O-week was exciting. Politics, alternative culture and lectures in the kind of theatres I'd only seen in movies. The Laughing Clowns played the refectory at lunchtime. I tripped out a little at the grinding drone of Collapse Board while looking at an extreme Christian sect's comic from the book of Revelation. A guy started chatting while I was reading in the glass walled reading room near the lecture theatres. His name was also Peter and we had a bit in common. He lived in the housing village and I soon was meeting his cronies and flatmates at some fun nights there. I cannot remember how it happened but he asked if I'd like to play bass in his band The Pits. That didn't take a lot of thought.
I found I was pretty good at University, breezing through the assignments and tutorials, enjoying the grown-up feel of speaking as articulately as possible on subjects I cared about. It was a lot easier to join tables and conversations in the common room over biscuits and coffee. If I'd started the previous year coping with isolation through a mangled right wingism that swiftly faded into nothing about the time I started reading and listening about things left of the divide and finding a more interesting and welcoming home for my thoughts there.
I practiced with The Pits well enough to be asked in and we played a gig in the Valley soon after. The set seemed to be over in three minutes, the first time I'd played in front of an audience. Peter chatted to Lindy Morrison who pretended to have remembered and liked my song Lights Out from the set we played. She was sipping vodka from a cologne bottle. Johnny Zero played a set on guitar with a didgeridoo player and a drum machine. I plodded at a piano backstage and a bloke dressed like someone into ska came up and chatted about using real pianos on stage. I can't remember how many people I met that night but it seemed like I'd stepped into a themepark for the post punque generation of Yesterdayland. I was so very bloody happy.
At home the psychodrama of my brother's marriage continued but it was easier to ignore or at worst, navigate around. I retreated to the room under the house where I could listen to ZZZ and work on assignments. The two things still weave themselves into the one fabric in my memory, academic thinking and music from the frontiers of creativity. Foucault and Throbbing Gristle. The ideas in the books and reams of photocopied extracts and so much that was crawling and growling out of that clock radio were soon all but indistinguishable to me.
The circle that had formed at Hubbards dispersed after the first few reunions back from holidays. We were all going to different places, some deferring for a year for travel or work and others still not bothering to go on to uni. I remember one of them turning up at Griffith one lunch time and my newer cronies snubbed him. I had only seen my own curve in slow detail and didn't get how far I'd gone from him. We didn't strike anything up beyond a greeting, didn't even have lunch together.
There weren't many but I started buying records again. Chief among these was the debut of The Go Gos, Beauty and the Beat which I bought from Rockinghorse the same visit I first heard it. That story will get its own article but I recall that buying it was important as it was the first contemporary LP I'd bought since high school in Townsville. I had a swag of singles in my luggage as well but that album was
No schoolies week. No assassinated Beatles. No murdered friends. Just a credit for the whole year and a ticket for a 1st class sitter in the Sunlander north. I don't remember the trip beyond dozing through most of it and smiling at a Californian who was asking about being able to see kangaroos from the train windows.
Now the music. I've done a bunch o' album articles but now - Singles!
Counting the Beat began with palm mutes on a harmonic, burst into a bass forward two beat thump and ended with a chant that everybody sang. la dadada la dadada la dadada la dadada. Infection followed.
It started as a kind of failed count-in. Clicketty click went the sticks and the bawming guitars and yelling voice sang of Ant Music
Love is Essential by Local Heroes SW9 hasn't made it across the decades but should have. Acoustic guitar arpeggios taken over by synth strings and a plaintive unaffected vocal it might have been the year's Love Will Tear Us Apart but for the elephant in the room of that one and that it just never travelled. Also, history has been neglectful to them; it's very very hard to find out anything about them. I once saw a copy of an SW9 album at the Record Market a few years later and decided against getting it, even though it had this song on it because it had another song called Hippy Street. Such as I was.
Marching Feet was the odd follow up to the sombre Lady Love by Melbourne electro rock synth band MEO 245. This was different. A zippy synth arpeggio which persisted through the chord changes as the guitar band part of it went through a Chuck Berry progression until the chorus took everything back to the mid '60s for a melodic pre-chorus before the big statement. It works the same way old bubblegum songs like Chewy Chewy still work, old values but everfresh style.
With Love Song Scots rockers Simple Minds gave the world the large scale nu-pop where the great rumbling backing could be either guitar or keyboards and the chanting choruses sounded like speakers at totatlitarian rallies. See also Spandau Ballet from the previous year.
Spellbound was one of the Banshees strongest offerings ever. A massive circular guitar riff, frantic acoustic playing and thunderous drumming buoyed up Siouxsie Sioux's career-best wailing. The video was all nightmares and horror movies but almost anything might have done. The strangely aloof snarl of it mixed with its own violence and caterwauling chorus. Then there's the bit where, at the bidding of the vocal, something or someone gets thrown down the stairs. Stately guitar figures play over the frenzy and then it suddenly stops. And you just want to hear it again.
