Child Of The 1980's

Last Autumn I reported that George Michael’s hugely successful first solo album, Faith, was to be remastered and reissued. The release unfortunately had to be put back, but I can now reveal that it is due for release on January 31st 2011, so in a couple of weeks at the time of writing!

There are two versions of the album being made available. The first is the Special Edition 2 CD/DVD version which contains the remastered album, a bonus CD featuring instrumental versions of some of the songs and a DVD with even more special footage. The, for the real fans, there is the Limited Edition Numbered Box Set which contains all the above plus a Vinyl version of the album and lots of other goodies.

To celebrate the reissue I’ve been given the opportunity of giving away three copies of the remastered album, so if you fancy winning a copy pop on over to the Faith competition entry page now!

If you are a fan of Eighties music then I have a great new band that you are bound to enjoy, particularly if you were into the synth pop stylings of bands like Depeche Mode or The Human League. They’re called Low Tide Theory, and their first track is called Crash.

Now, I’ll come clean and say that the reason I found out about them is because one of their number is actually and old school friend, but even if that weren’t the case I would still be writing this as I really enjoyed listening to Crash. It felt so retro that I almost had trouble in believing the song wasn’t actually a product of the Eighties for real.

Crash is their first track but they are busy preparing more audio delights for us, so why not pop over to their page on Reverb Nation or indeed the Low Tide Theory website (although at the time of writing this is still only in its early stages) to have a listen and find out more.

Alternatively, have a listen now with the little widget below…

George Michael may have had great success as one half of Wham!, but it wasn’t until he went solo that he could truly claim to have become a superstar of the pop world. George left Wham! because he was fed up with catering to a mainly teenage audience, and spurred on by the success of Careless Whisper, arguably a more mature sounding song than most of their repertoire, he finally decided to go it alone in 1986.

1987 then saw the release of his first solo album, entitled Faith, which was entirely written, arranged and produced by George, further cementing the fact that he was a very talented singer and musician. Faith hit the number one spot in the album charts of the UK, USA and several other countries, and went on to sell over 20 million copies!

That impressive sales figure is set to increase now that the album has been remastered and is to be reissued on 27th September 2010. Containing ten tracks, six of which managed to reach the top slot in the singles chart, I’m sure you’ll recognise most of the songs instantly. As well as the song that forms the title of the album, Faith, there’s also Father Figure, Monkey and I Want Your Sex. That last one can probably be played on the radio without any problems these days, but on release many radio stations played the alternative version I Want Your Love instead.

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I was driving in the car the other day when Joe Le Taxi by Vanessa Paradis suddenly came on the radio. I had forgotten all about this song until then, and hearing it again instantly took me back to my childhood, with memories of looking up the lyrics in my sisters copy of Smash Hits.

Joe Le Taxi hit number 3 in the UK charts when it was released at the beginning of 1988, but what is most surprising about this fact is that the song (as the title suggests) was sung in French, meaning most of us in the UK didn’t really have much of a clue as to what the song was saying, other than it was presumably about a taxi driver named Joe who liked the saxophone.

However, it was a very catchy song that you ended up humming or singing along with, despite not knowing what the words meant, so it was nice to see a song do well in the charts because people presumably must have really liked it.

Another surprising fact is that the singer, Vanessa Paradis, was only fourteen at the time, and this wasn’t even her first released song – that honour went to La Magie des surprises-parties (my French is not great but I’m guessing that’s The Magic of Surprise Parties) which was released in 1983, so she must have been just ten for that song!

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School trips were always fun for several reasons. First, it always seemed like a day off school. Secondly, you sometimes got to go to some interesting places. Thirdly, the coach trip often descended into what can only be described as mayhem! Fun mayhem that is!

The teachers would first try to keep everyone amused by playing something like I-Spy, but we soon all bored of that and somebody would try and liven the journey with a group song. I’m not talking something sensible like Kumbaya though, no, it would be something in the Ten Green Bottles vein to start off with.

The kids would get down to about 4 or 5 bottles remaining on the wall, whereupon one of the teachers wouldn’t be able to take it any more and would request a change of song. That’s when You’ll Never Get To Heaven started up. This was usually sung by having one person leading, and everyone else repeating the lines to start with, then everyone would join in for a recap of the verse. Here’s an example verse:-

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99 Red Balloons was a number one hit for Nena, which was both the name of the female singer of the song and her band too, in February 1984. This was the English translation of the original German version, which was called 99 Luftballons, and between the two versions Nena managed to achieve the number one slot in the charts in at least ten countries, including the UK, Ireland, Australia, Canada and home country Germany.

Surprisingly enough, though it only managed to reach number 2 in the US, this was with the original German language version of the song, which was quite an achievement.

The song was a very poppy, bouncy (fitting for a song about balloons) yet still a bit rocky affair, but the story it tells had a rather darker over tone. The two versions tell broadly the same tale, although the English version isn’t actually a direct translation of the words. It goes something like this…

Some friends buy a packet of balloons (perhaps a packet of 100 but one popped during inflation? Who knows?) and decide to blow them all up and let them loose into the sky. Off they merrily bob, only to be picked up on radar and mistaken as a possible UFO or maybe an enemy attack, which leads to fighter jets being scrambled and the brink of war! Ouch!

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Back in the eighties I remember a lot of Hollywood films mentioning a TV channel called MTV, and wondering what it was all about. It got to a point where if teenage characters in a movie was meant to be cool, they would just have to mention MTV and that was it – instant coolness.

MTV was launched in the US in 1981, so it really did form a backbone for musical popularity for US kids. Of course, the US was looked on in envy by us British kids, who only had four channels to choose from, with kids programming limited to certain times of the day. The closest we got to a music channel was Top of the Pops!

That changed in 1987 with the launch of MTV Europe, although the number of people able to view the channel was still severely limited since most didn’t have a satellite or cable TV setup with which to receive it. Indeed, it wasn’t until the early nineties that I finally got to see what all the fuss was about for myself when we got our first Amstrad satellite dish screwed to the wall of the house.

MTV was an odd kind of channel because it didn’t really featuring programmes as such back then. There were little segments such as MTV News which told you some of the latest goings on in the music world, but to all intents and purposes MTV was a channel all about playing music videos.

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Scottish identical twins Charlie and Craig Reid formed their two man band, The Proclaimers, in 1983, but it wasn’t until 1986 that they would hit the big time. A fan sent a demo tape of theirs to English band The Housemartins, who were so impressed they invited them to tour with them. This led to an appearance on Channel 4 music show The Tube, which gave them their first UK hit single, Letter From America.

Instantly recognisable from their glasses, jeans and thick Scottish accent when singing, Letter From America made them household names when it shot to number 3 in the charts. They had a unique style at the time, being both pop and almost folk music at the same time, the folk influence coming from the warbling sections of the song which is probably why the song was so popular, as everyone loved joining in with that particular bit.

They followed up with I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) which reached number 11 and has now become something of an anthem for Scottish football fans. This song also featured further strange voice work, and I can imagine that going down very well when sung by a stadium of football supporters!

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