— Muriel Gray
1984 would prove to be a key year in the eighties and not simply because it was the first time I started to become aware of the culture. Blockbuster albums by Prince and Bruce Springsteen sold and sold and sold, MTV was becoming a phenomenon and a new generation of stars were on the way up. It was perhaps the first year fully free of the 'eighventies', the interregnum of the end of the previous decade merging into the current one, as coined by pop journalist Taylor Parkes. Though clearly raised on punk and disco and the like, Madonna and Frankie Goes to Hollywood seemed to operate free of the era that preceded them. Duran Duran and Culture Club and Eurythmics and even the bloody Police seemed fully aware that the spirit of year zero was over and that it was 1984.
That's not to say that there weren't holdovers. Muriel Gray had a background in a Scottish punk group and became a presenter for The Tube, a program very much in the spirit of launching the kind of groups that began to take off during the new wave/post-punk boom, and a single like Shriekback's "Hand on My Heart" is just the sort of thing that would have appealed to individuals who were already growing nostalgic for the music of a half-dozen years' earlier (which must have seemed like a long way off by the mid-eighties). That they were led by Barry Andrews of XTC and Dave Allen of Gang of Four only ups the ante in the throwback states. Like new pop never happened.
I don't know whether to tip my hat to the lads in Shriekback for trying to carry on with new wave or to dismiss them as out of touch. Certainly post-punk contemporaries Talking Heads — to whom "Hand on My Heart" owes a sizable debt — had long abandoned their angular guitar rock in favour of so-called world music beats and soul music. (1984 being the year of their outstanding concert film Stop Making Sense, in which the group's CBGB roots are barely hinted at) Andrews' former bandmates in XTC were busy carving out their niche in challenging indie pop to ever-diminishing numbers — but, to their credit, they were trying to move forward. Plenty of new wave artists were around in the mid-eighties and a good selection of them had moved on. (Whether they remained successful or not is another matter) Still, much like boogie rockers remaining boogie rockers to the very end, I can't help but admire such a hard-headed refusal to adapt with the times. With some prog rock cred (XTC were always the post-punk band most welcoming to old school Genesis and Yes die hards and Andrews would subsequently join The League of Gentleman alongside King Crimson guitar hero Robert Fripp), they could always fall back on the excuse that they're the ones who are really moving forward while being but a mere retread.
All this would be just bluster if "Hand on My Heart" proved to be a good record but it spectacularly fails there too. The old new wavers had the element of punk rock thrill to fall back on which this single is bereft of. I respect Muriel Gray for picking it since that's what she dug and I suspect that Shriekback wouldn't have been able to pull of any kind of effective modern pop so perhaps it's for the best. The public weren't especially convinced —top sixty! — but they got themselves a SOTF and an obscure blogger writing about their lame record. Could've been worse for a group stuck in the eighventies.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
George Michael: "Careless Whisper"
"George grows up!", exclaims Gray. Pop stars suddenly going all mature and serious rarely works - The Beatles probably only managed it because they did it so gradually that few even noticed - but George Michael is the exception. Smartly dropping 'Wham!' from the credits (even though it appears on their second album Make It Big with Andrew Ridgeley in the rare position of being listed as a co-writer), Michael was able to get himself a new identity as a solo artist free of his happy-go-lucky, shuttlecocks-in-the-shorts image. Gray isn't entirely convinced by this new direction "...just a touch too American to be completely successful") but she must have seen — as surely all did at the time — that this was the way forward and Wham! weren't long for this world. Hardly anyone would have predicted, however, that George would never quite manage to better this.
1984 would prove to be a key year in the eighties and not simply because it was the first time I started to become aware of the culture. Blockbuster albums by Prince and Bruce Springsteen sold and sold and sold, MTV was becoming a phenomenon and a new generation of stars were on the way up. It was perhaps the first year fully free of the 'eighventies', the interregnum of the end of the previous decade merging into the current one, as coined by pop journalist Taylor Parkes. Though clearly raised on punk and disco and the like, Madonna and Frankie Goes to Hollywood seemed to operate free of the era that preceded them. Duran Duran and Culture Club and Eurythmics and even the bloody Police seemed fully aware that the spirit of year zero was over and that it was 1984.
That's not to say that there weren't holdovers. Muriel Gray had a background in a Scottish punk group and became a presenter for The Tube, a program very much in the spirit of launching the kind of groups that began to take off during the new wave/post-punk boom, and a single like Shriekback's "Hand on My Heart" is just the sort of thing that would have appealed to individuals who were already growing nostalgic for the music of a half-dozen years' earlier (which must have seemed like a long way off by the mid-eighties). That they were led by Barry Andrews of XTC and Dave Allen of Gang of Four only ups the ante in the throwback states. Like new pop never happened.
I don't know whether to tip my hat to the lads in Shriekback for trying to carry on with new wave or to dismiss them as out of touch. Certainly post-punk contemporaries Talking Heads — to whom "Hand on My Heart" owes a sizable debt — had long abandoned their angular guitar rock in favour of so-called world music beats and soul music. (1984 being the year of their outstanding concert film Stop Making Sense, in which the group's CBGB roots are barely hinted at) Andrews' former bandmates in XTC were busy carving out their niche in challenging indie pop to ever-diminishing numbers — but, to their credit, they were trying to move forward. Plenty of new wave artists were around in the mid-eighties and a good selection of them had moved on. (Whether they remained successful or not is another matter) Still, much like boogie rockers remaining boogie rockers to the very end, I can't help but admire such a hard-headed refusal to adapt with the times. With some prog rock cred (XTC were always the post-punk band most welcoming to old school Genesis and Yes die hards and Andrews would subsequently join The League of Gentleman alongside King Crimson guitar hero Robert Fripp), they could always fall back on the excuse that they're the ones who are really moving forward while being but a mere retread.
All this would be just bluster if "Hand on My Heart" proved to be a good record but it spectacularly fails there too. The old new wavers had the element of punk rock thrill to fall back on which this single is bereft of. I respect Muriel Gray for picking it since that's what she dug and I suspect that Shriekback wouldn't have been able to pull of any kind of effective modern pop so perhaps it's for the best. The public weren't especially convinced —top sixty! — but they got themselves a SOTF and an obscure blogger writing about their lame record. Could've been worse for a group stuck in the eighventies.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
George Michael: "Careless Whisper"
"George grows up!", exclaims Gray. Pop stars suddenly going all mature and serious rarely works - The Beatles probably only managed it because they did it so gradually that few even noticed - but George Michael is the exception. Smartly dropping 'Wham!' from the credits (even though it appears on their second album Make It Big with Andrew Ridgeley in the rare position of being listed as a co-writer), Michael was able to get himself a new identity as a solo artist free of his happy-go-lucky, shuttlecocks-in-the-shorts image. Gray isn't entirely convinced by this new direction "...just a touch too American to be completely successful") but she must have seen — as surely all did at the time — that this was the way forward and Wham! weren't long for this world. Hardly anyone would have predicted, however, that George would never quite manage to better this.
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