It’s 1981 and King Crimson main man Robert Fripp has reformed the band (after better part of seven years in the wilderness) with a whole new sound and Discipline, and the result is thundering (to put it mildly). Thela Hun Gingeet translates as Heat In The Jungle and it concerns an experience that Adrian Belew (the new guy) had while out for a walk with a tape recorder in the still rather mean streets of NYC. Word is, it actually caused stereo systems to catch fire back in the day.
“It’s true. We dropped our share of LSD in the 1980s, often as not up on mountaintops, miles from any electrical outlets. So we’d drag a blaster with us, because you had to have a soundtrack for all the strangeness and multiplicity. But what happened when we ran into normal folks? That’s where the Penguin Café Orchestra cassette came in handy. Right at the point where their faces were twisting to baleful scowls of judgment and disgust, we’d let drop easy acoustic textures incorporating fiddles, banjos, harmoniums, all manner of wooden gear that nevertheless floated strangely on the subliminal breeze. Although that Telephone + Rubber Band song did seem to confuse.” (Philip Random)
“John Cale being one of those artists who has never felt compelled to repeat himself. This version of the old cowboy song comes from 1981’s Honi Soit, which may not be anyone’s definition a pop item but it was his biggest seller. Which means there are likely still many copies of it floating around, which makes me feel very good somehow. Curious young minds stumbling onto Streets of Laredo gone discordantly into the ditch, dumping all the sunshine and melodrama, leaving only drama and the stink of death. I’d love to see this movie.” (Philip Random)
“The memory is of seeing Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark perform Statues live, Commodore Ballroom, 1981. The song comes across nice and moody on record but in that big room, packed with every serious art-weirdo-scenester in town, it was powerful stuff, it shut everybody up, it put us all in a trance that was both transcendent and foreboding. It was official. The 1980s were going to be that kind of movie.” (Philip Random)
The album’s called Dark Continent, and the song’s called Tse Tse Fly (both references to Africa) but Wall of Voodoo‘s first (and best) long player is really about America. The jangly guitars, cheap drum machines, scrapyard percussion bits and tips into noise. And the stories being told, equal parts noir and surreal. What could be more American?
“Nasty rip of Dead Kennedy genius from 1981, assholism not just on the rise in Ronald Reagan‘s America, boiling over. Fortunately, we had the best west coast hardcore to help us focus our rage, antipathy, spite. Not at anybody in particular – just the general, clean-cut crowd. The so-called good kids, all dressing the same, looking the same, drinking the same shitty beer, getting too drunk to stand, let alone f***, puking their repressed, conservative, neo-fascist guts.” (Philip Random)
Randophonic 
