Tag Archives: 1980s

Catching up on music with… KMFDM

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I do have a soft spot (heh) for industrial music. I don’t listen to it all that often, but I’ve loved it since I first heard those dance beats, clanky percussion and crunchy guitars in the late 80s with bands like DAF and Front 242 and Skinny Puppy and Ministry. Which means I was into it well before all those sci-fi action films of the 90s used this genre for all those martial arts fight scenes! [Looking at you, Mortal Kombat and Matrix movies!]

I used to see KMFDM at the indie record stores all the time, which is a surprise considering Wax Trax! releases (the label they’d been on for years) weren’t always easy to find. They’ve been around since the early 80s themselves, starting out in Germany and eventually emigrating to the States. I’m pretty sure I’d heard one or two of their songs on WAMH back in 1988-89, as there was an industrial/techno/EBM show that would play stuff like this.

I owned only a few of their CDs back in the day, but I’d throw them on now and again when I needed the boost for something that would fit the Mendaihu Universe’s more tense moments that I was writing at the time. [Interestingly enough, this is the kind of music Alec Poe would listen to, which goes quite against the laid back aura he puts out through most of the trilogy. It’s all under the skin and hidden away with him.]

They’re still around these days, having dropped an original album (Let Go) early last year and a revisit of an older album this year (Hau Ruck 2025). They may not get a lot of airplay, but they’re definitely an interesting band to check out.

I Had My MTV

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I’ll freely admit that I’m firmly on the Gen-Xer side of ‘remembering MTV back when it played music videos’. We’re talking the early 80s here, back when my family signed up for cable TV via Warner Amex. I’d heard about the channel via its mention in music magazines like Rolling Stone and its occasional “I want my MTV” commercial showing up here and there. The first videos I remember seeing on the channel was .38 Special’s “Hold On Loosely” and The Police’s “Spirits in the Material World”. It was sometime in 1982, and I was already well entrenched in rock radio and American Top 40, even at eleven years old. I was completely hooked.

I think what appealed to me, even as a preteen, was the fact that the channel tried so hard to be at the forefront of music culture, yet also felt like one of those low-budget community access channels where the production teams and the on-air hosts really didn’t know what the hell they were doing half the time. That was part of its charm! They knew enough to replay all the music videos that got a positive reaction from its viewers, but they weren’t afraid to insert weird things like Blotto’s “I Wanna Be a Lifeguard” or Yello’s “The Evening’s Young” to keep us on our toes. Hell, I even loved those one or two minute bumper fillers that were basically public domain films set to nameless instrumentals.

I bring this up following the recent news that the channel has chosen to shut down all of its UK channels by the end of the year, with the possibility of more channels in other countries going the way of the buffalo as well. Not that anyone is surprised these days, considering that the original channel plays reality shows and the tertiary smaller channels are mostly available via cable TV packages.

Most music videos show up on YouTube and TikTok these days, and that might be a good thing when you want to watch the new Taylor Swift video now instead of waiting for it to show up at some point in the next hour or so. But what we miss, just like streaming versus terrestrial radio, is two-fold: we miss out on the slow anticipation that our favorite band or singer will show up like some kind of mini-event, and we miss out on the potential discovery of music we might otherwise not have noticed on the way there.

I don’t necessarily miss those MTV days of yore. I’ve got a lot of great memories, and I’m glad I was there to witness the world premieres and the unscripted moments and the holiday countdowns. I’m thrilled that I was part of the era that got to see all those amazing bands and singers grow and evolve into world-dominating celebrities. I’m especially thankful that it played an extremely influential part in my life when I discovered 120 Minutes.

It was a specific point in time, just slightly ahead of the curve and unafraid to take chances. It was an era of two completely different iterations of pop music — the US and the UK — crashing into each other, influencing each side of the Atlantic and reaching out into the cosmos with something new and fascinating. It influenced the sound of rock and pop for decades to come, allowing it to evolve in unexpected directions.

Now that we have instant gratification at our internet fingertips, having that kind of cable channel doesn’t quite have the power and the reach that it once did. Sure, had they the budget and the creativity and less of the stakeholder influence, MTV itself could have evolved into something unique. Instead, it slowly faded away into yet another benchwarmer channel playing innocuous reality shows and viral videos of people doing stupid things.

That’s the one thing I wish had been different about the channel as it got older and less influential: it could have gone out on a high note rather than limping along well past its lifespan.

Flashback: long-form Duran Duran videos

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For completely random reasons, I was thinking the other day about those super extended Duran Duran videos of the day. You know the ones, where Simon would do some completely random quoting of Shakespeare, extras would be acting out some weird interpretive dance, not-quite hints of softcore porn, or something like that. So very 80s. So very Russell Mulcahy.

