Mad Eyed Screamer
Moderator
1980
The year began with me still discovering punk from 77 / 78 as well as unknowingly drifting into electric pop too.
With Generation X ending 1979 in pieces, I was looking for a band and then I found a band......
My friend Loz (a Blue naturally) had been championing Siouxsie & The Banshees, who themselves had gone through a messy split in 1979 when Kenny Morris and John McKay left during a tour of Scotland, with Robert Smith from the support band The Cure playing a double set each night to finish the tour off.
The Banshees returned with Budgie from The Slits on drums and John McGeogh from Magazine on guitar. Now at this point I have to admit (and only being 17 is my excuse) I never knew that band members swapped bands! I knew footballers changed clubs and signed for a new club, but it never occurred to me that band members would do the same thing!
The Banshees released the singles Happy House and Christine from the album Kaleidoscope and I jumped in with both feet first. The beginning of a love affair with the Banshees / Creatures / Siouxsie solo that remains today. The album had moved away from the fast and loud first two albums, a slower, more thoughtful album that remains a favourite of mine to this day - but not my favourite.... that's 1981!
Other highlights of the year, my first gig!---------- Stiff Little Fingers at the Coventry Locarno (a venue immortilised in The Specials Friday Night / Saturday Morning.) SLF's single 'At The Edge' had just come out and I had bought it.
I went to other gigs but not sure of the year. UK Subs at The General Wolfe for sure as it was promoting the single "Teenage" (7 inch pink vinyl) There was Pere Ubu and The Au Pairs at Coventry Poly but could have been 80 or 81.
Billy Idol & Tony James came back with the brilliant "Dancing With Myself" under the Gen X moniker but their ship had sailed and it failed to dent the top 50 despite me buying it on both 7 and 12 inch vinyl......
However, electronic pop was coming to the surface in 1980 that for me would explode further in 81.
Visage with their single "Fade To Gray". Looking back my intro into this genre was obvious. I left school and the careers advisor thought retail was my chosen career based on it being my dad's career.... I fucking hated it. I ended up working in a Ford Main Dealer garage in the parts department surrounded by blokes who fucking loved cars. I fucking hated every aspect about cars. Even now, I love driving cars, but absolutely no interest in knowing anything about them or getting my hands dirty. I stuck it out for four years. Every fucking day subjected to Radio Fucking One. Four years of Chicago / REO Wankwagon / Foreigner / Journey / Survivor / Styxx / Air Supply and other shite American soft rock (and yes, Air Supply are Aussies). The job was bad enough, but Radio 1 made it even worse...... Simon Bates and his Our Fucking Tune, Steve Fucking Wright and his "Get The Geese Off", it was half funny the first time but every fucking day?
And then out of nowhere, they would play something that stopped me in my tracks and I thought "this is different" and Visage was one such track. Someone a few pages back mentioned The Korgis "Everyone's Got to Learn Sometime" and that was another electronic song - nowhere near punk / post punk / new wave that I loved as it was just not soft fucking rock that Radio 1 were playing.
David Bowie and me had a strange affair. Not physically.... of course. I much prefered Bolan, but my eldest brother had bought me Hunky Dory for my birthday (maybe 14th in 1977) and I loved it but didn't go beyond it. My brother passed away in 1980. Never been ill in his life, goes to bed one night a month after his 21st birthday and has a brain hemorrhage. Three days later he's on a life support machine and after his kidneys and eyes are donated, it was switched off........... The weird thing is, my brother influenced me greatly musically, I said this in the 1979 year, I listened to what he was playing though the bedroom wall. Bowie / Bolan / Slade / early punk. But then he got into Springsteen / Hall & Oats / Tom Petty / Nils Lofgren. No idea how or where he was even hearing this stuff. But a few months after he died, I heard a song on the radio. Must have been Radio 1 as there was no other station around. But this song came on and immediately I liked it. Never heard it before. But I said to myself "This sounds like Bruce Springsteen". I swear to you all reading this I had never heard a Springsteen song before. And the song finished and the DJ said "that was Bruce Springsteen and his new single 'Hungry heart'" To this day I can't explain that..... but it happened 100%. A turning point in my life in so many ways..... My brother had the NME delivered every Thursday when he was alive, I'd scan it but without any conviction. My parents continued to have it delivered after he had died because to cancel it, was like cancelling their son..... I now picked it up and read it religiously from front page to back page.......
Bowie releases Ashes To Ashes (with Visage's Steve Strange in the video) and again, wonderful Radio 1 has to play something fucking decent other than American soft shite rock.
Other belting 1980 songs to make my job in the garage more bearable.......
Echo Beach - Martha & The Muffins
Car Trouble - Adam & The Ants
Once In A Lifetime - Talking Heads
A Forest - The Cure
That was my 1980.
