The next vinly afternoon in the cafe has the theme of mid-80s movement ‘The Big Music’, because I had audience requests for both Simple Minds and The U2. And, tbh, because I had to write something for the parish mag with an hour to print deadline, and my mind was totally blank.
Scotland: ver Minds, the Waterboys, etc.
Wales: The Alarm
Ireland: U2
England: errm?
I ask the AW Hive Mind, which English act grew mullets, waved flags, frequented castles, and generally acted like knobs?
Dunno about acted like knobs but New Model Army? A bit niche perhaps.
They were my first thought, too, but the audience is definitely civilians.
Wrong time period, but Coldplay would fit
Levellers, possibly (let’s really troll Kid Dynamite).
Or these guys:
Mullets? Check
Acting like knobs? Check
Waved flags? Not sure
Frequented castles? Well, graffiti-sprayed rubbish dumps and small cliffs
World Party?
Karl was a Welsh boyo.
Echo and The Bunnymen
(although probably only the castle criteria applies)
The Teardrop Explodes
I have 1979 Liverpool psychedelics down for another theme afternoon, and they’re both in it.
Feel free to peruse and steal from this playlist:
Unrelated. Am I the only person who thinks that using The Killing Moon over a phone company ad showing kids trying to get home safe is in poor taste?
Yes.
I saw that and, aside from the questionable taste, I wondered what possible relevance the song had to a mobile network provider
Ian McNob and his Icicle Works.
My thought: he has the perfect soaring tones for The Big Music.
Echo & the Bunnymen, likewise, with McCulloch in full throat.
Which leads, logically, to the many incarnations of Wah.
Hmm… civilians probably only know Birds Fly, but I have the Seven Singles Deep mini-album full of bangers.
My fave was always Out Of Season, which wasn’t a single.
The first three albums are full of bangers. It all went a bit weird after that. Even though he’s a silly man, he’s really good at this stuff.
There are some good ‘uns on his latest solo, Nabbey Road.OK, and some that aren’t. His selection of Fleetwood Mac covers has also its moments, and tackles both the Peter Green blues model as the Buck-Nicks enhanced later option. Even a song or two from the interim wilderness years.
I’d go for the Mercury-nominated, (half) Crazy Horse-backed, Head Like A Rock, but not (yet) on vinyl.
I really like the Fleetwood Mac one – some excellent choices
He’s already got a new one lined up. Very prolific even if he doesn’t match the heights of the Icies or his early solo career.
I think Love is a WC is quite well known, surely…?
You’re right. Birds Fly was only number 90, but a radio hit (I bought it). Love is a Wonderful Colour was a genuine #15 pop hit.
I can distinctly remember hearing Seven Horses (number 80) playing on lunchtime Radio 1 in the Scout hut, while I fed 50p pieces into the pool table. Why do I remember this shit? Answers on a postcard…
I don’t know why you remember this shit, (Actually I do. Because it’s IMPORTANT!!) but Hollow Horse should have been huge. Edit…I’ve just seen it’s Seven Horses but my point still stands.
Hollow Horse has got a great chorus, one where you put your arms around your best mate and bellow it out.
Love is a WC?? As in – seeing one’s love life going doon the lavvy pan?
You might find individual songs that fit the bill like Tower of Strength by the Mission.
I’m not familiar with much of their work but perennial under-achievers Then Jericho seemed to be aiming for that market with songs like Big Area.
I’m planning a Goth afternoon fairly soon, which feature the Mish, and culminate with the new Cure LP.
The Psychedelic Furs? Not so much of the rampart rock, but just like Simple Minds seemingly became American overnight after a John Hughes moment and started writing songs for stadiums instead of Odeons.
I went to see the Furs around 6 years ago and was surprised at how well the American era material had aged. I’d go so far as to say I enjoyed it more than the older material they played.
The American era was really only one album, and it included Pretty In Pink, which is a pretty indestructable song (even if they had a good go at it with the gated drums). I haven’t played Midnight to Midnight for years, I must rectify that.
No, no you mustn’t @fentonsteve
Just one look at the cover should tell you that.
Perhaps I should snort a load of charlie, to get in the right frame of mind.
I think they’d passed on the powder by the time Mirror Moves came out.
Midnight to Midnight has this underated track on it which I love –
Actually, yes. This is good. Epic chorus. Rest over the album was a bit rockist though.