The seventeen-plus minute version of “New Moon on Monday” is great in that it’s just like French New Wave cinema: full of attitude, and itself. Not entirely sure what it’s about other than some vague Cold War-ish anti-authoritarian protesting? I think? It’s a bit sluggish in places but it’s definitely an experience.

“Night Boat” on the other hand contains Simon’s quoting of Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet…while the band members slowly turn into zombies? Sure, why not?

Then there’s the wonderfully bonkers “Wild Boys” that makes absolutely no sense at all other than its slight nod towards Mad Max and Barbarella.

And oh yes! I’d completely forgotten there was an extended version of “Election Day” (their Arcadia side project, of course). Oh dear lord THE HAIR.

See, this is what happens when you’re a Gen-Xer and a first-gen MTV viewer, you remember all the fever-dream stuff like this.

I need to revisit 80s 4AD again…

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…it’s been far too long since I’ve sat down and let myself get lost in this stuff. I mean, considering I’ve been working on reviving the Walk in Silence book, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of these albums were a huge influence on my high school years, and would fit nicely with the current iteration of this project.

I always call this era of the label’s output autumnal, because a lot of it, at least for me, evokes the feeling of an impending change of seasons near the end of the year. The air growing colder, the sounds of nature growing quieter, the sky greyer. Many of these albums — most of which I had on cassette and played incessantly at night as I went to sleep — might not always invoke a darkness, but more of a sense of desolation and breakdown, and even abandonment at times. You can hear the dust being kicked up as you walk through the wide emptiness of this music.

That, now that I understand music a lot more, was the key to 4AD’s signature sound then. A clever mix of heavy reverberation with sparse instrumentation gives it that same sound that Cowboy Junkies achieved with The Trinity Session when they recorded inside an empty church. Listening to these albums with my Walkman, volume set high and bedroom darkened, I entered another world, sometimes an escape but often times a safe place. I could let my mind and creativity get lost within the music, letting it take me on a metaphysical trip somewhere.

The collection Lonely Is an Eyesore is a great place to start. I listened to this one just a few days ago. Several of its accompanying grainy 8mm and 16mm videos were shown on MTV’s 120 Minutes, which in turn inspired me later on during my college years for my film production classes.

This Mortal Coil was a huge favorite of mine, especially after hearing a few tracks from their second album Filigree & Shadow on college radio in late 1986. That particular album was one of my top favorites in 1987-88 and inspired a lot of story ideas.

Dead Can Dance was a band I’d heard of in passing but it was 1987’s Within the Realm of a Dying Sun that became my all-time favorite of theirs. Not quite chamber music, not quite alternative rock, not quite current orchestral music, this album wasn’t just one that I’d lose myself in at night, it helped me find a Zen calm right when I was at my most anxious.

Cocteau Twins was of course a major influence on my bass playing, thanks to the Blue Bell Knoll album. By late 1988 I had a good portion of their discography on cassette (and a few on vinyl) and I was constantly listening to it. The twin 1985 EPs, Tiny Dynamine and Echoes in a Shallow Bay, remain in heavy rotation after all these years alongside their project with Harold Budd, The Moon and the Melodies.

And of course, let’s not forget the surprise hit by MARRS, a one-off project between 4AD label mates Colourbox and AR Kane. While this one goes against the grain of the typical autumnal sound of the label, it’s so damn catchy and inventive that you can’t help but love it.

Fly-by: busy week

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Oof. Sorry I don’t have much to say here today, as my day job schedule is kind of heavy on the back end. In the meantime, I’ve been revisiting my U2 collection lately and remembering how much I still enjoy them. I’ve always liked them from the beginning (I actually remember seeing the “I Will Follow” and “Gloria” videos on early MTV), but I didn’t really get into them until the 1984 album The Unforgettable Fire, specifically the title song, which remains one of my favorite early tracks of theirs.

See you next week!

A Flock of Seagulls, Fortyish Years On

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Yes, folks. I am old enough that I remember the iconic and extremely low-budget (most of it seemingly spent on tinfoil) video for A Flock of Seagulls’ song “I Ran (So Far Away)” being new on MTV and loving it to bits. Never mind that the non-instrument props are from whatever they had in the studio’s back closet, this was taking the idea of music video to another level. They were part of a British wave of, well, New Wave. Distinctly pop yet heavily steeped in fashion, science fiction and even a bit of doom-and-gloom. It took Cold War darkness and tension into unexpected and highly creative directions.

