Wham!: "Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)"

24 June 1982

"I'd be lost in admiration if I could find time to stand still."

— Neil Tennant

No one was to know it at the time but a pop music phenomenon and a major talent was quietly establishing itself in the summer of 1982. Wham! were the last of British pop's eighties big four to have a number one hit but the first to enjoy the modest status of a SOTF from ver Hits. While none were overnight sensations, Wham! had the distinct advantage of George Michael's astounding talent to help them avoid the creative wilderness that hampered the development of contemporaries Culture Club, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet.

While few were listening this early on, Wham! did have Neil Tennant on their side (who would later pen a sort-of tribute to the moody George Michael). While the pop music obsessive in him knew what a magnificent romp "Wham Rap!" is, wearing his critic's hat may have cottoned him on fast to Michael's considerable abilities and the budding pop star inside must have been jealous that these pretty boy nineteen-year-old's were able to cut something so irresistible and so on point at such an early stage.

Up until this point, songs about unemployment in Thatcher's Britain veered towards statements of hopelessness and hostility. The Clash's "Career Opportunities", recorded two years prior to Thatcher's rise to power, examines a wasteland of few job prospects out there for young people. XTC's "Making Plans for Nigel", while humourous in its own right, takes on clueless parents and government placement schemes assuming that their charges are indeed "happy in [their] work". "Wham Rap!" was an altogether different proposition. Thatcherism didn't simply cause thousands to go out of work but created a culture of permanent joblessness and Wham! were the first to capture this resignation while marrying it to a quintessentially eighties hedonism. Forget about getting a job, don't bother even if you manage land one, just sign on to the dole, collect benefits and enjoy your life. 

Wham! may have been first on the pop scene to make a virtue of unemployment but there were others out there with something similar in mind. The now mostly forgotten comedy Shelley was about a thirty something well-educated layabout with no desire to find work. (By the mid-eighties, this contented-on-the-dole mentality was even yuppified on the comedy-soap series Bread) In real life, meanwhile, a young and talented writer named Geoff Dyer was effortlessly making the transition from Oxford undergrad to the dole queue. ("If Oxford had given me a taste for idleness, living on the dole in Brixton refined it still further"; see his illuminating essay "On the Roof" for more on his period of being part of the "aristocracy of welfare dependence")

The very idea of George Michael kicking it in rap mode may seem laughable and it is. It's not unlike one of those shapeless, impromptu raps that adolescents in the nineties would conjure up for just for the hell of it (my own attempt was from all the way back in 1991 when I penned the immortal "Joys of Shopping", complete with "hilarious" verses straight out of a Will Smith lark). His music wouldn't be joyous for much longer so it's likely he never contemplated rapping again but it's a commendable one-off. (A white British pop act wouldn't be able to pull off rap until Neil Tennant tried his hand at it some three years later)

In researching this week's post I decided to google search 'songs about unemployment'. "Well, that was a waste of time," I said to myself five minutes after doing so. Of course there is a place for hard scrabble, all-American tunes about desperate individuals struggling to put food on the table but it comes from a world of the Dust Bowl and Steinbeck novels. Michael and best mate Andrew Ridgely both had their fill of plates of egg and chips but were determined to make life on the dole be the party that it always should've been.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Joe Jackson: "Real Men"

While George Michael was busy standing up for his (unemployed) manhood, Joe Jackson was questioning the very core of masculinity with "Real Men". Once a sickly youth who doubtless took no pleasure in mucking about in a rugby scrum, he was now ensconced in a New York gay subculture in the midst of enduring marginalisation, beatings and the growing AIDS epidemic and puts forth the theory that maybe these are the real men — if, that is, I'm reading it right. My song deciphering skills may not but up to much but I sure do appreciate Jackson's seriously good vocal performance, effortlessly spitting out bile and tugging at the heart all at once. Note: I'm seriously considering writing a parody of this written from the perspective of psychologist/YouTube superstar Jordan Peterson and his supposed crisis of masculinity. Anyone who can do good Kermit the Frog impersonation is welcome to get in touch with me.

Stevie Wonder: "Do I Do"

10 June 1982

"Worth its weight in goldfish."

— Fred Dellar

A twenty-five word review: you're spoiling us, Dells. The brevity of this write-up is so stark that I went about counting the word length of all twenty-two singles up for consideration this fortnight. (I went through them just the once, not especially feeling like double-checking so there may be the odd error here and there) Bolstered by a seemingly Proust-like hundred and sixteen word critique of Carrie Lucas' "Show Me Where You're Coming From", the average length here is forty-seven words (and the median isn't much more forgiving, clocking in at forty-five). His concise "analysis" of Stevie Wonder's "Do I Do" is the shortest piece here, beating a dismissive review of ver Quo's "She Don't Fool Me" by four words. And, you know, it's cool. Dellar expended all the lexicography he deemed necessary for these pieces and maybe it's something I can learn from. Thus, in the spirit of prosaic economy, I present my own attempts at capturing Little Stevie's single in less than a baker's two dozen.

