"Synth Britannia" tribute
2009-10-21 by Hal BerstramThe Human League – Flexi Disc
This post was inspired by the BBC4 documentary “Synth Britannia” which aired last Friday (still available on the BBC iPlayer for UK residents) – a good documentary on the late 1970s and early 1980s UK ‘synthpop’ scene. Well worth 90 minutes of your time.
Synth-”pop” started out as a bunch of geezers in industrial locations such as Sheffield, Liverpool and East London influenced by science fiction and early Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream records. The Human League were right up with the best of them. This is from the commercially unsuccessful, but more quirky and probably more interesting ‘Mark I’ line-up which featured frontman Phil Oakey plus Ian Marsh and Martyn Ware (who later became Heaven 17).
‘The Dignity of Labour’ was the Human League’s second release (1979), a 4-song instrumental ep with a picture of the first man in space, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, on the front. It wasn’t really what you’d call ‘commercial’ – certainly not compared with the reasonably catchy debut single ‘Being Boiled’. In an attempt to boost sales, the group decided to include a flexidisc with the single. For the benefit of anyone under about 30, flexidiscs were one-sided flexible vinyl sheets with a music track pressed into them which could be played with a standard record player – although the quality wasn’t great (as you can hear on this track, which was included on the remaster of the League’s debut LP Reproduction as a bonus track – sounding like it’s been remastered from an original copy.
In an inspired move, the flexidisc track features the group deciding whether to have a flexidisc or not (and what to put on it). It’s a piece of self-referential humour which shows that the League could just as easily have been an alternative comedy group as an experimental pop outfit. Oakey’s line at the end is inspired:
“What we’ve got in this is not simple like everything else, and it’s not even complex… it’s MULTIPLEX. The picture of Yuri Gagarin isn’t just about the Russian space effort and it’s not just about Russian society… it’s about the individual as opposed to the group, and it’s about human frailty; no matter how big you are, you’re gonna be dead pretty soon.”
Well you can’t say fairer than that.
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- Blind Youth
- fansite - lots of info about the early Human League and other related Sheffield outfits
- Buy 'Reproduction'
- from Rough Trade - including 'Dignity of Labour' and other bonus tracks
More bargain bin booty
2008-10-07 by Kevvy KBarbara Mason – Another Man
Yet another nugget of €1 goodness from the Dutch vinyl crawl. This came out in 83 on West End records, and the backing track consists of a pulsing, metronomic electro beat, with some crazy electro-funk keyboards going off all over it. Many peeps stick with the instrumental, but I’m all about the quirky, albeit somewhat hetero-normative vocal put in by Barbara Mason – the another man in question turns out to be his, rather than hers, and she runs through the various tell tale signs that should have raised her suspicions before. Barbara Mason has a veritable soul pedigree stretching way back that this one track later in her career doesn’t do justice.
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Mills' pills
2008-09-27 by Kevvy K
Stephanie Mills – The Medicine Song
Apologies for prolonged blog absences… not for lack of thigns I want to post, lack of having a crafty 10 mins to sit down and crack one out, so to speak.
I was in Amsterdam on a work one last week, and stumbled across a veritable treasure trove of all manner of tasty vinyl at ludicrous prices. I ended up bringing some 60 records home with me… including 40 that I paid €1 each for, including lots of disco 12”s – was honestly the best crate digging experience of my life. I just kept stumbling upon treasure after treasure, and much of it minty fresh. So I’m going to be sharing some of them in the coming weeks.
This was actually a bank-breaking €4 rather than €1, but there was no way I was going to go home without this little beauty. A great, great track from 1984 on Casablanca records, with a wonderful cross over of boogie and pop sensibilities – no wonder it topped the US dance chart at the time, and even scraped into the UK top 30. There’s a great dub version on the flip too.
Disturbing fact – Stephanie was briefly romantically linked to Micheal Jackson when she was playing Dorothy in the original version of The Wiz.
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