RECORD MIRROR Singles Reviews, 30th August 1980

What could have been.

The run of Buzzcocks singles already compiled on Singles: Going Steady was so perfect that it somehow closed a chapter on them. The next single ("You Say You Don't Love Me") flopped, and this, the first of three 1980 releases in quick succession, was the their final chart entry. Lacking the pristine modernistic sheen of their hits, there's a roughness to both sides which feels retrograde. I'm more familiar with Heaven 17's 1981 B-side cover of "Are Everything", and I still prefer it. As for "Chainstore", I want to hear a Diggle vocal on a Buzzcocks track about as often as a Ringo vocal on a Beatles track, and "Harmony In My Head" thus sufficed. (NB. there's one thing that the Buzzcocks have in common with Genesis: they both replaced their departing original singers with remarkably similar-sounding existing band members.)

While familiar with both of Stewart Copeland's 1978 singles as Klark Kent ("Too Kool To Kalypso" and "Don't Care"), "Rich In A Ditch" passed me by. Copeland plays all the instruments himself, which is fine, but he's no singer, and singing about wanting to be rich ("I don't wanna work in a ditch") is an odd thing for him to be doing in 1980.

I've just learnt about the strange evolutionary afterlife of YMO's "Behind The Mask": recorded by Michael Jackson with his own lyrics during the Thriller sessions (and posthumously released in 2010), a US club hit for Greg Phillinganes in 1985, a UK Top 20 hit for Eric Clapton in 1987 (both using Jackson's lyrics), each version getting less synthy and more rocky. Play the Clapton next to the YMO, and there's barely anything left of the original. I'm getting strong Daft Punk vibes off the original.

Mike Nicholls dismisses YMO as superficial and empty, then bizarrely expresses a preference for Jezz Woodroffe's thin synth doodle ("catchier and more creative", like REALLY?), perhaps weighted by Woodroffe's minor Black Sabbath connection (as "Gerald Woodruffe", he played keyboards on Technical Ecstasy in 1976).

"Peaches" was Darts' penultimate chart entry, and so much of a retread of "The Boy From New York City" as to render it pointless. That said, it still feels wrong that they were outlasted by ShowaddyBloodyWaddy.

Formed from the ashes of Stackridge, The Korgis failed to match the success of their two big hits, but this is decent and probably deserved better. Their switch from prog to pop was elegantly handled, and Andy Davis (who played acoustic guitar on Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth" and "Oh Yoko") later toured with Goldfrapp, also guesting on their first two albums. Fair play to him.

The VIPs were one many bands that were lumped in with the much-hyped but under-delivering mod revival, and "The Quarter Moon", their only chart entry, sounds like Marc Bolan playing Merseybeat, which isn't such a bad thing. It was produced by Mike Leander, and the sax was played by Rudi Thompson, formerly of X-Ray Spex (and then playing in a band called The Outpatients with Paul Dean (also ex-Spex) and a workmate of mine whose brother was in The Members, but I digress). Jed Dmochowski from The VIPs pops up on YouTube, saying "I remember writing this at home in my attic bedroom, looking out at the sky for inspiration one night and seeing the quarter moon. It's about comforting someone after some sort of trauma, and how powerful that can be."

"I don't want no liberated woman in my house", sing Beat-wannabe flash-in-the-pans The A.T.'s (geddit?), so they can fuck off. Fun fact: bassist Neil Deamer ended up in ex-Korgi Andy Davis's backing band in the mid-90s. Look, I'm trying, OK.

Fronted by ex-Steel Pulse singer Michael Riley (aka Mykaell Riley, who formed the Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra and remixed East 17 and Bjork), black London ska band Headline drastically speed up The Folks Brothers & Count Ossie Afro-Combo's Prince Buster-produced 1960 bluebeat classic "Carolina", later sampled by Shaggy to chart-topping effect. The original remains fantastic.

I might do some more write-ups later, but it's a busy weekend.

