SMASH HITS singles in the issue 14th of April 1983

didn’t know it either, but I love it too - he does very cool things with his voice there. I might vote for it - Lil’ Red Riding ‘Vette will do probably do just fine without me

https://images.genius.com/287f7d09c505eff1760ab7694ed241f3.220x220x1.jpg
so sultry

xp

Dave Rimmer's book, "Once Upon A Time In The East" about his and Mark Reeder's adventures in the Eastern Bloc in the mid 80s is one of my favourite things. His reviews here are ridiculous.

Then it would have been Bauhaus, The Creatures or Heaven 17. A year later maybe Jonzun Crew or Prince Charles & The City Beat Band. I think I'll go Bauhaus because of the inane review.

I lapped up Dave Rimmer's Culture Club book, "Like Punk Never Happened", where as I recall he travelled with them on an international tour; there were some shrewd observations.

Working through these tunes now. The Men At Work track is dimly familiar. My best music and clubbing buddy at the time was emerging from a massive Bauhaus phase, but "Bela Lugosi's Dead" aside, their stuff never grabbed me; I found them a tad jejeune, and proto-goth wasn't a path that looked enticing. "Temptation" is so hard-wired into me that it's impossible to assess it objectively, but adding Carol Kenyon's soul diva vocals to an electronic backing felt like a fresh and thrilling move, with little precedent beyond Yazoo, and Jenny Burton on C-Bank's "One More Shot". JK's "I'll Slap Your Face" was a barely changed reworking of a track he'd first released as A Handful Of Cheek, ten years earlier; I inherited a promo copy of the latter, and took some perverse pleasure in it before his cancellation.

The Creatures "Miss The Girl" still sounds fantastic, and the album (Feast) which followed it a month later has remained an all-time favourite - it's a record for hot, sticky nights in high summer, with a unique sonic palette, and forever linked in my mind with Malcolm McLaren's Duck Rock, which evokes a similar mood via different means. Seriously, if you've never heard Feast, you really must.

Thinking back to Bauhaus: I'd already heard enough doomy/angsty post-punk to last me a lifetime during 1979/80, turning away from it all when Killing Joke and Spear Of Destiny came along, and this felt like a thin prolongation of a mood that had long since reached full fruition. Meanwhile, I'd discovered sex and dancing, and was busy embracing the light.

"Candy Girl" has to be one of the least remembered UK number ones of the 1980s, and for a record with such an immediate impact it had a short shelf life, but combining electro with early Jackson 5 felt incredibly exciting at the time. ("It's the first electro number one!", I trilled, while my music/clubbing buddy rolled his eyes.) Not having heard "ABC" since childhood, I hadn't quite twigged the extent of Starr & Jonzun's plagiarism, but hey. Meanwhile, "Space Cowboy" may have the Jonzun Crew's silliest cut, but silliness has never particularly bothered me. I'd been all over "Pack Jam" and "Space Is The Place", but THE killer cut ("We Are The Jonzun Crew") surfaced on their Lost In Space album, and I've only just discovered that it had a full-length video too (and if it slightly flattens the stunning percussion, it compensates for the loss with its visuals).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GqM6OuyU_U

(And then Starr and Jonzun eventually moved on to masterminding New Kids On The Block, hey ho.)

Turns out that the Veterans record first came out in 1979 (1980 in the UK). And never mind Dieter Meyer, I'm getting massive "Shalom Jackie" vibes from the same guy in the video - it's quite uncanny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-8xMWA6_ZE

Heaven 17 all the way. Obviously.

He really liked that Questions single, didn't he?

Why?

The orginal demo of Temptation is so great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2f_2jBMKcY

Sounds like Deborah Evans-Stickland from the Flying Lizards doing the deadpan vocals... and I'm assuming this was recorded after Soft Cell's "Tainted Love", but it would be amazing if it was before.

