The End of the Eighties, Track 19

“Somebody”
Depeche Mode
Some Great Reward
1984

Like most of America, it was the hit-you-over-the-head obvious, egalitarian “People Are People” where Depeche Mode first came onto my radar. Released in March of 1984, almost a half-year in advance of Some Great Reward, the single’s popularity would prompt the release of a US-only compilation of the same name nearly two months before Some Great Reward was available. The album of new material boasts two of Depeche Mode’s most provocative songs: the psycho-sexual “Master and Servant”, and the religious-questioning “Blasphemous Rumours”. But it’s the double A-side of that latter song that has always caught my ear. After Vince Clarke left Depeche Mode in 1981, Martin Gore stepped up and took over primary songwriting duties for the band. “Somebody” was Gore’s first ballad and only the fourth time he sang lead on a Depeche Mode song. 

Coming from a place of damaged love, there is a need for comfort. The hopeless romantic as the addict, and “Somebody” is the junkie’s lie – to himself, to her. There are pledges of support and requests for understanding. Challenging and disagreeing are a part of the healthy give-and-take façade that crumbles under harsher light. Things unravel when the singer admits, “I don’t want to be tied to anyone’s strings / I’m carefully trying to steer clear of those things.” Ultimately, the bait has been switched, and “Though things like this / Make me sick / In a case like this / I’ll get away with it.”

Playing off the duplicitous lyrical twist, there is a sinister undertone, courtesy of the heartbeat time being kept throughout, and the almost-intelligible voices that provide background… is it children on a playground, idle cocktail party-goers’ chatter, something else entirely?

Thematically, I love the bridge between The Cure’s “Untitled” and Depeche Mode’s “Somebody” on the playlist. Where the previous track wallows in its self-pity, this one looks for new hope (or at least a new bed to share). Also, of note, the original single version of “Somebody” found on the Catching Up With Depeche Mode/The Singles 81>85 compilations shaves a few seconds off the album version, but somehow feels more rich and textured.

The End of the Eighties, Track 18

“Untitled”
The Cure
Disintegration
1989

When it comes to The Cure, and Disintegration in particular, I’ve said so much already, but I hope that doesn’t mean the subject is unworthy of being revisited and refreshed…

I started dating Pam in January of 1989. It was the most intense relationship I’d ever been a part of at that point in my life. Inspiration and passion were the order of the day, every day. She encouraged me and challenged me. It was here that I found my voice. Here that I found my creative outlet. Here that Random Thoughts Escaping truly began. The title of the blog is taken from my first collection of poetry dated January 1989 through August 1989, which I pretentiously – and completely unironically in the way only an 18-year-old can – subtitled “Ideas of Life, Death, Love, Loss, Beginnings, and Endings.” I wrote constantly, scribbling furiously every chance I had. I filled page after page of angsty, sometimes-overwrought, sometimes-pretty good poetry. Ultimately, I found my voice and found a direction.

This relationship with Pam, however, wasn’t going to last. She opened me up to worlds I had never experienced, but I didn’t recognize what was always hanging in the air. She gave me as much fair warning as she did play with my heart. Ultimately, she broke it and moved to San Francisco to live with her ex-boyfriend. I spiraled.

Music was a huge part of that period in my life and that relationship in particular. And this album, released just a couple of months before Pam literally moved out of my life, was epic in scale. Disintegration became the soundtrack to my loss, and “Untitled” the voice of my heart. Sitting in my parents family room in the early morning summer hours after coming home from the bars, the stereo playing this album, this song, as my Sharpie raced across the page, trying to capture all the emotion of Life After Pam.

“Untitled” is six-and-a-half minutes of sorrow and resignation. Where “Closedown” is musically hard-charging, “Untitled” is languid, wallowing in tears and defeat. Thematically, it’s right in line with what’s considered typical Cure of the era, but the lyrical imagery is some of Robert Smith’s very best:

Hopelessly fighting the devil futility

Feeling the monster climb deeper inside of me

Feeling him gnawing my heart away hungrily

I’ll never lose this pain, never dream of you again.

And it spoke to me like no other in that dark summer as I struggled to redefine my new self, alone.

As a young writer, I loved the notion of this song being untitled. It fit perfectly with my own writing style of the time, which lacked punctuation and capitalization, eschewing rhyme and titles (the bulk of my poetry from the era took their titles from the first line of the poem). Today, I recognize “Untitled” as a cheeky bit of fun on Smith’s part, unable to even find the right words to provide a title for a song that laments “Never quite said what I wanted to say to you / Never quite managed the words to explain to you.”

