The History Of All Truth

Stephen  Morris is about to put his view of life in Joy Division and New Order into the public domain to put alongside Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook's versions (for the record Barney's was pretty disappointing, his account of his younger life growing up in Salford was interesting but after that it became a boring read. He skipped most of the 1980s because he thought people would find him describing how they made their greatest records dull and then spent the last two chapters detailing the collapse of relations with Hooky. Hooky's books were scurrilous, entertaining and full of the sort of details that I did want to read but his frequent references to Bernard as Twatto show how big the distance between them is and put downs of Gillian were unnecessary).

Stephen Morris' drumming is a massive part of the sound of his two bands. His travails with Hannett while recording Unknown Pleasures are well documented but clearly paid off. His synth drums on She's Lost Control are wonderful and the drum sound and drumming on Transmission b-side Novelty are among the best I've ever heard. Early New Order singles and albums are full of brilliantly recorded drum parts, as much part of the NO sound as Hooky's bass, the homemade kit keyboards and Barney's vocals- all of which are perfectly demonstrated on this 12" single from April 1984, a high point for the band, the record label and the 1980s as a whole.

Thieves Like Us

As if giving their fans a magnificent standalone single wasn't enough they coupled it with a gem of a b-side too, opening with Hooky's brilliant bass and some spikey guitar playing from Barney and another of his fragile vocals. Then the wall of synths come in. Lonesome Tonight, with it's pisstake title, is a masterpiece.

Lonesome Tonight

The lyrics of Lonesome Tonight are classic early New Order, that mixture of written to rhyme with personal point of view suddenly switching into something portentous- check the change here in the first verse from 'you turned your back on me' to two lines later 'the history of all truth'

I walk along the street
I look into your eyes
I'm pleasant when we meet
I'm there when you go home
How many times before
Could you tell I didn't care?
When you turned your back on me
I knew we'd get nowhere
Do you believe in youth
The history of all truth
A heart that's left at home
Becomes a heart of stone

Stephen's take on events should be interesting. He often comes across as the most thoughtful and considered of the surviving members of Joy Division. He's doing a short book tour to promote it with a Q and A session conducted by Dave Haslam starting at the Dancehouse in Manchester next Thursday and then going to Liverpool, Hebden Bridge and Newcastle (which looks a bit like a New Order world tour itinerary from 1985). Tickets for the Manchester event are here if you fancy it. See you there.

Dave Haslam is a Manchester mainstay since arriving in the city in the early 80s- DJ at the Hacienda and the Boardwalk, gig promoter, journalist and author, record label boss (Play Hard) and cultural commentator. From 1980 onwards, if something was happening in the Manchester area, the chances are he was involved or present. His latest book Sonic Youth Slept On My Floor is out now in paperback. Well worth reading if you want to peek inside Manchester's music scene as seen and lived by Dave from 1980 to the present. Someone described it as 'the literary equivalent of a brilliant chat with your best mate' which is a good take on it and it's refreshingly ant-nostalgic too. 

Beloved

In 1990 The Beloved, converts to dance from indie, put out an album called Happiness that was wide-eyed and progressive, full of the spirit and technology of the time. It was followed by a sister album of remixes and versions and a new song which they hoped would take them into the charts but didn't (It's Alright Now), one of the period's lost records. Blissed Out had a different number of tracks depending on which format you shelled out for, eight on the vinyl, eleven on the cd and sixteen on cassette (hardly anyone I knew had a cd player in 1990 and not buying cds was almost an act of faith and resistance- how times change).

Jon Marsh Tweeted yesterday that the cassette version was now available to buy/stream at the usual online stores so those extra tracks previously found on the tape were now out there again officially. The pick of these are the two final ones- firstly, the Timeless Dub of Don't You Worry is a dub- house treat (remix credited to Adam and Eve, a remix pseudonym for Jon and his wife Helena). Seems wrong to post mp3s of these two songs when they were only re-released yesterday and you can buy the pair for less than £2 so videos only I'm afraid...



