Whilst writing about the dessert Blancmange the other day I was reminded of the band Blancmange, and it occurred to me that whilst I remembered them being a band, I couldn’t actually remember any of the songs they did.

So a quick Internet search later and I bring to you Living On The Ceiling, a song I definitely remember and I hope you will too. If you’re not sure you do, then check out the video clip at the end of this post.

Blancmange themselves were a two piece outfit consisting of singer Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe, the synthesiser guy. They formed in 1979 and were fairly successful during the early Eighties, with them calling it a day in 1987. The pair did some solo work after that, but they recently reformed, and their fourth album, Blanc Burn, was released in March 2011.

Living on the Ceiling is a catchy song (probably why I remember it), with some interesting lyrics (I’m up the bloody wall!) and a mix of good old Eighties synthesiser and the sort of middle Eastern music you always associate with busy marketplaces and belly dancers. Oh, and surprise, surprise, the video itself contains a lot of middle Eastern style imagery to boot.

I guess going by the style of the video it must have been released around the same time as Spandau Ballet’s Gold and Duran Duran’s Rio, when this was seen as I cool thing to do. I’ve no idea which chronological order these songs come in though, so wouldn’t like to say who copied who!

Here in the UK I don’t think R.E.M. really made a big splash until the early Nineties, with the release of their album Out Of Time, which contained songs such as Shiny Happy People and Losing My Religion, and indeed I always thought that they were a new band at the time. How wrong I was though, as they actually formed right back in 1980!

In January 1980 lead singer Michael Stipe met guitarist Peter Buck in a record shop where Buck worked. They got chatting and discovered they shared similar tastes in music and became friends. Later they met up with bass guitarist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry, fellow students from the University of Georgia, who had been playing music together for a while, and they decided to have a go at forming their own group.

Before long the band felt they had something good going and dropped out of school to go touring around the southern US. They became a bit of a local phenomenon but it wasn’t until the summer of 1981 that they finally recorded their first single, Radio Free Europe. Despite only limited distribution, this song went on to become one of the New York Times best 10 singles of the year!

In May 1982 they signed with I.R.S. records and got more and more popular, but it wasn’t until 1987 that the band really put their name on the map with the release of their album Document. This featured songs such as The One I Love and It’s The End Of The World As We Know It, which I have to admit I never knew were R.E.M. songs until writing this! It makes me wonder now whether I had actually heard of R.E.M. earlier than I thought I had without even knowing it!

This brings us nicely back to 1991 and the release of Out of Time. Both these albums were pivotal in garnering R.E.M. a worldwide audience, so that when album Automatic For The People came along in 1992 it became an automatic buy for many people (pardon the pun!). This album contained tracks such as The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite, Everybody Hurts and Man On The Moon.

Whilst R.E.M. have continued to tour and record since then (even after the departure of Bill Berry in 1997, when the band continued as a three piece) I think this period around the late Eighties and early Nineties was definitely the high point of their careers.

I’ll leave you then with the video for Shiny Happy People, which is my personal favourite R.E.M. song for several reasons. First, it reminds me of first getting satellite TV, as it was played constantly on MTV at the time. Secondly it guest features Kate Pierson from The B-52’s, and thirdly, I love the bit where the song goes all slow at the end and it’s revealed that an old feller on a bike has been making the brightly coloured scrolling background go round.

The Vapors apparently thought themselves that they could become a one hit wonder after writing Turning Japanese, to the extent that they held the song back to be their second released single, in the hope that this damning fate wouldn’t happen to them. Sadly for them the strategy didn’t work, and so they will now forever be known to the masses just for this song.

However, it’s a good song to be remembered for, as its distinctive oriental sounding snatches make it instantly recognisable right from the start. The song is a very lively one with a catchy chorus that you only need to hear once to have it indelibly stamped into your brain (to be fair though the whole chorus does just consist of the following three lines repeated four times, so perhaps it’s no wonder)

The main lyrics talk about someone having a photograph of their big crush which they just can’t stop staring at because they are so besotted by them. So taken is the singer with their love interest that they would even like a Doctor to take a picture so they can look at then from the inside as well (as my particular favourite lyrics from the song state!).

