Singles releases reviewed in SMASH HITS on the 26th of April 1984

Haha Dave had Moz sussed from the get-go.

… and a tasty dig at Only You! It was originally demoed by Vince for Depeche and they hated it.

omg, I forgot about that!

The singer/drummer in Palais Schaumberg at this point was Mauritz Van Oswald from Basic Channel. Abso shocking performance here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKzFU1hbK_c

lol at Pickets review

i had this issue!

then, i dug cocteau twins, new order, fad gadget, palais schaumburg, gene loves jezebel, holger czukay and fashion. bob too, but not gonna count him as it's a reissue.

now, i still dig cocteau twins, fad gadget, palais schaumburg, and holger czukay. heard thieves like us too many times. haven't listened to gene loves jezebel or fashion since 1986.

gonna vote either fad gadget or roland rat.

fad gadget b-side should have been the a-side.

this came up on another thread, but david claridge aka roland rat was the guy behind the label who released monsoon's records including 'ever so lonely', had a uk number one with trio's 'da da da', and he also put out this comp with akiko yano and yuki takahashi:

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Tokyo-Mobile-Music-1/release/1106625

Cover for this issue: https://www.tilleysvintagemagazinessheffield.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/TilleysVintageMagazinesSheffield-TILL-00011_0030-Custom.jpg

wow, Nick.

Wow!! i had no idea.

Tokyo Mobile Music 1 rules. i have a Dutch copy so hadn't previously realised David 'Roland Rat' Claridge had compiled it.

Lots of goodness on The Mobile Suit Corporation.

The singer/drummer in Palais Schaumberg at this point was Mauritz Van Oswald from Basic Channel

he replaced holger hiller iirc! also fm einheit of einsturzende neubauten and thomas fehlmann (the orb etc) were in them. crazy level of talent in that band

hadn't previously realised David 'Roland Rat' Claridge had compiled it

he did all the street noise recordings between the tracks too!

Palais Schaumburg had Mufti of neubauten pass through them a couple of years earlier.
Then begat Holger Hiller who became an alternative solo artist .
I think both of them would have left by this point. I may still have teh 1st s/t lp around somewhere

Matt Bianco had an nteresting phone call on Saturday morning tv. BUt were mainly a supposedly hip bunch of jazz pop stars who probably became more Acid jazz in their next project.

some of Modern Romance went to my old school and had been around as the Leyton Buzzards around the time of punk.

fm einheit of einsturzende neubauten were in them.

wow x 2. how did i not know this!?!?!

x post

he did all the street noise recordings between the tracks too!

cool!

from Discogs:

Jnr.D October 17, 2019
Some of the field recording were done by 80s UK morning TV puppet Roland Rat... I kid you not.

musique conc-rat

This was my personal chart, compiled on 24th April 1984, while I was living in Berlin. Sandie Shaw and The Human League are in there, and New Order would appear the following week.

01 (01) Give Me Tonight / Let The Music Play / My Heart's Divided - Shannon
02 (03) Beat Box - Art Of Noise
03 (06) The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight - Dominatrix
04 (NE) Disconet Best Of 1983 Medley - Various
05 (04) Wood Beez - Scritti Politti
06 (08) Dr Mabuse - Propaganda
07 (02) Paco's Super Mix - Latin Rascals
08 (20) People Are People - Depeche Mode
09 (14) Big In Japan - Alphaville
10 (09) All Night Passion - Alisha
11 (11) Countdown - Kofi & The Love Tones
12 (24) She's Strange - Cameo
13 (05) I Want A New Drug - Huey Lewis & The News
14 (22) I Want It To Be Real - John Rocca
15 (13) Girls Just Want To Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper
16 (16) Watch The Closing Doors - I.R.T.
17 (17) I'm Living My Own Life - Earlene Bentley
18 (27) The Man's So Real - Mimi
19 (10) Hey DJ - World's Famous Supreme Team
20 (07) Hip Hop Bommi Bop - The Incredible T.H. Scratchers ft Freddie Love
21 (15) No Man Is An Island - Warp 9
22 (NE) Hand In Glove - Sandie Shaw
23 (NE) Colour My Love - Fun Fun
24 (re) Just Be Good To Me - The S.O.S. Band
25 (NE) They Only Come Out At Night - Peter Brown
26 (NE) Fresh - Fresh 3 MC's
27 (18) In The Heart/Tonight - Kool & The Gang
28 (28) Bubble Up - Big Tony
29 (re) Emergency - Laura Pallas
30 (25) The Caterpillar - The Cure
31 (29) High Energy - Evelyn Thomas
32 (35) Jam On It - Newcleus
33 (19) Din Daa Daa - George Kranz
34 (12) Rocket To Your Heart - Lisa
35 (NE) The Lebanon - Human League
36 (NE) Let Me Love You - Force MD's
37 (NE) Get Up Action - Digital Emotion
38 (37) Don't Waste Your Time - Yarbrough & Peoples
39 (31) Back At Ya - Kerr
40 (re) Desire - Paul Parker

Sentimental vote for Nena, tho the German originals are better

Yeah, the original (and already two years old) "Nur Geträumt" is heaps better. In Berlin, we'd moved on to "Lass Mich Dein Pirat Sein", "Rette Mich" and - best of all - "Irgendwie, Irgendwo, Irgendwann".

I Want It To Be Real - John Rocca

incredible song, fantastic video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1wMuNPqwV8

Wow, not seen that video before. He sounds at times a bit like Jon Anderson on this one (not during the spoken word section, obv). It was in the Billboard Dance Chart top 10 at the time, reaching #1 the following month.

as someone who made his fair share of personal charts in his days himself I can’t help but like your lists, mike - and that’s an undisputable number one if there ever was one

yeah he does sound a lot like jon anderson and he's got a bit of that same guilelessness about him too

xp yes, mike's list are great - so much good stuff on there it makes me really want to hear the ones i don't know already

Never heard that before. Absolutely great.

