SMASH HITS Singles - May 1984

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5uxYP2xVoLVQ7CKzyvkUj2

The only non-spotify track is Mari Wilson's "Ain't That Peculiar"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCtikc9ZATE

Dom...dom...dominatrix.

Thanks, forks!

https://i.imgur.com/XIGebfd.jpg

It's Smash Hits issue 10th of May 84. It was fortnightly, just to let the Americans and specifically my friend forksclovetofu, know :)

The review of Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go is quite something in hindsight. Maybe Dave Rimmer got it right.

It's hard not to vote for Dom-Dom-Domanatix but I have to vote with my heart and say that Rimmer was right. Red Guitar is really really something. The (prepared?) piano interlude that begins around 1:50 here was and remains incredible. I love this song so much. The album Brilliant Trees changed my life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tTX49CjAgo

Incredible that Red Guitar was a mainstream pop song in 1984. Sylvian is/was just such an unlikely cultural force.

Sakamoto was credited on Brilliant Trees as Piano and Sylvian was credited as prepared piano, so I'm not sure who did what on RG.

Red Guitar rules but i had to vote for Dominatrix as i had a formative experience to it, and i ended up being pals with one of them, which would have blown my tiny mind to smithereens back in 1984. Yhat same tiny mind would have been further blown had i known at the time that Peter Baumann who i was a mega fan of in '84 (still am) also played on it.

Much of this music was considered "college music" at the time, and I didn't hear it until the fall or later. My college station had Sylvian, Ultravox, and PiL in high rotation, and it's got to be "Red Guitar" for me. Listened to it recently and it's chock full of amazing sounds.

Xps now if i could only figure out what a fortnight is...

Oh, that's what Dave Rimmer looked like? Nice hair.

Favourite at the time: The Dominatrix, by a country mile. It is a matter of eternal regret that I have never heard it played in a club. Despite not having access to a record player (I was in Berlin, the record player was in the UK), I still bought a copy, and was intrigued to find Peter Baumann's name on the credits.

Favourite over time: The Style Council. They'd played a fantastic show at the Metropol a month earlier, and I clicked with every aspect of their early aesthetic, drifting away from them in around twelve months' time. It probably helped that I was spending inordinate amounts of time drinking cappuccino in Berlin cafes (unlike the angry ex-Jam fan who vented to the NME letters page: "we haven't got many coffee shops in Bolton"). I still find everything they released in 1983 and 1984 - B-sides, the lot - utterly magical.

I'm with Rimmer on The System - nothing could match the the power of that first album - but "I Just Wanna Make You Feel Good" still became a big favourite; it encapsulates that whole Summer 1984 "hot tempo" sound really well.

I liked Divine Sounds a lot, enjoyed Imagination, but rather breezed over David Sylvian when I should have been paying closer attention. Sade was great at the time, but my love for her didn't survive the seemingly endless afterlife of that first album, the lazy soundtrack choice for every crummy joint with pretensions for years to come. Very much the Moon Safari of its day.

"What Presence?" is where I got off the Orange Juice bus - three years earlier, they'd been my favourite band - but I did accidentally catch their last ever show, opening a miners' strike benefit at Brixton Academy in January 1985, which brought back all the good times.

"Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" is also where I got off the Wham! bus, and I would have been in full agreement with Rimmer at the time.

And it was quite the week for jumping off buses: hello "Bad Life", goodbye PiL. I've got a radio tape of it somewhere, which ends with a fragment of a bitterly disappointed John Peel ("when all that's left is cynicism..."), and the phrase stuck in my mind more than the track.

This was my personal chart, as of 9th May 1984:

