music

[8] The Jesus And Mary Chain, ‘April Skies’

They replaced Bobby Gillespie with a drum machine (there’s a thought) and revved up ‘Some Candy Talking’ to make a straight-up indie pop grower. It’s more unusual than that. You get two verses and then two choruses, and this makes it feel like it’s forever building to a big finish. In a way, it is. Jim Reid lets rip with what sounds like real drive, something that Psychocandy didn’t quite give us.

Junior was distracted this morning. We think she might’ve been peeved at wearing a blue vest and blue sleepsuit. She likes her girlie accoutrements. The Jesus and Mary Chain get a passing nod. She’ll learn though, when she’s decked out in black at 14 years old and telling us how she always liked The Velvet Underground.

Listening to ‘April Skies’ again makes me wonder whether we’ve got The Strokes all wrong. They like the skinny ties, trousers and baseball boots of new wave, but they want to make goth surf pop.

[9] Hue And Cry, ‘Labour Of Love’

A blistering white soul attack on Thatcherite Britain, or Matt Bianco with balls? You decide. Junior threw some shapes to it and thanked her lucky stars that the Kane brothers weren’t looking for Linda.

The dizzy heights of No.9 might be stretching it slightly for this, but it sustains a cracking tempo and some handily spat out lyrics. A friend of mine drops this into the mix occasionally when exercising his ninja DJ skillz, and it isn’t too out of place. Strange, as it’s dated in more than just its meaning.

We enjoyed the brassy few minutes, although some of its gloss was scuffed when I didn’t turn the tape off quickly enough at the end of the song. No.8, you see, is a stone cold classic.

[10] M/A/R/R/S, ‘Pump Up The Volume’

Junior looked a bit bewildered at this one, particularly with her dad struggling manfully to sing along with the samples. I do a mean Ofra Haza. As with the 1987 British public, however, bewilderment gave way to enthusiasm and we had a hit on our hands.

Colourbox were known for a maverick ‘86 World Cup theme, and AR Kane indulged in psychedelic shoe-gazing pop. Dave Dorrell and CJ Mackintosh bucked up their ideas for them and gave us a seminal No.1. Yeah, sampling wasn’t new, but for the punter at large a record consisting solely of samples was a new and frightening thing. It’s odd to think of the furore now. Lawsuits aplenty, not least from the blissfully backward Stock, Aitken and Waterman. Weeks earlier, they’d delighted in white labels of ‘Roadblock’ fooling the fashion-conscious DJs into championing Rick Astley’s svengalis, now they took their ball home when they could’ve been enjoying even greater kudos. Ironic, doncha think?

Oddly, this is still a meaty-sounding record. Put it next to the flimsy ‘Jack Your Body’ and see the Brits breaking the new ground. By the end, Junior was applauding.

[11] Simply Red, ‘The Right Thing’

The best bit of this record is the end. By the time we put this on, Junior had resorted to playing hide and seek by sitting on dad’s head (you try and find a baby that’s sitting on your head).

When I say the end, I mean the last minute. The flame-haired, jewel-toothed, priapic, McCutcheon-bothering minstrel changes the key and stretches his ad lib wings, and we can forget the dry work-out of the first three minutes. Nothing special, though. Hucknall was never as special as he thought, unlikely voice apart.

I heard ‘Something Got Me Started’ the other day. Horrible song, yet brimming with enormous, tangible confidence. It got me thinking that it wasn’t just the broad appeal MOR coffee-table soul that made him so successful; it was also his unstoppable, brash belief that he had everything and could do anything. Without that, he was just another Sade, albeit one a little less easy on the eye.

Now, don’t go deserting 1987 in your Duranie-like droves. The Top 10’s mustard.

[12] Deacon Blue, ‘Dignity’

Bear with me, Raintown was a good album for all its vanity and overarching straight-facedness. Everyone hated Ricky and Lorraine though, didn’t they? Things got worse when he grew a bob and she grabbed more vocals.

Not a hit with Junior, this. Her reactions were a little sluggish after staying up to watch Celebrity Big Brother last night, and it would have taken more than the aspirations of a Scotch binman to wrest her from her torpor.

This is another of those records that I clearly liked more 19 years ago. Not quite as inexplicable as the next one, but overblown and ’80s as it gets.