The year began with me still discovering punk from 77 / 78 as well as unknowingly drifting into electric pop too.
With Generation X ending 1979 in pieces, I was looking for a band and then I found a band......
My friend Loz (a Blue naturally) had been championing Siouxsie & The Banshees, who themselves had gone through a messy split in 1979 when Kenny Morris and John McKay left during a tour of Scotland, with Robert Smith from the support band The Cure playing a double set each night to finish the tour off.
The Banshees returned with Budgie from The Slits on drums and John McGeogh from Magazine on guitar. Now at this point I have to admit (and only being 17 is my excuse) I never knew that band members swapped bands! I knew footballers changed clubs and signed for a new club, but it never occurred to me that band members would do the same thing!
The Banshees released the singles Happy House and Christine from the album Kaleidoscope and I jumped in with both feet first. The beginning of a love affair with the Banshees / Creatures / Siouxsie solo that remains today. The album had moved away from the fast and loud first two albums, a slower, more thoughtful album that remains a favourite of mine to this day - but not my favourite.... that's 1981!
Other highlights of the year, my first gig!---------- Stiff Little Fingers at the Coventry Locarno (a venue immortilised in The Specials Friday Night / Saturday Morning.) SLF's single 'At The Edge' had just come out and I had bought it.
I went to other gigs but not sure of the year. UK Subs at The General Wolfe for sure as it was promoting the single "Teenage" (7 inch pink vinyl) There was Pere Ubu and The Au Pairs at Coventry Poly but could have been 80 or 81.
Billy Idol & Tony James came back with the brilliant "Dancing With Myself" under the Gen X moniker but their ship had sailed and it failed to dent the top 50 despite me buying it on both 7 and 12 inch vinyl......
However, electronic pop was coming to the surface in 1980 that for me would explode further in 81.
Visage with their single "Fade To Gray". Looking back my intro into this genre was obvious. I left school and the careers advisor thought retail was my chosen career based on it being my dad's career.... I fucking hated it. I ended up working in a Ford Main Dealer garage in the parts department surrounded by blokes who fucking loved cars. I fucking hated every aspect about cars. Even now, I love driving cars, but absolutely no interest in knowing anything about them or getting my hands dirty. I stuck it out for four years. Every fucking day subjected to Radio Fucking One. Four years of Chicago / REO Wankwagon / Foreigner / Journey / Survivor / Styxx / Air Supply and other shite American soft rock (and yes, Air Supply are Aussies). The job was bad enough, but Radio 1 made it even worse...... Simon Bates and his Our Fucking Tune, Steve Fucking Wright and his "Get The Geese Off", it was half funny the first time but every fucking day?
And then out of nowhere, they would play something that stopped me in my tracks and I thought "this is different" and Visage was one such track. Someone a few pages back mentioned The Korgis "Everyone's Got to Learn Sometime" and that was another electronic song - nowhere near punk / post punk / new wave that I loved as it was just not soft fucking rock that Radio 1 were playing.
David Bowie and me had a strange affair. Not physically.... of course. I much prefered Bolan, but my eldest brother had bought me Hunky Dory for my birthday (maybe 14th in 1977) and I loved it but didn't go beyond it. My brother passed away in 1980. Never been ill in his life, goes to bed one night a month after his 21st birthday and has a brain hemorrhage. Three days later he's on a life support machine and after his kidneys and eyes are donated, it was switched off........... The weird thing is, my brother influenced me greatly musically, I said this in the 1979 year, I listened to what he was playing though the bedroom wall. Bowie / Bolan / Slade / early punk. But then he got into Springsteen / Hall & Oats / Tom Petty / Nils Lofgren. No idea how or where he was even hearing this stuff. But a few months after he died, I heard a song on the radio. Must have been Radio 1 as there was no other station around. But this song came on and immediately I liked it. Never heard it before. But I said to myself "This sounds like Bruce Springsteen". I swear to you all reading this I had never heard a Springsteen song before. And the song finished and the DJ said "that was Bruce Springsteen and his new single 'Hungry heart'" To this day I can't explain that..... but it happened 100%. A turning point in my life in so many ways..... My brother had the NME delivered every Thursday when he was alive, I'd scan it but without any conviction. My parents continued to have it delivered after he had died because to cancel it, was like cancelling their son..... I now picked it up and read it religiously from front page to back page.......
Bowie releases Ashes To Ashes (with Visage's Steve Strange in the video) and again, wonderful Radio 1 has to play something fucking decent other than American soft shite rock.
Other belting 1980 songs to make my job in the garage more bearable.......
Echo Beach - Martha & The Muffins
Car Trouble - Adam & The Ants
Once In A Lifetime - Talking Heads
A Forest - The Cure
That was my 1980.