01 (03) The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight - Dominatrix
02 (01) Beat Box - The Art Of Noise
03 (02) Give Me Tonight - Shannon
04 (10) Hand In Glove - Sandie Shaw
05 (06) Big In Japan - Alphaville
06 (04) Disconet 1983 Top Tunes Medley - Various
07 (NE) Play That Beat Mr DJ (The Payoff Mix) - G.L.O.B.E. & Whiz Kid/Double Dee & Steinski
08 (NE) No More Words - Berlin
09 (re) High Energy - Evelyn Thomas
10 (07) Automatic - Pointer Sisters
11 (re) The Lebanon - Human League
12 (36) Thieves Like Us/Lonesome Tonight - New Order
13 (NE) Drums Only - Taracco
14 (17) The Nine Lives Of Dr Mabuse - Propaganda
15 (NE) Dizzy - Boney M
16 (09) Colour My Love - Fun Fun
17 (08) Just Be Good To Me - SOS Band
18 (NE) One For The Treble - Davy DMX
19 (05) People Are People - Depeche Mode
20 (NE) Gloria In 3D (Hot Tracks remix) - Laura Branigan
21 (11) Paco's Super Mix - Latin Rascals
22 (22) No Sell Out - Malcolm X
23 (NE) Peace In Our Time - The Imposter
24 (13) All Night Passion - Alisha
25 (12) Watch The Closing Doors - I.R.T. (Interboro Rhythm Team)
26 (35) I've Got To Find A Way - Zena Dejonay
27 (15) In The Heart/Tonight - Kool & The Gang
28 (NE) It's My Life - Talk Talk
29 (20) Hip Hop Bommi Bop - The Increadible T.H. Scratchers Starring Freddy Love ‎
30 (NE) Borderline - Madonna
31 (26) Get In Touch With Me - One Blood
32 (23) Don't Tell Me - Blancmange
33 (14) She's Strange - Cameo
34 (NE) Love System - The Twins
35 (24) Locomotion - OMD
36 (19) I Want A New Drug - Huey Lewis & The News
37 (NE) Tie Me Down - Romance
38 (21) They Only Come Out At Night - Peter Brown
39 (28) Let Me Love You - Force M.D.'s
40 (27) Fresh - Fresh 3 MC's

That PiL B-side is extraordinary, though, and accidentally ahead of its time.

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

An easy vote for my favourite Orange Juice single. That line-up didn't last long, did it?

I'm fairly sure that Malcolm Ross rejoined them for that final Brixton Academy gig, at least; I think he also played later that night with Aztec Camera, who headlined.

Re: piano on the Sylvian record: everything on "Red Guitar" is Sakamoto, you can tell by the jazzy, delicate filigrees. Sylvian plays prepared piano on "Backwaters".

good for him panning that awful wham song

voted for ultravox even tho he didn't like that either

Have to say, his writing style is very "old man from the fifties"...

Wake Me Up is both the best song and the best review on that page.

(in the US that was the first we heard from them, so it's weird to think of that as a disappointment to long time fans)

Dominatrix sounds like you had to be there.

Solo David Sylvain (for me) is one of those I keep trying to get into, but it isn't working.

Wake Me Up was Wham! nadir imo. Also completely unavoidable in UK at the time to the point of total over saturation. To this day just hearing "Jitterbug..." is enough to set off a Pavlovian reaction.

https://giphy.com/gifs/vintage-80s-RG01kHJGpCAY8

fucked that up

anyway, #teamIWannaDanceWithSomeoneWhoGo-Go

https://media4.giphy.com/media/RG01kHJGpCAY8/200.gif

that’s the way you do it
money for nothing and your gifs for free

Sade was great at the time, but my love for her didn't survive the seemingly endless afterlife of that first album, the lazy soundtrack choice for every crummy joint with pretensions for years to come. Very much the Moon Safari of its day.

Totally get this but Love Is Stronger than Pride is the best Sade song/single.

Re: piano on the Sylvian record: everything on "Red Guitar" is Sakamoto, you can tell by the jazzy, delicate filigrees. Sylvian plays prepared piano on "Backwaters".

― Halfway there but for you,

Thanks for that info. I could probably have just looked out the record. It makes sense that that's not a prepared piano. I should have known that already.

Always good to see mike's lists. Wild that you've kept them all the years!

Here's the full issue from this fortnight: https://www.flickr.com/photos/51106326@N00/albums/72157643123473814/

Fantastic footage of Sylvian with Sakamoto, Czukay, Hassel, Ronny Drayton and Steve Nye from the Brilliant Trees recording sessions.

https://vimeo.com/575291448/1874bdcf17

despite ‘bad life’ being repudiation of original pil project etc, can’t help but feeling quite fond of it - as a relatvely context-free teen i liked it as a funky weird pop single, and actually appreciated the cynicism!

