Say Something Complimentary About Howard Jones

This is a serious question but it's obviously also related to your sudden attack on me because I said I liked the new single by Nickelback. So another question is what's wrong with liking that kind of North American rock music?

As to Howard Jones. I didn't like him then and still don't. I find his songs, vocal style, haircut and clothes all irritating.

a) Not *always*. The factor I outlined at the start of this thread is simply the one thing that makes "New Song" special to me, although I like the "euphoric synth wave" towards the end of the song a lot better than other similar arrangements of the time.

b) It's the one sort of music that brings out the Robert Blatchford in me. A more prosaic way of putting it is that I find it ugly, uninteresting, repulsive, grim, neophobic, reactionary, backward, boring, anti-humanist and anti-individualist. A still more prosaic way of putting it is that I just dislike it, and dislike it all the more because of the horribly insistent way a song like "How You Remind Me" worms its way into my head when I don't want it there.

c) I don't really like him, either, but he made a couple of good singles and seems to epitomise a certain efficient, self-assured atmosphere of the time, but in a much less unpleasant way than became common later in the 80s.

(1) In high school (1985), one of the student trips was to Paris. The students apparently saw Howard Jones playing live in Paris (mime and all), including my high-school girlfriend. A significant part of my remaining high-school years was spent pretending to like Howard Jones, in order to get into her pants.

(2) A friend of another friend went to a Howard Jones concert in Philadelphia (during the late eighties). This friend-of-a-friend spent a good deal of time chatting up this woman (in order to get in her pants). At some point, he was approached and accosted by an angry Howard Jones -- apparently, this woman was Howard Jones's girlfriend. Ironic, since "No One Is to Blame" is kinda about free love and all (was it George Bernard Shaw who said "free love is fine - - as long as it's not my wife"?)

Why Howard Jones, of all people, has any pertinence to those erotically-charged events, I'll not touch. Re the music: "Things Can Only Get Better" is nice mid-eighties pop, I guess. The rest is crap.

Marcello is basically right but I posted this thread because Jones infuriates me in such an exact and specific sort of way that I can't entirely dismiss him, because I don't normally find someone so annoying so intriguing that I actually want to listen to them. You understand what I'm getting at here? Weird phenomenon, that.

I suppose what it is is that I'm psychologically intrigued by the idea of turning efficient blandness into a near-ideology.

Now that the Pinefox seems to have returned it's perhaps worth mentioning that Jones was better than Go West.

of course if there was a "new pop" project at all (smart post-punk ppl using the charts blah blah), they could hardly COMPLAIN when those not invited to the original project meetings (jensen) casually lumped unrelated contemporaries in with them: jones's triumph here was (for example) the cocteaus' failure — if the distinction wasn't audible to "outsiders" it possibly wasn't there at all, in the groove anyway (ps i wuv the cocteaus and cannot really remember a thing abt jones, but then i was an "insider")

c) I don't really like him, either, but he made a couple of good singles and seems to epitomise a certain efficient, self-assured atmosphere of the time, but in a much less unpleasant way than became common later in the 80s.

Well, that's nicely put. That said, I have to admit I had this Jones for "No One Is to Blame" for a while about seven years ago. It's one of those ostensibly traditionalist classic pop singles, using all the right spare parts, that you can't shake, and there seems to be something really "humane" about it that in reality is just hiding the very unpleasant, '80s attitudes that make me cringe when I think about that decade.

I am Keeping the Sab Ho with Ho Jo
(keeping the Sabbath holy with Howard Jones!)

HOJO seems really MORMON to me. Heard all his hits a million times at church dances, which favored light pop hits of the '80s. When I saw he recorded his live DVD in SLC it made perfect sense. Hence kep teh sab ho w/ho jo

Someone in my year at school looked like Howard Jones, had ginger hair, and also had a French name.

Howard Jeauxns

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyd676G2OD1r5w2vo.jpg
THROW OFF YOUR MENTAL CHAINS OO! OO! OOOO!

Actually that picture really looks like him. But somehow despite that I got beaten up more. Probably because I resembled the guy on the left of the photo.

I can't figure out how 'arty' he thinks or thought he was or would have been? Like I can tell he's trying to project something self-important but it just comes off as...Mormon.

Also, his greatest hits CD is one of those albums you will always find in a UK charity shop.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51CGVuEUPOL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
He looks so disinterested. "Yeah, here's my Best Of. wvrs."

HJ is basically Plastic Bertrand, if the latter suddenly decided that he wanted people to take him seriously.

Also he seems to be like a substitute/backup Thompson Twin. "Sorry mate, you didn't get the audition for the Twins. But if the white dude suddenly flakes out for some reason, you're in."

Or alternatively, Cyndi Lauper's irritating kid brother.

Saw him play at a local college in the mid-80s. Goofy but pretty entertaining. He made a big deal out of doing a one-man (and his synthesizers) version of "A Day in the Life." I guess I think of him as the non-thinking-person's Thomas Dolby.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcsXtiN8-UY
"You carn't sing, you carn't play, you look awful... Get the fack outta my office!"

a one-man (and his synthesizers) version of "A Day in the Life."

