Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

Lost 80s: Kissing the Pink (ripping again!)

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:16:24 -0800

Woo-hoo, I just got a new phono preamp, and a big old desk, so now I have my turntable hooked up to my PC and for the first time since 2002 I can rip tunes from vinyl again! It took a bit of doing; apparently the RCA audio input jacks on my Gateway GM5472 are merely decorative. So much for that selling point. So I broke down and plugged the jacks into a Y-adapter and then into the sound card line in jack, and now everything's dandy. For the maiden voyage of my new setup I've ripped "Water in My Eye" by Kissing the Pink (later just KTP), released on Magnet Records in 1982 as the B-side of the "Mr Blunt" single. It was not included on the band's first album, 1983's Naked, because by that time the singer was no longer in the band, according to the band member I interviewed by telephone for my campus radio station. Didn't actually record the interview, though... oops. Too bad about the singer, her voice is like a platinum bell (or maybe that's just the studio effects, but I love that sound!):

Kissing the Pink - Water in My Eye

Kissing the Pink

So who was that singer? I don't know, and I can't tell from Jeff Grote's otherwise exhaustive Kissing the Pink fansite. I wish they would have done more songs in this totally-synthesized vein. "Water in My Eye," and the rest of the Naked album, was produced by one of the architects of the 80s new wave sound, Colin Thurston. Thurston is best known for producing the first two Duran Duran albums; he also produced the Human League's Travelogue that I was just raving about the other day. I was taken aback to learn that he died in January of this year. Naked has been reissued on CD by Wounded Bird Records, who have an impressive catalog of fully-licensed reissues with original cover art.

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More Sheffield music: Chakk Theme

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 09:23:11 -0700

Following up on the "bands with a self-titled theme song" thread from two posts ago, here is Sheffield band Chakk with "Chakk Theme." It did not appear on any Chakk release, only on the Audio Visual LP companion to Rob Deacon's Abstract Magazine 6, a 1985 Sweatbox Records release. "Chakk Theme" is mostly instrumental, with nothing for singer Jake Harries to do except shout "Chakk" once in a while (I don't think second singer John Stuart was in the band yet); it may be the straight-ahead grooviest track they ever recorded:

Chakk Theme

Chakk

I frequently ponder my fixation on the music of Sheffield from the 80s. Was it really that special, or am I just exhibiting a symptom of middle age, whereby the favorite music of one's youth or young adulthood is elevated onto a pedestal and becomes the "best ever" that no contemporary music can possibly equal, leaving one stuck in an outdated aesthetic, listening to oldies and decrying the crap that passes for music these days? I think I'm safe on the latter count; there's enough music I like coming out all the time that I don't have time to listen to it all, so I don't really care about the crappiness of the music I'm not listening to. That leaves the first part of the question to deal with: was the Sheffield music scene in the 80s special? Observing it from afar, participating vicariously, it seemed special to me at the time. Back then, and even to this day, I had never been part of a local music "scene," mainly because I never lived anywhere where there was more than one band making music that I liked (often there was less than one band making music I liked), and I never had the initiative to start one. But across the ocean in bleak, postindustrial Sheffield, bands like Cabaret Voltaire, Hula, Chakk, ClockDVA, The Box, The Human League, and more were funking, bleeping, and skronking up a storm. I am pleased to report that it wasn't just romanticization on my part, there really was some magic happening there, and it has been chronicled in several books and at least one film, Made in Sheffield. And thankfully for the cash-impaired, Damon Fairclough has compiled a comprehensive mp3 mix of Sheffield bands, Destroyed by gods, and paired it with extensive commentary on each track, available for free download and reading from his Noise Heat Power website. He paints a firsthand portrait of Sheffield as revealed through its music scene, and manages to make me nostalgic for something I never actually lived through in the first place. Chakk are represented in Fairclough's mix by their first single, "Out of the Flesh" (from a FON reissue not the original Doublevision release). Martin Lilleker, who has written two books about Sheffield music (so far), drops an interesting Chakk tidbit in an interview with Pete Mella:

People actually moved to Sheffield because of it, that's why Chakk ended up forming a band in Sheffield specifically, because of the music. They'd heard the Cabs [Cabaret Voltaire], and would go to the city where that music was being played. Quite a lot of people came to Sheffield University for that very reason.