Stevie Wonder's run of seventies albums — Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, Fulfillingness' First Finale and Songs in the Key of Life — is unbeatable. 

Wow, that's twenty-five already. I really shot my word count load listing off all those albums. Best not to bother with them.

Was Stevie Wonder aware that he was no longer on a creative roll? The seventies were in the can and his release rate began slowing...

Okay, so my penchant for kick starting these posts with vague notions that have been running through my head won't work here.

Taken from Original Musicquarium, the single set an annoying trend of new tracks being tacked on to a greatest hits, thereby ensuring purchase from fans.

So much for being able to add a little context.

As Dellar says, this is a marked improvement on his recent Macca collaboration "Ebony and Ivory". A pity that the inferior number is remembered today.

Well, I guess there's no space here to bring up Fred Dellar's critique, such as it it. Not a big sacrifice given there's so little there.

Chopped down to five minutes, the single mix leaves out an unremarkable Dizzy Gillespie solo and useless rapping. What's left is a typically Wonder-ful groove. 

Now, I don't like to write reviews on Amazon or iTunes or TripAdvisor but if I did they would probably read like the above. Next.

Oh, you do, do you? Well, I would do what you do if I had an idea what you're doing. I'm not done doing nothin'.

Token "clever" review you might spot in a free weekly paper. More than a little hackish.

Given how I can happily listen to the sublime "Another Star" on a daily basis, I can't help but feel this is pleasant but disposable.

Summing up my honest feelings towards "Do I Do". This blog — not to mention music writing in general — would be a whole lot different if I wrote about every song this way. I've always felt, for example, that over-analytical sports journalists and commentators could probably do with a simple "well, Team A won because they're better than Team B" bit of punditry but the impulse towards basic banalities is not something I aspire to. I got a head full of vague notions and theories I can't wait to share with the world.

Glorious goodness that Wonder churns out so effortlessly, "Do..." succeeds in spite of some clunky lyrics about candy kisses. A great bass gets it moving.

Not bad and perhaps the best I can do for now. Let's finish up with one more that reads like a cliché pop mag review that manages to say as little as possible:

Well, I'll be damned. Little Stevie turns that mother out with a luscious groove from the heavens. He's still got it and then some. Ace.

And there you have it. Sort of an Exercises in Style for singles reviews. Not something I see myself attempting again unless another Smash Hits scribe I encounter here has taken upon him or herself to compose a twelve word review of a Strawberry Switchblade record. Until then, we'll have to make do with my standard notions and context and a smattering of analysis — and the next novelty piece I manage to cook up.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Monsoon: "Shakti (The Meaning of Within)"

The missing link between sixties raga and the joss stick techno of Talvin Singh, this is enlightened pop that shines on into a Karmic cascade.

Damn, I suck at this.

Echo & The Bunnymen: "The Back of Love"

27 May 1982

"Mac sounds like he's fed up of loitering in the backwaters of hipness..."
— David Hepworth

Did you know that Echo & The Bunnymen could have been U2? The theory goes that there were two up and coming quartets from opposite sides of the Irish Sea who had built up loyal followings and had similar profiles in the early eighties and one group went in one direction and the other went in another but it could have easily gone the other way. (Ian 'Mac' McCulloch, however, doesn't see it in quite such neutral, non-judgmental terms) I don't have a dog in this fight — if anything, I'm far more likely to give "Bring On the Dancing Horses" a spin than "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" — but I have to say that I don't see it. Obviously this parallel universe scenario wouldn't be exactly the same — it's impossible to picture his nibs uttering the famous/infamous "thank god it's them instead of you" line from "Do They Know It's Christmas" — but even then it's difficult to swallow such indie stalwarts hitting it big around the world when not dissimilar contemporaries The Cure, New Order and The Smiths never quite managed to do so.

Where the Bunnies had ver 2 beat — for the moment at any rate — was on the charts where "The Back of Love" nudged its way into the Top 20 when the best that Bobo, The Hedge, Adam 'Clear Off' Clayton and the other one could do was a modest Top 40 placing a year earlier with "Fire". Their first five cracks at the hit parade provide a blueprint for the eventual rise of alternative music — everyone from The Jesus & Mary Chain to Jane's Addiction can be heard in these records — with an equally forward thinking attitude of 'listeners must come to us, we're not coming to them' (a path, to be sure, U2 weren't keen to follow). 

