My Life in Music 1979 - 1985

Back again, and we're at the point when I was beginning to tape the Top 40 off of the radio on cheap cassettes that would last two plays before being eaten by the tape deck in the family sterogram. It's weird that about 24 years later I would be playing music on a stereogram again in a flat in Sheffield after finally going to Uni as my flatmate, 70s furniture freak and musical genius Robin owned one.

Memories included too. I have little recollection of my childhood, then again I don't often remember last Tuesday. Maybe I need regression therapy.

1979: Replicas - Gary Numan + Tubeway Army

Gary Numan's greatest album, features a theme of a sci-fi dystopia. This was the first of his machine phase albums and is the only one I still listen to on a regular basis. Has the classic Are 'Friends' Electric? but is surpassed by this little classic about robots raping people in council run gardens.

Numan's songs of androgyny and machine-man metamorphosis was based on a book Numan hoped to finish writing, set in a not-too-distant future metropolis where Machmen - robots with cloned human skin- and other machines keep the general public cowed on orders from the Grey Men (shadowy officials).

Young Dave, who was discovering his love of acting with a role in the school play, as Alan A Dale in Robin Hood. He didn't get the role of Joseph at Christmas which pissed him off.

1980: Absolutely - Madness


This was a tough one between this, Closer by Joy Division and Boys Don't Cry by The Cure, which was a US version of Three Imaginary Boys so lost out on a technicality and lets be honest, Closer isn't really that good an album, and if we're being honest, I'd listen to the Nutty Boys before Joy Division any day of the week. Madness was the first band I was really into. About this time I was flirting with Adam and the Ants and Kim Wilde, but they were the first band I'd adopted as my own enough to start wearing clothes like them and taking on a very strange way of speaking learnt through listening to Baggy Trousers and Embarrassment

1981: Dare - The Human League

And then Dave, discovered Electro with the album of his pre-teen years.

One of the reasons I love music so much is Dare. It's inventive, experimental, accessible and bloody good. It's the first of the albums with the known line up of Oakey, Catherall and Sully, and it's damn fine pop. I've played this so much I've had to buy replacement copies. And what's best about it is that it brought people to the band by releasing the worst song off the album and it being a number one smash hit.

This year the 8 year old me was rewarded with a proper role in the school play where he was General Stores, leader of the troops in Greatwood Primary School's production of Sir Spence and a Dragon Called Horace. He got told off for improvising a comedy limp by Mrs Waddington.

While not on Dare, here's the League with their greatest track - Being Boiled which you may know from Liberty X's Being Somebody.



1982: The Lexicon of Love - ABC

And here starts my obsession with bands from Sheffield. A few years after glam rock died ABC created glampop where image and music combined to a gold suited crescendo. Powerful synths, guitars and brass get together to belt out big pop tunes. While the League were forgetting people play instruments and using sequencers, samplers, ABC were very much the opposite with their open and approachable hits.

Lil' Dave hits double figures and gets his first acting snog as King Louis in the musical version of the The Marvellous Montgolfier Brothers - hit song Electric Smoke never troubled the charts. I was pissed off with the casting of the Queen, because it went to Rachel Tosney and I'd hoped for Amanda Jerger, cos she was the class hotty. I also remember the snow being really bad and we got time of school to play in it.

1983: Power, Corruption & Lies - New Order

The second New Order album was an odd bag. I really got into them six years later when I went mad buying vinyl and tape versions of albums - the tapes of NO albums used to come in big fabric boxes with postcards and strange stuff inside.

At times sounding like Joy Division, at others like Siouxsie and the Banshees, the early NO were very different to what we know of them today. Gillian Gilbert was a guitarist rather than a synth player, but on tracks like Age of Consent you can hear the foundations of what was to come.

And so I leave the beauty of Greatwood Primary and head to the other side of town to Ermysteds Boys Grammar for my secondary education. Away from most of my mates, and never to school with my brother or sister again, the 11 year old me had to play rugby and learn latin instead of making a desk tidy out of wood and blue varnish.

1984: The Smiths - The Smiths



We all love a bit of despondency don't we? And when combined with note perfect guitars it's even better. The Smiths grew up to be the album I lived by, one that was rarely off the stereo. In fact a finer debut would be hard to find for a good ten years or so. There's problems with it, but nothing is perfect, the production's a bit poor and there's no This Charming Man until the US and WEA versions, but in one album I discovered the true beauty of the Morrissey/Marr combination.

And so I discovered my language abilities in the classroom and my lack of prowess on the pitch as September came and year 2 started with a disappointment. The choice of rugby or cross country were simple, and right as we got every third week in the sports centre where I discovered I was all right at badminton and shit hot at ping pong. However not everything was good in the north with the miners strike. Luckily we lived in an area dependant on farming rather than the pits. We had to wait for our times of crisis as it would be another decade or so until foot and mouth and mad cow disease.

1985: Low Life - New Order/Meat is Murder - The Smiths


A tough one to choose a winner, so had to settle on a tie with Manchester's finest taking joint honours with... well, Manchester's finest. Low Life is where NO finally got it right all through the album. Starting with Love Vigilantes and it's mouth piano hook making a bold entrance followed by the star number The Perfect Kiss, there's not a bogus track on the album. It's around this time they discover Arthur Baker and electro disco, his influence is blatantly obvious on the 12" mixes and the next album Brootherhood. Hooky also seems to take his bass to another level from deep and dark to tuneful and vital. The band also seem to become multi instrumentalists as Hooky takes on synth drums and Steve Morris synths.

Here's the video of The Perfect Kiss directed by Jonathon Demme

My taste in women was highly defined at this time as the girls from Tight Fit and Jay Aston were replaced by Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy and Gillian Gilbert. I started to notice that the less conventionally pretty tended to be the most interesting and fun to hang out with.

Moz and Marr learn from the debut and draft in Stephen Street for production duties. It's a more diverse, and Marr hits his form running, but the mix of genres is a little offputting at times and the subtle as a brick title track lets the album down big time. However I'm playing by the rules so it's in, and it does contain How Soon Is Now? so it gets it's props.

Next time on My Life In Music:
Dave doubts himself as he develops a love of gay pop!
The Pixies enter my life and I fall madly for Kim Deal!
And will The Smiths and New Order get back on the list as I discover the genius of Lovebug Starsky?
Find out next week, same place same channel