Tag: Grebo

Categories
Tunes

100 best covers: #42 Pop Will Eat Itself “Games without frontiers”

<< #43    |    #41 >>

So here’s a topsy-turvy, chicken and the egg kind of story.

I remember hearing “Games without frontiers” on AM radio as a pre-teen not really know who the artist was or what the song was about. I much later became a fan of Peter Gabriel when I picked up his “Shaking the tree” compilation on CD in the midst of my 80s retro kick in the late 1990s and there, reacquainted myself with the track. However, prior to that, in the early 1990s, I became a fan of Grebo jokesters Pop Will Eat Itself, mostly because of their relations with The Wonder Stuff and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, bands of whom I was already a big fan. Years later, some time in the early 2000s, whilst exploring some of PWEI’s back catalogue that I had yet to consume, I came across this cover they did of “Games without frontiers” and with a bit more digging, found that it was their contribution to a fundraiser compilation supporting the peace efforts in Northern Ireland, called “Peace together”.

Peter Gabriel’s original version of the song was recorded for his self-titled third album, released in 1980. It features Kate Bush on backing vocals, plodding percussive and bass synths, a drum machine mimicking congos, whistling, and sinister guitar lines dancing along the minor key. It is oft-considered an anti-war song with a title referencing a well-known European game show and lyrics that equate politics with children games, rhyming off names of children from different cultures, all playing together.

So a good choice then for a band to cover for an album promoting peace. Pop Will Eat Itself’s cover is longer, predictably rage-filled, and rife with samples. Though its rhythm and its use of rhythm as melody is the same, the tone is indeed very different. It feels like they packaged it all up, Gabriel included, and shot it off into an apocalyptic future world similar to that found in “Tank girl”. Yeah, it’s fun in its angst.

Indeed, both versions are a gas and make you feel urbane as your happily singalong, but I think I may be siding with original in terms of preference, even as I replay the cover with the volume cranked.

Cover:

Original:

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

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.

Categories
Tunes

Eighties’ best 100 redux: #96 The Wonder Stuff “Unbearable” (1988)

credit to Derek Ridgers, Brighton 1988
credit to Derek Ridgers, Brighton 1988

<< #97    |    #95 >>

At song #96, we have The Wonder Stuff and their snarling, acerbic track “Unbearable”. This is a band that I typically identify with the early nineties because this is when I discovered them and also when the band released the bulk of their original catalogue. However, their startlingly upbeat debut album, “The eight legged groove machine” was released in the latter part of the eighties, back before the fiddle was added to the stuffies’ repertoire and before The Bass Thing left the band for America. I featured this very same album when it appeared at number two on my Best albums of 1988 list*, back when I counted that down a few years ago. And in that post, I described how the album was my introduction to the band and a bit of the story behind how the band became one of my favourites during my last few years of high school and into my early twenties.

For those unfamiliar with The Wonder Stuff, “Unbearable” is a good starting block. It is certainly representative of their early work and the rest of their debut album, seamlessly blending the pop mentality of The Beatles with the guns blazing, two-minute guitar rock of The Ramones. Yes, it’s the thirteenth track on a fourteen track LP that falls well short of the forty minute mark. Another song about money and the way it’s misspent, priorities and greed. It was this angst and snarling lyrics and vocals of frontman Miles Hunt that drew me (and by all accounts many others) to the band in the first place and what most probably led to the band’s downfall. They were quite popular for a time in their native country but sadly, The Wonder Stuff never quite broke into the North American market.

Original Eighties best 100 position: #98

Favourite lyric:  “I didn’t like you very much when I met you / And now I like you even less” Classic Miles Hunt.

Where are they now?: After their original break up in 1994, The Wonder Stuff re-formed for a string of shows in London in 2000. The shows were so successful, Hunt, who had been recording solo up to then, began recording new material under The Wonder Stuff name with the original guitarist, Malc Treece. The two of them are still at it these days, having added violinist Erica Nockalls in 2005, and the rest of the band has pretty much changed every few years since. They last surfaced with a new album called “Better being lucky” in 2019.

*In fact, each of their first three albums have appeared in the top five for albums on this blog for the years in which they were released.

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