^From that issue: The two page spread where Boy George, Marilyn, Pete Burns and someone called Tasty Tim (who has escaped my memory) all bitch about each other is grimly amusing

Thanks for that raffles!

Am curious to see what this Mr. Rimmer thought of Wham!’s Fantastic-era singles. “Wham Rap” is generally regarded as a joke these days (I think Allmusic gave that album one-and-a-half stars), so I’m pretty surprised people at the time felt let down by “WMUBYGG”

Wait -- was cappuccino such a part of The Style Council's ethos? Really?

"Wham Rap" is anti-Thatcher.

i like "Wham Rap".

They also played a benefit gig for the miners' strike.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdCs2K_ZEpU

Apparantly (according to this) (and it is witten partly by the C D'A crew) Wham Rap the Francois K version was a tune at Cocktail D'Amour.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/dec/10/cocktail-damore-berlin-worlds-best-parties

Wait -- was cappuccino such a part of The Style Council's ethos? Really?

Well, their sleeve notes were penned by "The Cappuccino Kid" (actually Paolo Hewitt), and their debut album was called Café Bleu...

Re. Wham!, they were originally seen as somewhat conceptual, witty and subversive, playing ironic games with male archetypes. "Wake Me Up" felt like a sharp break from all that, shedding nuance in favour of banal mass appeal. We'd expected more.

Yeah, it was a let down, away from 'credible' funk pop into radio friendly etc.

Oh, and at the time, cappuccino was a pure cafe/Italian thing, but subsequently.. I'm sure the Style Council had a lot to do with it!

It's "You're The Best Thing" vs. "Panama" over here. Mike, great hearing about that era, and agree on '83-'84 Style Council (and EBTG and Carmel from those same years).

Re. Wham!, they were originally seen as somewhat conceptual, witty and subversive, playing ironic games with male archetypes. "Wake Me Up" felt like a sharp break from all that, shedding nuance in favour of banal mass appeal. We'd expected more.

― mike t-diva, Saturday, July 24, 2021 7:26 AM

Until the ebullience and craft of "Careless Whisper" and "Everything She Wants" and "Freedom" made you renounce this apostasy.

I disliked "Wham Rap" at the time. Haven't heard it for years. "Wake Me Up" I seem to remember thinking was a record I would never like enough to buy but it was pleasant enough if it came on the radio. I've always liked that bit where it breaks down to organ chords and the singing comes back in with "I wanna hit that high...". "Careless Whisper" I found irritating at the time but now think is a masterpiece. "Freedom" I can hear in my head now and I like it. "Everything She Wants" I can't bring to mind.

Hated "Careless Whisper", thought it was such a dreary dirge; I'm sort of OK with it now, but I'd take "Nothing Looks The Same In The Light" off the debut album every time. I identified with it very strongly, and decided there and then that only a gay man could have written it.

Didn't rate "Freedom", couldn't see past the surface jollity, but there's no arguing with the majesty of "Everything She Wants".

I never knew Wham did a song called "Nothing Looks the Same in the Light". When you mentioned it I immediately thought of "U Sure Do" by Strike (1994). That same phrase occurs in the lyrics. I guess they must have stolen it from Wham.

'nothing looks the same in the light' is so good, but i think i like this one even more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AuEbm6hD7s

wow, I'd completely forgotten about that track. Thanks for the reminder!

I actually found a bootleg extended edit of it that's good. Pretty true to the original which is a bit too short. I can't send that to you (or anyone else) if you care for that kind of thing.

These threads are a bright spot on ilx atm

*thumbs up emoji*

This is an interesting one because I remember hardly any of these singles.

Sorry to be a bonehead but I have to vote for Van Halen. The PiL would be #2. For a long time I've owned the Commercial Zone record, on which "Bad Life" is called "Mad Max," as well as the This Is What You Want... record, and I have to say I much prefer the latter.

George produced that amazing track Blue (Armed With Love) that NickB posted. Really gorgeous production.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

'State Of Love' - didn't know it as a kid but holds up v well

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Eddie's guitar was mostly red, just like Sylvian's.

What on earth...

I got hard thinking of David Sylvian singing "Panama."

wake me up before you cum-cum

That's a rough result for Divine Sounds and The System.
Are we doing another one? Please?

will try to post one before or during the weekend.

SMASH HITS Singles - September 26 1984