Look at them fall
Flicker and fade
There’s a line in the genetics of popular music that goes: 1970s disco -> 1980s synthpop -> 1990s club electronica -> whatever it is came next in the 00s and the synthpop revival of the 2010s.
(Of course, that’s an exaggeration; there are many other strands of DNA in the 80s synthpop primordial soup: the musique concrete of the 1950s avant garde, electronic experimentation from the 1960s, Kraftwerk in the mid-70s with their ‘German electro’ sound which then detonated like an atom bomb around the British scene in the early 80s. And if we want to get truly nerdy (and of course we do) then most of the 1990s in computer gaming was dominated by synthy sounds otherwise forgotten a decade earlier by the analog ‘MTV unplugged’ mainstream.)
But that line weaving from disco, into synthpop and back into club dance music still intrigues me, mostly because – generally – I’m not hugely into 70s disco, and the 1990s drug-culture club music mostly left me cold. Why? I’m not sure. I think because although I love the pure tones of synthesisers, I also love the poetry of words, and a song doesn’t really register with me unless it combines both. Dance music is music that has its eyes squarely elsewhere: it’s music not intended to be primarily listened to, and it just doesn’t work if you’re not there, live.
A band that seems to exemplify this trend is Freur, who fall neatly into three separate phases. From 1982 to 1986, a Welsh New Wavey synthpop group; reformed as Underworld from 1987 to 1990 as more mainstream pop-dance-rock; then from 1991 on, a techno/acid house electronic dance band becoming hugely famous with the soundtrack to Trainspotting. Today, Underworld continue to be beyond huge in the British scene; they ran the music for the 2012 London Olympics. That’s pretty much the definition of ‘made it’.
This was their big breakthrough hit, in 1996: the deliriously named ‘Born Slippy .NUXX‘ (best not to ask really). Absolutely world-shattering stuff; doesn’t do a thing for me, I’m terribly sorry. This is why I’m old. Though I was 24 at the time and it still didn’t help.
Drive boy dog boy
Dirty numb angel boy
In the doorway boy
She was a-lipstick boy
She was a-beautiful boy
And tears boy
And all in your inner space boy
1988’s Underneath The Radar I find a lot more interesting. A bit long, but it’s got that 80s sound and the authentic tang of Cold War mixed hedonism/despair in the lyrics:
We kiss underneath the searchlights
And we live underneath the bomb
We live underneath the radar
There’s no way that you’re ever gonna get far
It’s perfectly acceptable. Yet for me it’s that first 1983 hit that sends shivers down my spine: Doot-Doot. Why? I don’t know! Only I have a deep memory of hearing this tune. And it has the same nostalgic melancholy for abandoned media (that seems so cute and yet so true now) that inhabits those early Buggles songs.
… And, well, just because that’s the noise that those beepy boxes of the future make, that’s why. And you’re singing along too. You might as well admit it.
Doot. Doot doot.
For extra bonus Eighties, the live version. Remember when you watch it that these people had perfectly good music careers afterwards – and still do.
What’s in a name?
Face on a stage
Where are you now?
Memory fades
You take a bow
Here in the dark
Watching the screen
Look at them fall
The final scene
And we go doot
Doot doot
Look at them fall
Flicker and fade
Gone are the screams
I put them to bed
Now they are dreams
And we go doot
Doot doot