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Fun Boy Three – Waiting
Fun Boy Three
Waiting
1983 – Chrysalis
Origin: Coventry, England
Style: New Wave
“The true sign that you’re living through a golden age is the feeling that it’s never going to end. There seems to be no earthly reason why it should stop. It’s an illusion, of course, like the first swoony rush of falling in love. But that’s how it felt to be young and British and besotted with pop music in the early eighties.”
This is what Simon Reynolds wrote (Rip It Up And Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. Simon Reynolds: 2005, p. 403) when he was referring to the New Pop scene and artists like Altered Images, Bow Wow Wow, Depeche Mode, and Fun Boy Three taking over the mainstream.
By 1982, people have gotten over the shock of Terry Hall, Lynval Golding, and Neville Staples leaving The Specials to form a fresh, sort-of anti-ska New Wave sound. Popular standouts from their first album like “The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum” and “Summertime” helped ease the pain and push them back into the mainstream.
Although not as popular as The Specials massive success, Waiting was an album that would help balance that out, and “Our Lips Are Sealed” is the immediate eye-grabber. Written by Go-Go’s Jane Wiedlin and Hall, it’s not so surprising that both bands would record the same song, as both versions became a success, with Fun Boy Three hitting the UK Charts at number 7 and a Top Of The Pops winner (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLyzwFwiEXc). This song alone sealed the fate of the band in New Wave carbonite for centuries to come.
What is even more immediately intriguing about Waiting is David Byrne’s name on the production and mixing credits, right at the height of the Talking Head’s career.
Not necessarily disbanding their African music influences because the tribal percussion and the underlying up-step tempo as demonstrated on “The Barnyard Connection,” a song that talks about the working man and his plight — a blue-collar exorcism under a romantic skyline of youthful nights and ganja fantasies — the band stretches their capabilities farther than their previous effort.
If it was Byrne or the band, or a combination of both, Waiting experiments with various elements like wrapping strings around a tango stance as Hall mummers about the joys and delusions of love. “The Pressure of Life” is the typical dreamy-eyed New Wave as horns and pianos dance in the background of a simple pop rock song that leaked into many band’s persona: Soft Cell, Talk Talk, Yazoo, bands like that.
The song, or songs shall I say, that never get old is the pairing that introduces the album. The R.W. Goodwin cover of “Murder She Said” (the original version is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwc1qoZW5kM) is an upbeat, modest sock hop of an instrumental that rock and rolls with bouncy momentum. With a slight change of some piano notes, the song immediately transitions into a conspiracy romp with “The More I See (The Less I Believe)” with the backing vocals, this low hum of vocals, adding a sense of mental fear to the paranoia.
As Hall’s hair kept getting bigger and the band’s sound became slicker, this album was Fun Boy Three’s finest hour before parting ways a few years after.
Features ex-members of The Specials
Cross-Reference: Orchestral Maneuveurs in the Dark, Soft Cell, Bow Wow Wow
David Bowie – Station To Station
David Bowie
Station To Station
1976 – RCA
Origin: Brixton, England
Style: Rock and Roll
I admit it. I am not a huge Bowie fan, although the amount of Bowie I have in my collection would dispute that statement. I don’t even own a copy of Low … yet. I know. I know. For someone who has spent years writing about the indie rock scene and does not even have a copy of Low is blasphemous. But I did pick up a copy of Station To Station lately. And not just because it has “Golden Years” on it, which I like very much, but it was more for the aura and intrigue that surrounded the album’s release. Little did I know that this album would make me that Bowie fan I tried to deny but always wanted to be. Remember? Lots of Bowie albums? But in order to understand Station To Station, we have to start out by crossing over to another medium — film.
At the basic level, 1970s film and The New Hollywood style can simply be categorized into two elements: realism and escapism. And for some films, the lines blur. In Vanishing Point, we are led on a high-speed existential journey that feels so real that we could swear Kowalski was beyond fiction. Friedkin gave us The Exorcist and Spielberg Jaws, two very real elements in human reality but could not happen to the extent that they made it. And then there was The Man Who Fell To Earth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKF5lHcJY9k), an experiment of science fiction with realism.
