Tears for Fears: C or D?

DESTROY: Everything after SONGS FROM THE BIG CHAIR

Not sure about that 'last New Wave' bad claim.

Woman in Chains. No!

I just bought a v.cheap compilation in Fopp - they weren't very good is my expert opinion. "Pale Shelter" is pretty smart though. Spandau Ballet did it all with much more panache.

My wife was *B L A S T I N G* Spandau Ballet all day yesterday (courtesy of the GOLD best-of,.....god help us).

TFF-wise again, yes...."Woman in Chains" is gawdawful. But there's simply no arguing with "Change," "Pale Shelter" and "Mad World." Hell, I still love "Shout" and "Head over Heels" as well.

Spandau Ballet, though? There is a special circle in Hell reserved for me where that is all they play.

I don't really see what Spandau Ballet have got to do with it, Tom.

And "Sowing the Seeds" is quite perfect, for what it is, which is the best Beatles homage that XTC was too anal to ever truly accomplish. Partridge actually did a fair amount of mentoring for Roland and Curt--I bet he was pissed off when they outdid him on this one.

My crackpot theory: Tears for Fears was not a very original band at all, but every time they took on a challenge they met it. I am at work now so I can't spend time defending this theory. Maybe I'll start a blog or something.

My son's favorite song these days is "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," which he was singing while sitting on the toilet this morning. (He's four, so it's still cute.) At least he wasn't singing his second fave: "Shout, shout, let it all out..."

Always thought it sounded too much like Elton John slaughtering "I Am the Walrus."

Early SB is full of angst!

Great news is that Roland and Curt are now back together recording a new Tears for Fears album. And about time, too.

TfF, on the other hand started out as repressed middle-class Montessori school weirdos - ten years earlier they woulda been into Genesis... the first two lps really define 80s progpop (see also Blancmange, Kershaw, Jones). They got into "soul" in the same way someone like Peter Gabriel did - as though they at last had found their "true voice" and got a bit less uptight, but more pompous (and less fun).

I had a wonderful emotional experience with an unintentional soundtrack of "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" late last year, which makes it hard for me to discuss the song objectively. I've always thought it was TFF's best moment.

I do sooo love "Head Over Heels," "Shout," "Everybody Wants To..."

"Sowing The Seeds Of Love" rocked my world as much as any other cassingle. My mom wouldn't let me by the album cuz she looked at the song listing and noticed "Woman In Chains" "Bad Man's Song" and the songs about Knives and assumed they were metal or something, or at least violent and mysoginist.

They were pompous assholes though. I never liked "Change" but after I saw the video on VH1 Classic I turned around. Orzabal looked so cute dancing around with those kabuki people.

Relatively smart new wavers=classic, definitely

Oh please......labels labels labels. Boring boring boring.

Blancmange were a brilliant, witty, much underrated band who should've been a whole lot bigger than they ever were.

Progpop? I smile as I type it, even......

spandau were better cz there were more of them

http://www.btinternet.com/~d.i.w/Dublin_Castle_210401.htm

you can see what Blancmange vocalist Neil Arthur is up to now. Click around the place and you might even see me!

I don't see what the problem is with calling Blancmange, TfF, Howard and Nik etc etc progpop - it was lots of people who in a previous time would have been making concept albums but because of synthesizers/not having to form a band/no need for drum solos - wound up making daft - often enjoyable - synthpop instead. Part of the fun of it and the reason it was so odd, was that they really didn't have a feeling for/much knowledge of pop - which divides them from popswots/Bowieboyz like ABC, Human League, even Spandau Ballet...

Jerry - I'm a label-phobe through and through. I hate the determination people seem to have with 'boxing' and 'labelling' music. It's so, so pointless. And 'progpop' is a new one even by me.

Nah, Blancmange were musicians, not flimsy synthy pop. And bloody good songwriters, too (we can forgive them 'The day before you came'....).

I think Jerry nailed it, actually. Also the TFF best of has been growing on me, chiz chiz.

(But Spandau were still better.)

