A little helping of button badge goodness in the shape of ‘Red Mecca’ era Cabaret Voltaire, a particularly fine vintage. Well, at least two of them are of that era – the pale blue one dates from a bit later, 1982 or 1983, can’t quite recall exactly when it was I bought it, but it would have been one of those years.
With an advertised running time of 8 hours and 25 minutes, this whopping 8 CD set brings you the voice of Peter Hook himself reading his in parts amusing and unpretentious take on his days as one quarter of Joy Division. Any conceptions of the mythic, pained, sullen and mysterious image of Joy Division as a band is taken in hand and dismantled by Hook. You’d be hard pressed to balance the immature, laddish wind-ups and downright cruel ‘japes’ played on one another by the band with the somewhat sombre yet brutal grace of the music they made, as told by Hooky. There’s a recurring retrospective regret to proceedings as the inevitable end of Ian Curtis unfolds. A good many ‘why didn’t we see what was happening?’ or ‘why didn’t we take a break?’ questions arise as one event after another that should have rung the klaxon of concern takes shape, is absorbed, patched up or glossed over and everything proceeds relentlessly all the same. All too often the urge to forget the implications and move on seemingly from Ian Curtis himself. Hook jokes about naming his book ‘He Said He Was All Right So We Carried On’ and you have to chuckle, darkly.
For some reason, I’ve never posted anything about Visage on this blog, despite having a fair few of their records. The return of the band in recent years has been a most welcome surprise, with a strong album that tapped into the original style of the band and a string of fine singles (and accompanying remixes, the latter something of a rarity). This on top of their classic era material, particularly the first two albums. So, it is with sadness that I have just read about the passing of Steve Strange. RIP, Steve.
Nothing especially exotic when it comes to the musical content of this 45, fine as it is nevertheless – very much Ultravox mark II at the high water mark of their splendidly noir pomp. The A and B sides match the UK release, the former being an edited version of the LP cut, the latter one of Ultravox’s mark II’s best ever B sides, IMHO, with Warren Cann on lead vocals. No, the chief attraction of this 45 is the cover, which broke with the tradition of most territories equivalent releases by ditching the (admittedly very good) Peter Saville (or Estudio Saville, as his nom de plume would have it on this outing) design – instead, the cover features one of photographer Brian Griffin‘s sumptuous shots from the ‘Rage In Era’ period, Ultravox in a timeless retro style in front of a vanishing point horizon. It did at least keep a similar in vein ‘brush script’ style typeface for the titles, the A side of which is also translated as ‘La Voz’ for this release. There does also seem to be another Spanish 7″ edition that features the regular picture sleeve design, it may be a promo only affair though? This is the one for me though.
A stray single that put a full stop on the initial period of Colin Newman’s solo releases, ‘We Means We Starts’ followed shortly after his third album, ‘Not To’ in early 1982, but was not included on the album. Though sonically it shared a lot of the same DNA as the long player, it seems to have been put together by a different grouping. ‘Not To’ had included a good number of songs that Wire had first performed live but never recorded or released, so it inevitably had a great deal of comparisons to Wire from the off. In particular, the more overtly ‘pop’ side was always bandied about as if this were the sole preserve of Colin Newman – despite his previous solo album, ‘Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish’ straying into the kind of outer fringes sonic areas that erstwhile colleagues Gilbert and Lewis had been mapping as their own. Having said that, there’s no doubt that this ‘poppier’ side was in the sights with this album’s sound.
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