Before Ridley Scott turned Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep into an historical science fiction masterpiece, Nicolas Roeg was experimenting with science fiction as an art form. And as Scott was influenced by Roeg’s “cut-up” technique, it’s Roeg’s use of Bowie that gave the film an unearthly reality.
Roeg was not unfamiliar with using rock stars in his films, as he captured the character trait of Mick Jagger in his film Performance. But whether the film had a direct affect on Bowie, besides physical construct for Station To Station and Low, is not certain based on the darkness of Bowie’s career and the extreme effects of drugs that altered his cognitive reality. According to the Wikipedia article on Station To Station (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_to_Station), Roeg warned him that his character Newton would remain with him for some time after the film. And it did, all the way to Low.
And there seems to be some conflict with this time period and the idea that a soundtrack was to be developed by Bowie. On my vinyl pressing of Station To Station, it indicates that this is the soundtrack to The Man Who Fell To Earth. Even though “TVC15” is the only song that could remotely be considered soundtrack fodder for the film in essence, yet the song is an antithesis for its upbeat folly, and also it was written about the thought of Iggy Pop’s girlfriend being eaten by her TV.
However, Bowie began work on a soundtrack separate of the Station sessions. And then, after five or six tracks into it, the project was canceled and Bowie, in a state of burn out, scrapped the entire project. The timeline stipulates even more contradiction as Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray in David Bowie: An Illustrated Record (1981, Avon Books) claims that Bowie already knew that the soundtrack was doomed which led to the Station sessions; whereas, Nicholas Pegg in The Complete David Bowie (2004, Reynolds & Hearn, Ltd.) writes that it was after the Station sessions when this took place. Either way, the only surviving piece was “Subterraneans” and ended up on the Low album.
Within Station To Station alone, so much has been written about the concept, the allure, and the legend behind the making that even if it was not regarded as being one of Bowie’s most acclaimed albums of all time, the story behind it fuels the intrigue. And it is amazing that Bowie even lived through it to see another album, let alone another three decades and beyond.
Back up to Young Americans. This was the first album that gave American audiences a strong taste of Bowie. With the standout songs “Fame” and the title track, the U.S. was getting a very accessible version of the man whose first trip to America had him prance around in woman’s clothes and dry humping his guitarist.
But the hit singles from Young Americans gave assurance to RCA to let Bowie do whatever he wanted and be completely open to ideas. Disgusted over the state of rock and roll — Bowie said to a young Cameron Crowe in Rolling Stone (Issue #204, January 15, 1976) that “I have rocked my roll” — he was not interested in creating a hit single and wanted to do the music the way he heard it.
Ironically, “Golden Years,” the first track recorded did become a hit, charting on the UK Singles at number 8 and the Billboard Pop Singles at number 10. Oddly enough the first song to make a public appearance was not “Golden Years.” Bowie’s initial television appearance was on the Dinah Shore Show where he performed “Stay” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXZKsKD1UsY), two days after the official release of the album (Bowie: Golden Years: http://mywebsite.bigpond.com/roger.griffin/GoldenYears/1976.html).
More than any other song on the album, “Stay” demonstrates Bowie’s new direction into funk, soul, and hard rock — so much for abandoning rock and roll. Following in the footsteps of Lou Reed and his entrancement with ethnic music within a pop mainframe, “Stay” is a song that is very accessible yet also frenzied and unnerving, demonstrating someone who is seen as a cold and a false romantic running into missed opportunities, “You can never really tell when somebody wants something you want too,” he sings. His over-accentuating vocal enunciation gives the presence that he’s trying a little too hard to convey sincerity or regret, making it unsure that he practices what he preaches. Even his performance on Dinah Shore, when he expresses, “Let’s get it together,” shows him with a sarcastic grin on his face as if you are being played by the piper but cannot do anything about it.
This was also a song that some of the band admits was recorded while being hopped up on a serious amount of cocaine.
During this time, Bowie, living in Los Angeles, developed a generous cocaine habit. It has been referred to as “astronomical.” Bowie does not even remember work he did on the album. He later told Q Magazine in 1996 that the Station sessions were his darkest hour, and therefore that mindset reflected on the ambiance of the recording.