Don't forget the Senor Coconut cover of 'Behind The Mask' which I am also a complete sucker for.

Released on short-lived Manchester indie label Absurd Records, Cairo's "Movie Stars" is an undistinguished generic ska follow-up to their only other single, the better and less frantic "I Like Bluebeat". Some obscure records are obscure for a reason.

I was too young ever to see The Rezillos live (a matter of some regret, as I loved them right from their very start), but I caught Fay Fife & Eugene Reynolds' spin-off band The Revillos at the back end of the year, and briefly dated one of their costume designers. This rather pallid Johnny Kidd & The Pirates cover does not showcase them at their best. Try Where's The Boy For Me? or Motorbike Beat instead, they're great.

Spider's "Everything Is Alright" is one of the first recorded compositions by Holly Knight, then their keyboardist, who went on to huge success as a songwriter during the 1980s (e.g. Tina Turner "The Best", Pat Benatar "Love Is A Battlefield", Animotion "Obsession", all of which help to explain why this efficient, polished and bloodless piece of drivetime AOR leaves me cold).

"Wild In The Streets" was the only release for Pin-Ups, and there the trail goes cold.

According to their press release, The Trend "germinated in the hills of the Pennines". Their first three singles were self-penned, but for this, their final release before reforming in the mid-2010s, it looks as if MCA had pushed them into the unlikely hands of Tony Macauley ("Build Me Up Buttercup", "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes", "Silver Lady"), who wrote and produced it. To the old lag's credit, he does a serviceable Springsteen-esque power pop job, and it's a shame that it only exists online in such a rough recording.

I dimly recall "The Russians Are Coming" getting some evening airplay on Radio One (it's a very 1980 Mike Read Show type of record), but it was the first and last single for East Dulwich's Shadowfax, and the sole release on their own Risky Discs label. Although it sounds like power pop, the band's image was more hard rock, and so they've been catalogued on a NWOBHM site, which details the grim fates of three of the band members, and one of their managers.

Durham's The Carpettes started out as bog standard second-generation 1977 punk rock, of the sort that John Peel became overly fond of, and they recorded two sessions for Peel during 1978. By 1979's "I Don't Mean It", which I clearly remember, they were nudging towards power pop, and by 1980 their quest to sound like a Jags tribute band was complete.

Best known in the UK for "One Rule For You", a minor chart hit but major radio airplay hit from summer 1979, and in the US for an English language cover of Falco's "Der Komissar" that reached #5 in 1983, Christian pop-rockers After The Fire were obvious candidates for the Mike Read treatment, and between 1978 and 1983 they chugged along comfortably, with sufficient modest recognition to keep them viable. If Alan Tarney had ever produced Nick Lowe, it might have turned out something like "Love Will Always Make You Cry".

Best known for "Hold On", a 1979 #18 hit in the US, Ian Gomm had been in Brinsley Schwarz with Nick Lowe, and he co-wrote "Cruel To Be Kind" with Lowe. "Jealousy" fits comfortably into that whole Rockpile/Graham Parker/Elvis Costello slipstream, but without anything else to distinguish it, and its YouTube/Spotify play counts are very low.

Taken from her fourth and final LP for DJM, Jenny Darren's self-penned, "Ashes To Ashes"-biting "Lover", her ninth of ten singles, fared as poorly as the rest of her output - which included the original version of "Heartbreaker", re-jigged a year later by Pat Benatar into her first hit record. Jenny Darren finally got her five minutes of fame in 2018, when she performed "Highway To Hell" on Britain's Got Talent, aged 68, when she gamely submitted to their "frumpy grandma strips to reveal leather-clad rock chick" narrative.

Accidentally reviewed by Mike Nicholls as the lead track, when in fact it was the B-side to "I'm Alright", the theme from Caddyshack, "Lead The Way" is a completely forgettable orchestrated ballad; meanwhile the sprightlier, Buckingham-esque "I'm Alright" reached #7 in the US. Nicholls would make the same mistake again further down this column.

