ABC: "Tears Are Not Enough"

29 October 1981

"The vinyl debut of the latest in a long line of incredibly hip Sheffield bands, this is a funk attack on all fronts."
— Dave Rimmer

For singles released well over thirty years ago it's important to listen to the correct version. If one does a YouTube search for ABC's "Tears Are Not Enough" they're most likely to come across the spruced up rendition that appears on their classic 1982 album The Lexicon of Love. A consistently excellent work of precision musicianship, exquisite arrangements and dramatic love songs with much more depth than they initially appear (more on that in a bit), Lexicon was a commercial and critical smash, one so huge that it ended up becoming the group's albatross. It's also one of those albums that seems loaded with potential hit singles. So chock full of quality is it that "Tears Are Not Enough" doesn't even stand out. I wasn't even aware that it was a single.

But we're still in '81 and getting ahead of things. The Lexicon of Love is six months away, ABC are just one of those "incredibly hip Sheffield bands" (something tells me that Dave Rimmer is referring to them being in the same company as The Human League and Heaven 17 rather than Def Leppard) and "Tears Are Not Enough" is a new single sounding fresh, funky and — at least to these ears so many years in the future with the reference of the album version to go by — free of that familiar studio gloss.

Sounding somewhat muffled and sparse compared to what they had on offer a year later, "Tears Are Not Enough" gives the listener some indication of what early eighties English bands would have sounded like just as they were on the cusp of recording contracts, contemporary production and shiny silver suits. In other words, precisely how they would have sounded to a gaggle of Sheffield scenesters. Chic, they sound like bloody Chic.

"ABC," Rimmer writes to conclude his review, "inspire optimism for the future of Brit-Funk." I'm amazed His Nibs doesn't state the Chic influence but maybe that only seems obvious in hindsight. Either that or their influence was so overwhelming on the entire scene at the time that it scarcely merited comment. But just what was it about Chic that affected a generation of British acts? For one thing, leaders Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards were musicians' musicians; schooled in jazz, they were masters of the guitar and bass respectively but they tended to keep their solos tight and not too showy (the notable exception is Rodgers' remarkable tour-de-force of fretwork "Savoire Faire"). For young British hopefuls, perhaps Chic seemed DIY enough to appeal to punk values while their playing managed to be challenging enough to keep followers interested.

Then there's what Ian Macdonald described as Chic's 'elegance and alienation': glitzy, glamourous pop with a brooding dark side. Music made by and for people straight out of that wonderful 1998 film The Last Days of Disco: individuals who would go about ordinary, mediocre lives until they hit the dancefloor of their favourite nightclub. Transplanted over to the UK in the early part of the eighties, this meant signing on to the dole while aspiring to the high life. Far from the escapism of disco, there's a deceptive nastiness at play. The rawer sound of the single version of "Tears Are Not Enough" is more in step with the surprisingly bitter lyrics, delivered by a hard-hearted Martin Fry. These are tough Steel City Sheffielders after all.

So when Dave Rimmer lauds ABC for providing a blueprint for the "future of Brit-Funk" it's down to them expertly aping the Chic sound while imbuing some grim English realism into the mix. Your move, Pig Bag. Your move.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Fun Boy Three: "The Lunatics (Have Taken Over the Asylum)"

The typeset of critical acclaim was barely dry, the record store returns barely returned and The Specials had collapsed. Their extraordinary seventh single "Ghost Town" topped the charts that summer and its pull was such that everyone went straight out and rioted (or something to that effect). The streets now deserted and the band now imploded, vocalists Lynval Golding, Terry Hall and Neville Staple pull themselves together for the closest thing to a follow-up. "The Lunatics" can't measure up to its predecessor's gloomy, chilling atmospherics but it is fascinating in its own right. Are these lunatics they sing of really supposed to be Reagan and Thatcher or are they referring to themselves? Being free of the dictatorial iron fist of visionary Special Jerry Dammers may have made them feel that they were a trio of ne'er-do-well vocalists suddenly in charge of their own collective fate. Either way, it may be a little too on the nose but it's an impressive move nonetheless.

