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Eighties’ best 100 redux: #91 Pop Will Eat Itself “Wise up! sucker” (1989)

<< #92    |    #90 >>

I started this project of re-counting down my top 100 favourite eighties tunes just over a year ago and yet, I’m only at song #91!*

Pop Will Eat Itself’s track, “Wise up! sucker”, just snuck itself into the eighties, and subsequently, my list, being released in 1989. PWEI came out of the same Grebo music scene as another Stourbridge, England band, The Wonder Stuff (see track #96). In fact, both bands have their roots in a short-lived project from the early eighties, called From Eden and Miles Hunt and Clint Mansell remain friends today. PWEI very quickly moved on from their original pop punk influenced sound to the dark, drum machine- and sample-heavy music heard on “Wise up! sucker”.

This song comes from what many consider to be PWEI’s second album, “This is the day!… This is the hour!… This is this!” (I guess many don’t consider “Now for a feast” a proper album?) “Wise up! sucker” is a cacophony of the aforementioned drum machines and samples, along with drilling guitars and half-sung, half-rapped vocals and is instantly recognizable for its “She loves me… She loves me not” chorus. And yes, that is Miles Hunt singing back up.

I think I first came to realize that I liked these guys after dancing to this very song and drunkenly screaming the chorus on a Saturday night at a now defunct alternative music club in Oshawa called the Moon Room and meeting a girl on the dance floor that I would spend the rest of that summer courting. I never got the girl (I have since found a better one) but still love the tune.

Original Eighties best 100 position: #92

Favourite lyric: “You give me sixteen different flavours of hell” Have you ever been in a relationship like that?

Where are they now?: The band went on to many different projects after their breakup in 1996. Original member Clint Mansell has had a successful career scoring films, such as “Requiem for a dream” and “The wrestler”. In 2011, Graham Crabb resurrected the PWEI name and released a new album, though he was the only original member that performed on it. Since then, original members Richard March, Fuzz Townshend, and Adam Mole** have rejoined the group and a couple other records have followed.

*Though I have been making up ground of late…

**Clint Mansell is the only original member that is not currently with the band.

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2013: #24 Steve Mason “Oh my Lord”

<< #25    |    #23 >>

My maxim for a number of years now has been “So much music, so little time.” As focused as I’ve been over the last couple of decades on keeping on top of the best music available, rather than settling in on the heap of proven music already in my collection, I often find myself behind and missing out on some great releases. Just as an example, I have a running playlist for which I post a part every quarter year, that includes songs from some of my favourite releases for those three months, but inevitably I discover a song or album or EP after the fact that I could have easily included.

Steve Mason’s brilliant sophomore solo album, “Monkey minds in the devil’s time”, was one of those albums that I originally missed out on when it was originally released in March 2013. I came upon it months later, kicked myself after listening to it and catching interest mere moments after the spoken word intro faded into the reverberating and haunting “Lie awake”. And even now, I often lose sight of how compelling of a listen it is, until I come around to it again. Thank goodness I have these lists that I create that force me to go back and revisit all the music I’ve loved over the years.

…But I am digressing…

In the decade that passed after Steve Mason abdicated his post as frontman of indie buzz group, The Beta Band, he suffered bouts of poverty and depression, released a variety of material under multiple pseudonyms, and most importantly, seemingly rediscovered his joy for writing new music. And thank goodness for such small mercies. “Oh my lord”, the first proper single off of “Monkey minds in the devil’s time”, appeals to my penchant and weakness for a good groove. The piano lays a jaunty riff and the drum beat jives easily with the laid back bass line while Mason leaves it all laid bare, a soulful turn on vocals. It just bleeds old-school psychedelic blues rock, à la Primal Scream’s “Give out but don’t give up”, but with more sincerity.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2013 list, click here.

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Eighties’ best 100 redux: #92 The Housemartins “Caravan of love” (1986)

<< #93    |    #91 >>

Ah… the high school dance memories…

The Housemartins’ “Caravan of love” at track #92, reminds me of the half-hugging*, half-shuffling we would call “slow dancing” back in the old high school auditorium days. Teen boys lining the walls on one end of the hall and groups of tittering teen girls on the other, each eyeing and sizing the other up, while betwixt them were couples that had got up the nerve to cross the floor and find each other. There might be a few more songs on this list that call this image clearly to mind, some on this list mostly because of this memory.

In this case, though, I consider myself something more of a fan of the group that sang the song. The Housemartins were formed in 1983 by Paul Heaton and Stan Cullimore and went through a number of personnel changes, that included drummer Dave Hemingway, who would go on to form The Beautiful South with Paul Heaton later on, and bassist Norman Cook, who would later go on to fame as Fatboy Slim. Their music was jangly, indie pop at its best with Paul Heaton’s extraordinary vocal work at the centre of it all.

The group only ever released two full-length albums and a handful of singles in their brief five years in existence, but so many of their songs soundtracked the latter half of my high school years and the ones immediately thereafter. Indeed, The Housemartins’ 1988 compilation, “Now that’s what I call quite good”, was one of first compact discs I ever bought, a necessity after I had worn out the cassette tape I had copied from a friend. So many great tunes on that one and it’s a compilation that I keep hoping will see a vinyl reissue one day.

“Caravan of love”, an a cappella cover of an Isley-Jasper-Isley tune (this is the first of a number of covers that will grace this list), gave The Housemartins their first and only UK #1 hit in December 1986. Paul Heaton and company often delved into a cappella territory but for some reason this is the one that struck a chord with the buying public. It certainly is a song that begs to be sung along with.

I think I’ll go sing along to it again.

“…Everybody take a stand, Join the caravan of love… Stand up, stand up…”

Original Eighties best 100 position: #89

Favourite lyric: “We’ll be living in a world of peace /
In the day when everyone is free ” Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

Where are they now?: As I hinted at above, the band went their separate ways after they broke up in 1988 and never looked back. I read somewhere that the original members were gathered for a photo shoot and feature by Mojo magazine in 2009 and at that time, they unfortunately maintained that there won’t ever be a reunion.

*Not too close, mind you, it was a Catholic high school!

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.