Soft Cell -- classic or dud?

What I meant to say, is I think "Down In The Subway" is Soft Cell's best cover. Feel free to disagree, as I'm sure you all do.

the 12" of "say hello" (which might, on the day of reckoning, just end up being my favourite song in the world)

i've just finished copying a dusty HD's worth of old MP3s on to my new(ish) mac. out of several thousand, this is the one i went straight to and played.

i don't think i'd change a word of what i wrote there, either.

I just rediscovered Non-stop Erotic Cabaret. God I love this album. Is it a bad thing that it kind-of speaks to me?

What, do you identify with being a sex dwarf?

haha, no. Just the feeling and attitude of grubby urban vice and disappointment.

xpost
Bored suburban housewife?

Nah. My friends were weirdo eccentrics and we'd go out and do the club thing, be weird, do drugs, etc. and my father was some button-down guy who secretly picked up trannies in 1980s Time Square ... and would disappear in prison for weeks (we were told he was working late). My highschool best friend (who's now dying of AIDS sadly) looks exactly like Marc Almond, so maybe that, too.

Anyway, this is a great album. Soft Cell A+

my father was some button-down guy who secretly picked up trannies in 1980s Time Square ... and would disappear in prison for weeks (we were told he was working late)

Exactly what was the explanation for weekends, then.

No idea. We just thought he was working. What a weird upbringing. Anyway, Marc Almond really does irony well just using music ... I didn't appreciate it until now.

yeah, anyone who can cameo as well as he did in the frickin' Coil "Tainted Love" video can operate on a level higher than an "is it irony or not?" type thing.

I just learned what a "bedsit" is and boy did I have that song wrong. I thought a bedsit was like a babysitter for grown-ups? Which I knew made no sense because he was "all alone," but I thought maybe he felt alone spiritually next to the cold panoptic eye of this freaky adult babysitter. That and sometimes it's foolish to try & make sense of lyrics but maybe I should've tried harder with this one by employing a dictionary instead of totally making shit up.

Another hypothesis was a "bedsit" was a person who works at a spanking parlor? I feel kind of embarrassed by all this but you have to admit such a figure would fit in the general Soft Cell world.

I like all these alternate interpretations!

i have recently found that i quite like soft cell. not always as music (they have only a small handful of songs i hold close), but as characters, as performance, as a wonderful thing that existed in the world. like suicide, they transmute rock & pop into this wholly other language, the rinky-dink chintz of the sounds a perfect foil for marc's arch sleaze and coy torment. also enjoying the way their music and attitude - perhaps in turn channeling throbbing gristle's? - leach out into their followers and contemporaries, usually in more "palatable" (less explicitly queer) guise. berlin's "sex (i'm a)", eurythmics' "love is a stranger", even ebn-ozn's "aeiou sometimes y"...

classic burt itt

i guess everything i just said is a cliche, the received wisdom, soft cell 101, but i never really gave them a fair shake at the time and have been entertaining myself recently playing russian roulette with nostalgia. "talk talk" vs. "it's my life", that kind of thing.

I still can't believe a bedsit is just a place a person lives in.

that it is literally his (only) home
I think about this every day.

what kind of question is this, who would ever say dud?

The original video for Sex Dwarf remains disturbingly impressive:

http://vimeo.com/10458506

(NSFW and probably illegal in a few states.)

oh man i wanna watch that but i'm at W
..Cabaret is the best €2 purchase I made this year

NSEC is one of those albums that sold because of the hit single, only to surprise/shock said buyers that the single isn't remotely representative of their style. Sometimes, discovering that can be a good thing. This time, it is.

Here doggy doggy

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/soft_cells_infamous_sex_dwarf_video_nsfw

now that looks like a good time

...is currently banned from YouTube.

Nope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=470l3j-56CY

I don't know how anyone could call the band who made that video a dud.

I never got into Soft Cell as much as I did other bands from that period, but I still enjoy listening to that first album from time to time.

The extended Torch is extraordinary. Their best moment, I think. Loving this tonight.

NON-STOP EROTIC CABARET is one of the best albums of the 80s. It has aged like fine wine. Little known secret: Soft Cell's videos are amongst the best of all-time. They were all directed (AFAIK) by Tim Pope, who worked extensively with The Cure.

Chilling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz_x1Arnuw0

When I finally read the book it worked even more brilliantly, though they are two different beasts in the end.

Go Alfred!

http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/soft-cell-feature

thanks!

Really great in-depth feature on The Art of Falling Apart here at the Quietus today

http://thequietus.com/articles/14100-soft-cell-interview-marc-almond

I can't stop listening to This Last In Sodom at the moment... while not the most accessible Soft Cell album, there's something about it that keeps making me return to it a lot at the moment. 'Slave To This', for one, is just insane and wonderful.

This Last Night In Sodom, rather.

and oh my god, 'Surrender To A Stranger'...

Great, scuzzy and insane album. My favorite of theirs by a mile.

The Art of Falling Apart is my favourite but some of my favourite songs of theirs are on Sodom. Little Rough Rhinestone, Meet Murder My Angel and Soul Inside are all so good. It does have its weaker moments, Slave to This still creeps me out a little too much and Down in the Subway is the only weak Soft Cell single.

I've occasionally read Sodom being described as "unlistenable", but that's absolute bollocks really. It does have an attitude to it that I don't seem to get from the other two Soft Cell albums, though. A synth-punk from a time when mainstream synth-pop was getting increasingly chirpier.

*album

Neil Tennant's review of This Last Night In Sodom from Smash Hits:

Out with a bang. For their final LP together Marc Almond and David Ball have put together a hot, rockin' collection of new songs about sin, squalot, suffering etc. The rock'n'roll rhythm of 'Down In The Subway' isn't restricted to that track; several others, particularly 'Mr Self Destruct' could be jived to with ease. Others are steeped in a luscious, Spanish sensuousness, hot and revengeful, with richly textured synthesizers and a twangy guitar. A triumphant farewell. (8.5 out of 10)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h2SS-sSMfY

So I'm listening to 'Fun City' for what must be the hundredth time now, and it still hasn't lost any of its power. Their best ever song? I'm beginning to think so.

I'm listening to This Last Night In Sodom again and... man, this album is just fucking incredible. Why aren't this and The Art Of Falling Apart seen as being up there with the first album? They're all excellent!

Trudat!

Thirded! (is it really mono though? I never noticed)

Some of the tracks are, yes!