110. Enola Gay

Before they were OMD, they were Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and better – cool young masters of dance floor ready girlfriend-left-me earworm pop of highest attainment. Except the Enola Gay in question here is not just some wayward girl who didn’t stay home, she’s the US air force bomber that dropped the BOMB on Hiroshima — history’s exclamation point, all of mankind’s progress and/or regress manifesting in a pivotal instant that (combined with what happened a few days later in Nagasaki) FORCED change, triggered apocalypse, immenatized the eschaton (and so on). It’s 8:15 in the AM, Japan time, August 6, 1945. Always has been, always will be. This is where we are. Nothing will ever be the same.

Advertisement

471. statues

“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)

OMD-Organization