The Jam: "Absolute Beginners"

15 October 1981

"And if Paul Weller's lyrics won't see him installed as poet laureate during the next fortnight, they should at least help him grace the charts till his current supply of pocket money runs out."

— Fred Dellar

From one imperial phase to another: last week it was The Police and now we have The Jam. They have a few similarities on the surface — both trios with charismatic frontmen and both groups rose in popularity at about the same time. (For Sting and his crew this meant damn-near world domination whereas Paul Weller and co. had to be content with a much more parochial following, albeit one that was so fanatical that they managed the unprecedented feat of getting import-only Jam singles from Europe on to the UK Top 40) In terms of presentation and style, however, the two acts couldn't have been more different. Where The Police were older — considerably so in the case of guitarist Andy Summers — The Jam were younger, with a following that was equally wet behind the ears. Where Sting's songwriting seemed locked in a world of minute human obsessions, Weller's tunes spoke of people slipping through the cracks of Thatcherism. Where The Police borrowed from pub rock and reggae, The Jam nicked from mod, sixties pop and, now, soul.

"Absolute Beginners" is the beginning of The Jam's final period in which they began to fully embrace black music. And this was no mere blip: soul, Motown, jazz and house music would all end up defining the next ten years of Weller's career. Of course no one was to know this at the time. What's fascinating is that there may not have been much of a sense that they were heading in a different direction. Fred Dellar's review in the October 15th issue of the Hits mentions Weller's lyrical fortitude — as quoted above — as well as being impressed that they'd be literate enough to borrow the title of a Colin McInnes novel for the name of their new single. As for their new sound, there's a "punchy brass line to help things stay alive" but not much an indication that they might be heading in a new direction. Going all R & B seemed to go over His Nibs' head.

The Jam's previous single was "Funeral Pyre", which ramps up the psychedelic/post-punk fusion of their Sound Affects album to an extreme. Where were they to go after such an abrasive, jarring record? Add a horn section apparently. There's a little more to it though. Weller's guitar playing does a deft balancing act between a jangly-Motown style and some clipped new wave. If The Jam's run of sublime singles — beginning with "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" back in '78 all the way through to the end of '82 — can take us on a narrative continuum, as I would like to think they can, then here we have Weller taking a blowtorch to his cynicism of old in the appropriately named "Funeral Pyre" only to start all over again with the unusually idealistic "Absolute Beginners". Or did Weller simply get up on the right side of the bed for a change?

We're not to know but that's beside the point. Just to have this capsule of what The Jam were up to in the autumn of '81 makes the stand-alone single worthwhile. Years later, with his empire beginning to crumble all around him, Noel Gallagher began lamenting about how singles had to take a back seat to albums and that he didn't have the freedom to release a new forty-five without an L.P. following hot on its heels. Attempting to take stock of the hubris-fuelled disaster that was Be Here Now, Gallagher expressed feeling let down at how the "D'You Know What I Mean?" single came out in advance, then the album itself was released and that it was "over almost before it had begun". He looked back in envy at his musical heroes of the eighties, The Jam and The Smiths, as acts who could churn out singles seemingly whenever they felt like it, regardless of whether they had an album to promote. The dynamic of "D'You Know..." — and, to be sure, far better singles — is that it is supposed to represent the album as a whole; stand-alone's are to be judged on their own terms, not necessarily as a signpost of what's to come but as a postcard of what's up. 

That's not to say, however, that a single is little more than a trifle to bestow upon the populace. I like to think there was a time when the single could be as much of an creative statement as an entire album. Plus, an ace three-minute pop song could only whet one's appetite for more to come. Just what could The Jam have in store next?

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Haircut One Hundred: "Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)"

Horns. Loads and loads of horns. Well, three really. This isn't the fairlight synthesizer nor a Bob Clearmountain-esque big drum sound but there's something intrinsically eighties to pop songs with a horn section. Well, not really but they do crop up on the SOTF as well as on Orange Juice's "L.O.V.E...Love" and on this little firecracker. Dellar admits throughout various selections of this fortnight's singles review page that he wants to turn that mother out and this is the best one to get down to. A very youthful-looking Nick Heyward leads his Haircut chums through something that Talking Heads could very easily have recorded with a bit more edginess but without nearly this much passion.

