Best track on The Human League: Travelogue

Life Kills gets my vote...

My second vote (if i had one) would go to the bass drum sound in Gordons Gin, easily the heaviest bass drum sound of the 80's..

why i oughta...

Since I have the feeling "Black Hit of Space" is going to win (and really, it deserves it) I can vote "Gordon's Gin" in good conscience. Thank goodness it's not the Fast Product version of "Being Boiled" or I would've had to make an unpleasant choice...

I doubt many people are familiar enough with this album to vote (no hit singles either), but I voted for "A Crow And a Baby".

(Sorry, koogs - your inclusion of it on my comp just underlines your exemplary taste and allows me to revisit it while commuting without doing a dodgy rip on my laptop; and it's the reason I started this poll).

I'm voting for WXJL, btw.

Toyota City.

dreams of leaving, people! dreams of leaving.

this incarnation of the band didn't actually put a single note wrong as far as i'm concerned, and every song on this album is a hewn-from-diamond joy, but the breadth, scope and wonder of that song put it in a "league" of its own (see what i did there?)

My weirdest ever drugs episode involved the spooky instrumental section of "Dreams of Leaving". It's the only piece of music I'd really call "cosmic".

it is the home-made synth sounds of the middle of Dreams of Leaving that prompted me to buy this recently, having heard them on Freak Zone on radio6. was hoping there was going to be more of this but there isn't really. Tom Baker, one of the bonus tracks, gets close.

> no hit singles either

Being Boiled? #6 in uk chart (re-release) and, also, "In 2003 Richard X recorded Being Nobody, a mashup of "Being Boiled" and Liberty X's version of "Ain't Nobody". It reached number 3 in the British charts." so it's not like it's not familiar.

Not to mention I get the impression that this is the best-loved incarnation of the band around here (and for good damn reason).

Yeah, it's Dream Of Leaving by a decent margin.

Insert 's' at the appropriate point.

Being Boiled? #6 in uk chart (re-release) and, also, "In 2003 Richard X recorded Being Nobody, a mashup of "Being Boiled" and Liberty X's version of "Ain't Nobody". It reached number 3 in the British charts." so it's not like it's not familiar

er ... but that's a different version of "being boiled" that richard X was tooling about with. from what i remember: the original ("fast") version was released as a single in 1978, then again in 1981 -- on EMI? -- when the MK-II league were charting all over the shop with the "dare" singles. i think that's the one that got to #6.

the (inferior) "horns" version on "travelogue" was released on the "holiday 80" EP but that was a bit of a clusterfuck in terms of tracks/charting and i'm really not sure how many people are familiar with it. certainly: everyone i know thinks of "being boiled" as the one that goes: "DUR-DUR ... hissssssss ... okay, ready, let's do it" -- and that's the way it should be, natch ;)

on EMI?

basically, by whoever had the rights to the fast product back catalogue, i guess. i'm sure it was EMI.

dreams of leaving/being boiled

can't decide!

Being Boiled:

Grimly OTM.

Fast version, pink sleeve with cartoon dancing couple, "DUR-DUR ... hissssssss ... okay, ready, let's do it". AWESOME. My copy has seen better days. Under 4 minutes, Circus Of Death nearly 5 minutes.

Holiday '80 double pack, very underrated single, same version as Travelogue but with a fadeout. Rock 'N' Roll/Nightclubbing is awesome though. Being Boiled now about 4 1/2 minutes long. My copy is very ragged indeed.

Holiday '80 single 7", simulated stereo mix of above.

Virgin simulated reissue of Fast single in 82, Being Boiled is same as simulated stereo mix above, Circus Od Death now under 4 minutes.

... and the actual label on the record itself has gone from being a superb black-and-white picture of a house to a crappy red-and-yellow thing, IIRC (although the outer sleeve is unchanged ... i think).

didn't realise CoD -- which is perhaps my absolute core human league moment, and i might yet wax lyrical about here -- was edited for the re-release, though. will need to dig out my copies (yes, i am that sad) and listen.

there are SO MANY versions of all these songs, of course (see HL threads passim) because of the whole "send us a C90" thing ... i'm pretty sure i put two cassettes' worth up on my webspace ages ago, but i can't remember the URL and i can't access the directories from here. i'll look tonight and see. ISTR linking to them from another HL thread, but can't remember which one.

also: you all know about blind youth, right? if not: sorry, that's your afternoon gone :)

I get the impression that this is the best-loved incarnation of the band around here

Really? I was under the impression League MkII ruled the roost round these parts.