XL Capris' World War 3 might now sound like just another nuclear threat ditty for the pile but it works as a palm-mute-and-harmonies plea recording of its time (and its endless white background video). Only a cliche from a distance. The threat was real, regardless of how literally it was stated.
I'm in Love With a German Film Star showed The Passions could go from a quirky, spiky indy sound to a lush, arch wonder that seemed to float and squeeze like an erotic dream: "I'm in love. I'm in loooove. I'm in loooove....."
Down Under, Men at Work's competition-shrinking anthem managed to celebrate being Australian without a breath of patriotism to sour it. Compare and contrast the Texas DJ who rewrote it as Down Yonder (which only sounded subnationalistically chauvinistic). Later driven into the earth by a lawsuit over a five note figure on the flute. It had a hookline on a FLUTE! A funny pisstake video about Australian tourists that charms to this day (or would if it wasn't contradicted by nearly a decade of regressive politics but you can't have everything).
Turn Me Loose was the year on the charts' embarrassing moment of overdrinking before vomitng on the host. The clip put bandanas on the backburner until Guns 'n' Roses over a decade later (who were welcome to it as they might as well have been Loverboy's children). Like punk never happened. Actually, like post punk wasn't happening.
Tainted Love bamped out with a bullseye synthetic orchestra, '60s garage band BVs and a mighty lead voice. Whether it's filling the sticky carpet dance floors of share house parties in 1981 or drowning out the whoops on hens nights it still sounds contemporary.
Ultravox had fallen off my radar in the late '70s when John Foxx jumped ship and produced something compelling and fresh. The band hired Midge Ure from the Rich Kids for mic duties and the result was Vienna. The clip told you everything with its recreation of nineteenth century intrigue among the rich and powerful and the chorus phrase, "this means nothing to me." I can't remember whose place it was but I was part of a small group that briefly landed in a share house where a bearded older buy saw the clip on Nightmoves and said, "Ultravox? They're just the new wave Eagles." I was young enough to think he was trying to appeal everyone in the room who was younger and sniggered lightly. Still ....
I Want to Be Free yelled Toyah as she trashed wedding cakes and tea settings while a pair of official types/parents/teachers/older people in sci-fi conservative fashions looked on unimpressed from above. Even at the time, at that age, I was too old for the message. See also, the previous year's Kids in America which this effectively replaced. Lots of synth strings and cymbals. Not offensively try-hard but not much more than tokenistic either.
The Pretenders showed in the debut album that they were bringing a lot to the table, offering a take on rock music that neither pretended it was new nor remodelled tradition. Message of Love with its slashing chorused guitar, hectoring vocal and a middle 8 change to a gallop, won the heart of everyone who heard it. Tough and tender at once. A classic. ONly sorry I didn't get around to writing about their second album (no time)
The Dugites from Perth had a cute little hit with a cute little clip called In Your Car the year before but surprised everyone with Waiting, a synth pop marvel that went from tinkling consolation to soaring pain as the yearning exploded before suddenly stopping and then falling into a bizarre key change that only made it expand. Still a masterpiece.
New Toy Lene Lovich bipped and bopped through more noo wave quirk but it sounded fine and the clip was straight out of Repulsion. A tick of approval.
Boys in Town - The first salvo in the Divynls' campaign to conquer the Australian charts carried a strong message delivered with a compelling attitude and contemporary rock substance. I didn't love this one but kept my ear out for future statements. Some of which were superb.
Devo's Beauitiful World took them further into the synth pop realm they had helped to forge with a bittersweet irony between the driving riff in the music and the self-contradiction in the lyric. The clip's power lay in the increasing mash of America kitsch and horror as cold war novelty acts rubbed shoulders with the Klan and the nuclear threat. Catchy in more ways than one.
Primary - The Cure. a breathless chugging nightmare that made the charts. A reason to bend a saulte to the whole year.
Bette Davis' Eyes was a song by a woman who looked like a contemporary movie star, all platinum bouffant and long black dress, surrounded by art directed punque style people who danced like robots with geared joints. That was the video. Remember, in Australia at least, we saw the video before we heard the song (from the late 70s, as it happens). A refrain on the synth broken by a raspy vocal about a local debaucher. Thing is, the whole thing sounded like Bruce Springsteen had written it. Making a pro blush? Really? It was like hearing your father say the word lesbian. Uni friend Nicola got it right, even though she couldn't make it through the statement witnout laughing: Kim Carnes is America's idea of New Romantics. Everyone else laughed, too.
Under Pressure mourned the great murdered man but it just sounded like a formless mess to me.
Blitz anthem No.1 Fade to Grey gives us a little cooling drop of synthesis before the big saw wave riff bursts in and it's a mix of ethereal whispers, warbles on lonely platforms and a big eerie chorus. Steve Strange, the doorman of the Blitz club called in all his favours and got most of Ultravox behind him. Only this wasn't Steve from down the Elephant and Castle's vanity singalong. Along with a constantly shifting identity and black background video and deathless groove, this is a classic writ in marble.