The Police: "Invisible Sun"

1 October 1981

"These are the goods! After the most hypnotic intro of the week, the song develops the kind of creamy propulsion that might give psychedelia a good name".

— Ian Birch

I've never especially liked The Police but I've never really been able to adequately explain why — though, truthfully, I've never really taken the time to think much about it until this past week. I've often thought of them along much the same lines as I do The Who, Eagles and Pulp, bands who may all have very talented singers, musicians and songwriters and who all possess a unique style and image that I might admire but who I just can't bring myself to like. Groups, in other words, who are less than the sum of their parts.

There's more to it than that though. First, there's the name. While Culture Club gave off a vibe of cool open-mindedness about race and sexuality and Wham! was silly but exciting and Duran Duran seemed naff (and still does) but vaguely hinted at the pretension of being named after a book or a film (I can't be bothered to look it up right now but it was probably from something like To Kill a Mockingbird or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, something I should've read or seen by now but is probably too late to bother with at this point), The Police smacked of authoritarianism and rigidity. What kind of young person back in 1981 looking around for music to get into was looking at a group calling themselves The Police and thinking "maybe they'll speak to me." No wonder they — along with Dire Straits, who happened to also be band with a boring name — was the eighties group of choice for baby boomers.

But who cares about their name if their songs hold up, right? Well, The Police don't do so well on that front either. It's not so much the cod reggae of their early work nor the bland MOR of the Synchronicity album that leaves them wanting, more that their songwriter and leader had a lot to say but seemed to fritter it away on songs dealing with cheap hookers and sex with teenage girls and stalking. A more personal, direct songwriter might have made something of value of these topics but when not you're best suited to connecting with the masses. Dammit, Sting, sing about something that matters for once!

"Invisible Sun" comes right in their — in the words of future Smash Hits scribe and pop star Neil Tennant — imperial phase and it was a brave move to put out something of actual consequence as a single. Putting his patented vocalist paranoia to good use, Sting weaves an unsettling tale of getting caught up in a system in which everyone is expendable and no one really matters ("I don't ever want to play the part, of a statistic on a government chart", "They would kill me for a cigarette, but I don't even wanna die just yet"). He drew inspiration from the situation in Ulster during The Troubles; drummer Stuart Copeland saw it being about Beirut. Indeed, it could just as easily be about Warsaw, Johannesburg, Gwangju, Kabul or any other parts of the world that had been living through hell at the time. Rising to their charismatic frontman's challenge, Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers deliver a simple, restrained performance, keeping the atmosphere as bleak as possible. The grainy, black-and-white video features shots of people meandering through desolate, bombed-out streets; they're probably stoic British souls trying their best to get through the Luftwaffe but they could be anyone at any time. We only see close-up shots of Sting's face in little more than silhouette form: don't look at me, he seems to be saying, take a look at what's going on around you.