Spandau wins because they seem at all times to be saying something, unlike Duran Duran who should have just gone ahead and sung in fake Esperanto

Pre-Tears For Fears Graduate appearing on Mike Reid's Runaround children's quiz show in 1980! What a strange (and not very good) band, what were they trying to be? Now a-gih a-gih a-gih gooooooooooo!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Il4Sh9TQQ

kind of a new wave take on 60s mod pop?

really hate that madness-esque turnaround thing at the end of the verses

when i say that madness-esque turnaround thing, i might actually mean ian dury-esque, but you know what i mean

New wave take on mod with a fucking flute?

weren't there some mod/garage/freakbeat-type bands with flutes? like the troggs or someone

I'm not saying it's not a weird thing btw, just groping for some sort of context

what were they trying to be?

PJ Harvey

(xp) "Wild Thing" had an ocarina on it. Never mind the mod thing though how many new wave acts had a flautist in their ranks?

(xp) lol

I read "ocarina" as "cocaine"

Annie Lennox was a flautist, there's flute on a couple of Eurythmics tracks. Not sure she ever used it in the Tourists though (I have never listened to the Tourists)

But that's by the bye really, the flute on that song is very much part of its 60s-ness imo, the new wave bit is the production and clunky chorus

Plenty of flute examples in and around the era. Genesis and Jethro Tull (of course); Tears for Fears love their prog. But "Down Under" was only the next year, and not long before we get to "One Night in Bangkok." That TFF song def. sounds more like the '60s than 1980 to me, disco-y Ian Dury turnaround bit aside.

Kraftwerk had flute through Autobahn

not sure they were going for a prog thing really, this was how they were presenting themselves at the time...

https://bluehatrecords.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/elvis-should-play-ska-flyer-with-tour-dates.jpg

uncanny how the logo on the kick drum resembles a 'play' icon, that was clever of them

I'd say they were just young and confused because the flute calls to mind capering prog folk before it does the groovy 60s.

yes to young and confused plus also throwing whatever instruments they'd learned as kids into the mix, just cos it seemed like a good idea at the time

some more footage here that has them sounding somehwere between xtc, secret affair and madness

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

“Elvis Should Play Ska”. A light jab at Elvis Costello, after the famous rocker took a swipe at the genre, the track is filled with the up-strummed chords, a spiky guitar solo and some fantastic drumming. No horns, but the track is so bouncy and catchy they aren’t really needed.

Wonder if this song was written before 2 Tone took off. The skank of "Detectives" and "Chelsea" seems an odd thing to object to.

The album is pretty good IIRC but then I like this sort of thing.

Elvis Costello, after the famous rocker took a swipe at the genre

Wait, what? At the least EC was pretty tuned in to and in tune with 2 Tone.

kind of interesting that Mark Hollis started out making fairly similar music in The Reaction as their careers maybe followed somewhat similar paths through the 80s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlxZ8FW2q8g

xp I took it as a bad choice of words and what they meant was Elvis having done skaish tunes

more like "took a stab" perhaps?

They sound more like XTC than anyone else tbh. The mod connection seems like a bit of bandwagon jumping.

would imagine that xtc's influence was pretty strong in that part of the country

Indeed!

was actually living somewhere between bath and swindon at that time, but would've been too young to have recognized the pungent scent of partridge in the breeze

That I know or have known numerous people who went to school with TFF is one of my not-at-all-claims-to-fame-but-I-like-mentioning-it

were they too visible from westbury white horse?

watched this live a couple weeks back, Curt Smith performing Mad World at a temple here in L.A.

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

xp Probably not - Beckford's Tower is the main spot in Bath to see the horse

my username is v. shit but that's what I get for making an account here about eight years before I began posting

I read "ocarina" as "cocaine"

― hat trick of trashiness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

the legend of zelda: cocaine of time

Trying to remember the Chris Morris quote about Sowing The Seeds Of Love.

Really had no idea Orzabal and Smith had made music like this. I always thought "kick out the Style, bring back the Jam" was a weird line because TFF are closer to the Style, but now I'm rethinking things

The album is pretty good IIRC but then I like this sort of thing.

What sort of thing is it though?

Tuneful jerky new wave+power pop hinterland

There was this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBq6pBhyNq8