If you’ve followed this blog over the years (thank you!), then you probably already knew there was simply no way “Untitled” wouldn’t appear on the End of the Eighties playlist. For an expanded look at the entire album this song is taken from and the importance of Disintegration, I hope you’ll take a few moments to revisit my thoughts on it from 2011 with fresh eyes, and enjoy!

The End of the Eighties, Track 17

“Jump in the River”
Sinéad O’Connor
I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
1990

It was difficult not to pick the obvious Sinéad O’Connor song here (like I did with the Cowboy Junkies’ selection earlier on the playlist). “Nothing Compares 2 U” is epic in every way and deserving of its recognition. The strings and verge-of-tears vocals over Prince’s heart wrenching lyrics are a perfect storm of emotion. I remember the video coming on MTV while home from college and calling my mom into the room to watch it, and gushing about how beautiful O’Connor was and those amazing green eyes and trying to put into words the way the song touched me. (The significance of this occasion may be lost over the years, but this was actually an olive branch of sorts – an attempt at connecting with my mom and letting her into my world – given the tempestuous state of my relationship with my parents during my punk phase.) The album that followed shortly after that first proper single was wrapped in stark passion and right in the crosshairs of my musical awareness.

But “Jump in the River” is the one that holds specific Bowling Green memories. Located right on Main Street in downtown BG, Uptown/Downtown was already a ten-year-old fixture in the small college town by the time we arrived on campus. I had no interest in Downtown’s sports bar, but Uptown’s dance club was a perfectly acceptable option.

The ritual of getting ready to go out now seems almost as important as the night out itself was – eyeliner and black lipstick, black tights under ripped jeans, these crazy black boots I had bought the year before, and the black leather motorcycle jacket I bought on consignment in BG (and plastered with NIN and Ministry stickers) all played a role. Throw in a pack of cigarettes and the Zippo lighter John’s dad gave me years before, and the costume was accessorized.

I remember very little about the inside of Uptown other than ubiquitous crowds and sweat and thumping music. I’m pretty sure “college alternative” nights were on Wednesdays back in the day, but I say that without any sense of certainty. I do know we danced at Uptown to “Jump in the River”. The gunshot ricochet opening and driving percussion make it one of the hardest tracks on I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. Co-written by O’Connor and Marco Pirroni, he of the seminal punk pedigree, I still love the song’s imagery… 

Real world kisses (“I thought I tasted of too many cigarettes, but you tasted like wine.”) give way to the fascination of a relationship never meant to last (“It’s all been a gorgeous mistake / A sick one, a clean one, the best one God ever made”). Over Pirroni’s screeching feedback guitar, O’Connor describes all the turmoil of young love and lust in a single couplet: “There’s been days like this before, you know, and I liked it all / Like the times we did it so hard there was blood on the wall.” This was music that spoke to me in the same way The The’s Mind Bomb expanded my world.

Originally found alongside the likes of New Order, Debbie Harry, Ziggy Marley, Tom Tom Club, and Brian Eno, the song was the lead off of Jonathan Demme’s stellar (and underrated) Married to the Mob soundtrack, meaning “Jump in the River” was actually released a year before O’Connor’s album.

Among the selections on I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, there are certainly songs I prefer to “Jump in the River” – the slow build from a cappella to the stirring drum and acoustic guitar finale of “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance” springs immediately to mind – but this song makes the most sense based on its ties to nights out at Bowling Green and flow within the playlist.

The End of the Eighties, Track 16

“I Melt with You (Tokes’ Rock the World Mix)”
Modern English
I Melt with You CD Maxi-Single
1990

Modern English started out as labelmates of Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Pixies, and Bauhaus. The original three founding members were even a part of the rotating cast of musicians that participated in 4AD label founder Ivo Watts-Russell’s supergroup This Mortal Coil. But it was the synthpop confection of “I Melt with You” that finds the group treading one-hit wonder territory for the casual music fan. The original 1982 version of the song secured a spot in the pop culture consciousness by being featured in and playing over the closing credits of Valley Girl. The band re-recorded and re-released the song numerous times throughout the years that followed, but were never able to really cash-in on it.

I remember my friends Jen and Nancy humming along with the song on drives home from Thursday’s. And I remember Jeff having a copy of the original After the Snow 4AD release at Bowling Green. But by the time we were on campus, Modern English had broken up, left 4AD, reformed, and were now on the TVT label with a new album – Pillow Lips. The playlist version here is one of the remixes from that latter era found on the 1990 CD maxi-single release of “I Melt with You”. More percussive-based than other versions and drawn out to nearly six minutes, the “Tokes’ Rock the World Mix” is relentlessly optimistic.