A number of years later Sting began to get deeply involved in protecting the Brazilian Rainforests. His work drew both praise and criticism and he made the point that he wasn't exploiting the cause by making an album about it — as, indeed, plenty of other artists were happy to do in the post-Live Aid late-eighties. A shame since it may have inspired something as outstanding as this.

~~~~

Also of some cop

Squeeze: "Labelled with Love"

Between Nick Lowe's lifelong fetish for the genre, Elvis Costello's occasional dabblage — including his cover of "A Good Year for the Roses", also released this fortnight — and the present number from Difford, Tilbrook and co., it seems that an interest in country music was something that many within Britain's pub rock scene had in common. (Have the likes of Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou Harris and The Dixie Chicks ever considered putting together Canvey Island Country: Nashville's Tribute to UK Pub Rock to return the favour? They really ought to) A good thing too. (But, first, a little context: twenty years ago the airwaves were polluted by Fastball and their catchy but irritating hit "The Way" and when I first gave Squeeze a listen a couple years later all I could think of was the similarly smug armchair psychology at play in their many character sketch songs. And we're back) "Labelled with Love" dials back considerably on the smarminess in order to sensitively tell the tale of a woman at the end of her life. Maybe country music was good for the Squeezed: it hooked them on to everything great about their music while stripping away all the nonsense.

Bob Dylan: "Lenny Bruce"

17 September 1981

"There can be few people in any walk of life who are getting a worse press than Bob Dylan...mainly, it seems, because of his religious views."

— Tim de Lisle

Christian rock is something that is almost impossible to listen to if you're an outsider. I'm sure it sounds absolutely brilliant to believers, especially if you happen to be a Bible-bashing, abortion clinic picketing, homosexual-hating zealot, but to us godless types it's low on creativity, humourless, self-righteous and limited to awfully narrow subject matter. It's also, obviously though no less crucially, made by Christians who have hopefully carved out a nice, lucrative place for themselves on the evangelical circuit. In short, they needn't bother performing for secular audiences and for all I know many of them are high on creativity, full of humour and not the least bit self-righteous, all the while covering a myriad of topics far beyond their lord and saviour. Perhaps I'll find out for myself at some point. For now, we'll have to make due with artists who dabbled in what the Louvin Brothers called "the Christian Life" and for that I'm grateful that one the finest songwriters who ever lived was once a churchey. Take a bow, Bob Dylan.

For the purposes of this entry I have delved into Dylan's born-again period, listening to the album trilogy Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love (from which "Lenny Bruce" was taken) as well as some of the recent collection The Bootleg Series Vol. 13: Trouble No More. It may be trite to say but this isn't exactly his most fertile period. Far from being along the creative lines of the likes of "Love Minus Zero/No Limit", "Tombstone Blues" or "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts", even his best track from the time, the strangely unreleased "Ain't Gonna Go to Hell (for Anybody)", is more along the lines of likable but lighter fare such as "One More Night" or "Mozambique": by no means an account of the man's lyrical facility although certainly ample evidence for what underrated melodies he carve out.

Slow Train Coming is generally regarded as the high point (relatively speaking) of his evangelical phase and it's a passable release. While I've never cared much for the sentiment, "Gotta Serve Somebody" is just about the best Dylan ever got at espousing Jesus without letting his muse wilt away. Worryingly, though, he descends into scriptural cliché on other numbers and the slickness of the production actually seems to mask the slightness of the material. The little Dylan had to say at the time ended up being said on Slow Train which left its follow-up, Saved, bereft of purpose beyond quoting from the Good Book in song. Which then brings us to Shot of Love, a mixed bag of gospel and his first secular tunes since prior to his conversion. Far from his new material giving him a shot of vitality, if anything it's the batch of devotional works — particularly the outstanding "Every Grain of Sand" — that manage to be far more convincing than the tedious bar band rock. Could he have begun to turn his back on Christianity just as it was beginning to bare fruit? "The constant wonder of [Dylan's] career," observed Ian MacDonald, "is that a man so often close to spiritual breakthrough so consistently winds up bumping his head on the ceiling of his own ego".

Finally we come to "Lenny Bruce" itself. I can't say that I agree with Tim de Lisle who describes it as a "poignant, simple ballad" in his Smash Hits review. It's fascinating in its own way but only because it may well contain the clumsiest lyrics of Dylan's career. Opening reasonably enough with "Lenny Bruce is dead but his ghost lives on and on", it quickly goes off the rails in the very next line: "Never did get any Golden Globe awards, never made it to Synanon". I don't want to get bogged down too much by details but are those really such vital points to be making? Never took home a poor-cousin Academy Award and never joined criminal cult detox program, yeah that's too bad. The whole thing reads like random jottings covering everything from an anecdote about sharing a cab with him to curious observations about how he "never robbed any churches, nor cut off any babies heads". Way to lavish our Len with praise there Bobby.