Secondly the track Acid Love (from 1988) a proper UK acid house tune with a hazy vocal, in thrall to the sounds coming out of Chicago and Detroit, Phuture and Pierre, and designed to send ripples up and down your spine.



And here is the album version of one of the peaks from Happinesss, a song about being in ove with being in love...

Your Love Takes Me Higher

The photo at the top of this post is from an interview with Jon and Steve in The Face, published in November 1990. If you want the full hit,  the interview and pages of the magazine are at Test Pressing. 

Fifteen

There are two significant events today, June 14th 2018, one personal and one international. The first one, close to home, is the 15th birthday of number two child/number one daughter Eliza. Once, as the picture shows, she was young and cute and happily wore a Clash t-shirt. Now she is 15, growing up into a young woman and probably wouldn't wear a Clash t-shirt.

Every summer in recent years we've driven to France with a stack of music. I get accused of hogging the car stereo. Not true obviously. Finding songs we can all agree on is a bit of an artform. Last summer we got there on this one- I've got to say, I think this is a tune. So you can have this one as your birthday song Eliza. Happy birthday.



One of Eliza's presents is Dolly Parton's 9 To 5 on 7" (which she should have opened by the time this is posted). So here's your birthday bonus song...



We survived our first 'proper' teenage house party at the weekend, a mixed group of 15 of them in our garden, with music, dancing, shrieking and  'controlled' drinking (you can control what they drink in your house- more difficult to control what some of them have drunk before they arrive). Apart from some minor damage to our already patchy lawn there was no harm done and much fun had. The party playlist was dominated by 80s pop, some disgraceful 80s soft-rock and some more contemporary stuff. Back in 1985, when I turned 15 this was the UK's number one single...



19 is groundbreaking in its own way and genuinely memorable, and kept at the number one slot by regular releases of remixed versions. Vietnam was big in the mid-80s. A decade on from the end of the war people were getting to grips with it, what had happened and what it meant. I read somewhere recently that the average age of the combat soldier in Vietnam wasn't actually 19 but 22. But that doesn't really change the message of the song or the fact that if you were poor, uneducated or black you were far more likely to end up in Vietnam than if you were wealthier, educated and white. Does it Mr. Trump? Coincidentally I played it to my Year 11 class recently as part of their depth study on The Vietnam War. They weren't very impressed if truth be told, the sounds were too dated and quaint, the stuttering vocal too cliched and the female backing vox too cheesy. But they took the message and the visuals in.

The other event today is the start of the World Cup, Russia 2018. This is my 11th World Cup. I have some vague memories of Argentina '78 aged 8, memories of the final at least, which I was allowed to stay up and watch some of. Spain '82 is the first one I really  remember- in the picture above Bryan Robson celebrates after scoring against France in England's opening game. Mexico '86 was a blast, taking place during my O Levels, the magnificence of Diego Maradona in his prime, England out in controversial manner and an epic France v Brazil game. Italia 90 was ace, mixed up as it was with New Order's World In Motion, No Alla Violenza, Toto Schillaci, Roger Milla and an England run to the semi-finals.

Twenty-eight years on, this is still the only world cup record that really matters.

'Love's got the world in motion and we can't believe it's true'.

World In Motion (No Alla Violenza Mix)

That's What Gets Results

Who wouldn't want a Face magazine t-shirt as modelled by Siobhan Fahey from Bananarama? I'm half tempted to print out the cut out slip and send it off to the address and see what happens (I'd have to put a postal order in I think).

Bananarama have reformed recently. They kept appearing on the Top Of The Pops reruns (not the 1985 ones showing at the moment but last year's 1983 repeats). Cruel Summer sounded very good all these years later, a slightly off kilter pop song about love in oppressive summer heat in the city. The home-made dancing is refreshing too, a time when female pop stars weren't drilled to within an inch of their lives. And maybe some of us were suddenly reminded why Bananarama being on Top Of The Pops week in, week out when we were 13 years old was something of a visual treat...