Running counterpoint musically and thematically to the funeral dirge The Cure’s catalog occupied in my music library, “I Melt with You” brims over with unstoppable buoyancy. From the iconic humming breakdown to the jangly synths, it all comes back to the sentimental simplicity of a new wave love song.

The End of the Eighties, Track 15

“Victim of Love”
Erasure
The Secret Policeman’s Third Ball (The Music)
1987

The Secret Policeman’s Ball shows, an acclaimed UK series of comedy and music benefits for Amnesty International, seem to have gone largely unnoticed in the US outside of the new wave community. The music artists and song selections lent themselves to a certain sensibility of the cause at hand among college alternative fans, particularly in the late ’80s. (Yes, I had an Amnesty International poster up on the closet door in our dorm room of the lone protester standing down a row of tanks in Tiananmen Square.) Boasting a lineup that included Kate Bush, Duran Duran, Lou Reed, Bob Geldof, Peter Gabriel, World Party, and Erasure, the Third Ball soundtrack fit easily into my collection.

While difficult to pick a standout among the album’s selection, Erasure’s deceptively joyous reading of “Victim of Love” gets high marks if only for singer Andy Bell’s over-the-top “Merci beaucoup!” exclamation at the song’s end. But there is more to it than that. The song itself, originally found on the duo’s second album, The Circus, released the same year as their Secret Policeman’s Ball appearance, works thematically for the era. It’s a cautionary tale about guarding one’s heart when entering into a new relationship. And in that period of late adolescence and young adulthood, it is appropriate advice, even if I never personally followed it at the time.

This is one of a handful of songs that didn’t actually appear on either of the original End of the Eighties mix CDs, but the Third Ball album was so prominent in my CD player that year John and I roomed together, and I hold this era of Erasure so closely to my relationship with Pam, there was simply no way I could ignore it when the playlist expanded. And it seemed to fit nicely next to Yaz’s “Only You” in the running order, contrasting two of Vince Clarke’s musical outlets.

The End of the Eighties, Track 14

“Only You”
Yaz
Upstairs at Eric’s
1982

Kari, my first college girlfriend, had Upstairs at Eric’s on cassette. We caught each other’s eye during freshman orientation, and I remember pointing her out to John in the crowd. I lamented afterwards that I wasn’t able to find her to talk with her after the assembly, and John matter-of-factly informed me that on a campus of 15,000 I was bound to run into her again. Sure enough, crossing campus one night soon thereafter with my newly found group of friends, we passed her. Even more amazing, I learned that our new friend Jennifer knew Kari because they were both in the vocal program.

Kari went to a high school and school district with the same name as mine, but that was located in Northwestern Ohio, which always amazed me (perhaps the first hint that my world wasn’t quite as unique as I had previously thought). She had done some modeling in high school, and although she looked every bit the punk when we dated – dyed hair, dark makeup, black wardrobe, piercings – her striking beauty still shone through with an exotic hint. She’s the girlfriend who pierced my cartilage the night of the Bizarre Love Triangle.

I went to Kari’s parent’s house once while we were dating. I remember her hometown seeming every bit as rural as mine (perhaps more so), but I don’t remember if I spent the night or not. Her parents’ house was close enough to Bowling Green that it’s possible we just went there one weekend afternoon. I do know I brought her home to my parents’ house one long weekend while we were dating. I introduced her to my high school punk friends and took her to Thursday’s.

Much like the intertwined relationships of college and young adulthood, there was a certain incestuous nature to the alternative bands of the ’80s. The tangling of rosters was always fascinating to me: The Cure’s Robert Smith playing with Siouxsie and the Banshees, Electronic’s Pet Shop Boys/New Order/Smiths lineup, the Mission UK/Sisters of Mercy connections, and on and on. And then there’s Vince Clarke... 

Clarke helped found Depeche Mode and contributed three hits to their Speak & Spell debut, “Dreaming of Me”, “New Life”, and “Just Can’t Get Enough”, then left the band. He hooked up with Alison Moyet and produced two albums in the same number of years under the Yaz banner (Yazoo in the UK). Before teaming up with Andy Bell to form Erasure – his longest lasting musical partnership – in 1985, there was a detour as The Assembly (producing the Feargal Sharkey fronted single “Never Never”).