Quite what this has to do with turning Japanese though I’m really not sure.

All in all a great fun song that whenever I hear it always takes me straight back to my youth. I also particularly like it for the weird sound effect that always reminds me of the ace puppet series Star Fleet. Listen out for it at the end of the song, which you can watch and listen to below. It’s when the traditionally dressed Japanese woman is playing the tubular bells.

In the UK, the song they are best known for is Love Shack, one of those tunes that gets put on for parties because it’s such a happy sounding song, yet is still quite rock ‘n’ roll in it’s way. Some may also remember that they provided a version of the theme song for the live action Flintstones movie, though technically they were called The BC-52’s for that…

Anyway, as with most in the UK it was Love Shack that was the first B-52’s song I had knowingly heard, but the band name wasn’t new to me. I had heard of them before as, being a big fan of the Commodore Amiga home computer, I had learnt that several models of this computer had the name of a B-52’s song printed on the motherboard. For example, the extremely popular Amiga 500 had Rock Lobster printed on it’s main board.

It wasn’t until I went to college (mid 1990’s) that I actually heard some more B-52’s songs. A friend had a couple of albums, so as well as finally getting to hear what Rock Lobster sounded like I also heard a number of other songs such as Planet Claire, Is That You Mo-Dean and Good Stuff.

I have to say I became a bit of a fan of their unique style, which is a kind of mix of rock ‘n’ roll, Beach Boys style surfer music with a bit of Sixties and Seventies thrown in for good measure. Their song titles tend to be a little odd it has to be said (and their lyrics even odder) but they’re generally quite light hearted and happy to listen too.

The band formed in 1976 and originally consisted of vocalist Fred Schneider (who has quite a unique sounding voice), brother and sister Ricky and Cindy Wilson (guitarist and vocalist respectively), Kate Pierson (keyboards) and drummer Keith Strickland. The name of the band came not from the famous bomber aircraft, but from a beehive type hairstyle (which did take it’s name from the aircraft).

The B-52’s are still playing today, although over the years they have taken a few breaks from their musical careers. One of the first of these came when Ricky died in 1985, which saw the surviving members take a break until 1989, when they reformed for the album Cosmic Thing.

In 1990 Cindy Wilson took time out to concentrate on raising a family, and in 1992 the remaining trio of Schneider, Pierson and Strickland released the album Good Stuff. Since then whilst the band has remained active it has taken until 2008 for them to release another album, Funplex, which has also seen them drop the apostrophe from the band name, meaning they are now actually The B-52s.

It was also used as one of the tracks on that rather dubious fad from the late Nineties, the Big Mouth Billy Bass. But let’s move swiftly on from that shall we…

The song was written and performed solely by McFerrin, and by perform I don’t just mean singing the vocals, but the entire music track. The music is an a cappella track, which if you don’t know means that no musical instruments were used to create it. Instead the entire tune is made up of different layers of Bobby McFerrin making musical sounds with his own voice (you know, dooooo-do-do-do-do, that sort of thing).

The song has a very laid back reggae style to it, with lyrics that illustrate several different problems that might (perhaps) crop up in your normal life, problems which you are then told to get over by just not worrying, and being happy.

The song hit the top of the charts in the US and just missed out in the UK as it only reached number 2 (I’m surprised too, I was quite sure it hit number 1 in the UK but apparently not). Whilst this success was predominately down to it being a great song, I’m sure the fact that Robin Williams (wearing something that looks like he’s just come from an Arabian market) featured in the video didn’t hurt either.

Interestingly Keren and Sara have been life long friends, and have known each other since the tender age of four. Sara met Siobhan at College, and that was how the three came together to first become friends and then become a musical group.

In 1981 they recorded their first proper demo song Aie a Mwana, which was perhaps a bit of a strange choice given that it is sung in Swahili. However, it got them noticed and they found there first chart success when they teamed up with Fun Boy Three for T’ain’t What You Do (It’s The Way That You Do It). I always remember it seemed a bit odd to me that Bananarama only got the “featuring” tag for this song, since it seemed like they did most of the singing!