"I heard the news today OO! OO! OOO! boy"

I kind of feel that HJ is diametrically the opposite of Nik Kershaw - HJ's songs try to be lyrically meaningful but fall short, while Kershaw's seem meaningful but are really (as he admitted about 'The Riddle') just nonsense.

i was about to say that "hide and seek" is a good song but i just listened to it then and it isn't.

"What is love anyway? Does anybody really love anybody anyway?"

There's a reevaluation waiting to be written about this guy who scored big hits, a couple of which are indelible perennials on Eighties Radio ("No One is to Blame," "Things Can Only Get Better"), and "No One is to Blame" will exist as long as adult contemporary does. Yet he was the James Taylor of the synth pop set.

I wish people still did that ridic hairstyle he had c Human's Lib. It is maybe the bets male hairstyle. I don't think I've ever seen it in person. HOJO himself is too Mormon-y to be attracted to, tho. Or is he? He kind of looks like he's about 5'2", or is that just the drapey '80s clothes?

Both him and Mick Hucknall started out with moderatley crazy ginger hair curtailed by some sensible old man hat and then on sophomore ephorts went HAIR BONKLERS

I don't remember hojo as a "ginger"

thx to ho jo's ha ble (hair bleach)

ginger asplosion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OO9LloDSJo&feature=related

HoJoCos

(Howard Jones confessions)

saw HJ at St. Paul Civic Center in 1985. He had the mime shown in the photo a few posts up, and a drummer playing inside a cage. This was only my 3rd concert after LOL Tom Petty and LOLOLOL Chicago.

same year - brought the 12" sleeve for one of the Dream Into Action singles to a Cost Cutters in Roseville, said 'I want my hair to look like this'. (This was me 'going punk')

Human's Lib and Dolby's The Flat Earth were the first things I ever shoplifted (the Target in Falcon Heights across from Har Mar Mall, '85 again)

Dream Into Action was the first tape I had that was made of that clear plastic. Remember taking it out of the case and being truly awed at this object from ~the future~

Still like 'Hide and Seek' but could hap'ly never hear any of the others again.

This song is horrible and HoJo was a menace.

i genuinely love "no one is to blame" with my whole heart. perfect song.

xpost I like that song

The version of No One Is To Blame from Action Replay was one of the first songs I saw on MTV at maybe age 7, and recorded it on a blank tape on my little cassette player. Throughout my youth, I never met anyone else who knew about Howard Jones. Once, maybe ten years later, I heard the song again at a dentist appointment. Many years later, I had a friend who had been in high school during the late 80s, and revealed that she and her friends had all been "big HoJo fans" and had seen him in concert. HoJo! I was amazed that this mostly-forgotten pop singer had a whole-ass nickname and a gaggle of teenage fans.

A few years ago, I went through his catalog on Spotify to see if there was anything else I liked. At the time, I was working on a "Gentlemen of 80s Pop" playlist (other artists included Wang Chung, Level 42, Tears for Fears - that "blazers, sunglasses, and synths" kind of vibe). Looking back on that playlist, I didn't ADD any more HoJo to it, but maybe I was in error. I remember liking some of the "new" tunes I heard. Will give another listen soon.

He obviously had a much bigger presence in the UK, half a dozen top ten hits - No One... only went to 16, it is the best though. Mostly based on nostalgia I'd say What is Love, New Song and Like to Get to Know You Well also worth checking out.

He kept earning AT40 hits a few months into the Soundscan era: "Lift Me Up" hit #32 in early 1992.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msskz3lHE6g

"Thank God, he's no' Scottish, there's nae chance the cunt stays roon the corner..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4Rgun1oPeM

He's definitely in the category of artists where I know a good half dozen songs despite not owning any of the albums in any form. I almost started a thread on that subject but wasn't sure how to grammatically state it, lol.

What Is Love? is passable perhaps but I've long since come to the conclusion that New Musik pulled off everything that Howard Jones was aiming for three years earlier and a hundred times better. Check out the album Warp from 1982,so much less clunky than HJ

Hide and Seek is a masterpiece imo, his best song for sure.
I also have enduring love for Conditioning, New Song, No One Ever (album version) Things Can Only… and Automaton but H&S is frickin deathless

Hide and Seek is a masterpiece

Agreed, it's a really lovely piece of work. "Pearl in the Shell" is another good one that I don't see mentioned above.

Realized this morning that "No One Is to Blame" paved the way for "Ironic."

"Hide and Seek" is one of my favourite singles of the era. I once compiled a vague '80s pop' CD for my dad to play in the car, obviously geared towards stuff we agreed on, and I closed it out with that. Lovely chilly gothic stuff on country lanes at night.

First couple of albums (but especially the first) have a lot to like. Human's Lib has two really fast bleepy bloopy songs with tumbling drums I love, "Conditioning" and "Hunt the Self" (the latter putting an abrupt full-stop to Hide and Seek's continuing ambient drift, a superior track segue). Don't Always Look at the Rain, while a little heavy-handed as is common for him, does rather resemble a Colin Moulding song and the slow-mo beats and arcing synths are high quality 80s faux-class.

i should mention that i saw HJ on the Dream Into Action tour at the St Paul Civic Center, he had a mime and his drummer was in a cage. Also, Dream Into Action was the first tape I ever owned that was clear plastic. Quite striking at the time!

xpost hunt the self yes that one too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vJiF1eYHpM

Montage!