SHAKEDOWN, 1979 (October, part two)

As with last month, I’ve given this one a bit of a build-up, one that I am sure will live fully up to its billing.  It’s a bumper edition, with ten tracks in all, beginning with the single that I listed at #6 in my 45 45s @ 45 series back in 2008 over at the old blog.

mp3: Joy Division – Transmission

Released on 7 October 1979.   The first time that many of us had heard it would have been a few weeks previously on the BBC2 programme, Something Else.  It would be the only time the band appeared on a TV programme that was broadcast across the entire nation – everything else was via Granada TV and only available in north-west England.

mp3: John Cooper Clarke – Twat!

One of JCC‘s best-known and most-loved poems.  Just in case anyone not from the UK doesn’t know, twat is vulgar slang for a vagina, as well as being the perfect word to describe a stupid, obnoxious and unpleasant person, for example D Trump or N Farage.

mp3: The Cure – Jumping Someone Else’s Train

Their third single of 1979 that failed to get anywhere other than the indie charts.  The good news is that the next single, A Forest, released in March 1980, would reach the destination of the mainstream chart.

mp3: Dead Kennedys – California Uber Alles

The name of the band led to hostility from the outset, even over here in the UK.  The music papers weren’t really sure how to handle them, and there was certainly no chance of the major labels offering them a deal.   There were a few writers who mentioned, based on their debut single that had been released In America, on their own label, back in June 1979 that there was a bit of musical merit to pay attention to.  Bob Last, the entrepreneur behind the Edinburgh-based Fast Product label, managed to secure the license for a UK pressing.   I don’t ever remember hearing it on the radio back in 1979, but I do know a few of the independent record shops proudly had the distinctive sleeve on display.

Eddie, the bona-fide punk in our school, of course bought a copy and brought a tape in so we would listen to it in the common room.  Let’s say it divided opinion.  I liked it, but I didn’t go out and buy it for fear that the name of the band might cause offence to my parents.

The song was re-recorded the following year for inclusion the band’s debut album Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables.

mp3: Martha & The Muffins – Insect Love

There’s a misconception that Echo Beach, the Top 10 single for the Canadian band, was the debut.  It charted in March 1980, but their little-known debut single dated back to October 1979.   One of the reasons it is forgotten about is that it was left off the debut album.

mp3: Talking Heads – Life During Wartime

The press may have been positive, particularly around how good they were as a live act, and the album Fear of Music, released in August 1979, may have gone into the charts at #33 the previous month, but the search for a hit 45 went on.  And would continue to do so until February 1981.

mp3: Wire – Map Ref. 41˚N 93˚W

The third single from Wire in 1979. Lifted from the album 154, which had been released a few weeks previously, it proved to be their last involvement with the folk at Harvest Records, whose bungling back in March 1979 had caused the band to miss out on a Top of The Pops appearance when Outdoor Miner was on the threshold of becoming a Top 40 hit.

Finally, for this month, three cult bands whose names begin with the letter P.

mp3 : The Passage – 16 Hours

One of four tracks from the About Time EP, released on the Manchester-based indie, Object Records.

The Passage were from the city and at the time consisted of Dick Witts, Tony Friel and Lorraine Hilton.  Witts was a multi-instrumentalist who spent time as a percussionist with a symphony orchestra, while Friel was the bassist with The Fall.

mp3: Pere Ubu – The Fabulous Sequel (Have Shoes Will Walk)

From Cleveland, Ohio.  I own nothing by the band, and indeed they have always been an act that I don’t get the appeal of.  They had already been on the go for some four years by this point in time and inked a deal with a major label, as this one came out on Chrysalis Records.  But as you’ll have noticed last week, Dirk is very fond of an earlier single.

mp3: The Pop Group – We Are All Prostitutes

The Bristol-based post-punk group were much feted in the UK music papers back in the late 70s.  Indeed, they have always been very revered with an article in The Guardian in 2015 declaring that “they – ahead of Gang of Four, PiL, A Certain Ratio and the rest – steered punk towards a radical, politicised mash-up of dub, funk, free jazz and the avant-garde.”

Rough Trade Records had signed them in the summer of 1979, and this 45, a critique of consumerism, was their first release for the label.

I think this edition of TVV has something that would meet the tastes of just about everyone who drops by today.

JC