"barely left a singe mark" - late Seventies pomp pop

Massive for a moment, but barely left a singe mark on Rock-Pop history

1.



The Motors - formed by former members of Ducks Deluxe  and Bram Tchaikovsky - got to #4 with "Airport" in 1978

They were sort of considered New Wave (two John Peel sessions) but they weren't really - more like pub rock, bloating slightly into pomp pop, like a less studio-savvy, less witty 10 c.c.


2.

City Boy -  " moderately successful English rock band in the late 1970s, characterised by complex vocal arrangements and heavy guitars", often accused of leaning too heavily on Queen and 10 c.c. for inspiration

This was their big hit.





This was their small hit.



3. 

Sniff 'n' the Tears - okay, not really Massive, but Radio One deejays supported this one quite heavily. And it was a hit in other territories, including the US where it got to #15. 

Sniff 'n' the Tears specialised in sexist and sometimes creepily disturbing record covers.  

It's coming from the same place  - late 1970s adult pop, cleverly arranged, cleanly produced, keyboard-hooky -- as things like Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" and Manfred Mann Earth Band's "Blinded By The Light", both of which are genuinely splendid, whereas you feel a bit wet for half-liking "Driver's Seat"

4. 

Sad Cafe - this lot are just cloying 




5. 
Sad Cafe made me think of Cafe Society, who weren't massive, but whose Tom Robinson went on to be a bit massive as TRB



On the Kinks's ill-fated label Konk

Here Tom drops the New Wave for a moment and reverts to pre-76 self, with a song co-written with Elton John




""The song appeared on Elton's 1980 album "21 at 33", but this is actually the original version! Sung and released as a single by Tom Robinson (famous for "Glad to be Gay") already in 1979. Robinson's version is openly gay, using only male pronouns, while Elton's version surprisingly disguises the orientation by using "she".



6/ Bethnal - not massive at all but they got a lot of press at the time, signed to a major label - considered New Wave but really more like The Who - the Seventies Who, mind, not the Who that inspired Jam and mod revival



I mean, just look at their album artwork - the whiff of Old Wave fair comes off it. Looks like it might have been done by someone on work experience at Hypgnosis

And they had a violinist in the band for Christ's sake



That barrel-chested Daltrey-esque vocal...



The clincher - a cover of "Baby O' Reilly"




7/ Fischer-Z

Their one hit, "The Worker" -  in the genre of  "Mr Jones", gently-mocking-the-office-drone-suburban-conformist type songs. Perhaps related to "What A Waste" by Ian Dury, "The British Way of Life" by The Chords, and, tenuously, "The Diary of Horace Wimp" by ELO and "Making Plans for Nigel" by XTC.



Not pomp pop, but clever-clever.




8/ And finally... the biggest of all the late Seventies pomp pop bands who have left barely a singe mark on history - THE BOOMTOWN RATS

Springsteen-retooled-as-New-Wave, keyboard-dominated.... they had two number ones, a whole bunch of other big hits....  yet few groups are less remembered, spawned smaller. 

Barefaced attempt to follow up "I Don't Like Mondays" with another song based on a real-life story of nihilistic youth tragedy 

Where they copping UB40 at this point? Minds blown by "King" and Signing Off? Or perhaps "Dreadlock Holiday"....

Wipes Away Syndrome

Heard this on the radio, shocked by how good it was. An original sound, at a time that abounded with original sounds.

Never actually listened to the whole of the album it's from

Underrated band, Simple Minds.

Another candidate for "Drops Away Syndrome".

But in their case, an example of how the latter half of their career almost completely erased the critical stature - even the memories - of the first part of it.

For a long time I just forgot about the existence of this masterpiece.

What a striking sound  -- somewhere between Low and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, but fronted by a de-bluesed Jim Morrison and with some "Working the Midnight Shift"/"Beat the Clock" worked in there too. Yet ending up sounding completely its own thing, to be neither followed up by the group or imitated by others

Then they started to get into their stadium stride. Never really got to grips with the Sons and Fascination / Sister Feelings Call  double slab of  sound - but loved these singles

"Sweat In Bullet" the first one I bought; the other two taped off Stubbs

And then this brace of beauties (although I think I only bought "Glittering Prize" - funds were tight!)

Even the next album had its moments, "Waterfront" and "Catwalk"

"Alive and Kicking" is where it's getting a bit overblown / positivity-bombastic. But "All The Things She Said" is quite nice - and you gotta oddly admire their unabashed uncool in the video

But then... oh dear

When they were bad, they were so very bad - hence the retroactive partial eclipse of their own prior majesty

So perhaps "Wipes Away Syndrome"?


(further reading - "from plateaux to platus: a tale of decline" i.e. my 1990 review of a Simple Minds box set)

orgone insane

female shriekers

The ongoing Kate Bush mass hysteria got me thinking about other female singers with shrill, soaring voices -- operatic or histrionic or she-warrior whooping. In the postpunk / New Wave era there were a whole bunch of them, although few of them, I suspect, would have acknowledged any affinity with Bush.  Like Bush, these were divisive voices -  fingernails-on-blackboard grating  and/or preposterous to some, sublime and uplifting and empowered to others.