But then just what was Dylan doing composing a tribute to a 'sick' Jewish comedian at the height of being immersed Christianity anyway? The Dylanologist in me reckons that he's consciously or unconsciously attempting to claw his way back to his heyday, to a 1963 when Lenny Bruce was shocking audiences with rapid-fire rants about race at the hungry i club and when Bob Dylan was stunning audiences with his intricate lyrics at the Philharmonic Hall. Either that or he's building up Bruce in order to besmirch his own legacy — and, by extension, his fans. ("More of an outlaw than you ever were" is surely aimed at someone)

Of course there is a third possibility. Bob Dylan may have been a Christian — he may still be one for all we know — but he was never a Christian rock star. He had plenty more material to cover. He just needed to find his way back home.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Rickie Lee Jones: "Woody & Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking"

I have a good friend who's a very talented songwriter and I once had the privilege of having him play a private concert for myself and a small number of people. He introduced one number by saying that it had originally been called "O Witness" which he then changed it to "Whisky Orchard" before he finally settled on "Gold Star". "And then you wrote the song?" I wittily, if rather annoyingly, chimed in. Rickie Lee Jones has always struck me as the sort of person who would come up with a funky song title and then force herself to come up with an appropriate song to work around it. Thus, "Woody & Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking". Had squaresville Jesus boy Bob Dylan had any desire to reclaim his hipness he could've done a lot worse than to have followed the lead of Jones. An effortless, jazzy, finger-snapping, toe-tapping, scat-filled piece, this is just the sort of thing that brings groovy cats and trailer park dirtbags together.

Ian Dury: "Spasticus Autisticus"

3 September 1981

"Personally, my flesh crawls each time I hear him shout "I Spasticus". And it hurts so good."

— Pete Silverton

It should be clear by now that minorities don't appreciate having every little thing explained to them by middle-aged white guys. When Bill Maher devotes a portion of each recent episode of his weekly program Real Time to discussing his perceived grievances with Me Too and doesn't bother including a representative from the movement then there's clearly something wrong. Week after week he's been wondering why these women are unable or unwilling to distinguish between horrific serial sex predators and those who've been accused of creepy though not necessarily illegal acts. Too bad he's unable or unwilling to listen to them; perhaps he'd discover that the vast majority are able to make those distinctions. And, so, he has found himself mansplaining an issue that doesn't exist: hard to believe feminists aren't on his side.

1981 was the UN's International Year of Disabled Persons. Using the slogan of "a wheelchair in every home", it was meant to raise awareness of the plight of the handicapped and how they were marginalised by society. It's arguable that this resolution produced a net good: the increasing prominence of disabled parking spaces and wheelchair ramps by the end of the eighties was likely at least somewhat attributable to the IYDP. Nonetheless, one of its critics was Ian Dury who considered it to be "patronising".

"Spasticus Autisticus" was Dury's reply to the IYDP and it's savage. The near-gibberish of some of the lyrics ("I wibble when I piddle, cos my middle is a riddle", "I dribble when I nibble, and I quibble when I scribble") might delude the listener into thinking this just one of his jolly music hall-inspired ditties. But when he gets to the more delicately sung middle part ("So place your hard-earned peanuts in my tin, and thank the creator you're not in the state I'm in / So long have I been languished on the shelf, I must give all proceeds to myself") you know he means business. It closes with the repeated shouts of "I'm Spasticus!" that made Pete Silverton so understandably squeamish. 

Ian Dury has always struck me as one of those odd British national treasures, much like, say, Frank Bruno or Tony Hancock, who have almost no recognition elsewhere. (Prior to becoming a bit more aware of him about twenty years ago, my only previous knowledge of him was that he sang the theme to the TV series The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole) But perhaps a significant portion of the esteem with which he is held in his homeland stems from his courage and bull-headed determination to be himself at all costs. He wasn't about to put up with busy bodies at the UN telling others how to treat him: he could do just fine informing them himself.

But would he have made of his protest song getting played at the Paralympics Opening Ceremony?

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Portsmouth Sinfonia: "Classical Muddly"

It's hard to imagine how something like the Portsmouth Sinfonia managed to catch on (to the extent that they did). Either as deconstructionists par excellence to rival eyeball mask-sporting crazies The Residents or as the self-proclaimed 'world's worst orchestral' doing what they did, well, worst (or is it best?), the Sinfonia unleash a barrage of noises — some of which manage to be musical in some form or other — that make for a fun if awfully chaotic listen. The amateurism of the players is reinforced by the slapdash quality of the mix as the opening bars of Also sprach Zarathustra abruptly transitions into the William Tell Overture which in turn becomes Beethoven's 5th and so on — with the simplest of drum machine beats to barely hold it all together. A shame they didn't just record it all in one shot, though that might have made them sound too professional and there's no way they would have put up with that.