They first hit the chart due to their backing vocals on the Fun Boy Three's 1982 hit single, It Ain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It), which came about because Terry Hall saw an article on them in The Face and liked their look. They switched around for Bananarama's next single Really Saying Something with Terry, Lynval and Neville singing backing for Siobhan, Sara and Keren.

It Ain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It)

The song was originally written in 1939 by jazz musicians Melvin 'Sy' Oliver and James 'Trummy' Young. It says something about the Fun Boy Three's talents that they took an old jazz tune and turned it into a pop ska song, and then to number 4 in the charts (probably selling hundreds of thousands of copies).

So Much Confusion

'...When October comes around' said the Pet Shop Boys in My October Symphony. Later on Neil Tennant asks about whether we should 'remember December instead or worry about February?' I guess February just rhymed. I haven't got any songs on the computer named after February and can't think of many with lyrics referring to the second month other than this one.

My October Symphony is from Behaviour, 1990's PSB tour de force. Produced by Harold Faltermeyer using analogue synths it mixes full on pop, rave influenced pop, ballads and what got called adult pop- musical, reflective, lyrically grown up, classy instead of teenage (which could sound a bit dull but Behaviour is an album that could never be called dull. Inventive, subtle, wry, expansive but not dull). My October Symphony chucks many things into the pot besides Neil's lyrics- a blast of a male voice choir, house inspired backing vox, sweeping strings and a funky guitar part played by Johnny Marr. I always felt it's a song about autumn really (and wanting to move on and change) but according to a PSB fan site- 'Neil adopts the role of a Russian composer who has dedicated his life and work to the ideals of the revolution but now feels confused and betrayed in the wake of the collapse of Communism'. So there you go. On the same site Janet Street Porter claims it is about a lingerie model. Which one Janet?

My October Symphony

In 1991 they released a stand alone single, DJ Culture, partly to promote their singles compilation Discography, partly as a comment on the Gulf War and how George Bush borrowed from Churchill's wartime speeches just as artists sample each other (with a reference to Oscar Wilde's trial thrown in too), and partly because they'd recorded what was a very good pop song. As a single it kind of went missing, despite reaching number 13 in the chart.

And So The Conversation Turned

I've said it before- sometimes you find a picture and that drives the post rather than the other way around. That is the case today. Having found this picture of Joanne and Susan from The Human League, snapped for The Face in June 1986, I couldn't not post it. The only Human League song on my hard drive is this one...

(Keep Feeling) Fascination

That's a properly joyous blast of 1980s pop and no mistake. I do have at least one, maybe two of their albums on vinyl, and also their 1978 single Being Boiled, a pioneering piece of synth-art opening with some white noise and the words 'Ok, ready, let's do it'. Being Boiled was from the days before Joanne and Susan were plucked from the dancefloor by Phil Oakey and turned into pop stars while still at school. I think it's safe to say that this would cause their school a few safeguarding issues today. Not to mention the tracking of their progress towards their predicted GCSE grades. The 1980s- a time when pop groups didn't have to worry about Ofsted.

Why Why Why

Back to it this morning- early start, work clothes, motorway etc etc. It's all a bit of a shock after two weeks off.

This Leo Mas and Fabrice version of The Woodentops' Why Why Why is one way to ease the pain and lessen the blow. Eight minutes of sun dappled groove.

Why Why Why (Balearic Militant Dub)

British Summertime

At least from today onwards until October the clock in my car will be telling the right time. British summertime starts today- you did remember to put your clocks forward didn't you? Yesterday's sunshine made it feel like the seasons had changed at a stroke. Everything feels a little better with some sun on your face.

It gives me a good excuse to post this Ultramarine song from 1991.

British Summertime

Go Brothers Go

The new Chemical Brothers album (Born In The Echoes) is out today and being praised as a return to form. This single, Go, came out at the start of May and has already been viewed close to five million times on Youtube which would suggest they're got a pretty healthy surviving fanbase. Go is funky, synthy and fun with Q Tip providing the hip-house vocals- the album also has Beck, St Vincent and Cate Le Bon on microphone duties.