This past week, the band dropped a Deluxe edition of their first album, a three-disc collection of a new album remaster, single mixes and b-sides, several BBC radio sessions, and even a short live set. The remaster itself sounds amazing, given that it’s not always easy to give a synth-heavy sound a warm feeling. The remaster gives the album plenty of breathing room and clarity for each performer. And Paul Reynolds’ distinctive guitar work, similar to that of U2’s Edge with its soaring and extremely melodic qualities, sounds crisp and clear.

The rest of the album may have its filler moments, but it also contains some bangers such as the singles “Space Age Love Song” and “Telecommunication” as well great deep cuts “DNA” and album closer “Man Made”. I highly recommend giving it a spin!

Revisiting

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I’ve been thinking about revisiting some discographies lately, mainly the ones of bands I used to listen to obsessively back in my youth. One of the inspirations for this was the reissue of REM’s Chronic Town EP a few weeks ago, their first release on the IRS label.

I’ve always been an early-era fan of the band up to and including 1988’s Green, and it’s been ages since I’ve listened to those first albums other than hearing the occasional single on the radio (usually “The One I Love” or “It’s the End of the World As We Know It”, but occasionally I’ll hear “Superman” as well). Me and my high school friends were big fans of the band and taped each other’s copies of their albums into our own collections. But I haven’t listened to Lifes Rich Pageant in ages, and I used to play that one a ton in my college years.

So how is this different from any other time I obsess over 80s alternative rock? Well, instead of slinking back into the memory banks to relive those times or attempting to work on the Walk in Silence book, this is just…for fun, just like before.

I think part of it is tied into what I was talking about in the previous post, in which I find myself so constantly wrapped up in New Releases every week that few songs are actually sticking in my head. Which leads to the question: how is it that these REM songs (and Smiths songs, and Love and Rockets songs, and so on) stick like Gorilla Glue where the new songs don’t?

I think it’s partly because I’m not allowing those new songs to anchor themselves in the first place. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to do that somehow. The focus has gone from the music to the procurement of it. Which of course feeds into my obsessive tendencies, but doesn’t really move me emotionally, does it?

I’ve been trying to figure out how to change that these last few months. How do I let these songs into my psyche when I’ve forgotten how to do that? What do they have to anchor to? Moments in time, memories in the making? So many of those songs are fleeting, great to listen to but never quite moving me emotionally. Produced too clean, given airplay to a station that smothers us with its constant repetition. Caught in a race with millions of other songs, all trying to enter my subconscious at the same time.

It’s time to revisit how I made them stick in the first place. Allowing the song to percolate and simmer for a while in my mind, to allow it to latch onto a moment in my life. Keeping myself from getting constantly distracted by yet another song that sneaks up behind it. Allow the song to become a part of my own personal and private world rather than chasing after several songs at once as they go by.

You see us as you want to see us…

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…in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions.

Every time I hear some blowhard talk about how these children are too young to understand — be it gender, race, sexuality, or any other bugbear that scares the bejeezus out of conservatives these days — it always reminds me just how many movies out there have been made about those same children understanding just fine and it’s the closed-minded adults who aren’t listening or paying attention.

It makes me think of Over the Edge, that 1979 film with a super young Matt Dillon, about a small nowhere town where there’s nothing to do, the cops don’t trust the kids, and the parents refuse to understand why they’re acting the way they are.

https://youtu.be/_cMYUJhChO0

It makes me think of Times Square, a 1980 film about two teenage runaways from opposite sides of NYC and how they’re both cast off, ignored and expected to conform.

It reminds me of Pump Up the Volume — a 1990 film with a whole lot of parallels to Over the Edge about, you guessed it, bored teens in a small town full of adults who won’t listen to them.

It reminds me of Permanent Record, a 1988 film about a teen’s suicide, his friends’ reactions, and the adults’ reticence about talking with them about it.

And of course, it reminds me of The Breakfast Club, the classic teen flick about kids figuring themselves out because the adults in charge are certainly doing a shit-ass job helping them.

They all have a similar theme: the kids might not be totally alright, but they’re trying as hard as they fucking can to make it through with minimal damage…all while dealing with Adults With The Best Of Intentions who obviously aren’t listening or paying attention.

I always think of those films (and soundtracks) when I see state leaders threatening to shut down any mention of the word ‘gay’, or passing laws essentially outlawing treatment for trans teens, or any other bullshit they’re on this week. It reminds me of being a teen and discovering nonconformity for the first time. It reminds me of not being able to truly be myself for fear of reprisal from adults or other teens.