“Rockist”? Never been absolutely sure what that means…
A bit too guitary, a bit too obvious, a bit too commercial.
I might well be wrong @fitterstoke
Interesting – if pushed, I thought it was more to do with that big, “authentic”, waaay too earnest thing. I’ve seen it used, usually as a pejorative, but I’ve never been really sure…
You’re right @fitterstoke!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockism_and_poptimism#:~:text=Rockism%20is%20the%20belief%20that,normative%20state%20of%20popular%20music.
I’d regard the Keith Forsey produced Mirror Moves as very much the start of their American phase – certainly the cut off point from the earlier “new wave”, to pop success.
The next one (and my fave), Book of Days, was very goth… and sank without trace. I saw them on that tour.
No tunes on that album @fentonsteve if I recall correctly. A bit of a dirge. Or was that the next one “World Outside?”
The comeback album from 5 years ago was a bit one paced.
I rather like it, in a sort of Pornography-by-the-Cure way. I really didn’t like World Outside, despite the Gil Norton production.
I took a chance on seeing a band called Book of Days playing the Mean Fiddler around the time the album came out. Fortunately it turned out to be the Furs under a pseudonym. I’d talked a few people into following my hunch (…see Young Frankenstein for similar jokes). It was a really good gig and wonderful to see them in such a small venue.
Building on this finger-on-the-pulse reputation, I convinced some of the same people that Bowie was possibly playing the same Mean Fiddler under the name “the Legendary Stardust Cowboy”. Bowie was in London at the time and I had just read him mention the Legendary Stardust Cowboy in an interview presumably about where the name Ziggy Stardust came from. It wasn’t Bowie. It was some old git playing poor country music. My reputation was in tatters.
Some you win…
When I’m in the right mood , Mirror Moves is my favourite of theirs. Fantastically tuneful even if it did lose a bit of edge and originality.
Looking at the track listing, I still know words to all of the songs. Typical of a lot of music at the time it was when pop music was a bit edgy and edgy music was a bit pop. Kind of how I like my music.
‘When pop music was a bit edgy and edgy music was a bit pop’ – always fun @salwarpe
Not a bad call, but are they known by civilians outside of Leics.?
I bet Pretty in Pink will be as well known as anything by The Alarm.
I only really know one song by them – Sister Europe.
(I don’t know anything by The Alarm – am I a civilian?)
No, just normal. I realise that might not be what you want to hear. (I don’t know any of their songs because they look ridiculous).
68 Guns
(wave that flag and hold your lighter in the air)
Where were you
HIGH-ding when the
STORM broke and the
RAIN began to fall?
How’s about this for inflated nonsense? Seven minutes of pumped-up froth, and you know it is as an epic because the drums don’t even come in for the first two minutes. Despite all that, I still quite like it.
P.S. Did all bands 80s bands use the same snare? It sounds like a bowl of jelly hit with a wooden spoon.
Spirit of ’76:
The Alarm
remain mighty popular, it seems, having been absorbed into the folk/celtic punk diaspora* that is a potent grassroots market. Mike Peters is currently having yet another round of chemo for his aggressively recurrent blood cancer.
*As in Levellers, UK Subs, New Model Army, Ferocious Dog and also many an unfashionable warhorse you didn’t think still going or commercially viable. Courtesy festivals like Bearded Theory, Revolution and many more, these band maintain a massive following, more under the radar than over.
“The Human Saxophone” – Anto Thistlethwaite out of the Waterboys – is definitely English!
James?
Edit: I see they didn’t really become well known until 1990
Their ’80s stuff (which I prefer, tbh) is a very Indie, kind of Fall / Beefheart, racket.
1980s James is completely brilliant, a much more interesting and satisfying catalogue than anything they put out after 1990.
Duran Duran or Sigue Sigue Sputnik? Definitely knobs with mullets. Don’t know about the castles, but Duran Duran did frequent yachts.
Tenpole Tudor, obviously.
Maybe not “civilian” enough, and a bit Prog-adjacent … It Bites
It’s got to be the Sowing The Seeds of Love hitmakers, Shirley?
Good call.
Say “the big music” to me and it’s not stadium rock and extravagant mullets that I think about, but Mike Scott and this splendid song.