If there is a godfather of ’80s college alternative synth, it’s Clarke. But among the considerable body of Clarke’s work (or the entire genre of synthpop, for that matter), it was never more organic than Yaz’s output. 1982’s Upstairs at Eric’s has a surprising warmth to it, owed in no small part to Moyet’s vocals. Even in the late ’80s, it still felt fresh and connected with us on so many levels.

My relationship with Kari imploded spectacularly before the first semester ended. It was entirely my fault, and I don’t know that we ever made it back to being anything more than the fringes of civil in each other’s presence for the remainder of my time on campus. But there were so many nights we spent on the deck of the campus library seeping well into the early morning hours where we poured our hearts out to each other, living the drama that only a college-aged couple can. The chiming ballad of “Only You”, though, remains one of my favorite songs of the era. It’s when wrapped in that aural warmth that I can close my eyes and still see Kari’s face from all those years ago, and remember how fortunate I was to have known her.

On a musically related sidenote, possibly the only synthpop act to come close to matching the lushness of Yaz was the (equally) criminally short-lived early 2000s Akron band, 20goto10. Classically trained vocalist Sara Eugene’s pipes were every bit as haunting and full as anything Moyet has done.

The End of the Eighties - REVIVAL!

I am a nostalgia whore. And music is almost always a trigger for me. Probably close to 15 years ago I sat down and just wrote lists and lists of songs and a one or two sentence description of what immediately comes to mind when I hear those songs. This list of music and associations spans my entire life – from the pop music and 8-tracks my sister first exposed me to in the ’70s and early ’80s to the classic and hard rock I that shaped my middle school and early high school years of the mid-’80s to the alternative college rock of the late ’80s that defined some of the most influential times in my young adulthood.

Somewhere around a dozen years ago, I created a pair of CD sets for my wife and close college friends, compiling songs that I felt captured our shared history from that last era. These exercises collided spectacularly a few years ago when, after thoughtfully combining the two playlists into a single, five-hour-plus late ’80s time capsule, I originally sat down to write about each of the tracks. Seventy songs about 24 months, each track taking me on a different journey. Sometimes diving into the artist’s history, sometimes into my personal history, sometimes on tangents I never expected, I made my way through the first 13 tracks, then life got in the way. It’s an exercise I’ve wanted to revisit for quite a while, but I didn’t want to publish anything more until I was certain I could devote the time to it the project deserves.

My favorite outcome from when I originally published the first 13 tracks here was receiving feedback from not just the people who were there, but also encouragement from people whose musical opinion I value, like Matt Sebastian over at Slicing Up Eyeballs and Dave Purcell. I was also amazed by the way my writing provided a catalyst for people from my past to engage me – like Matt Kish, who I referenced in Track 10 – when I had no idea they were out there, let alone reading my blog or remembered me more than 20 years later.

It’s the memory of those exchanges – sometimes just brief Twitter responses, sometimes lengthy email conversations – that has kept this project alive in my head over the last few years. In January, I set out to resume this creative workout, and I have been writing furiously ever since, picking up right where I had left off with Track 14 and plowing ahead with renewed creative energies. I intend to post a track a week until this thing is compete, and my ultimate goals remain the same as they did when this project was originally launched: When finished, you’ll have some perspective on the music of the era, a window into the events that shaped me into the person I have become, and the blueprint for a kickass ’80s playlist! 

Links to the introduction and the first 13 tracks can be found here, as well as along the right side of the blog in the “End of the Eighties” section. I hope you’ll take the time over the next few days to revisit the original tracks and continue to come back each Wednesday for new songs over the next year or so to add to the playlist as we time travel together, letting the music take us where my memory bends, and I hope you'll join the conversation by commenting on the blog, as well as spread the word far and wide on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.

2010 Introduction: 70 Songs About 24 Months

Track 01 - “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” (Bauhaus)

Track 02 - “From the Flagstones” (Cocteau Twins)

Track 03 - “Saudade” (Love and Rockets)

Track 04 - “A Few Hours After This…” (The Cure)

Track 05 - “Blind Hearts” (Xymox)

Track 06 - “Sweet Jane” (Cowboy Junkies)

Track 07 - “Candleland” (Ian McCulloch)

Track 08 - “The Spy in the Cab” (Bauhaus)

Track 09 - “Something I Can Never Have” (Nine Inch Nails)

Track 10 - “Gravitate to Me” (The The)

Track 11 - “Stripped” (Depeche Mode)

Track 12 - “Time Has Got Nothing to Do with It” (Peter Murphy)

Track 13 - “Bizarre Love Triangle” (New Order)