And it reminds me of growing up as a teen, looking for answers but also knowing that the adults are going to give me what they think I need to hear, which might hurt more than help.

Deep Dive

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I’ve been doing a deep dive into 80s music lately.

I’m shocked, SHOCKED! I hear you say, not bothering to hide your eyeroll. But this is different, honest! I mean, sure, I’ve been listening to some of my old mixtapes and radio tapes, primarily because of a few writing projects I’m working on, but instead of doing the usual dive into records that have a bit of a long history to them, I’m playing around with records I remember seeing in the bins back in the day that have kind of been forgotten.

Not the “forgotten” bands that were really one-hit-wonders, or “obscure” bands that actually get a lot of airplay on certain genre stations. (And on the other side of the spectrum, I’m not yet at the “outsider” musicians that are just a bit too weird and impenetrable for my current tastes. I’m getting there, though.) I’m talking about the ones that I distinctly remember hearing on college radio and seeing their videos on 120 Minutes.

I’m talking about bands like the Jean-Paul Sartre Experience…

…or Gaye Bykers On Acid…

…or Fetchin Bones…

The funny thing is that many of these bands were the ones where I could never find their records, or never got around to buying them for budgeting reasons, or that I didn’t want to chance it if I didn’t exactly like it. I’m coming across a lot of them and checking out their grainy ripped-from-videotape music videos on YouTube. A lot of them are bands where I’d said I’d check them out sooner or later because I’d been hyperfocused on other obsessions…and I’m now realizing that I’ve finally come to the “later” part of that equation.

Some of these bands have stood the test of time, or are definitely a time capsule of a specific style. Some of them have not aged well at all (there’s one comic-punk band I used to like, but now sound like those one-joke pastiches you’d hear on those “irreverent” (read: tasteless bro humor) Morning Drive radio shows). They’re the bands that haven’t had as much of the Old Wave Renaissance play on satellite radio, but they’re the bands music nerds like me will remember.

What am I getting out of this? Well, aside from expanding my soundtracks and playlists, they’re filling some much-neglected holes in my personal history of listening to college radio. And as I’d hoped and expected, they’re also bringing back some memories I’d long forgotten. They’re putting the music history (and my own history) in a much richer context, that 80s college radio wasn’t just about The Cure and Depeche Mode and Wire and REM, but about the smaller bands and scenes that popped up. The music from different parts of the country — or the globe — that had a small but sizeable fanbase of their own. The music that may have somehow made its way onto major labels, but for the most part felt right at home on the independents.

And let me tell you, I’ve been having a hell of a fun time with it all!

Keep Coming Back

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I mentioned over at Welcome to Bridgetown that I find myself once again returning to the 80s (surprise surprise), via an old story I started my senior year in high school and attempted to revive numerous times over the ensuing decades. This is the story that went through so many different titles, versions and mutations that it has its own report binder here in the file department of Spare Oom.

And here I am, half-seriously coming back to it. Again.

I mean, this is the same story that also inspired my much more recent nonfic book idea that shares the name of this blog, Walk in Silence. The college rock era of the late 80s will always be near and dear to my heart for many reasons.

So why bring up this old story again, you ask? To answer that, I’d need to explain why it failed so many times in the past, and it’s called roman à clef. Each time I resurrected it, I made the mistake of wanting to write it as a self-insert piece of fiction, and therein lies the problem: my life back then wasn’t nearly as exciting as I often make it out to be. A lot of silliness and a lot of gloominess and everything in between, but not enough to make it an excitable read. So what’s different now? Well, thirty years on I’ve learned a thing or two about how to write fiction and realized roman à clef is not what was needed here. I knew what I wanted to write, but real life self-inserting wasn’t the way to go.

I’m not taking this project too seriously at the moment, as I’m already focusing on a few other things, but I’m letting myself devote an hour or two a day for it anyway, making notes and revisiting mixtapes and looking at discographies and chronologies. I’m also resurrecting a writing style I haven’t used since those same 80s days: using music to inspire and influence certain scenes, Michael Mann style. The difference here is that I’m not leaning heavy on memory here. I’m taking ideas from the songs I loved and expanding on what images and thoughts they inspire and evoke in me. Sure, there’ll be a few self-inserts in there — there always are in my books — but it won’t be as obvious this time out. And I’m making an expanded mixtape that’ll have both the obvious (say, “Under the Milky Way”) and the deep cut (such as the below Love Tractor song). That, of course, is the most fun part of this project so far.

I have no deadline for this particular story, but I am looking forward to spending more time on it if and when I can!