Pretty in Pink took Psychedlic Furs from a meandering first effort with a single good song to an all killer no filler album featuring this bona fide song for the ages. Break it down to its pieces and you've got a '60s style song about a girl but add the arrangement, production and attitude of a band that's found its sound and stride and here it is, a big, head-buzzing monster of world weariness with a lead vocal that's been keel hauled on the hull of a tobacco freighter. The great bash of the two note figure before the chorus hurts like a funeral toll.
Fascist Groove Thang - Synth funk politics with serious vocals. Worked. The other half of the old band was busy doing Vogue cover pop.
This Ole House - did almost as much for the rockabilly revival as the Stray Cats and was daggy enough to have a much great reach.
Unguarded Moment - The Curch sounded more weighed down that their inspirations from the '60s but felt newer for it.
Alone With You - Sunnyboys' prayer to teenage angst hit its spot and went out the door at the right moment, a prefect rock statement.
Our Lips Are Sealed chugged out of the radio like a motorised curtain letting the sunlight in.
Homosapien had Pete Shelley banned for the entendre in the title (and refrain). Despite the plinky keyboards it sounded tougher than the Buzzcocks. The candyshop arrangment and production came courtesy of the most celebrated producer of the era, 1981's own Martin Rushent who was in everything but a bath. You think of the early '80s as the time of tingly synthesisers and endless, directionless 12 inch mixes and you are thinking of Martin Rushent. He'd already made headway with the likes of The Stranglers.
Screaming Jets seemed to be only months too late to be taken seriously. Would anyone have cared that much without the Peter Gabriel harmonies, though? One thing about this was that Johnny Warman announcing the different parts of the song (probably a guide vocal they liked) which launched far too many wincing moments at band practices ("chorus" and someone would do the chorus from this song) Clip was acceptably goofy for the time.
Never Say Never -Romeo's Void's cry was a kind of Gang of Four number with world wise snarling girl on top.
Release the Bats exploded in jungle drums and exasperated screams, hilarious in its extremity before you heard it a few times and realised that it was a song, after all, not just a few minutes of chaos. Cute Elvis channeling, though. Didn't sound like any birthday party I ever went to.
Ceremony's cooing fanfare set the funeral barge of Ian Curtis on to the waves in a fiery celebration (but if you turned the record over it felt like his wake up call in Hell)
Too Fast for You - The Church's double EP offered five new songs that tightened up everything that was good about the debut album and left everything that wasn't on the cutting room floor. From the brightness of the title track to the gorgeous flow of Sisters the band was gettng ready for the apex of their first stage, the following year's album The Blurred Crusade. A beautiful package.
And we went out singing to the Teardrop Explodes and their Passionate Friend: ba ba baa baba ba baa ba ba ba ba baba ba ba ba ba baa....
It was drama free. I booked a 1st class sitter to Townsville on the Sunlander and cruised along the landscape as it went from southern verdance to curtains of sugar cane and thence to Townsville. A girl from Melbourne asked me what I was reading (Coming Up for Air by George Orwell) and we struck up. And then it was hometown station, mum on the platform, Aitkenvale and a couple of months of the good life. There were people with games. I had stories to tell.
The Importance of 1981
The thing is that 1981 is not just another year of pop culture, of songs great and naff, of op shop fashions and fanzines. 1981 is a year of fulfillment. The punk to post-punk transition is as debated as the starting point of Generation X (a punk era term, btw) but it doesn't really matter when it happened as much as that it did. By 1981 it had happened. What happened?
Well, you could get on on stage at Bingo Pete's in the valley and play a digeridoo with a drum machine and that would be a gig. You turned the radio up when you heard a weird spoken word piece about a fish in a glass paperweight set to uneasy sounding tapeloops of phrases that might be synthesised or just vocals. And you loved when the act/group/entity that had done it advertised themselves as being available for weddings, parties and alternative English lessons. ZZZ's new music show could have something played on hammers and doorways or a bothersome hybrid of metal and indy and it would still be acceptable. 1981 was where anything at all went but none of it was expected to be professional.
Professional. That was the word my Dad used to describe the tape my band released as an album in 1983. I still smart at the faux pas. "Very professional" In 1981 professional meant the worst of everything, it meant giving up and paying big bucks for note perfect gigs or movies that flattered young adults by inviting them into a previous generation's idea of acceptable humour and drama.
In 1981 Release the Bats was released as a single. That's something that its vocalist, Nick Cave would not dream of doing now or even a few years later. 1981, even more profoundly than 1977, was where the us and the them divided.
Of course, I'm telling this from the point of view of someone who was 18 years old in 1981 and at 18 you think you've invented everything or at least reinvented it enough to find the real value of it. I don't deny my nostalgia, here, but nor do I deny my plain memory. And what I remember is that the way of living I and people like myself, surrounded by the great lotto-headed straight world around me, rejected the idea itself that being in tune was good.
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