This is where David Hepworth's comment about "loitering in the backwaters of hipness" comes into play. Mac's once so-indie-it-hurts voice gets passionate on "The Back of Love", putting some real feeling in where there was once nothing but apathetic gloom. Hepworth states that this new found emoting on McCulloch's part "complements the urgent guitars and thundering drums of his colleagues" but I'd argue that they, too, put far more gusto into their performances than ever before — it's not as though Mac was the only one upping his game here. It helps, too, that a too-brief flourish of horns not unlike The Rolling Stones' "Bitch" helps augment a thrilling arrangement.

A breakthrough both in terms of the record's quality and its chart performance, "The Back of Love" was the first of several Top 40 appearances for ver Bunnies. They never had world dominance in them, no, but at least they wouldn't be off self-righteously basking in their own cleverness while deriding their supposedly chief competitor. At least not yet.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Madness: "House of Fun"

Surprisingly the nutty ones' sole chart topper — odder still since it's hardly one of their better remembered hits nowadays — "House of Fun" carries on the jovial, third form naughtiness of "Baggy Trousers" to a stammering ("N-n-n-no, no miss, you misunderstood...") tale of trying to purchase a pack of condoms from the chemist. The lyrics are a bit awkward but perhaps that's in order to emphasise just how nervous every sexually malnourished young man in search of protection can be — a pity they never did a follow up in which the rubbers never end up being used and the expiry date approaches and then passes (I'd like to say that we've all been there but I certainly have!). The brisk sea-side pier ska helps to hammer the point home of a single that would just about bring to a close everything 'mad' about Madness. Melancholy beckons. Tomorrow's just another day.

China Crisis: "Scream Down at Me"

13 May 1982

"In a fortnight where so many Big Names fail to come up with the goods, this one stands tall."

— Dave Rimmer

They aren't quite the Big Names from the entry of couple weeks' back — only one Rock & Roll Hall of Famer here even though it's probably time Duran Duran got themselves inducted; sorry, that's the last I'll be bringing up the RNRHOF for a while — but there's some pretty stiff competition here, even if only on paper. A suddenly faltering Adam & The Ants (in fact an Adam Ant solo single, as this issue of ver Hits' Bitz section mentions), Soft Cell riding a wave of momentum from "Tainted Love" but quickly becoming hard to sell, ABC hitting their stride with (ho-hum) another brilliant tune, The Associates delivering a bit of a let down following the extraordinary "Party Fears Two", Blondie's first duff track in damn-near forever, Culture Club proving to be not quite ready to take their rightful place in pantheon of UK pop and XTC moving into a permanent spot in ver dumper. Step forward China Crisis!

Polished white-boy funk was all the rage in the UK pop scene of 1982, something I've already become weary of as I've been trudging through singles review pages and YouTube playlists. Fuelled by the energy of punk with the precision of Chic and Motown classics, the likes of Haircut One Hundred and Pigbag had the chops, the flair and, yes, even the soul to eek out some effective tunes that got them featured in Smash Hits and landed them on Top of the Pops and would get them a decent return on the eighties retro package tour circuit today. What they lack is a fresh take that made them more than just another bloody white-boy funk group. Again, step forward China Crisis!

Like its equally outstanding predecessor "African and White", "Scream Down at Me" has those same hallmarks of the British funk-soul boom but with elements of world music and the increasingly influential New Order added to the mix. So while the guitars chug along and the sythns hold it all together, the bass goes out on a superb solo excursion and the drums kick in some brilliant tribal rhythms. All of these disparate elements could have very easily created a giant mess but the whole thing comes together beautifully.

Quite whether the members of China Crisis themselves were happy with the results is another matter. The single promptly went nowhere and has since failed to appear on either a CC studio or compilation album. And their unique brand of indie funk started to get phased out in favour of a more sensitive synth-pop soul that resulted in some Top 20 hits a year later. Stand down China Crisis.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Duran Duran: "Hungry Like the Wolf"

Another one that failed to impress the discerning Dave Rimmer this fortnight ("...this seems curiously lifeless even by their own standards"), "Hungry Like the Wolf" is nevertheless for many where the Duranies get going, particularly in North America where it was their first hit. I seldom listen to them anymore and they don't tend to get the same sort of rotation on retro radio stations and in eighties-obsessed grocery stores as many of their contemporaries so there are some bits I'd forgotten about. Was Lardo LeBon's voice, for one, always so nasally? Did I never notice just how metal that riff (played by a Taylor) is? Did I used to think it was "Hungry Like a Wolf" when I was a boy? (Rightly since animal lust calls for an indefinite article) Lots to quibble with — this is Duran Duran we're talking about — but stupidly impressive pop has its place too.