Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 24/08/2009

‘I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar’ is potentially the most evocative lyric of the Eighties, but the Human League story didn’t start with Dare, the album that ’Don’t You Want Me’ was taken from. Dare was in fact their third and there are few indications on their previous two – Reproduction and Travelogue – that point to the glossy pop brilliance that producer Martyn Rushent would lend to the 1981 album. Travelogue includes a track called ’Gordon’s Gin’ which may inadvertently allude to the lyric above, but aside from a turgid disco track the earlier albums are mostly spiky and experimental.

According to an Amazon review of one of the League’s first two albums, the sound of the early trio of Martyn Ware, Ian Marsh and Philip Oakey was more like fellow Sheffield band Cabaret Voltaire or the Cabs’ counterparts Throbbing Gristle. This is the kind of lazy music journalism that gets my goat. Sure, the sound of the first two albums is more out there, more gritty, but I own every Cabaret Voltaire album and those two Human League albums are really tame in comparison. All the reviewer has done is looked at who else on the nascent electronic scene came from Sheffield and namedropped casually. As for the TG comparisons? Well don’t even get me started.

Rant aside, Reproduction and Travelogue have some good songs. The enduringly minimal early cult electro of the Mantronix-esque ‘Being Boiled’ is included as a bonus track on the former, while the latter includes an electro-glam medley of Glitter’s ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ and Iggy’s ‘Nightclubbing’ which predates and predicts Goldfrapp’s dabbling in the genre circa Black Cherry. Marsh and Ware left to form Heaven 17, Oakey recruited Susan Sulley and Joanne Catherall, recorded ’Don’t You Want Me’, defined the synth pop sound of the early Eighties then rapidly went downhill. I interviewed Martyn Ware a few years ago – my interview is here.



Music recommendations often come from unlikely places. In a recent profile, one of my fund manager colleagues was asked what he was currently listening to. He namechecked a band I’d never heard of, Datarock, which piqued my curiosity and so I took a listen. The consistently time-robbing website rcrdlbl.com has a couple of free Datarock songs, one of which is ‘True Stories’ whose lyrics are entirely made up of Talking Heads song names and whose clipped funk vibe authentically evokes the distinctive sound of that band. The Norwegian duo are clearly off their (data) rockers, and may be a huge joke, but I remain intrigued. They remind me of The Hives crossed with Daft Punk, but don’t ask me why.

Although terrible quality, I’ve been listening to a couple of sonically intriguing downloads from the expansive UbuWeb archive. One is the seven-minute track ‘Loop’ by a very early Velvet Underground (although it seems to just be John Cale). In ‘Loop’, which is essentially a pure noise feedback piece that was originally released as a rare flexi-disc, you really hear what attracted Andy Warhol into the band’s orbit originally; it’s rock ’n roll music reduced to its basest elements, justifying the band’s reputation as NY punk’s guiding lights. ‘I’m Sticking With You’ it ain’t.