I was in the car the other day and Block Rockin' Beats came on. It's the most blindingly obvious Chemical Brothers song (Hey Boy Hey Girl excepted maybe). Massive breakbeat. Big borrowed bassline. Hip hop vocal sample from Schoolly D. SIRENS! Totally in your face. No subtlety. No nuance. It's completely stupid. And brilliant.

Block Rockin' Beats

Due to ongoing issues with Boxnet this is via Mediafire but I seem to recall people having some problems with it before. Is Mediafire any use?

Echoes And Bunnymen

I was skipping through Bill Drummond's excellent book 45 the other night, due to turning 45. He was Echo And The Bunnymen's manager all the way through their best years and writes very eloquently and passionately about them. Then I went and found this- the Bunnymen live at Rockpalast in 1981 with an hour and half set spanning the first three albums, showing what a formidable back catalogue they were building up. But the most striking thing is how different their set up looks with them playing in a line across the front of the stage, not with the drum riser behind the singer- changes the whole look of a band playing live. Almost revolutionary. Actually, on second thoughts, the most striking thing is Ian doing sexy in his ripped t-shirt.

Rankin' Night Out

Tonight The Beat are playing at Sale Waterside, a ten minute walk from our front door. It seems silly not to go doesn't it? There are two versions of The Beat on the road at the moment, one led by Andy Wakeling and the other by Ranking Roger. We are going to see the Ranking Roger version. I'm not sure if the two bands are competing after a fall out or if it's a ska franchise thing. Either way the babysitter's booked and we get to do the middle aged skank.

In this clip The (English) Beat play Rankin' Full Stop at the gigantic US festival in San Bernadino in 1983, also the occasion where Mick Jones last trod the boards with The Clash.

Stella

The MA 1 bomber jacket seems to be having a fashion moment- I've seen a few young people in them recently and Gallagher Senior wore one on stage with Johnny Marr last month (it's on Youtube, they're doing Lust For Life). It got me wishing I still had mine (from donkey's years ago). I had a black MA 2 in the mid-90s as well, which I loved (which went missing/was borrowed). This pair of photographs were from a fashion shoot in the 100th issue of The Face (September 1988). I think the model was called Alex. You can run the risk of looking like either you're on your way to a neo-Nazi meeting or you're a bouncer, but they are a great jacket.

Ultramarine's Stella was posted at another blog this week, the 12" with the Stella Breathes and Stella Connects versions. Ultramarine made acid house inspired music, with a dash of something English and pastoral. Stella, from 1991, is tailor made for listening to while enjoying a lazy afternoon in the sun, lying in long grass. Unfortunately it is late December but that shouldn't take away the beauty of this.

Stella (Album Version)

Out Of The Black

This is a bit good and thanks to Echorich for the tip off- a remix of Out Of The Black from Neneh Cherry's excellent album Blank Project. The songs on the album are really stripped back and percussive, Neneh's singing blues and jazz influenced. This remix by Hot Chip's Joe Goddard puts some clubby sounds and dynamics into it, alongside Swedish popstar Robyn.



And tying recent postees together neatly, in this Big Audio Dynamite video for C'mon Every Beatbox, Neneh Cherry busts some moves and cuts some rug. I always love the way Mick and Don sing alternate lines in this song (and there's a guitar solo pinched from Jimi Hendrix). Surely this was where Roddy Frame got his inspiration for Good Morning Britain from too.

Hoomba Hoomba Chant Chant

This picture appeared in the August 1990 issue of The Face in an article called A Raver's Guide To Europe. It shows Andrew Weatherall at Pacha, Ibiza, hard at work doing research for Screamadelica and Morning Dove White.

Looking at the late 80s/early 90s there's a point when Balearic (an eclectic mix of records you could dance to that all fitted in with a certain vibe) turned into piano house and then chill out, i.e. people making records with a specific sounds and feel deliberately to evoke those Balearic feelings, the tail wagging the dog maybe. Piano house and chill out both quickly became debased currencies. This record from 1990 by Voice Of Africa skirts around that fine line, with the Keep On Moving drum sample and the tinkling piano line. Very close to the line.