Bowie gathered the Young Americans crew — Carlos Alomar, Earl Slick, Dennis Davis and Warren Peace — to Cherokee Studios in Hollywood. Bowie also brought in bassist George Murray, who later became a part of the Murry/Davis/Alomar rhythm section that would last up to Scary Monsters. He also signed on Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band pianist Roy Brittan to replace Mike Garson, who Bowie said was “off being a Scientologist somewhere.” (Pegg book).
The recording work was intense that lasted almost three months with sessions going well beyond 24-hour, non-stop sessions and fueled by a never-ending pile of cocaine and a perfectionist attitude. Bowie had the Orson Wells syndrome as he would work until he was kicked out of Cherokee to make room for another band, and within 90 minutes, he would be down at the LA Record Plant working again.
Bowie’s mind was racing at the time. In Cameron Crowe’s Playboy article (http://www.cameroncrowe.com/eyes_ears/articles/crowe_jrl_bowie.html) Bowie would sporadically get up from the interview and begin writing a song, paint, and one time, asked for 20 random items from Crowe, studied it for 10 seconds, and then proceeded to repeat it back to him forwards and backwards.
His interest with occultism also reached obsessive levels. Crowe’s interviews weaved a series of tales that is now digested as legend. Stories of black candles, bottled urine, bodies falling past windows, The Rolling Stones sending him hidden messages in their record sleeves, and many other twisted tales. Whether true or not, his mindset, the cocaine, and a staple diet of red and green peppers, left him paranoid, manic depressive, and physically wore down in a very short period of time.
But the results were incredible given proof of the album’s output. Bowie’s favorite group at the time was Kraftwerk and he loved their convention of using music as a means for productivity. At the beginning of the title track, we hear a synthesized train roaring from one speaker to the other, directly influenced by the car startup on “Autobahn.” Slick’s guitar screeches the train to a halt and the teutonic rhythm of drum and bass come in, jump starting the 10 minute song. It is precisely that second you know that you are in for something unique. Slick then slides into what Bowie calls a “Chuck Berry riff” (Pegg book) over and over for the first half of the song even while the rest of the band is changing around chord structures.
The song can be interpreted as a person in transition, as Pegg considered this album a “halfway point on the journey between Young Americans and Low. The idea behind Station To Station revolves with the stations of the cross. “There you are, drive like a demon from station to station,” croons the thin white duke.
Bowie’s last great persona, the thin white duke, takes prevalence from the beginning with his pristine white light fashion statement to the opening lyrics, “The return of the thin white duke, throwing darts in lovers eyes.” He takes notes from Alain Delon’s Jeff Costello character in Le Samourai showing signs of a male debonair but cannot hide his hollowness from escaping out of that pencil thin shell of his.
However by the final track, “Wild Is The Wind” is probably the most sincere you are going to hear Bowie in 1976. But then again, this was a song not written by Bowie. Originally written by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington, “Wild Is The Wind” was a track recorded for the Johnny Mathis film of the same name. At the time, the original was up for an Academy Award and became a very popular song. Bowie’s version is a very dramatic presentation as he croons through a passionate array of beautiful balladry. Was this choice a confession by Bowie during a time when his marriage was in disarray? Or, was this simple contemplation on his own personal state? The song is a climactic endnote to this album and the intro into his work with Eno and the upcoming “Berlin Trilogy.”
Bowie’s work here is the equivalent to Milton’s devil in Paradise Lost. You are not sure whether to have sympathy for his plight or fear him, but either way, it will be certain that you will respect him for what he has created.
Cross-Reference: Lou Reed, Kraftwerk, Roxy Music
Goldie – Timeless
Goldie
Timeless
1995 – FFRR
Origin: Walsall, England
Style: Drum ‘n’ Bass
In September 1995, David Toop of Mojo said this regarding Clifford Joseph Price, better known as Goldie, “With a few notable exceptions, Jungle has thus far been a music for singles and endless drum ‘n’ bass compilations. As the genre’s first high-profile, major label album, Timeless by Goldie and his Metalheadz changes all that.”
Looking back at the mid-90s, this maybe the reason why “Inner City Life” was pounded into my skull over and over on soundtracks and in compilations. Even Rabbit in the Hole’s remix of the song became almost as popular.
Then again it could also be the major success of the album, reaching #7 on the UK charts, the highest for a drum and bass album at the time. That alone made this song saturate the scene and create a household name for drum and bass, especially across the globe.
