Black Box: "I Don't Know Anybody Else" / Tears for Fears: "Advice for the Young at Heart"

7 February 1990 (with some Requiem-like spillover here)

"I like this — this is my single of the fortnight because it's what the people want now."

— London Boy Edem

"This is my single of the fortnight — especially because its got that sun on it. It must be the symbol of the 90's!"

— London Boy Dennis

Pop groups were once a lot more prolific. In 1965 The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys and The Byrds released two albums apiece, with The Rolling Stones going one better with a trio of LPs. Sure, albums tended to be shorter back then but the rapid pace artists kept keeping the product coming more than made up the difference. A work rate of an album a year was still commonplace into the eighties though it really depended on the act in question. People that toured their albums to death typically had a larger gap between follow-ups and the business model pioneered by Michael Jackson's Thriller also slowed things down considerably. When blockbuster albums could potentially result in six, seven or even eight singles, there's every reason to expect record labels to want to milk it for as long as possible.

Tears for Fears didn't really fit either of these trends but they, too, were happy to let the years pass between albums. Their acclaimed debut The Hurting came out in the spring of 1983 and it hugely successful follow-up Songs from the Big Chair arrived just under two years later. Not bad even if plenty of other groups were able to lap them at the same time. It would then be another five-and-a-half-years before third album The Seeds of Love would come out. (In approximately the same amount of time Prince, R.E.M. and XTC all managed to release six albums apiece) This relatively slow work rate may or may not have been to their liking, though you'd have to think that their record label would've loved a new LP in about 1987. If it was their doing then all the power to them. However, such slow output robs listeners of accurate picture of how they were progressing. How a band develops

Roland Orzbal and Curt Smith really began to emerge in North America with the singles "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and "Shout" both from Songs from the Big Chair. They were immediately lumped in with Culture Club, Duran Duran and Wham! as a part of the so-called Second British Invasion of the early-to-mid eighties. It was a designation that didn't mean a whole lot since everyone who happened to come from the UK was a part of this SBI (not unlike the way groups like Radiohead and Manic Street Preachers were considered to be Britpop in the US even when no one would've applied the term to either of them back home) but they had little in common with these other groups. English New Pop had arisen out of the ashes of punk, new wave and post punk but Tears for Fears were much closer to prog rock derived acts like Thomas Dolby, Kajagoogoo, Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw. These were the sort of people who probably all had their own home studios so they could live out their dreams of being a Todd Rundgren-esque sonic wizard. Fantastically talented musicians who made immaculate home demos. People who spent at least as much time producing others as they did on their own work. Acts who often proved that brilliant musicianship doesn't a great pop song make . Luckily, Tears for Fears were by far the best of the bunch.

I once really liked Curt Smith. Far from being the other one in Tears for Fears, he was the only reason I had anything to do with my sister's favourite group. For one thing, he looked so utterly English. He had vaguely angelic facial features that deftly masked an individual who could handle himself in a pub brawl, the midway point between Gilbert O'Sullivan and the Dynamite Kid. Plus, he had a lovely voice. His TFF partner sounded like his throat had been permanently coated in phlegm but Smith's singing was clear and wistful and you could just tell that he meant every word.

It wasn't until I grew up that I realised that I got it all wrong. I don't take anything back about my description of Smith (I have to say I'm rather chuffed about comparing him to Gilbert O'Sullivan and the Dynamite Kid) only that he wasn't the one to care about in Tears for Fears. Roland Orzbal wrote most of the songs and he could get something out of nearly every instrument he'd pick up. Aging into adulthood even gave me much more of an appreciation for his vocals. Roland was the heart and soul of Tears for Fears and I wish I had been more aware of this as a youngster.

With the gap between albums ever widening, we were already seeing TFF entering a premature musical middle age with The Seeds of Love. A third album should be the point in which a group begins to really hit its stride not where they get all reflective and start harping on about how much better the sixties were and all that stuff. The duo had once been synth-pop adjacent but they were now starting to come across as baby boomer rock royalty. (It certainly didn't help when they appeared alongside Phil Collins, Cliff Richard and Pink Floyd at the 1990 Silver Clef Award Winners Concert and as part of the accompanying Knebworth live album) Eurythmics had evolved in a similar fashion but at least they were of an appropriate age.

There's nothing wrong with musical maturity, only that it seemed to hit Orzbal and Smith at a fairly young age. Ironically, a song entitled "Advice for the Young at Heart" would prove to be one of their most middle-of-the-road numbers. As always, it's well played and arranged but it's also tame. Orzbal takes lead vocals on most of The Seeds of Love and his soulful voice gives the LP some much needed passion; Smith's singing here only exposes how bloodless the whole thing is. "Sowing the Seeds of Love" had been a wonderful bit of Beatle-esque pop (at a time when being "Beatle-esque" still meant something) that gave the duo their last big hit; "Woman in Chains" introduced the world to the spectacular voice of Oleta Adams and it's a excellent composition. But this? It's not even a great deep cut and it's status as a single smacks of needing to put the spotlight on Smith for a bit. Few were convinced and it had a three week stay in the lower reaches of the Top 40 before disappearing.

