there could not accept the new members in their beloved dinosaur rock band, particularly when they performed a segment from “Video Killed the Radio Star”

to communicate with the Trevor Horn of the Buggles tries spirit of Carol Anne in 1979.

onstage. After facing a giant brick wall of Do Not Want!, Yes disbanded in 1981, leaving the Buggles with some interesting anecdotes.

Work began on the second Buggles album, Adventures in Modern Recording, in 1981, but Downes quit before it was finished, citing creative differences. Horn finished the album with the aid of session musicians, but the results were simply not the same. The band’s moment had clearly passed, a fact that was borne out by the relatively low chart placing of both the album and its singles.

Horn brought the band to an end and immersed himself in production work, a field in which he found immediate and lasting success. Downes went on to form the group Asia with his Yes bandmate Steve Howe, and together they made a self-titled record of warmed-over crap that really and truly sucked all forms of ass and that you probably don’t listen to if you’re reading this book. The CD version, however, is microwavesafe, making it an ideal vessel upon which to warm a bran muffin.

MEMBERS: Geoff Downes (keyboards, drums, percussion); Trevor Horn (vocals, bass guitar, guitar) DISCOGRAPHY: The Age of Plastic (Island, 1980); Adventures in Modern Recording (Phantom Import Distribution, 1982)

of them can be said to sound like her. She has referenced Austrian psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich in her work, sung about agoraphobia, and had two albums make it in Out magazine’s Top 100 Greatest Gayest Albums list. Even John Lydon hailed her as “fucking brilliant” at the 2001 Q Awards, and that guy hates everything. But while she has many admirers, she has no significant imitators. She is an artist of such originality that nobody dares to copy her.

Born in 1958 in South London, Bush showed an early interest in music, studying piano and violin during grammar school and writing her own music by the

BRO NSK I BEA T - THE BUG GLES - KAT E BUS H 49

time she reached adolescence. A family friend brought her to the attention of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, who financed her first demo and helped arrange her EMI Records deal when she was only sixteen years old. Things moved slowly after that, as Bush focused on finishing school and studying mime, an act for which she is barely forgiven. By the time she was nineteen, she began work on her first recording for EMI, the song “Wuthering Heights.” Based on the Emily Bronte novel of the same name, the song was sung from the point of view of the main character’s

corpse. It hit number one on the UK charts in 1978, and the lush, sophisticated follow-up single, “The Man with the Child in His Eyes,” reached number six. The success of the singles was a huge boon to her debut album, The Kick Inside, which debuted at number three and sold one million copies in the United Kingdom alone.

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Kate Bush had established herself as a decidedly intellectual artist with a highly literate vision.

For this reason, EMI chose to promote her by focusing mainly on her boobs. The label promoted her album with posters that showed her in a very snug, form-fitting top, a decision that enraged her to no end. “People weren’t even generally aware that I wrote my own songs or played the piano,” she said in a 1982 interview with New Musical Express.

“The media just promoted me as a female body.”

After the release of Lionheart, Bush embarked on her first tour.

The jaunt lasted only six weeks, but it was a ridiculously elaborate production involving intense choreography, complex lighting effects, and no less than seventeen—seventeen— costume changes. Her intention to dance as she sang also created a practical problem: how can we amplify her voice if her hands are too occupied with elaborately choreographed movements to hold a microphone? This crisis was resolved when her engineers invented the first ever headset microphone.

Bush had felt rushed into the studio for Lionheart and was less than thrilled with the experience of being a touring musician. She decided to make her first tour her last and spend as long as she needed crafting albums.

This led to her gaining a reputation as a mysterious, mercurial recluse, which caused the UK music press to regularly speculate that a nervous

breakdown was the cause of her absence from the public eye, or worse, that she had gained weight.

After Never Forever and the stylistically diverse The Dreaming, Bush instituted a policy of producing her own work entirely on her own, recording at the 48-track studio that she had built in her home. The Hounds of Love album, released in 1985, was the first to be recorded there, and it debuted at number one on the UK charts, staying there for an entire month and vindicating her decision to operate independently.