Love that Loggins story ^^

And the passwords joke

Released on short-lived Manchester indie label Absurd Records, Cairo's "Movie Stars" is an undistinguished generic ska follow-up to their only other single, the better and less frantic "I Like Bluebeat". Some obscure records are obscure for a reason.

I'm very partial to Cairo's "I Like Bluebeat", possibly for nostalgic reasions as it was always on Radio 1 in the evenings (Mike Read show?) while I was doing my homework.

There were actually 2 versions of "I Like Bluebeat" out almost simultaneously, the other one by The Outline and not as good imo. I always wondered what that was all about. Any idea mike?

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

The Outline and Cairo were actually the same band. The Outline's version is earlier, before they changed their name, and Cairo's version, while extremely similar, is more produced. One version of the single actually has both recordings, separately credited to both band names.

It was some sort of licensing deal, apparently Absurd said "never again"...

Perhaps unsurprisingly the only songs I know here are the Michael Schenker and the Scorpions. I like the Schenker better.

Schenker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44zFCZ4nitQ

Scorpions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X27IfAgzhTY

thanks! x post

the zoo rules.

Its title is the only even vaguely interesting feature of "No Mo Do Yakamo", a lacklustre will-this-do chug which cemented Dr Feelgood's status as former hitmakers, and which, with pointedly cruel timing, was reviewed in the same week that Ian Dury & The Blockheads' "I Want To Be Straight" (featuring the recently joined Wilko Johnson) entered the singles chart.

And while we're paddling in the spillage of pub rock, here's the third and final single from Charles Shaar Murray's alter ego, Blast Furnace (formerly "and The Heatwaves", until Rod Temperton's band took them to court). Featuring Bob Geldof and Phil Lynott on backing vocals, "Can't Stop The Boy" first appeared on the B-side of the band's 1978 debut EP release, and its chummy references to Dee Dee Ramone and The Boomtown Rats already sound two years out of date.

Although "I Still Remember It" is a tidy and effective little slice of power pop, The Hitmen sounded less generic and more characterful on their best known single, "Bates Motel" (1981). At some point in their brief career, the line-up featured Alan Wilder, later of Depeche Mode, but he's not playing on this one. Most of the other band members did OK after they split: the singer joined Youth and Jimmy Cauty in Brilliant, before forming Juno Reactor; the guitarist wrote and produced for Kirsty MacColl, Alison Moyet, Terence Trent D'Arby, Anni-Frid Lyngstad etc; the bassist became Nick Lowe's producer for over 20 years, and worked with Bryan Ferry and others.

Earlier in 1980, I saw Manicured Noise at the Lyceum, at the bottom of a bill which also featured, in order, The Teardrop Explodes, Echo & The Bunnymen (I fell asleep), A Certain Ratio (I woke up) and the Psychedelic Furs. I remember them as more scratchy/angsty/angular/post-punky than this more, uh, manicured recording. Their second single (which was covered by Shack in 1998), it followed "Metronome", which sounds closer to the way I remember them.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Can’t quite work out Mr Nicholls. Tempted to vote for the enjoyable After the Fire in reaction to him lambasting them as “perennial wimps”. I googled him and the top result was home raving over noted macho man Elvis Costello so 🤷‍♂️.

Home = him

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php/Record_Mirror,_March_14,_1981

I quite like the Classix Nouveaux track but it does also sound like a Flight of the Conchords parody of the era.

I love these threads btw, especially the move to Record Mirror with the extra weirdness. The playlists alone are a great way of dropping into another time without the filter of modern day preferences.

Hitmen->Brilliant->Juno Reactor! Charles Shaar Murray! Who knew? mike t-diva knew. Good stuff.