A little surprised at how much gushing there is for Travelogue. Great though it is, I'd rate it below Reproduction and several leagues (geddit) below Dare! Just isn't lovable enough for me. I voted WXJL in the end, though it was a tough choice, narrowly edging out 'Dreams of Leaving'. However I would've voted 'I don't depend on you' if the cd's bonus tracks were included.

I'm pretty sure the support for "Dare" is just as strong on ILM as the support for the early stuff.

yeh, but then i steam in and upset everything. don't get me wrong: i love "dare". but my adoration for the first incarnation of the band eclipses almost everything.

"reproduction" is better in many ways -- scarier, cleverer, way more beautiful -- but it's "travelogue" i come back to much more.

I voted for "Dreams of Leaving." It's really a gutwrenching song which upset me a great deal as a 11, 12-year old.

Great, great record all around. But I'm baffled that people prefer the "okay, ready, let's do it" "Being Boiled" to the album version (is that what you'd call it?). Maybe it's because I grew up with the latter and didn't hear the other one until it was underneath "No Scrubs" years later. But the album version is so much more sonically adventurous. Even the hand claps fuck with background/foreground distinctions. Plus it's faster/more danceable. The other one is too damn minimal.

So when Simon Reynolds called it the greatest song ever (or something to that effect), did he mean the "okay, ready, let's do it" version? :(

I'm a resident mostly-lurker, but also big Human League fan, and had to log in to vote for WXJL Tonight, since it's an all time favorite song (even though I have to double check the order of the call letters every time I type it).
The intro is so bombastic! And then it cools down, then builds for huge choruses multiple times, and then has that whole over the top multitracked-building-vocal-chorus thing going at the end! I feel like the words are a little ridiculous, but the music makes it seem convincing and *really important*.

(bonus track hon. mention: "Marianne" another bombastic one, basically)

"marianne" is a triumph, yes.

So when Simon Reynolds called it the greatest song ever (or something to that effect), did he mean the "okay, ready, let's do it" version? :(

yes!

i mean, surely? one is a pioneering piece of genius; the other's a slightly cheesy, glossy reworking of said pioneering piece of genius that tells us a lot about what heaven 17 were going to sound like.

also ... the old human league rarities, demos and bootlegs i mention above are here:

a bootleg called in darkness

a C90 i acquired many years ago labelled very rare out-takes and demos

can't actually remember what this one is, but it'll be more alternate versions and unreleased songs

this is basically delving much deeper than "the golden hour of the future" ever did, and i urge you all to get clicking :)

Ooo ta.

Also, you have been OTM^^^.

I voted for 'Black hit of space', although i've got a soft spot for 'A crow and a baby'.

one is a pioneering piece of genius

Ok well your use of the words "cheesy" and "glossy" explain why I love that version. But why is the original such a...well, what you say above?

i listened to it carefully on the way home from work so i could try to give you a proper answer.

it's the way it's just so sparse ... it's like a song created from nothing, just a few sparks and wires. it's the way the percussion genuinely sounds like something being boiled -- right down to the hiss of gas at the beginning. it's the way what's not there -- the space between the sounds -- is as important as what is; it's the way what is there is so fucking dark. it's the way it still, after all these years, manages to be scary, unsettling, wry and utterly nonsensical. it's the way there's barely any melody, yet what melody there is ... well, it's perfect.

it's so simple it's beyond complexity.

it is perhaps the best single ever made.

that do you? ;)

and i can't help hearing the other version -- which i listened to straight after -- as a bit of a conceptual joke ... ie "we made this song with almost nothing to it; let's re-do it with the kitchen sink" ... but i'm not sure whether or not that's the case. i mean, i'm sure i read an interview with martyn ware somewhere where he said that what they were actually trying to do on "reproduction" was make motown with synths ... not necessarily what i hear when i listen to it! i do hear it in heaven 17, of course -- but that's more like "ah, there's some dudes trying to do motown with synths. not the best idea in the world, that."

That did me very well. Thank you. But even more than your last post, you made me realize why I prefer the album version: "we made this song with almost nothing to it; let's re-do it with the kitchen sink"

It's no doubt a horrible capitalist persuasion but I'm a kitchen sink kind of guy. Give me as many sounds as possible in four minutes. And like minimal techno/dance/whatever, I find it more fascinating to read about or discuss at parties than actually listen to (for lenghty periods of time). In fact, your description of the original "Being Boiled" above offers me more pleasure than the song itself (well, ok, about as much pleasure). I don't HATE that version. Just prefer the album one.

It's like what Philip Sherburne (sp?) (I think) said on the Ricardo Villalobos thread about that monster "Fizueher Zizueher" (or whatever the hell it's called) track - Villalobos has a modernist focus that imbues one or two musical elements with significance whereas Basement Jaxx throw in the kitchen sink and thus there's a postmodern reduction of the importance of any of the elements. And that's roughly analogous to the two versions of "Being Boiled."