It was not until I listened to Timeless that I discovered “Inner City Life” was just part of a 21-minute soundscape of an urban jungle masterpiece. The song appropriately called “Timeless” which features the parts “Inner City Life,” “Pressure,” and “Jah” is a sonically moving piece with equal parts free-flowing and controlled chaos that spirals into a journey through industrialized interpretations like a living breathing machine. “Inner City Life” just seems to flow in and out of all of that.
This is also the song that international audiences had the chance to experience UK Top 10 vocalist Diane Charlemagne; she was lead singer for the band Urban Cookie Collective and later performed with Moby for his live tours.
Timeless cannot be mentioned without throwing Rob Playford’s name into the discussion. Playford (aka Timecode) (www.discogs.com/artist/Rob+Playford) has been referred to as “the busiest man in jungle.” He did most of the programming and production on this album, complimenting Goldie’s ideas and arrangements.
Goldie was a master at timescale-pitch modification, a process of changing the speed or duration of an audio signal without affecting its pitch. A great example dates back to 1992 and the song “Terminator,” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDnOIANwPJo&feature=related) an early Metalheadz experience, Goldie’s start-up label. Although not as drastic as on “Terminator,” the timescale-pitch modification method is also smoothed in throughout the Timeless album.
For Goldie, this was his life’s achievement, a decade in the making that reached back before “Terminator” fueled a dance floor of ecstasy-laden kids. Going from a Hip Hop graffiti artist background (his artwork adorns the album cover) to a DJ who revolutionized breakbeat beyond the basic element of the style, Timeless pushed the sound to revolutionary proportions .
You may not immediately recognize it but this album is an homage to the people of the past, the pioneers: Doc Scott, Grooverider, Kemistry, and others. This is also an artist with a lot of energy, anger, and passion for what he does. And with a dark past, Timeless may be as much a recognition as it is the light at the end of the tunnel, as “State Of Mind” clearly enunciates. “I played the game and felt the pain, but I am stronger now.”
“Sea of Tears” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvOozz7rmko) became the second standout track to the album and also the second longest. Whereas, “Inner City Life” was a look outward, “Sea of Tears” is a look inward and best demonstrates the mind of Goldie as it has its dark corners and a reflection of his upbringing (Mixmag, “The War Is Over,” by Tony Marcus: http://www.techno.de/mixmag/interviews/goldie.html).
This is his escape into sadness and beauty, a full reality. Timeless is an album that goes well beyond a progressive movement of electronic culture and has sealed its fate as an artist’s statement for the time. Although I would argue that LTJ Bukem had a more reactive role in the drum ‘n’ bass scene, I cannot argue the decision that Timeless was selected to be in Robert Dimery’s book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die if not for its action, for its art.
Cross-Reference: LTJ Bukem, Doc Scott, Rob Playford
Leftfield – Rhythm and Stealth
Leftfield
Rhythm and Stealth
1999 – Hard Hands
Origin: London, England
Style: Electronic
Leftfield may not have been about quantity, but the albums they did create really packed a wallop in the electronic scene. Some say they were redefining in the British House scene (http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/leftfield/albums/album/92360/review/5942344/rhythm_and_stealth) and even though they were right there on the front lines with bands like Underworld and Basement Jaxx, I would consider them to be more defining than redefining. Paul Daley and Neil Barnes were just two guys looking to progress the electronic atmosphere into the 21st Century instead of re-working what was already permeating the British airwaves. Or, crushing the airwaves as they were known to break sound ordinances with their piercingly loud live shows.
The duo saw its name on soundtracks to films like Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, Hackers, and others to re-workings by Sasha and Digweed and the songs being resonated in clubs like Renaissance (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=55993588).
You could consider the band now legendary. For one album (Leftism) to make such a huge impact on the dance floors, as The Face (July, 1999 issue) called it, it made the three-year wait in between albums excruciating for many to tolerate. At that point, Leftfield could have done anything they wanted, and the fact that another Leftfield album was in the works thrilled all electronic fans. The reason why it took so long is that the two didn’t know exactly what they wanted to do and ended up scrapping and rebuilding tunes left and right. And upon its release, it garnered many styles of reaction.