It was also her first significant entry on the US Billboard charts, where it reached number thirty. Time has been kind to this album, and it has earned a reputation over the years as her finest work. More than twentyfive years after its release it still sounds as unique and timeless as it did the day it was released.

Bush didn’t release a follow-up to Hounds of Love for another four years, but her absence didn’t seem to hurt her. The Sensual World, released in 1989, reached the number two position in the

wears the costume she bought Science fiction fan Kate Bush of the Jedi. rn Retu after r Fishe e from Carri

United Kingdom and went gold in America, becoming her biggestselling album in the United States.

After another four-year hiatus, she released The Red Shoes and directed a short film, The Line, the Cross & the Curve, to go with it.

She would later disavow the film, referring to it in a 2005 interview with The Guardian as “a load of bollocks.” But as much as it might have sucked, it was the last dose of Kate Bush anyone was going to get for a long time. She had intended to take a year off, but when all was said and done it had turned into twelve years. Part of the reason was the birth of her first child in 1998, which put her musical plans on indefinite hold while she did the mommy thing.

Bush emerged from the recording studio with new product in hand in 2005.

Her eighth album of new material, Aerial, was a two-disc set. Disc one was dubbed “A Sea of Honey,” and it touched on personal matters such as her son and the recent death of her mother. Less personal perhaps was the song “π.” An ode to the ratio of a circle’s area to the square of its radius, the song literally consisted of Bush singing all the symbol’s numerals to its 137th decimal place. Seriously. Disc two was called “A Sky of Honey” and featured a thematically linked series of songs that featured birds chirping a lot. Clearly the twelve-year absence hadn’t changed her artistic approach, and it hadn’t hurt her sales either. The album entered the UK album charts at number three, going on to sell over one million copies worldwide.

Aerial was reissued in 2010, the only change being to the second disc, which was originally nine separate songs and now runs as a single, unindexed track. Other than recording a new song, “Lyra,” for the 2007 movie The Golden Compass, Kate Bush was quiet until 2011, when she released not one but two albums. This was not the first time that Bush withdrew from the public eye for years on end, only to emerge again with something striking and brilliant.

DISCOGRAPHY: The Kick Inside (EMI, 1978); Lionheart (EMI, 1978); Never for Ever (EMI, 1980); The Dreaming (EMI, 1982); Hounds of Love (EMI, 1985); The Sensual World (Columbia, 1989); The Red Shoes (Columbia, 1993); Aerial (Columbia, 2005); Director’s Cut (Fish People, 2011); 50 Words for Snow (Fish People, 2011)

KATE BuSH

KAT E BUS H

#

51

irk) in ard H. K der, Rich steins. in r ll e a e M b h en n, Steph them wit o g ts in a lt W e s p (l-r: Chri ich nobody was Voltaire h Cabaret nce in w ra a e p p ve a a rare li

Cabaret Voltaire Years active: 1973–1994

“ I sometimes des

pair at the s tate of popu the trends ar lar m u s i c … e getting fas ter and faste is sort of go r and the tur ing to an ult nover i m a t e i m plosion, you o f styles an know, d music, and t h e w h ole popular t just going to hing is disappear up its own ass. ” —STEP H E N M A L L IN DER,

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on pop music in the 1980s

When it comes to making decisions that are guaranteed to catapult your group to stardom, few can equal naming your band after a Zurich nightclub that was central to the Dada movement.

This was surely what the members of Cabaret Voltaire were thinking when they did just that.

Consisting of singer and bassist Stephen Mallinder and multiinstrumentalists Richard H. Kirk and Chris Watson, the group formed in the early 1970s and specialized in industrial and electronic music, well before anyone else was really doing it. It was original stuff, and audiences at their 1973 gigs didn’t know what to make of it. As a result, they were regularly deluged with audience hatred. Mallinder even had the unique privilege of suffering a chipped backbone when the band was showered with projectiles at an early performance.

Refusing to let a minor consideration like spinal damage get in their way, the group hung around long enough to latch on to the punk movement.

