Come the mid 1980s, Shriekback were doing two things very well. Dark and funky rave-ups that could seriously move a dancefloor, and dark and smooth little dreamscapes, that felt equal parts seductive and apocalyptic, rather like the world in general. Like looking your loved one in the eye and hearing a serpent hiss back. Creepy stuff.
“The Show is Coming is a pretty solid blueprint for what much of my 1985 sounded like, all that societal corrosion and apocalyptic immanence in motion. Seriously, who better than the Dub Syndicate (doing as their name suggested) to lay down the required beats and breaks and echoes? Often as not, I never really noticed particular cuts, just threw on mixtapes or tuned in radio shows. But every now and then, something like The Show is Coming did stick out, the smart samples getting my attention, the tough, rock-steady groove doing the rest.” (Philip Random)
“To be clear, the stuff that came to be known as Grunge was alive and raw for years before most of the world ever heard about it. Look no further than Slow, straight outa the mean streets of Vancouver’s plush west side, teenagers with an equal love of punk rock and the likes of Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, ACDC, The Rolling Stones (anything and everything as long as it howled). I remember seeing them one night in 1985 at a small club. Maybe thirty seconds into the opening number (a Temptations cover), the singer (a guy named Tom) was up on the front row tables, kicking everybody’s beers over, instigating rage and ecstasy, smashing atoms by the truckload. Bad boys indeed.” (Philip Random)
“Propaganda are mostly forgotten now, but trust me, this is what 1985 sounded like. Big, majestic, mysterious, not afraid to explore the darker side of things – a dream within a dream indeed. All credit to the band themselves, who I know nothing about except I think the woman doing the singing was German (maybe they all were). But don’t overlook the guy in the control room, twiddling the dials, pulling it all together – one Trevor Horn who was rather a big deal at the time working with the likes of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, ABC, Grace Jones, Malcolm McLaren’s Duck Rock, not to forget Yes and The Buggles (he was in both of them). Pop sonic artist of the decade? There are worse arguments.” (Philip Random)
“DOA, original Vancouver punks, deliver the theme song to the great general strike of the mid 1980s, wherein the people finally just got so disgusted, they all rose up simultaneously and shut the whole stupid system down. The asylums were emptied, the schools burned, the banks blown to smithereens, the various politicians, bureaucrats and business leaders strangled with each others intestines. Or maybe it was just a dream.” (Philip Random)
In which Ralph Schuckett, Richard Butler, Bob Dorough, Ellen Shipley and John Petersen take on a Kurt Weill song made famous by the Doors, sort of. But it really ought to be the other way around, Kurt Weill being one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th Century (oft working with Bertolt Brecht), and the degree to which so many are ignorant of this is the degree to which we continue to be ignorant of what makes this f***ed up world continue to spin and wobble and crash and burn. Fortunately, producer, arranger, lover-of-cool-stuff Hal Willner set a bunch of us straight in the mid-80s sometime with Lost In The Stars an all-star tribute if ever there was one. Beyond the five names already listed, it had Todd Rundgren, Van Dyke Parks, Dagmar Krause, Tom Waits, Marianne Faithfull, even Sting (not sucking) all throwing in, paying homage, telling the truth.
Randophonic 