Prince Charles was lauded by the rock and style press, but cold-shouldered by funk/soul clubs - James Hamilton in Record Mirror was repeatedly witheringly scornful, saying it was funk for gullible trendies. Like "Money's Too Tight To Mention", "Cash (Cash Money)" must have fitted in with the prevalent "hard times" aesthetic, and I do quite like it - the rock and style press sometimes got it right on otherwise cold-shouldered funk, most notably with Defunkt's superb "The Razor's Edge" (Neville Brody sleeve art and all).

Peaking at 42, "Telegraph" ended OMD's unbroken run of Top 20 hits that had begun with "Messages" in 1980, and I recall Dazzle Ships being greeted with some bafflement. It's... OK. They bounced back in 1984, so no lasting harm done.

Although far from great, The Questions "Price You Pay" is better than expected, rhythmically effective, and not dissimilar to King "Love And Pride" at times. Actually, I'd take it over "Love And Pride".

if I vote for JK do I actually get to slap his face?

I see Jonzun Crew I vote Jonzun Crew.

I thought The Questions song was really good as well. That Temptation demo is fantastic.

"Nightmares" is one of my all time faves but it's hard to not vote for "Beat It"

How Rimmer can call the gumby pyschobilly Tall Boys track "slow" is beyond me - it rattles along at a very brisk pace. Astonishing that Tom Robinson would follow such a piss-poor track as "Now Martin's Gone" with the hugely affecting (at least if you were me!) and hugely successful "War Baby" - he sounds beyond redemption here. Dismissed by James Hamilton as "a formula gigolo whipper", O'Bryan's single flopped, as fast "whippers" were mostly prone to do at the time (this is 130bpm, which would have been fine for Hi-NRG but not for anything else) - I quite like it, but "whippers" were never much my thing (then again, "Beat It"...)

Hah, the opening lines of "Nightmares" put me in mind of "These Boots Are Made For Walking".

I was all set to vote for "Miss The Girl", but c'mon, "Little Red Corvette" is unimpeachable (unlike, alas, its creator). It didn't become a UK hit for nearly two more years, though - top 10 in US, but a mere #54 here in 1983.

Hah, the opening lines of "Nightmares" put me in mind of "These Boots Are Made For Walking".

Yes, immediately. Such a blatant rip.

the hugely affecting (at least if you were me!) and hugely successful "War Baby"

God, yes. I haven't heard or thought about this song for 30-odd years but what an amazing thing. According to wiki he wrote it in despair after a visit to a gay sauna in Berlin!

Prince Charles was lauded by the rock and style press

They seemed to be ubiquitous in '83/8. Tons of my (gullible trendy) friends had the album, which hasn't aged very well.

Defunkt have aged well.

"War Baby" is eternal. x post.

except for the saxaphone. ;-)

I was quite mystified by the (very short-lived) Prince Charles hype as well (maybe the UK music press was tittilated by his name idk)

Defunkt were and are great - “The Razor’s Edge” is a stone cold classic

"Only the very young and the very beautiful can be so aloof" - they don't write opening lines like that anymore. :(

must have fitted in with the prevalent "hard times" aesthetic

When you're in the grip of an unrequited, unfulfillable and overwhelming crush one someone who lives in the shared house next door to your own, "War Baby" is strong meat indeed!

Wow, where has that demo version of "Temptation" been all my life? I love the Numan-esque arrangement, and the deadpan female voice somehow brings into focus something I'd always missed, that the lyric is about a man's terror of getting his girlfriend pregnant.

Sounds like Deborah Evans-Stickland from the Flying Lizards doing the deadpan vocals...

According to this (below) it's a German student they knew but Claudia Brücken used to join them to do it in concert:

https://postpunkmonk.com/2013/02/14/a-young-persons-guide-to-heaven-17-temptation/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-wp0Mywpf4

Wow, where has that demo version of "Temptation" been all my life?

My first time hearing it too. Great.

Re the Questions, yeah I like it, bought it at the time. But in this company, it seems odd to have escaped any snark. Maybe Paul Weller was a mate, or hopefully might be...

Shame they were about five years late for electroclash with releasing that demo. Would have seemed like a scam in 2001.

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