Fairclough's written piece is the online equivalent of liner notes; remember all the text that used to come with an album, or a CD, that you could read while listening to the music to enhance the experience? I tried listening to a Rhino Records podcast once, but the guy wouldn't play the music until he was done talking about it, slowly, and I couldn't sit through it. The beauty of liner notes, and the 21st century equivalent that I'll call "blog accompaniment," is that you don't have to stop the music to get the information. And it doesn't get any better than Destroyed by gods.

I'm not done with Chakk--I like them more than Fairclough does--but I'm done for today. Stay tuned for more at a later date.

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Lost 80s: A Primary Industry

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 21:48:30 -0700

Here's a first: an intersection of my 80s rarities thread with my car-chase music thread. The first song released by A Primary Industry was "Perversion" on Life at the Top, the LP companion to Abstract magazine number 4 from 1984:

A Primary Industry - Perversion

A Primary Industry

Abstract was the brainchild of Rob Deacon, who died last month in a canoeing accident at age 42 (same as me). Life at the Top was issued by Third Mind records, and introduced me to several cutting-edge bands such as Pornosect, Attrition, Bushido, Stress, and Muslimgauze. I have two other issues of Abstract, and they are equally chock-full of creamy postpunk goodness. Deacon evolved Abstract into the Sweatbox record label, which I consider one of the top five labels of the 80s. Sweatbox launched Meat Beat Manifesto, for one, and issued records by A Primary Industry, In the Nursery, Adi Newton's post-ClockDVA group The Anti Group, and probably some more that I can't think of at the moment. They were all great records in beautifully-designed sleeves.

A Primary Industry put out another song on another Abstract LP, an EP (7 Hertz), an LP (Ultramarine), and a 12' remake of Blondie's "Heart of Glass" (all on Sweatbox), then disappeared. I have only now discovered that they didn't actually disappear, the core of Paul Hammond and Ian Cooper just regrouped under a different name, Ultramarine. I never got around to checking them out in the 90s, but I will make up for that shortly.

I can never hear "Perversion" without thinking of Pigbag's signature tune, "Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag" (1982), so here's that too:

They go together well, no? Perhaps a little too well, if you know what I mean? I think it's safe to say that API were "influenced by" Pigbag, and "Perversion" is their homage. They got away from it on their album, though.

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Survival Records Redux: Play

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 03:43:52 -0700

Update: Oops, I screwed up! The song I meant to post was "This Little Girl," but instead I posted "Chasing the Sun," which is the instrumental version of "This Little Girl." Both phrases are lyrics from the song, so I got confused. I've corrected the entry.

Here's another song from the 80s minimal-techno label Survival Records (more background here), ~~"Chasing the Sun"~~ "This Little Girl" by Play. Play was Wayne Kennedy's one-man band, joined on recordings by Drinking Electricity members David Rome (Survival's founder) and P.K. Edgely (Survival's designer). Play's sole album, Red Movies, collected three singles and their four B-sides. ~~"Chasing the Sun"~~ "This Little Girl" is the best, there is a stark grandeur to it that is unmatched by the other tracks:

04 - This Little Girl

Play

It took me a long time to find Red Movies; every time I asked my record dealer, Howie, to look for it on one of his trips to England, he always said, "Play Dead? I've got some Play Dead here." No, not Play Dead! I know Play Dead, I like Play Dead, I have a bunch of their records, I just want PLAY, no Dead! I eventually found it somewhere else, and for a good price, just $6.99 if I remember correctly. It's never been reissued on CD, but a vinyl rip is available for download via Yarrost's LiveJournal.

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