Early audiences may have hated them, but punk audiences embraced them, and in 1978 they signed to Rough Trade Records. Cabaret Voltaire released a string of highly praised EPs and singles, as well as watershed albums like The Voice of America (1980) and Red Mecca (1981). However, Watson left the band in 1983 to form the Halfer Trio, and the remaining members took the opportunity to take their

music in a much more commercial direction. This decision yielded a UK top forty chart performance for their 1983 release The Crackdown, a first for the group, and the 1984 album Micro-Phonies, which featured “Sensoria,” a song memorable for its vertigo-inducing video.

Throughout the rest of the 1980s, they continued to release albums that sold respectably and were well received, including their 1987 album Code, which contained “Here to Go,” the only Cabaret Voltaire single on the US Billboard charts.

Around this time, Kirk had already begun recording sporadically on his own, and Mallinder moved away to Australia. The group released albums into the 1990s, but Cabaret Voltaire had ceased to be a band in the traditional sense, and it’s safe to say that by the mid-1990s they were basically defunct. Since then, Mallinder has released albums under the name Sassi & Loco and started his own label, Offworld Sounds, and Kirk has made albums with the New Zealand group Kora.

MEMBERS: Richard H. Kirk (guitars, keyboards, tapes); Stephen Mallinder (vocals, bass, keyboards); Chris Watson (keyboards, tapes) DISCOGRAPHY: Mix-Up (Mute, 1979); The Voice of America (Mute, 1980); Red Mecca (Mute, 1981); 2x45 (Mute, 1982); Johnny Yesno (Grey Area Records, 1983); The Crackdown (EMI Gold, 1983); MicroPhonies (Virgin, 1984); Drinking Gasoline (Blue Plate, 1985); The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (Virgin, 1985); Code (Manhattan Records, 1987); Groovy, Laidback and Nasty (Parlophone, 1990); Body and Soul (Les Disques Du Crépuscule, 1991); Plasticity (Instinct, 1993); International Language (Instinct, 1993); The Conversation (Instinct, 1994)

CAB ARE T VOLT AIRE 53

Cactus World News Years active: 1984–1991

Hailed as the next big thing, this Irish band had a leg up on the competition from day one. U2’s Bono financed their debut EP, The Bridge, which led to MCA Records signing the band and releasing their debut album, Urban Beaches, in 1986. Bursting with melodramatic anthems, soaring vocals,

the amount of advance hype. In the United States, the appeal of Urban Beaches never expanded beyond college radio.

MCA was so pig-bitingly mad about this state of affairs that they withdrew the group’s follow-up, No Shelter (1989), before it was even released. The group fell apart not long after, and the individual members went their separate ways.

No Shelter was not released until 2004. Only drummer Wayne Sheehy appears to have carved out a career for himself in the music business, playing briefly with Hothouse Flowers and currently with former Tea Party singer Jeff Martin.

MEMBERS: J. J. Collier (drums); John Doyle (bass); Frank Kearns (guitar); Eoin McEvoy (vocals); Fergal MacAindris (bass); Chris McGoldrick (bass); Wayne Sheehy (drums) DISCOGRAPHY: Urban Beaches (MCA, 1986); Live—Spin Magazine Concert Series (MCA, 1986); No Shelter (Red Coral, 2004)

and guitars that were waterlogged with reverb, the album was a compendium of U2-isms at their most stirring.

Cactus World News released three singles from the album, all of which placed on the UK singles chart.

Despite having plenty of commercial potential, the album simply didn’t sell. While this is fairly typical for a debut album, Urban Beaches was held to a higher standard due to

Captain Sensible Years active: 1976–present

Captain Sensible is mostly known for two things: his tenure in the Damned, and his red beret, and not necessarily in that order. Born Raymond Burns in 1954, Captain Sensible began his solo career in grand style, hitting number one on the UK singles chart with “Happy Talk,” a song from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific.

After such an auspicious debut, some artists might be intimidated by the prospect of crafting a follow-up. Not Captain Sensible.

He did just fine, releasing a string of singles through A&M Records, which were all hits. Among these were “Glad It’s All Over,” an antiwar song about the conflict in the Falkland Islands, “Wot! No Meat?” his ode to vegetarianism, and “One Christmas Catalogue,” which was about Captain Sensible not liking the baby Jesus’s birthday.