Smith would end up departing not long after, making Tears for Fears effectively a solo project for Orzbal. His/their nineties output varied in quality. The pair would eventually reform and they remain a top group. It's just a shame that they've only managed to put out seven albums in nearly forty years of recording activity. It would've been nice to have seen them young and hungry, successful and riding that wave, experimental as the hits began drying up, doing an obligatory fan-service, play-it-safe album as they began to mellow and, finally, approaching more advanced years with a nothing-to-lose mentality of once again being adventuresome. We got a taste of these periods but never a sustained progression of moving from one to another. Prog rock groups are supposed to progress, you know.

~~~~~

Gosh, there's also a Black Box single to review, isn't there? I spent the past several days thinking so much about Tears for Fears that I neglected to give much consideration to its co-Single of the Fortnight. Let's see if I can find much to say about it now.

Black Box's "Ride on Time" began dominating the UK singles charts a few weeks after I returned to Canada. It was hardly the first Eurodance or Italo house record but to many it might as well have been. Jive Bunny's "Swing the Mood" had spent a very long month at the top of the charts so its usurper was bound to be appreciated. It ended up spending six weeks at number one and it did similarly brisk business in the record shops all over Europe. To this day, many pop kids of the eighties have fond memories of it

Yet, it never did anything in North America. Mind you, there's nothing strange about that: European success means squat on the other side of the Atlantic. What is odd is that subsequent Black Box singles made the charts in the US and Canada. "I Don't Know Anybody Else" (listed as "I Don't Know Anyone" in this issue of Smash Hits) was a respectable Top 30 entry in early 1990 and then "Everybody, Everybody" became a Top 10 stormer later in the year. "Ride on Time" never meant a thing in the new world but they were still able to become relevant, at least for a time.

"I Don't Know Anybody Else" is London Boy Edem's Single of the Fortnight (even if I'm not entirely convinced it was his favourite) but he admits that it isn't quite "Ride on Time". Their first hit, he reckons, "was a complete one-off" and this follow-up is just more of the same. Very good but clearly lacking the thrill of old. But the group's unusual path towards having hits in North America suggests that this was simply to do with release dates rather than one record being vastly superior to the other. "Ride on Time" came out first and, as such, it was the bigger hit and made more of an impact. Your favourite Black Box song is just like your favourite Wes Anderson movie: whichever you hear or see first will the one you are fondest of.

Black Box's lip-synching issues would end up being dwarfed by Milli Vanilli's at about the same time. Partly this was down to the former being far bigger, particularly in North America. The pair were also more than happy to boast of their considerable talents. What happened to Rob and Fab is sad but it was difficult to feel sorry for them at the time. "Groups" like Black Box managed to come away from it intact because it was clear their "vocalists" were simply a front. Eurodance would carry on typically with a duo of a female singer and a male rapper in the mould of Snap!, Culture Beat or 2 Unlimited. I had no idea if any of these people did the vocals on their hits but I did know that it didn't matter anyway. It was the studio boffins working behind the scenes who deserved all the credit anyway.

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Finally, a word about Edem Ephraim and Dennis Fuller, this issue's guest singles reviewers. The London Boys have already been covered in this space but I don't imagine they'll be reappearing. Their chart run was brief but hit singles "Requiem" and "London Nights" were appealing hi-NRG pop-dance records. They also had the look of good pop stars and the pair carried themselves well in interviews and, indeed, in this singles review. They always looked like the type of people who were enjoying every second of their ride on the giddy carousel of pop. Sadly, they were both killed by a drunk driver in early 1996. VER HITS salutes them and I hope that their hits will remain dancefloor favourites forever.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Electribe 101: "Talking with Myself"

German vocalist Billy Rae Martin and her chums from Birmingham weren't giving up on this number and with good reason. I remember reading about it a year earlier in a Chris Heath review in Smash Hits and wishing I could hear it. Naturally I didn't seek it out, I instead waited for it to come to me — and maybe I wasn't the only one. We're still a year away from Massive Attack's "Unfinished Sympathy" and the dawn of trip hop but no one told this to Electribe 101. The London Boys aren't particularly fussed but maybe it was just too ahead of its time. An outstanding single that deserves to be remembered today.

London Boys: "London Nights"

14 June 1989

"Neither Spagna nor Milli Vanilli can hold a candle against this."

— Mike Soutar

There aren't many left but if you ever happen to browse around a South Korean record store there's a decent chance you'll come upon a copy of The Twelve Commandments of Dance by London Boys. I began noticing this a few years ago and wondered why music shops were choosing to stock this album when it was clear that no one wanted. Then, I happened to be speaking to a couple I know well about music. They both liked Michael Jackson, vaguely remembered Madonna and hadn't heard of either George Michael or Prince. Then, the woman mentioned that she really liked the London Boys and her husband concurred. Based on this admittedly slim bit of polling, I can conclude that there had once been a demand for their work even if there no longer was any. But such is the way of popular music.