Of exotic Eastern European origins (Serbian on her dad's side, she was born Lili-Marlene Premilovich), Lene Lovich had a couple of big UK hits, like the New Wave boppy "Lucky Number", and initially came over as a charming oddball but then got more operatic and (to most pop punters) off-putting with her later, much smaller hits like "Bird Song"


Then there was Nina Hagen, who had a whole pre-punk career in East Germany as singer of Automobil and then kookified herself in line with New Wave aesthetics

Like a cross between Ari Up and Klaus Nomi

In fact according to Wiki she trained in ballet and opera and was considered an "opera prodigy" aged nine.

Beating Bauhaus to this cover...

How about this potentially shrillgasmic team-up of Nina and Lene, who clearly recognised each other as kindred spirits of stratospheric warble....

Actually not as ear-shattering as you'd expect


In fact Nina actually covered Lene's biggest hit "Lucky Number" and out-showboated her

And then the warrior-chieftainess of suburban postpunk - Toyah Wilcox, whose band  - Toyah - were originally a sort of distaff Adam and the Antz (when the band had a 'Z' on the end) with indie-chart big seller Sheep Farming In Barnet -

Then she followed the trail blazed by Adam and the Ants (with a S on the end now -- less cultic and underground in vybe, more open for teenybop business)  into pop and the UK hit parade

Revealingly, she was originally, and remained primarily an actress  - Derek Jarman's Jubilee and The Tempest,  films, big theatre roles in stage productions by cutting-edge street-raw playrights,

A sort of thesped up, lisping Siouxsie

Once the missing link between Boadicea and Kirk Brandon.... nowadays she's a charming, oh-so-English, matronly-but-sexy figure, married to Bob Fripp, and what a lovely couple they make

There's others worth mentioning....

Pauline Murray, of astonishingly pure vocals, whose solo album backed by The Invisible Girls (Martin Hannett's lot) is soon to be reissued in deluxe expanded bonus-track-laden form by LTM / Les Disques Du Crepuscule

Poly Styrene and Siouxsie and Ari Up as pioneers

Over in the States, Missing Persons's Dale Bozzio

And Clare Grogan, in her early mode of Siouxsie-as-cutie, punkette pixie

Prototypes in pre-punk?

Grace Slick

Sonja Kristina from Curved Air

Who I hear a trace of in this Nina with Autombil tune

Oh, and a few more sort-of-vaguely connected New Wavers -- not so much shrieky as warbly in the case of the Modettes

And high-pitched but not vocally strong or imposing enough to really rank as a shrieker: Honey Bane

And how could I forget? Beki Bondage of Vice Squad, who judging by the interview bits really was the Kate Bush of punk -- so well spoken, so nice.




Indians In Moscow

And Danielle Dax - the Peel Band / DIY underground's very own equivalent to Bush perhaps - theatrical, fantastical of lyrics, produced her own music, fluctuating vocally.... perhaps more breathy than shrieky but still....







as one YouTube appreciator puts it, "if bowie and kate bush had produced a child this is what she would have sounded like...."

(via this cool Dissensus thread on the Late Night City Aesthetic)

Oooh that flickering gtr lick

Kinda like a jazz-funk E2-E4
 
The axeman finding the intersection between Manuel Gottsching and George Benson

 The concept of "late night city" and the (an)aesthetic of smoooooov made me think of two things:

1/ R&B station I tuned into while in London in the summer of 2004 - a weekday transmission, in the small hours -- which I blogged about here:

Choice FM, 96.9 (pirate or legal?), Mondays after-midnight--Jenny Francis "The Slowdown". The eroto-langourous mist of Co-Ed’s "My Place", underpinned with post-"Sexual Healing" 808 clave-poings and basspulse; the softcore pornhaze of Usher’s "Seduction"; Brandy’s Coldplay/"Clocks" piano sampling "Should I Stay". Slowjamz as ambient; put-you-in-the-mood music. Extremism of lushness/loveliness/luxuriance--refuting Noise-dogma as surely as Shirley Brown and The Dramatics did back in the day. Texted in, dedications to "Tulse Hill man dem." 

2/ Thomas Leer's "Tight As A Drum" from the incredible 4 Movements EP



Which I described (for the Rip It Up compilation on V2) thus:


"A tingling, tremulous mist of synthetic sighs and shivers, "Tight as a Drum"
captures the frayed euphoria of a young man who's made it through 'til
dawn's early light"

 
wow

so cool



people are clever

and the sounds are good too

Woebot send me some of Sculpture's stuff a while ago, but on a burned CD!

But I think I have one or other of their actual platters too somewhere.


(via Tiny Mix Tapes)

Berkhamsted's finest!

Berko band win Melody Maker 1974 National Rock Contest with their hard-riffing progressive sound!


But wait a minute!

That dude on the left with the Afro....

I recognise him....

He went on to play in Tubeway Army.

You can see him in the video for "Cars".

Cedric Sharpley!

Great drummer.

Dead now, sadly.

I saw him a couple of times in Berko. The occasion that's still vivid in my memory is Ced striding purposefully across the Lower Kings Road. Quite possibly on his way to the town's one record shop (not counting W.H. Smith and Woolies).

MM gave oddly extensive coverage to Druid after their triumph. There was quite a large piece on them, looking at their beginnings, the struggle of an up and coming band -  gig by slightly better gig, key decisions to invest in better equipment, and so forth. And then there was a later piece looking at their progress since winning the contest.

After Tubeway Army, Sharpley and some of his fellow Numan-minions formed the band Dramatis, with Gaz's support.

never saw the video for this beaut before, never knew it was based around the Prisoner!

Something about Scottish music at this time, a clarity, a fierce purity

s-s-s-scintillating