Captain Sensible left A&M almost as quickly as they had signed him, hopping from label to label and project to project. Among these was Dead Men Walking, a collaboration with members of the Alarm, Spear of Destiny, and the Stray Cats. He also released a series of solo albums, most of which sold well in the UK. Both Women and Captains First (1982) and The Power of Love (1983) were slick and synthpop-heavy affairs that were probably intended to show that Captain Sensible was A Serious Musician™, but the bottom line was that the songs just weren’t there. Fortunately, he got his mojo back on the 1989 release Revolution Now, and as the years passed, subsequent albums found the captain settling into an almost psychedelic pop style that at times recalled Syd Barrett, no foolin’.

Outside of his solo career and the occasional Damned reunion, Captain Sensible released a recording of “The Snooker Song” from the musical The Hunting of the Snark, which was used as the theme to the British game show Big Break.

He also got involved in politics in 2006, starting a new British political party called the Blah! Party, but where’s the sizzle in that?

The Cars

Years active: 1976–1 988; 2010–present For the most part, new wave music was pretty much dismissed by rock fans. It was considered gutless and lame by people who listened to Led Zeppelin, swore by AC/DC, and believed with all their hearts that Jim Morrison was still alive.

However, the Cars played a brand of new wave with hard rock guitars that the long hair–sporting music fan deemed kosher. At your average stoner hangout session, you could follow up side two of Dark Side of the Moon with side one of Shake It Up, and no hesher on Earth would look at you funny for doing so. By the same token, you could put a Cars song after A Flock of Seagulls tune on a mix tape and nobody would bat an eye.

The Cars formed in Boston in 1976 after following a circuitous route to get there. Singer and guitarist Ric Ocasek was living in Cleveland when he met singer and bassist Ben

DISCOGRAPHY: Women and Captains First (Universal Distribution, 1982); The Power of Love (Universal Distribution, 1983); Revolution Now (Griffin, 1989); Live at the Milky Way (Griffin, 1995); Meathead (Cherry Red, 1995); The Universe of Geoffrey Brown (Pipeline, 1998); Mad Cows & Englishmen (Scratch, 2002)

Orr. The two became fast friends and began collaborating together on music, playing in bands together and moving from city to city as they did so. After doing time in New York City and Ann Arbor, they settled down in the Cambridge section of Boston, playing in a variety of bands, including Martin Mull and His Fabulous Furniture, which is the most awesome band name in the history. Along the way they met keyboard player Greg Hawkes and guitarist Elliot Easton, and when they recruited former Modern Lovers drummer Dave Robinson, the Cars were complete.

In 1977, the band cut a demo of “Just What I Needed,” which became the most requested song on Boston’s WBCN radio station.

By the end of the year, the Cars were signed to Elektra Records.

Their self-titled debut album contained singles that seemed tailor-made for the 1978 summer, such as “Good Times Roll,” “Just What I Needed,” and “My Best Friend’s Girl,” all of which would chart high and stay on the airwaves for years.

The Cars’ second album, Candy-O, released one year later,

and all-around Politician, multi-instrumentalist ible, in 1977.

Sens ain Capt Man ce issan Rena 54

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CAC TUS WOR LD NEW S - CAP TAIN SEN SIBL E - THE CAR S 55

climbed to number three on the US charts.

The album eventually went platinum, and with that, the Cars, who scraped by just two years earlier by playing in clubs, became an arena rock act. The band followed it up with Panorama (1980) and Shake It Up (1981). Both albums would go platinum, and the “Shake It Up” single took its place in the top ten, the first Cars single to do so.

The group took a much-deserved break after all the hysteria had died down. Ocasek made a solo album and also won himself permanent cred in the punk community by producing Bad Brains’ Rock for Light in 1982. When the Cars emerged from the studio in 1984, they had crafted a groundbreaking hit album.

In addition, the music videos for Heartbeat City pushed the form considerably. “You Might Think” was an early exercise in computer animation, while the video for “Magic” caused a mild stir by depicting Ocasek walking Christlike on water atop a swimming pool while fawning sycophants fall over themselves to worship him. The video for “Hello Again” was the last directorial project of pop artist Andy Warhol and also featured Showgirls star Gina Gershon.

Heartbeat City also included the band’s biggest hit single, “Drive.”