[13] Duran Duran, ‘Skin Trade’

Like a typical Duranie of the period, Junior was indifferent to this. There was a brief slapping of the thighs at the start, yet attention soon turned to the socks. So, what made the fans desert in their droves? I don’t think it’s a bad record even now, but it was the first to miss the Top 10 in years. Maybe it’s because it had an almost intelligible lyric.

Arcadia and the Power Station diluted the fanbase and the preceding single ‘Notorious’ scraped to No.7 on comeback power alone. A-ha had nicked the girls and the CD age had come and populated the chart’s upper reaches with the more ‘serious’ artists. The biggest bands in the country were now Dire Straits and U2. Duran Duran’s fabled mix of the Sex Pistols and Chic – without the Sex Pistols and the disco joy – wasn’t cutting the ice.

So, Simon, we’ve explained the reason for this strange behaviour. Perhaps you shouldn’t have allowed all those Taylors to jump ship, and then replaced them with AMERICANS.

[14] The Cure, ‘Just Like Heaven’

Junior’s mum reports that this was a bigger success: it had Junior up and boogie-ing with panda, a handy Robert Smith lookalike. The song reminds me of the summer, and getting a taste of heartbreak, but otherwise I was a bit ambivalent about The Cure while somehow having loads of their records.

It’s a lovely tune – even the Dinosaur Jr version is sweet until he starts roaring – and Smith keeps the yelping in check. I saw Katie Melua performing it on Popworld or something a few weeks back, treating us to an acoustic take which was designed to show the astonished masses that she’d cleverly found a Real Song behind the nasty loud rock noise. Well done, Katie.

Come the revolution…

[15] The Wonder Stuff, ‘Unbearable’

Foreshadowing James Blunt by a couple of decades in the rhyming slang stakes, Miles Hunt introduced his troupe of Black Country grebo-pop rockers to the world with this quickfire, snotty-nosed number. They were the greatest band ever for a year, before I woke up, got serious and cared more about girls. As late as 1990 though, I was bonding with fellow undergraduates over Stuffies (as the Melody Maker undoubtedly called them) t-shirts and posters.

The twin millstones of ‘Size Of A Cow’ and ‘Dizzy’ will live longer in the collective memory, but over a couple of albums they brought together countless floppy fringed and oversized topped teenage boys with their spiky, catchy pop punk. We even turned up to their gigs a couple of years back. It’s hard to let go.

Junior was asleep when I left for work this morning, so for a change she’s listened to this and the next tune with her mum. Speaking to her mum just now, I’m told that while this was playing Junior was lying stock straight on her mat, waving her arms and legs just a little. She’s growing up a bit faster than her dad.

Stevie Wonder, ‘Happy Birthday’

A short postscript. Played this last Tuesday for Junior’s half-birthday, but shelved any review. Today, of course, it’s Martin Luther King Day, the result of Stevie’s schmaltzy yet warming musical campaign. Was the day inaugurated purely on the strength of this song’s message? Or is that apocryphal?

I remember Junior kicking her legs along to this, still buoyed by the superlative Scritti Politti tune. She wasn’t rolling over from back to front – because she did that for The First Time this morning – but she was happy. Her mother just rolled her eyes. My record selection can be a touch literal.

A worthwhile song, then, but one that accelerated Stevie’s wholehearted embrace of gloopy sentiment. It means most to me as a play-out to a sweet episode of Northern Exposure, no stranger itself to the gloop.

[16] Aerosmith, ‘Dude (Looks Like A Lady)’

Hilarious stuff – “Lord, imagine my surprise!” – and a raucous, headlong assault on the heart of the rawk. I still think it’s a bit of a gem, and Junior looked like she was having a ball as well. There were squeals to accompany the now standard claps, and she grinned like she could see herself in the mirror. 

When we were 15, most of my friends were into heavy metal or rock at the very least. I didn’t really catch the bug, but I always reckoned this was because I’d been a record buyer for years. For many of them, this was the first time that music was twitching their synapses, and a teenage boy can hardly start with an A-ha single. I no longer had this kind of shame, but I liked a bit of Aerosmith and AC/DC. The rest could go hang.

It’s a mixed bag, this 1987 set. That was the identity I seemed to be forging, and it’s stayed with me – anything goes as long as it’s good. A formative year, then, that’ll do for my novel.