In which case, the big music for me includes John Coltrane, Arvo Pärt, the Cocteau Towns. Sigur Ros, Tangerine Dream, Terry Riley, Nusrat Ali Fateh Khan, Sun Ra, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou etc.
I know! I’m barking. And up the wrong tree to boot!
That’s kind of what gave me the idea, but it’ll have to be This Is The Sea, however much I like the second album.
“mid-80s movement ‘The Big Music’”
I hope your vinyl afternoon goes well, Mr F – but “movement” is right – possibly my least favourite period/grouping of bands in the last few decades, all in one thread…
Cheerio!
Spear of Destiny?
That was my first thought too.
1984 – the best year in pop.
Has the Afterword ever done a thread on this before?
Erm yes, Just over a year ago. I started it.
Old age is catching up with me – reading the comments, I don’t remember making (m)any of them….
The core bands I think of in this bailiwick are the ones you or others have mostly mentioned – Simple Minds, U2, Big Country, Echo and the Bunnymen. Not quite the same but around at the same time and definitely producers of big, if you will, anthemic, songs – how about Tears for Fears?
SFTBC, maybe. Debut is too synthy. Third is too Peppery.
I seem to remember the propaganda at the time (notably from Jim Kerr) was that there was something particularly “celtic” about big rousing choruses and open-hearted sentiment as opposed to the buttoned up “quiet desperation” of the more restrained English. So it’s no surprise to see Pete Wylie, McNabb and the Bunnies put forth as Liverpool seems (certainly from follwing football) to be the least English city in England..
To an extent, I agree with Jim. There’s something anthemic about what later became “stadium rock” that the English acts didn’t have. Perhaps it is the proximity of mountains?
Mind you, Ocean Rain might fit. It’s hardly Doors-influenced post-punk at all, and definitely tries to be epic. Perhaps not “the greatest album ever made” though.
Yes, the landscape used to feature prominently in music videos of the time and record covers (e.g. the Bunnies’ Porcupine). The whole thing probably peaked with Big Country blazing while two bandits rode their motorbike through the highlands in Restless Natives..
How about the 80s iteration of Slade?
Mullets? ✅
Flags? ✅
Castles? ✅
Windswept outdoors videos, Anthemic choruses ✅✅
A compelling argument…
Nobody mentioned Then Jericho then
Except for Bamber up there. I thought if I ignored it, it might go away…
Bugger …”Rubs eyes”
Not an English band and probably not well known but I regarded the Triffids as capable of producing Big Music particularly songs like Wide Open Road and Bury Me Deep in Love. I’d say they’d go down well in the company of the other bands you’ve mentioned.
A more obscure Australian example might be the eponymous first album by Hunters and Collectors. Ther are some epic massive tracks on that…. Obviously the days before they went mainstream and crowd pleasing.
Dexys Midnight Runners?
I said DEXYS MIDNIGHT RUNNERS!
You are looking for pompous, overblown, mullets, behaving like knobs…
I’ve got Dexys down for a future “three completely different albums recorded by the same act” theme. I expect half the audience to leave when Don’t Stand Me Down starts.
Killing Joke were in on this. A few decent sized hits too. I present this video as evidence.
That’s actually a really good call. I have the Night Time LP, which is surprisinlgy pop for an edgy band, to paraphrase Sal.
And both Kings and Queens and Come As You Are, sorry, Eighties, were radio hits, but not so big chart hits as Love Like Blood. Three bangers on an eight-track album.
1985 was really a year when Goth hit the mainstream. I wanted to like this song, and the pounding rhythm, organ sound and great riffage impressed. But the singing was just a little bit too meh. Similar with this effort from the other punk-turned-goth outfit, the Damned – a bit too tongue in cheek for proper goff.
Luckily, later that year I discovered First and Last and Always and In the Flat Field – never looked back.
The Damned don’t belong in this list – they always had a sense of humour…
Indeed. In the pantheon of the Big 3, they were seen as the cartoon version. Did them no harm, and their self deprecation means they can still fill a concert hall. The band least likely to succeed, have succeeded.
The Big Three? I’m afraid I thought the Pistols and the (no hits) Clash were pretentious shite at the time – but I always liked the Damned. And, on reflection, I’m sure it was because they had a sense of humour about themselves and the scene. “Cartoon version”? Nah – they were probably the most honest of the three…
I know this is a minority opinion – fair enough.