It would reach number three in the United States, a feat that the Cars would never repeat again, and it

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Easton joined Creedence Clearwater Revisited, who toured the United States playing “Bad Moon Rising” over and over again. This union finally ended, mercifully, but Easton made an equally questionable career move when he and Hawkes formed the New Cars in 2005 with Todd Rundgren, who should know better.

In 2010, they regrouped as the Cars proper and released Move Like This the following year to positive reviews.

also scored near the top of the singles charts in the United Kingdom, Canada, and West Germany. The video for the song was notable for featuring Czech supermodel Paulina Porizkova, who would go on to marry Ocasek in 1989, a decision that was met with confusion and anguish by heterosexual males everywhere.

The Cars released a greatest hits album in 1985 but otherwise stayed quiet for the next two years. When they returned in 1987, it was with a lackluster album, Door to Door, which was the group’s first commercial and critical misfire. The group announced in 1988 the members were going their separate ways, never disclosing the reasons for the split.

Postbreakup, Ocasek succeeded in carving out a niche for himself as one of the most sought-after producers in all of rockdom, helming albums by everyone from Hole to No Doubt to Weezer. Tragically, bassist Ben Orr was stricken with pancreatic cancer, and he died in October 2000. Also tragically, guitarist Elliot

MEMBERS: Elliot Easton (guitar, vocals); Greg Hawkes (keyboards, synthesizer, percussion, saxophone, vocals); Ric Ocasek (guitar, vocals); Benjamin Orr (bass guitar, vocals); David Robinson (drums, percussion, vocals) DISCOGRAPHY: The Cars (Elektra, 1978); Candy-O (Elektra, 1979); Panorama (Elektra, 1980); Shake It Up (Elektra, 1981); Heartbeat City (Elektra, 1984); Door to Door (Elektra, 1987); Move Like This (Hear Music, 2011)

Ocasek) Easton, Greg Hawkes, Ben Orr, Ric The Cars (l-r: David Robinson, Elliot in 1978.

City York New in lking jaywa commit a heinous act of group

most predictable e Th g. in lo so us to ui at “I’ve never gone for gr itar for days on end. gu on k an w to is ld or w thing in the not impressed by it.”

I’m . ng ti lif t gh ei w e lik It’s simplicity —ELLIOT EA STON, on

The Church

Years active: 1980–present The Church is an Australian band who formed in 1980 in Sydney.

Although they’re associated with the new wave movement in most people’s minds, their music sounds more akin to a psychedelic pop band, especially when they indulge in epic instrumental Echoplex jams, putting them a lot closer to the Byrds than to Matthew Wilder. The nucleus of the band has always been the duo of singer and bassist Steve Kilbey and guitarist Marty Willson-Piper, who endured lineup change after lineup change together without ever losing sight of their melancholy, atmospheric approach.

The Church’s debut album, Of Skins and Heart, was released in 1981 to resounding success in their native country. However, it would be a few more years and a few more albums before they broke out of their status as a regional act. The group released The Blurred Crusade in 1982 and Seance in 1983 and supplemented those releases with two EPs. The years of persistence finally paid off when they signed with Warner Bros. Records for an American deal. Their first release for the label, Heyday (1985), was universally hailed as a psychedelic masterpiece, with Rolling Stone going so far as to compare the album to Love’s seminal Forever Changes album, high praise indeed.

A few critics groused about the album’s use of horns and a string section, but fans loved it.

The Church signed a new deal with Arista Records for their next album, Starfish, which was released in 1988. Anyone worrying about the band’s ability to top Heyday had

THE CAR S - THE CHU RCH 57

his or her anxieties quelled in short order. The album featured “Under the Milky Way,” which would remain the group’s calling card. Written

by Kilbey and his girlfriend Karin Jansson, the song struck a nerve with listeners all over the world, and it became the band’s only international hit. The song appears in the band’s live set to this day and also appeared in the 2001 cult film Donnie Darko, to great effect.

Starfish ultimately went gold, but the group would never see this level of success again. The Church’s commercial fortunes began to diminish with their 1992 album Priest=Aura, which sounded like a bunch of incoherent bullshit that justifiably brought out every

critic’s inner hater. Also not helping the album was the nonexistent promotion from their label. After all, the grunge revolution was in full effect and the band sounded nothing like Nirvana, so after their 1994 album Sometime Anywhere, Arista dropped them.