According to discogs there was an album off the back of this single but it was never released.

there was an album called 'Extra, Extra' that had that song on it. it's pretty patchy though, just like the Freeez album with IOU on it. best off sticking with the singles with Rocca imo, he had some amazing ones eg Pink Rhythm 'Melody of Love', Midi Rain 'Always (Blue Piano Mix)'

Having played these all through, I'm in broad agreement with Dave Gahan. Favourite then: Sandie Shaw. Favourite now: New Order.

there are a bunch on here i don't know, hard to imagine anything's better than either cocteau or blue nile though

Blue Nile was the only one I bought - a 12in bargain bin punt, six months down the line, when I was back in the UK and had a turntable again.

I only heard 10 of these at the time; the other 17 were new to me this morning.

I keep meaning to buy a copy of the Kajagoogoo record because it's got quite a nice track on the b-side called 'The Pump Rooms Of Bath', which is this strange proggy art-funk instrumental, kind of Mick Karn meets Jean-Luc Ponty:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsL6-NZv5bM

voting by review: Only You

^determined to undermine crucial 80s smash hits single polling data through misdirection.

I love the thread of keen interest in producers that runs through his reviews

Abso agree, it's cool.

My then-teenage sister was friends with some loser 80s pop band who shared management with Modern Romance, so she vaguely knew them too. I remember her recounting the sad atmosphere when they decided to split - they had one (one!) letter from a mega-fan who was hugely upset at the decision. No-one else seemed to care, or even notice.

My personal opinion is that Dagmar Krause's later version of Mack The Knife is superior to King Kurt's, but I'm willing to listen to arguments to the contrary.

One thing that really strikes you looking at these old issues is the general stance on "American music" which, for the most part, veers from comic disregard to sheer disdain. There are issues where there's e.g. a new Madonna album and the cover and main feature is on Jimmy The Hoover or Hollywood Beyond. Access to US stars would have been a problem at that time, ofc but iirc Madonna spent quite a lot of time in the UK around the time of album releases and was publicity-hungry of course.

I had a good laugh at the Jimmy The Hoover article but then I listened to Tantalise (Wo Wo Ee Yeh Yeh), which I had forgotten, and it's really rather good!

I found another hit-heavy cracker of a review sheet, which I will poll next.

There's another Gahan-helmed single review page where he describes Prince's Kiss as "a little too Stodgy"!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEkB25V_ow8

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

David Claridge aka man behind Roland Rat seems quite the character if this is correct http://www.curiousbritishtelly.co.uk/2017/07/david-claridge-who-is-man-behind-roland.html

i saw an episode of Swap Shop or something like that with Roland Rat. As usual they had a phone in and some kid asked what music he liked, ‘Minimalism, you know Philip Glass and Steve Reich’, much to the kid’s and Noel Edmonds bafflement. Knowing his background it makes sense now.

woah, thanks for that! this sounds amazing, v jarman-esque:

Following the demise of The Blitz, Claridge sought to keep its creative spirit alive, but push on in new directions. An early enterprise was The Ancients, a club night held at the Hell club at 30 Henrietta Street, Soho in 1980. An unusual club night in the extreme, The Ancients looked to mix classical composers Bach and Vivaldi with contemporary bands Magazine and Bauhaus. It also gave Claridge an excuse to dig out his ruff again as he told Over 21 Magazine:

"It´s going to be slides and film and smoke guns and candles and ochre lighting. Hopefully people will come along dressed in the appropriate clothes and we´ll include them in it, projecting them on the walls or in the film we´re making"

roland rat in his civvies:

https://assets.about.me/background/users/d/a/v/davidclaridge_1458945981_86.jpg

That's wild! According to a commenter on that he lives in Palm Springs so he must have made a fair bit off of it!

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

I wonder if stirmonster voted for Fad Gadget or Roland Rat?! If I had heard the Fad b-side in time I would have voted for that but I ended up voting for Love and Pride because I loved that song then.

I voted for Fad Gadget. I wonder who gave Roland his vote?

I just listened to "Love and Pride" for the first time in decades. It is better than I remember and it feels like there should be some immense 12" dub version. A missed opportunity.

When it came out all the uber cool girls in my year at school seemed to overnight go from worshipping Japan / David Sylvian to suddenly being huge King fans which I couldn't quite get my head around.

King were a hype band for nearly two years before “Love And Pride” charted; I saw them live in spring 1983, at a club venue that hosted a few hype bands (pre-hit Joboxers spring to mind), and didn’t rate them at all. The other perennial hype band from this era was a-ha, stalwarts of the bargain bins.

I just listened to "Love and Pride" for the first time in decades. It is better than I remember and it feels like there should be some immense 12" dub version. A missed opportunity.

There is a dub version but only 4 minutes long

https://www.discogs.com/King-Love-Pride-Extended-12-Mix/release/209425

Oh! Will investigate. Cheers.

I quite like Love & Pride but my sister had the album on tape and the rest of it was abysmal afaicr. Had a song on it called I Kissed The Spikey Fridge and every now and again it sneaks back into my brain and spoils my day

Voted for Thieves Like Us - one of New Orders best but nowhere near as overplayed as Temptation

Here you go Nick

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

Oh god

Almost 8 minutes long that version. You're welcome

I Kissed the Spikey Fridge?

I guess Paul King's Big Book Of Lyrics wasn't the bottomless pot of gold after all

he swiftly moved on to being an MTV Europe VJ for a reason

I daren't listen to I Kissed The Spiky Fridge lest the same fate befall my brain as that which befell Nick's. But it does sound like it could be name of one of them John Peel bands, or a parody thereof.