But to me, there's more of an equality between the kitchen sink in Basement Jaxx and the album version of "Being Boiled." It's not so much that these sounds have no significance as it is that they destroy hierarchy itself. Or at least they strive to. But that lends these songs a utopian feeling which only gets augmented on the dancefloor.

Anyhoo, great defense!

Yes, It's great precisely because there's nothing to it. It's void of everything except the essential components and they are, well, just perfect.

I actually think I might like Richard X's tinkering with it on Being Nobody more than the kitchen sink version.

Also grimly UR RONG abt H17, who in many ways I prefer to late-era League but that's probably another conversation.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"toyota city" is quite poignant really. A paean to a city of the industrial future, by a band from a city that is fading into the industrial past.

Quite a noble gesture from the League really. If I was from Sheffield at the time, I would have thought "f*ck Toyota City".

Listen to the voice of Buddha!

I don't HATE that version. Just prefer the album one

hahah! driving past kilmarnock today, i put on "travelogue" and started telling mrs F about this thread and the "being boiled" debate ... i think i used exactly that line -- only the other way round, natch.

that's an interesting and very valid set of comparisons you make, kevin, and i'm absolutely and wholeheartedly going to adopt "the postmodern version" as my description of choice for the album recording :)

philk: i've never thought of "toyota city" in those terms, either. you're almost certainly right ... although i wonder if there's a yearning for escape, for transcending the old steel-bashing past and embracing a future of glorious technology?

as for H17: i dunno. never quite been able to get them, and i'm not sure why because all the ingredients are there ... also, buying two -- YES, TWO -- mis-pressed copies of "the luxury gap" (ie with the first side repeated) probably fucked me off more than i realised ;)

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

shite turnout. nice result, though.

Funnily enough, I'd have voted for "Only after dark", as I bought the single back in the day.

Grimly: Yeah "Toyota City" is bittersweet. I think the League's innate futurism compelled them to admire Toyota City (which really does exist, I mean you'll see it on a map of Japan), while at the same time a place like that augured the death-knell of the world they would have known. It's an escape, but maybe at the cost of lots of people they knew at home.

Also, it's a piece of music at odds with the rest of the album. It's quite "soft" sounding, whereas the rest of Travelogue has a hard, angular feel.

why do i have this vague, nagging feeling that "toyota city" actually predates the other tracks?

one swift visit to blind youth later ... yeh, here we go ...

This instrumental appeared on the League's first demo tape, along with Being Boiled and Circus Of Death. A soft, hypnotic exercise in repetition, the piece revolves around a simple eight-note motif which persists throughout the track, adorned with an array of incidental musical asides. According to Philip's dialogue on the 'Taverner tape', this piece was intended as a 'mock-oriental tune', which probably explains why the song is named after the Japanese city made famous by Toyota Motors.
The original version lasted over five and a half minutes, but was edited to less than three and a half minutes for inclusion on the group's second album.
An alternate edit of this track was also created for the 'Taverner tape'. Instead of fading in from silence, this edit opens with a few unsettling notes not used on the released versions. The track is quite brief, fading and ending after little more than two minutes.
Short version released on Travelogue
Long version released on the 'Human League cassette', In Darkness (unofficially), Only After Dark and the Japanese 12" edition of Holiday '80.
Alternate edit unreleased but included on the 'Taverner tape'

there's a link to "in darkness" above, of course ... i assume it's on there, but it's a long time since i've listened.

i think i like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PudsafxWRZ0

no

Except for the vocals, TRAVELOGUE sounds like it came out in the past five years. It sounds like a warmer, more humorous version of MERRIWEATHER POST PAVILION. Listening to it today made it clear to me that it was the most ahead of its time of any record from that period.

As for best song on the album, I choose "Life Kills."

That MERRIWEATHER... reference is most directed at "WXJL Tonight," but the whole record sounds very raw and hectic and under-arranged in that ultra-modern way.

Love this album. But as I only have it on LP, I'm afraid "Black Hit of Space" gets played on my DJ nights and the excellent rest of the tunes deserve a lot more play from me.

I prefer Dare! and Reproduction but this album is so classic. I would have voted for W.X.J.L. Tonight just ahead of Black Hit of Space. I just love this band so much.

the pre-fragmentation Human League albums were one of the best things Rip It Up & Start Again caused me to buy.

indeed. fab book.

'WXJL Tonight', without a doubt. Such a monumental track. The synths are amazing, and Phil Oakey's vocals - that part near the end where he really goes for it gives me chills every time. It's almost like a darker version of 10cc, in some ways.

Does that intro not sound like latter-day Animal Collective?