Undeterred, the Church simply signed to a smaller label and got on with it. Since their first post-Arista release, Magician Among the Spirits (1996), the band has stayed busy touring and releasing albums, including Hologram of Baal (1998), which was released with a limited edition second disc composed entirely of a single eighty-minute jam. Unfortunately, touring was not without drama, and in 1999, Kilbey was arrested in New York City while attempting to buy heroin. Their last album of new material, Untitled #23, was released in 2009, and although it won the group few new fans, it gave their existing ones another reason to remain faithful to the Church.

eve Kilbey, ard Ploog, St ty area.

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MEMBERS: Jay Dee Daugherty (drums); Steve Kilbey (bass guitar, vocals); Peter Koppes (guitar); Richard Ploog (drums); Tim Powles (drums); Nick Ward (drums); Marty Willson-Piper (guitar) DISCOGRAPHY: Of Skins and Heart (Arista, 1981); The Blurred Crusade (Arista, 1982); Seance (Arista, 1984); Remote Luxury (Arista, 1984); Heyday (Arista, 1985); Starfish (Arista, 1988); Gold Afternoon Fix (Mushroom Records, 1990); Priest=Aura (Arista, 1992); Sometime Anywhere (Arista, 1994); Magician among the Spirits (Thirsty Ear Recordings, 1996); Hologram of Baal (Festival Records, 1998); A Box of Birds (Cooking Vinyl Records, 1999); After Everything Now This (Thirsty Ear Recordings, 2002); Parallel Universe (Thirsty Ear Recordings, 2002); Forget Yourself (Cooking Vinyl Records, 2003); El Momento Descuidado (Cooking Vinyl Records, 2005); Uninvited, Like the Clouds (Cooking Vinyl Records, 2006); El Momento Siguiente (Liberation, 2007), Untitled #23 (Second Motion Records, 2009)

Cocteau Twins Years active: 1982–1998

The 4AD label was the launching pad for such seminal groups as Bauhaus, Dead Can Dance and the Pixies. One of the most significant bands the label produced was Cocteau Twins, who have probably caused more rock critics to use the word ethereal than any other band in history.

The Scottish trio originally consisted of guitarist Robin Guthrie, bassist Will Heggie and singer Elizabeth Fraser.

While it might be uncharitable to minimize the contributions of her bandmates, Fraser was the single most essential and identifiable component of Cocteau Twins’s sound.

Her breathy vocals were half whispered and half sung over the music, a

technique that gave Cocteau Twins a sound that has been imitated many times since, see Enya for a grating and annoying attempt at replicating Fraser’s dreamy style.

The group joined 4AD in 1982. Even in their first release, Garlands, they were honing their sound. Shortly after their next release, the Peppermint Pig EP, Heggie resigned. Frazer and Guthrie took it in stride and soon recorded their 1983 album, Head over Heels, their furious productivity suggesting they were less than concerned with the door smacking Heggie in the ass on his way out.

Heggie was replaced by Simon Raymonde, whom Fraser and Guthrie had met while working on the This Mortal Coil project for 4AD. Raymonde’s debut Cocteau Twins release was the four-song EP The Spangle Maker. A trio again, they released Treasure in 1984. Most of the album’s ten songs took their titles from the works of nineteenth century French author Gérard de Nerval. De Nerval owned a pet lobster named Thibault and was a member of the self-explanatory Club des Hashischins. Clearly, de Nerval was a writer whose work would and could supply no end of dramatic and possibly deeply disturbed inspiration.

The group then went into creative overdrive, releasing three EPs (Aikea-Guinea, Tiny Dynamine, and Echoes in a Shallow Bay) in 1985 and the Love’s Easy Tears EP and Victorialand album in 1986. They

Communards Years active: 1985–1988

Cocteau Twins (l-r: Robin Guthrie, Elizabeth Fraser) in a characteristically joyous photo.

also performed on The Moon and the Melodies, a 1986 collaboration with American composer and poet Harold Budd. In a time when major artists often take five years or more between album releases, Cocteau Twins’s run of four EPs and two LPs in the space of just two years is nearly unfathomable.