Agree, and no intention to do them down. They were and still are a brilliant band. And with Captain Sensible in the ranks they were never going to be too serious.
I agree!
In that video, they look like they are doing a historical scene for bored school children at Warwick Castle.
The Police
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
I’ve done FGTH as part of a ZTT afternoon, although that was pre-Covid.
The Police are down for a future “lead drummers” theme.
The answer is Queen of course. All these other Bowie wannabes just didn’t have the weight.
You might have a point. Can I bring myself to get The Works or Kind of Magic off the shelf for the first time in 40 years, though? The civilians might like it, not sure I would.
While the Sisters of Mercy were primarily goth of course, the singles of Floodland were certainly big… As was the hair.
Yeah, but they were big in a different way. The idea behind This Corrosion was that it was a soundtrack to a disco at the Borgias, while the press release for the Lucretia single talked of it having “a million gonzoid guitars”.
Much though I quite like the idea of the 12″ of Lucretia blaring out in Fent’s cafe, I don’t think the Sisters should be part of this one.
Yeah, there was an air of optimism and stadium crowd positivity about what is termed here ‘Big Music’. The Sisters were rather more twisted in their approach – thee snider approach to Pop, you might say.
Lucretia has a great bass line that even I , as a root note plodder, can play.
It’s not a castle, it’s a bunker. Also, it’s not on vinyl.
Perhaps I could arrange the absent vinyl album to be played live instead.
It turns out the event is on the afternoon of Burns night, so all music will be from north of the border.
Sorry, Mr Bonio and The Hedge, but you’ll have to wait until another time.
You may want to reconsider that Fents. I’m Scottish, but I don’t think it’s possible to fill 2 or 3 hours with decent pop music from Scotland. We’re just not very good at it. Mark my words, you’ll be reaching for Rod Stewart, AC/DC and Talking Heads by the 25 minutes mark.
Harsh and unfair.
Ok that sounds like a gauntlet laid down Retro.
Go for it, retro – a Scottish “big music” playlist lasting two or three hours
(no rubbish, mind – only tunes that Mr F might want to play to his punters…)
Tempting/tempted, but “your” big music may not be “mine”, plus I thought the brief had changed from big music to just Scottish music. I am guessing mainly of the rockular variety.
To @fentonsteve ‘s list, below, I would add:
Belle & Sebastian, Arab Strap, Cosmic Rough Riders, Teenage Fanclub, Goodbye Mr Mackenzie, Orange Juice, Pearlfishers, Camera Obscura, Manran, Peat & Diesel, Tidelines, SAHB, Skerryvore, Travis, Wet Wet Wet (just…),Wolfstone, Glasvegas, Associates, AWB, Aztec Camera, Beta Band, Big Dish, The Bluebells, Mogwai, Churches, Cocteau Twins, Danny Wilson, Delgados, Young Fathers, Franz Ferdinand, Fratellis, Frightened Rabbit, Idlewild, Jesus & Mary Chain, Nazareth, Love & Money, Peatbog Faeries, primal Scream, Rezillos, Revillos, Shop Assistants, Snow Patrol, Big Country and, of course, the Primevals.
Apologies – the change in brief escaped me.
I thought it was Scottish “Big Music”, rather than just Scottish music (which would include everything from Jimmy Shand to SAHB, rather than just the earnest chaps in 80s vests).
Despite my brain dump below, and retro’s additions above, I think I need to keep to Scottish Big Music, or I’ll be there all night (and all week).
https://www.cherryred.co.uk/big-gold-dreams-a-story-of-scottish-independent-music-19771989-5cd-boxset
115 songs to start you off.
Yeah, I’ve got that box. Not on vinyl, though.
Just off the top of my head…
Simple Minds, the Waterboys, the Skids, Big Country, The Blue Nile, Altered Images, Hipsway, Texas, Deacon Blue (I like Raintown, but they did go very quickly off the boil when they got to America), LC & the Commotions, Strawberry Switchblade, Eddi Reader (I have her album of Robert Burns songs), Trashcan Sinatras, Love & Money, The Scottish Band.
Give me 10 minutes and I’ll think of more, and chuck in some earnest young men in vests.
Eurythmics!!!!
Too late, aren’t I? But half Scottish.
Too English, then…..
So, The Big Music is choons for those who like it bombastic but not as preposterous as metal, if I’m reading this thread right.
Not for me, thanks. Mostly.