Classix Nouveaux were originally conceived as a vehicle for X-Ray Spex after Poly Styrene left in 1979, and an advert was placed in Melody Maker looking for her replacement. Sal Solo answered the ad and got the gig, but only two ex-Spexers (guitarist Jak Airport and drummer B.P. Hurding) actually joined the new band (Rudi Thomson and Paul Dean ending up with my workmate Paddy Carroll in The Outpatients, see above). By the time that "The Robots Dance", their debut single, was released on their own ESP label (the label's only release, as they signed to Liberty later in 1980), Jak Airport had already left the band, who had by then been lumped in with the emerging New Romantic scene, rather to their surprise. The track sounds to me like a bridge between the post-punk that dominated at the start of the year, and the futurism that had just begun its ascendancy (we're still exactly two months away from the release of Spandau's "To Cut A Long Story Short", which would properly kickstart the column inches).

I first read about The Motels in Punk in late 1976, but the original line-up split up in 1977, reforming in 1978 with just singer Martha Davis and guitarist Jeff Jourard remaining from the first line-up. They'd already had a Top 10 hit in Australia with "Total Control" in 1979, and they wouldn't crack the US chart until 1982 with "Only The Lonely", but in the interim they had two minor UK hits with "Days Are OK" and "Whose Problem", its immediate predecessor (both recorded after Jeff Jourard had left). "Whose Problem" is my best discovery of this poll, which slips neatly into its post-Pretenders times; it's immensely pleasurable, and I might yet vote for it.

Jeff Scott & The Hitmakers "Keep On Proving It" can't be found online, and it remains rare, selling for around £35 on Discogs. The weedy-voiced Jeff Scott's other two choppy power pop singles - one solo, another with the Hitmakers - are all on YouTube, and sell for similar amounts. They're nothing special.

Despite Mike Nicholls' perplexing praise and predictions of future greatness, Live Wire plodded on hitlessly until 1981, during which time they released three flop albums for A&M. As with Jenny Darren's extended tenure at DJM, you do wonder why they were given so many chances; this is dreary, pedestrian stuff.

For a band much lauded for their intelligence, XTC's "Generals And Majors" offers a pretty facile commentary on the armed forces, rendered more facile still by its video, featuring Richard Branson. Andy Partridge thought so too, commenting that Branson only appeared "because he's a complete publicity hog. He decided he was gonna turn up and keep suggesting that he be in the video. That is the worst video ever made by man".

As with Kenny Loggins above, that silly old Mike Nicholls accidentally reviews the B-side of The Upset's only single, "Hurt". I saw tons of bands like The Upset in support slots during 1980 - there was an absolute glut of them - so it made sense for three of the band (who had supported Dexys on tour) to quickly jump ship and join forces with five ex-Dexys (including Mick Talbot) in The Bureau.

Cathy La Creme's John Cooper Clarke pisstake is nicely done, her vocals reminding me of Yorkshire punk poet Joolz Denby.

"West One (Shine On Me)" is the only one here that I ended up owning on vinyl, as it appeared in the autumn on a cheap Virgin compilation called Cash Cows. Malcolm Owen, who had been fired for his heroin habit and then re-hired, had fatally OD-ed six weeks earlier, making this their final single. I'm torn between voting for this and The Motels.

It would be good if we could poll one of James Hamilton’s disco review columns from Record Mirror. Early 80s ones were pretty interesting with disco, soul, early rap, electro and dance friendly rock all featuring.

Yeah, I can easily do one of those next, as I've been turning them all into a blog over the past four years (started at 1975, now up to 1989). https://jameshamiltonsdiscopage.com/

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

Honourable set of votes there. The Ruts deserved more, it's a fine track and an indication that they would have gone on to greater glories.

Agreed re. The Ruts. That's a resounding mandate for YMO and XTC. Not really getting the love for the latter, but the people have spoken.

The Ruts track is miles better than the XTC track and I speak as an XTC fan of old. Can't quibble with YMO tho.

New poll: RECORD MIRROR James Hamilton's Disco Page, 15th September 1979