In 1988, the group released Blue Bell Knoll, their first album released in the United States, thanks to an international deal with the Capitol Records subsidiary Fontana. Heaven or Las Vegas was released in 1990 under the same terms, and it became the best-selling album of the band’s entire catalog. Cocteau Twins subsequently left 4AD to become Fontana Records artists exclusively.

Cocteau Twins continued recording through the mid 1990s. After 1993’s Four Calendar Café, they released two separate EPs simultaneously in 1995, the subdued Twinlights and the remix release Otherness. In 1996 they released Milk and Kisses, which some older fans happily regarded as something of a return to Cocteau Twins’s classic style.

Unfortunately, the joy was shortlived. Fraser and Guthrie, a couple for as long as the band had been together, broke up during the 1997 sessions for their new album, taking the band down with them, and the new project was never completed. It was a sad, whimpering note on which to end the career of such a groundbreaking band. The good news is that Cocteau Twins’s music is still considered a quintessential example of what the 1980’s independent alternative scene was capable of producing at its creative peak.

MEMBERS: Elizabeth Fraser (vocals); Robin Guthrie (guitar); Simon Raymonde (bass); Will Heggie (bass) DISCOGRAPHY: Garlands (1982, 4AD); Lullabies EP (1982, 4AD); Head over Heels (1983, 4AD); Peppermint Pig EP (1983, 4AD); Sunburst and Snowblind EP (1983, 4AD); Treasure (1984, 4AD); The Spangle Maker EP (1984, 4AD); Aikea-Guinea EP (1985, 4AD); Tiny Dynamine EP (1985, 4AD); Echoes in a Shallow Bay EP (1985, 4AD); Victorialand (1986, 4AD); Love’s Easy Tears EP (1986, 4AD); The Moon and the Melodies (with Harold Budd) (1986, 4AD); Blue Bell Knoll (1988, 4AD); Heaven or Las Vegas (1990, 4AD); FourCalendar Café (1993, Fontana); Twinlights EP (1995, Fontana); Otherness EP (1995, Fontana); Milk and Kisses (1996, Fontana)

Jimmy Somerville’s decision to leave Bronski Beat surprised many fans and critics alike. After all, here was an ascendant group that achieved mainstream success with their first album, and the man who had contributed its distinctive vocals was not even going to wait the prerequisite three albums before pursuing a solo career. What was wrong with him? Didn’t he know that abandoning his humble origins for the lure of the big time was the surest path to the corruption of his soul? Hadn’t he seen The Apple?

Rather than go solo, Somerville teamed up with classically trained pianist Richard Coles, who had played on Bronski Beat’s “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” Together they formed the Communards, who took a page from the Bronski Beat playbook by covering a disco classic, “Don’t Leave Me This Way.” The song became a huge hit, spending four weeks at number one and becoming the biggest selling single in the United Kingdom in 1986 and topping the dance charts in the United States.

Clearly, the Communards could have made an easy career of just covering disco songs, but that was just not how they rolled. Their self-

titled 1985 debut album featured “Reprise,” an attack on British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, which was as shocking as it was scathing.

Despite the United Kingdom’s affection for the Iron Lady, the political content of the song didn’t hurt the album’s sales one bit, and the follow-up, Red (1987), also sold well. It featured yet another disco cover, this time “Never Can Say Goodbye” by Gloria Gaynor.

However, far from repeating the formula of the debut, the album was a marked step up from the debut in every way. It included strong singles in “There’s More to Love Than Boy Meets Girl” and “Tomorrow,” and it also contained the harrowing “For a Friend,” written for someone close to the band who had died of AIDS. There was every reason to believe that the group would follow up this album with another quality piece of work, but in 1988 Coles left. In fact, he left music entirely and became a journalist, a vocation that he later abandoned in order to become an ordained priest in the Church of England. Somerville responded by going solo, releasing the Read My Lips album in 1989.

MEMBERS: Richard Coles (arranger, piano, clarinet); Dave Renwick (bass guitar); Jimmy Somerville (vocals) DISCOGRAPHY: Communards (MCA Records, 1985); Red (London, 1987)

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