Hoomba Hoomba

The Voice Of Africa record is a million miles from Balearica of The Woodentops, Fini Tribe, The Residents and Nitzer Ebb (not that any of those bands knew they were making Balearica at the time). Nitzer Ebb's Join In The Chant is a much tougher animal.

Join In The Chant

Mandy

This one's for Drew.

Mandy Smith, mainly famous for marrying the least cool Rolling Stone when she turned sixteen (and he was forty seven), had a pop career of sorts, after signing to Stock Aitken and Waterman. This song, I Just Can't Wait, smashed the UK chart, peaking at number 91. It gained a remix (the Cool Jazzy Breezy Balearic Mix) which made it popular in certain late 80s clubs and circles, especially the legendary Shoom. It was also on the compilation album Balearic Beats Volume 1. Is it a balearic classic? You can decide for yourselves. Drew loves it.



The Face picked up on Shoom and Mandy Smith's remix as this clipping  from 1988 shows...

Just to show how SAW-ish the original was (and by contrast how balearic that remix actually was)...



Don't worry- we will never speak of this again.

Oochy Koochy

That gin stuff gets you drunk dunnit. Been reading the November 1988 issue of The Face that dropped through the letterbox today (ebay £2.99, free P&P), bought for Drew but he bought got one off ebay himself so now I've got one too. As well as Glasgow's scooter clubs, Neneh Cherry and Nick Cave it's got Baby Ford in it. Oochy Koochy was released in 1988 and famously the bassline destroyed the PA in several London nightclubs and the speakers in the studio it was recorded in. It says here.

Here's the video from The Chart Show (must have been the Dance Chart week)... you can almost smell the dry ice and poppers...



And the full length 12" version (with a somewhat crap video)...



Right, I'm off to dance on the kitchen table while Mrs Swiss flicks the lights on and off...

Face Time

I used to love The Face. Between the late 80s and early 00s I bought almost every copy (and many of them are in the loft, awaiting a good sifting through). Yes, it was silly, pretentious, over-the-top, often very London-centric, and over-styled. But it was also done well, trend setting, at times laugh-out-loud funny, with some really good writers, totally hit the spot at times (and completely missed the target other times), covered issues as well as music and fashion, and its front cover felt like an event- in short essential monthly reading, a frippery but worth it.

Above, the Madchester issue, in which Nick Kent made up quotes various interviewees allegedly said... and below Tricky and Martina Topley Bird

I bought a copy in summer 1987, a double sized, special edition, 100th issue I think. It tried to review the 80s- 'whatever happens now' it said, 'the decade is shaped, nothing can alter the way it looks from here'. Arf. Over the next two years acid house swept the nation, the north rose again, the Berlin Wall came down, Communism collapsed.... 

The pleasure of reading old magazines is seeing where they got it right and where they got it very, very wrong; the bands, records, trends and styles they were sure were the next big thing and are now buried in the 'where are they now?' file. I mean, no disrespect to The Farm (who at times I quite like) and I know Groovy Train was a big hit but 'How to succeed in the music business'? 

Whatever it did though, The Face was rarely boring and for a while it did document our lives (or aspects of them). 

Raving, Aliens, Vodka, Discos, Ibiza... it's got the lot.

                                                                 Mmmmmmm, Kylie.


                                                     Sorry, lost myself there for a moment...

                                         Actually I don't remember this 90s Futures Issue one at all.

I more or less stopped buying it with this issue below- I was clearly too old for it, our time together had passed and besides I began to feel they were laughing at me.

This is The High Numbers (early Who as I'm sure you know). I was going to post the magnificent Face Up by New Order from Lowlife but it's not on my hard drive and I can't be arsed ripping it at the moment. Laziness. Sorry. This is good anyway.

I'm The Face