This song set them up on the road to success, and it led to a string of chart successes including Really Saying Something, which was the return of a favour as it featured Fun Boy Three, Robert De Niro’s Waiting and Cruel Summer, which featured as part of the soundtrack on The Karate Kid.

By 1986 Bananarama started to work with Stock, Aitken and Waterman, which yielded them further chart hits such as Venus, I Heard A Rumour and Love In The First Degree, which I’m sure are some of the first songs many people will think of straight away when asked to name a Bananarama song (in particular Venus, which sadly is now going to be linked forever to women’s razors it would seem).

In 1988 though, Siobhan Fahey left the group after becoming a bit disinterested in the way the band had changed under the guidance of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. She reappeared as Shakespears Sister (initially alongside Marcella Detroit), and whilst it wasn’t their only release, Stay will be the song most will remember from them.

Bananarama continued on without Fahey though, and brought on board new member Jacquie O’Sullivan. More hits followed including I Want You Back and Nathan Jones, and the group were also listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the female group with the most chart entries (a record which they still apparently hold today, so take that Spice Girls!).

In 1989 the girls joined with Lananeeneenoonoo, (otherwise known as Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Kathy Burke) to record a version of The Beatles song Help for Comic Relief.

Jacquie O’Sullivan left the band in 1991, but Keren and Sara still continue to perform as Bananarama, now a duo, to this day. They are still recording new songs, and also continue to play live at events such as the Rewind Festival.

Here in the UK, Men At Work are the opposite to Dexys. An Australian band who were pretty successful there, in Blighty they are really only remembered for one song, and that was Down Under (sometimes known as A Land Down Under, thanks to the chorus lyrics).

Down Under was originally recorded in 1981, but when it was reissued the following year it took the world by storm, hitting the number one spot in Australia, the UK and Ireland, the US, and a few more countries besides. I guess it was seen as a bit of a novelty record thanks to the funny lyrics and the catchy tune (but more on that in a bit) and that’s why it did so well.

The song tells the story of an Australian traveller touring the world, who meets various people on the way who befriend him because of his nationality. For a country brought up on Marmite it also introduced the UK to Vegemite, the Australian equivalent of the love-it-or-hate-it foodstuff. I’m sure it must have been because of Down Under that us Brits were even able to buy Vegemite in supermarkets for a while (not sure if you still can, but I don’t think so). For more on this food by product see the rather amusing Vegemite entry in the BBC’s h2g2 (An online attempt at creating a real Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, in a similar manner to Wikipedia).

I mentioned earlier the catchy tune, and it is this that has got the band into trouble. It was alleged that the flute solo is in fact the music from the song Kookaburra, a Girl Guides’ song written in 1935 by Marion Sinclair. In 1988 Sinclair died, and the copyright to the song ended up in the hands of publisher Larrikin Music in 1990. Jump forward to 2009 and Larrikin decide to sue Men At Work for ripping off Kookaburra, and get this, they managed to win their case at Men At Work were ordered to pay 5% of their royalties from the song since 2002!

The above case has actually angered many Australians, not just because of how unfair it is to sue someone for something done nearly 30 years ago, but also because until that point Kookaburra had been seen as part of Australia’s heritage and was considered part of the public domain.

Still, it’s a great song, and really takes me back to my childhood. Have a listen and watch the video below…

Starting with Rewind Scotland then, this festival will be running from July 29th-31st 2011 and is taking place at Scone Palace. Some of the acts confirmed as appearing are The Human League, Billy Ocean, Kim Wilde, Nik Kershaw, Bananarama, ABC and Toyah and that’s just the beginning as there are loads more.

The Rewind festival in Henley-On-Thames will take place from August 19th-21st 2011 and as in previous years is held by the side of the river Thames. Acts appearing here include all those mentioned above plus Village People, The Original Bucks Fizz and Captain Sensible, though again there are far more than this.

Both festivals are not just about the music however, and will feature a fun fair, eating areas and theatre spots. It has been dubbed the perfect festival for people who don’t usually go to festivals, and to further back up this claim you can even book up for the “Glamping” option, where you arrive to find a tent sent up for you so you don’t have to worry about how to insert rod A into slot B.

For more information or to book tickets head on over to the Rewind Festival website.