When The Beatles left Liverpool for Hamburg they were unknown by most and disliked by the rest. Howie Casey, sax player for Merseyside group Derry and the Seniors, begged Alan Williams not to send that "bum group" over to Germany, fearing that they were going to ruin it for everyone. Nothing of the sort happened and the Fab Four returned to England a markedly better band, one that was a step closer to world conquest. John Lennon recalled that everyone thought they were German and that they "[spoke] good English".

Confusing Die Beatles for Germans wouldn't last long (especially after they made such a hash of both "Sie leibt dich" and "Komm, gib mir deine Hand") but there's no question that their time in Hamburg did them a world of good. Over the years, Germany became a place where pop stars of different stripes and various levels of success could go to turn their fortunes around or just get themselves together. Donna Summer spent most of her twenties in Munich where she would first meet fellow transplants Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte; she wouldn't move back to her native United States until after becoming a global superstar. David Bowie and Iggy Pop famously lived in West Berlin in the late-seventies which resulted in a creative flowering for both of them. The influence of American and British artists on German pop was such that English became the lingua franca of domestic acts from Boney M. to Propaganda.

So, a trajectory of The Beatles to Donna Summer to David Bowie and Iggy Pop to...the London Boys. (One of them is not like the others) Edem Ephraim and Dennis Fuller were German residents but they had originally been from, well, London. Being based in Hamburg, a name like 'London Boys' must have carried more weight than it would have back in their homeland (they were so-named because "everyone in Germany called us two boys from London"). Indeed, a group called Londonbeat had recently been on the charts with the single "9 A.M. (The Comfort Zone)" and it had been obvious that the group's three American vocalists and guitarist who everyone assumed to be German (turns out he was in fact from the UK) had next to nothing to do with the British capital. Bands from London didn't need to advertise where they hailed from; only those who came from elsewhere felt the need to tell everyone about it — something that Dennis and Edem doubled down on by titling their second hit single "London Nights".

When London Boys emerged in the spring of 1989 it was with "Requiem", an over-the-top dancefloor stormer that gave them a Top 5 hit. Its chart progress had been slow with the single drifting around the lower reaches of the flop side of the hit parade in December and January before returning in the spring when it would eventually peak. The momentum it generated was strong enough that its follow-up came in with a bang, being that week's second highest new entry (behind a still widely popular if increasingly stale Queen). "Requiem had only just dropped off the Top 40 a week earlier which would give London Boys an impressive nineteen straight weeks of chart action spread over a pair of singles.

But if we had assumed that Dennis and Edem's second hit was just going to be more of the same from the first, we were mistaken. Sure, "London Nights" is good fun with plenty of Euro-stomp energy but it's streets ahead of "Requiem". I had dug their first hit but found the pleading chorus ("this is the story now, the story of our love") utterly unconvincing. The duo drew upon religious imagery from time to time but in a very artificial fashion (even as a unaware twelve-year-old I knew that The Twelve Commandments of Dance was a lame title).

By contrast, "London Nights" felt the real thing. Being expats, they had memories of London to rely on but it feels like they'd been away for long enough that that they were able to pull off romanticizing it. With West Germany thriving, they weren't necessarily privy to the worst of the Thatcher years. There's a certain darkness in the verses but it's counteracted by an ecstatic chorus. Showing that they'd picked up more than a little from their adopted country, it's not unlike Propaganda's wonderful singles "Dr. Mabuse" and "Duel". On the other hand, it also draws upon Pet Shop Boys, who had already immortalized London as a hotbed of sleaze in "West End Girls".

London Boys had hits in Britain and throughout Europe (and, presumably, South Korea) but where they remained unknowns was in North America. While Milli Vanilli ran off a succession of Top 5 hits, Dennis and Edem remained an obscurity, something I could never comprehend. Their records were unavailable to me but the bulk of "London Nights" had permanently squatted in my brain. It became one of those songs I most associated with the end of my year in England and one that would lead me to over-romanticize this period of my life. I had enjoyed our many visits to London but it had never been a place I experienced at two or three in the morning when "the party's out and the fever [drove me] wild" but that's the kind of London I created in my mind. Again, such is the power of pop.

 

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Prince: "Batdance"

Half-Prince, half-Joker, the Purple Perv manages to look like Two-Face in the video of "Batdance". Even more confused is the record itself. It seemed cool at the time until the soundtrack came out when it was revealed that it was just a glorified megamix of the album and, indeed, a condescended six-minute summing up of the Batman film that was on its way. A mess and, as Mike Soutar says, "very odd indeed" but a just-past-peak Prince managed to tie it all up into a great party record to rival "London Nights".  Obviously he accomplished far more elsewhere but you'd be hard pressed to find another record of his that is this much fun. And I still quote "This town needs an enema!" on occasion without even thinking of Jack Nicholson or Tim Burton: as far as I'm concerned, this was all Prince's doing too. Shame I bought that soundtrack album though.