As Leftism showed a trance-like cosmos of electronic music Rhythm and Stealth showed a completely different side of the band. As the end of the ‘90s neared and pre-millennium tension was running high, Rhythm And Stealth was an album that encapsulated how we felt about the oncoming 21st Century, both terrifying and excited, an ironic statement given that Neil Barnes did not want to be involved with the social aspects that would saturate New Years Eve, 1999 (Seven, December 22, 1999). He ended up playing a small party with some friends that night, while Daley was in Sydney pumping up some club.
In a way, I consider Rhythm and Stealth to be the Peeping Tom of techno. Once Michael Powell made that controversial film, his chances of a mainstream career as a filmmaker had failed. It’s not like Rhythm and Stealth is controversial, but it was the Powell syndrome in reverse. Leftield already had became number one on many levels and this album, in particular, made the mark on the UK Record Chart, but critics were fuming when they got their taste of the electro breakbeat that became a running theme on the album. And even the band admits it in a Mixmag article that some people who loved Leftism may find Rhythm and Stealth too hard (Mixmag, September 1999).
The single of “Afrika Shox,” a teaming with Afrika Bambaataa best defines the confusion and tension of uncertainty we were facing as a human race at the end 20th Century as Bambaataa proclaimed, “Are you ready for the new age?” Unfortunately the song was more futuristic in construct than reality. But for Leftfield fans, this was not just a bold direction for the group but a dangerous one as they saturated their first single with electro. Musik Magazine claimed it to be “as eagerly anticipated as ‘The Phantom Menace’ and almost as disappointing” (http://www.leftfield-online.co.uk/reviews/afrikamuzik.htm), while NME called the song a “worryingly pedestrian piece of work” (http://www.leftfield-online.co.uk/reviews/afrikanme2.htm).
There were people who liked the song and its direction, but more so they were more impressed with the video that accompanied the piece showing a guy with an estranged paranoia stumbling around the city as his limbs shatter one-by-one like glass (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvxbFWY2Hsc).
“Dub Gussett” dives even more into electro acid house that sounds a lot like Ritchie Hawtin jonesing for a big phat beat.
Speaking of “phat,” what became more familiar to audiences and a more traditional Leftfield approach was “Phat Planet,” which we used in a UK Guinness ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAk2wUkmguk), which strange enough only looped the beginning sample. But that minute 40 seconds made such impact.
And as said at the beginning, the band pretty much did whatever they wanted, going from reggae dub humping (“Chant Of A Poor Man”) to a traditional late ‘80s house thumper (“Double Flash”) to an ethereal hip grinder (“Swords”).
What made this album so incredibly rich was how flawless the band became when jumping around through different styles. No matter where they were on the electronic gamut, you still knew Leftfield was behind the knobs.
Features ex-members of A Man Called Heaven, Brand New Heavies
Cross-Reference: Fluke, 808 State, Underworld
Heaven 17 – Self-Titled
Heaven 17
Self-Titled
1982 – Arista
Origin: Sheffield, England
Style: New Wave
Even though this is not a major release for the band, it is important in some aspects. Compiling both UK singles of Penthouse and Pavement and The Luxury Gap, this self-titled album is a greatest hits of sorts.
What it was really meant to do was give the U.S. audience an introductory sample of the band’s music with a resume of U.K. chart toppers.
The album features a selection of classics including “Let Me Go” and “(We Don’t Need That) Fascist Groove Thang,” two necessities within the ‘80s New Wave amalgam. The single versions of “Play To Win” and “Let Me Go” are used instead of the album version, which could be the only perk of buying this release compared to more modern-day collections of the band.
And for some reason, the more well-known “Temptation” was not included which is a shame being that is one of the better Heaven 17 songs. Nonetheless the album does a great job of summing up the band’s early career and the original album artwork is a classic ‘80s New Wave delight.
As for song specifics, I’ll save the closer look for each individual album. Unless you are a collector of the band or the genre, with better retrospective releases like Higher and Higher, this album is almost unnecessary to obtain.
But to make justice of space, here is an interesting perspective interview with Martyn Ware: (Red Bull Music Academy: 2007 Toronto Interview with Martyn Ware).
Features ex-members of Human League
Cross-Reference: Cabaret Voltaire, Human League, ABC
