Entertainment For Lively Minds
Synth Brittania
! watched that new Synth Brittania two-parter that's coming to BBC4 anytime soon.
It was great, with loads of brilliant clips of run down late Seventies Britain, Top of the Pops performances, Swap Shop appearances, etc., and great interviews with members of long-forgotten bands, well-known bands, bands you never paid much attention to but will now and of course the most perfect soundtrack, with everyone from Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, to Kraftwerk, The Normal, Gary Numan and the Human League.
So it's all wonderful but as with all these things, it's let down by woeful research.
I really hope the copy I saw wasn't the final edit, as it's littered with factual errors. Ultravox's Vienna a hit in 1982? OMD having two hits in the same year both about Joan of Arc? Fade To Grey being THE hit of 1980? Deep sigh. I could go on.
How hard can it be to get your facts straight? The Guinness Book of Hit Singles must be knocking around the office somewhere. It's very poor, and of course once it's out there, it becomes fact and everything gets blurred. Lazy, very lazy.
But I do recommend the show. If you were 16 in 1981 then it's what you've been waiting for. Film of Croc's in Basildon, Kraftwerk, OMD and Yazoo - it's like a dream.
But it made the really good point that once Howard Jones got in on the act it was all but over as an exciting movement, as it had become totally mainstream.
Joanne Catherall has piled it on.
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1981
I was 12 in 1981, so I was just getting to the right age. And this was music that didn't really sound like anything that had gone before. Although really it did, but I wasn't aware of the full 20 minutes of Donna Summer doing Love To Love You Baby, or Kraftwerk or Roxy.
(Even now when I listen to Bowie's Berlin albums I think to myself, New Romantics...)
I've seen the bad research in other programmes though, and it bugs the hell out of me. It's like when they use music from the era in tv programmes. I really enjoyed Ashes To Ashes, but the music was all out of kilter.
OMD
Wasn't Joan of Arc and Maid of Orleans both 1981?
The one thing that really brings out my inner pedant is shoddy musical research. It's laziness nothing more. It's not even hard these days is it?? One frigging click!
Maid Of Orleans
came out in January 82, I know because I got the local record shop to order it, so I could buy it the week it came out. I was pretty strict about writing dates on my singles back then, probably in order for my future self to be geeky about it on music forums. Whilst sitting in silver foil spacesuits and wearing anti-gravity packs.
I was 16 in 1981 too
and remember being very impiressed by the sheer alien sound of the opening to one of the OMD singles, only to be very disappointed when it transformed into yet another bloody synth pop song.
For me, the whole synth thing wasn't that it was another instrument, but that it could do things completely different from all other instruments. And it seemed very few groups understood that properly (TG being a noble example).
you can't get better than -
the "Made in sheffield" documentary... it has all the gubbins and more in it!
http://www.sheffieldvision.com/aboutmis.html
got me back into cabaret voltaire and hunting down obscure electronic acts!
On the subject of getting
On the subject of getting your facts right, Crocs was in Rayleigh, not Basildon. Though Depeche Mode are from the unlovely new town and used to play at Crocs.
Sound of the Crowd
popped up on the radio in the car yesterday. Sounded fantastic.
Prompted The Light to throw a few angular shapes in the passenger seat. We then both giggled. Great tunes, happy days.
A hat with alignment worn inside
Yes, it's an absolute corker. I forget how good they were, in fact how good all that stuff was.
Not just of interest
to those of 16 in 1981. A very interesting time. I'll be looking out for this when it does appear.
Perhaps a crucial factor for studio recording (and thus commercial acceptance) is the way in which lots of things started to become more controllable/sequence-able.
Where would the Human League Mk2 have been without the programmed Linn drums and synths on their Martin Rushent-produced output?
That's all explained
lots and lots and lots of technology in this
Crocs...
Was not in Basildon; it was in Rayleigh, as any (Essex-born) fule kno. It was a grotty sticky-floored gig venue in the old-skool style. In the mid-80s it moved about a nanometre upmarket and reopened as (I think) The Pink Toothbrush.
Do I win today's Pedant Corner Prize?
P.
No
Someone already beat you to it
No,
Fraid not, because Ian P ^ ^ got there 3 hours before you :)
I Think You'll Find..
It's Pedants' Corner.
(Lynne Truss herself confirmed the position of the apostrophe here so anyone else can sod off.)
Although it should really be The Corner Wherein May Be Found Those Who Derive Pleasure From The Application Of Pedantry.
So there.
The Eye recently renamed their column 'Pedantry Corner'
to end the argument once and for all
The Telly Prog
Sounds great.
Especially if there's lots of technical stuff which I can pretend to understand.