0028 - Paula Abdul

I was expecting Paula Abdul - or to give her full name, My Homegirl Paula Abdul - to be the first entry on this blog that I was a bit embarrassed about.  There will be plenty of music I write about in the future that I'd rather not admit to owning, but write about it I will.  It turns out, though, that I actually quite like my Paula Abdul song.

0027 - ABC

In my previous posting on A Flock Of Seagulls, much of what I had to say was gushing praise for two of their three singles released in 1982.  ABC also released 3 singles in 1982, but go one better than A Flock Of Seagulls - they're all excellent.

0026 - ABBA

Come on now, I don't have to tell you about ABBA, do I? I am glad of having a whole album to listen to here though (even if it is just greatest hits compilation ABBA Gold and not Arrival, or something), after so many bands where I have just one or two songs.

0025 - A.P.P.L.E.

I suppose I'm something of a musical magpie - I'm always buying, downloading, listening, but I've never really been part of a scene and I'm not really an expert on any particular music. I've been reflecting on this because until now, A.P.P.L.E. have been to me just a band with a song on a compilation that I might not even have ever listened to when I should be perhaps revering them as anarcho-punk trailblazers. I suppose that's why we have Google...

0024 - A-Heads

Another one-song wonder, No Rule is some absolutely textbook punk from A-Heads. It starts out sounding like it's going to be a bad school band cover of the Jam's That's Entertainment, but quickly gets the ironic intro done before clattering to the end with a sound that, were it recorded in 2002 and not 1982, would be uncomfortably close to Elastica's.

0023 - a-ha

Let me take you back to an earlier, simpler time.  Sunday 22 May, 2005, to be exact. 

It was the last day of the Scottish football season and I went to the pub with two friends - we'll call them Andy and Ronan, since that's their names - to watch the exciting, pulsating climax to another entirely predictable two-horse race in the SPL.

0022 - A-Gen 53

Another band I have just one track by are Austrian punks A-Gen 53. I know next to nothing about them and I'm indebted to YouTube member MikeyRemembers for what little I do know about the band and the song, Stalingrad-Stumpfsinn:

0017 - A Produce

A Produce is the name under which southern Californian trance pioneer Barry Craig, er, produced his music. Active for nearly 30 years since the early 80s, he was fairly prolific, releasing nine albums, an EP and a couple of compilations between 1988 and 2011.

Naturally, given this substantial back-catalogue, I have exactly one A Produce track.

0016 - A Noise Agency

So what was it I said in my post about 20/20 - "whenever I hear or read of something as being post-punk, I expect it to either sound like Dead Kennedys or Wire." So it's a big hurrah to A Noise Agency for reinforcing my preconceptions.

0015 - A Flock Of Seagulls

Mention A Flock Of Seagulls to anyone old enough to remember the 80s (and a lot of people who aren't) and they'll think of hair.  Frontman Mike Score's ridiculous barnet is perhaps the most mocked, parodied and generally laughed at hairstyle of all time, although, in fairness, at least it means we remember him and his band.

0014 - 8088

I was commenting recently on the lack of information online about 3D Picnic. Relative to 8088 though, the interwebs hold a veritable 30-volume encyclopaedia of 3D Picnic knowledge. The only certain info I can find are the listening stats on Last.fm for the one 8088 song I have, which are, I think (and this is part of the problem), credited to a different, more recent, 8088 (I think, in fact, that there might be three 8088s - this one from the mid-80s, another from the late 90s and yet another from the early 2010s, as well as a DJ 8088).

0012 - 5uu's

It's almost too easy to mock prog-rock/avant-rock/experimental-rock/whatever you want to call it, so I'm going to try not to. However, if we have a look at the track listing from 5uu's first album, Bel Marduk & Tiamat:

1. Theme From Marduk & Tiamat
2. Birth Of The Scale Of Life 
3. Birth Of The Compromisation 
4. Birth Of The Loyalty To Creation 
5. The Birth Of Ancient Internationalism  
6. Birth Of The Fear Of Life  
7. Birth Of Contemporary Global Friction 
8. Birth Of Sporting 
9. Birth Of Magic, Dogma And Faith 

There really isn't much needs to be said - as the old joke goes: Pretentious? Moi? I've got three of the tracks from the album - 2, 3 and 5 - but before I talk about them, a bit of background.

0009 - 45 Grave

Another band I have only the one track by are 45 Grave. Riboflavin Flavored, Non-Carbonated, Poly-Unsaturated Blood is the first song the band released, on the compilation album Darker Skratcher, released by the Los Angeles Free Music Society in 1980.

0007 - 3D Picnic

3D Picnic (also known as 3-D Picnic and Three D. Picnic) aren't the first band I've written about that I didn't know anything about beforehand, but they are the first about whom there seems to be very little information readily available.  What I believe I know is this:

They were active in LA in the late 80s and early 90s and released 3 albums, Dirt, Sunshine & Cockroaches and covers collection New Wave Party;

They were fronted by Dallas Don Burnet, who at some point was also a member of the rather better known (albeit still obscure) Thelonius Monster.

0006 - 20/20

I know that post-punk isn't exactly a genre and I do like a lot of music from that immediate post-punk era - in fact, I think that the period from the late-70s to mid-80s represents the pinnacle of pop music in my lifetime. So it's a bit odd that whenever I hear or read of something as being post-punk, I expect it to either sound like Dead Kennedys or Wire. Of my recent post-punk-pop-postings, 100 Flowers fit that mould reasonably well, but 17 Pygmies' jazz and synth-pop couldn't be much further removed. 20/20 are something else again - classic 80s power-pop.

0004 - 17 Pygmies

More post-punk from LA, but a pretty stark contrast from the last lot - where 100 Flowers were fairly straightforward punk, 17 Pygmies are much more of a mixed bag.

0002 - 100 Flowers

100 Flowers are a post-punk three piece from Los Angeles who started life in 1978 as The Urinals, changed their name to 100 Flowers in 1981, disbanded in 1983, reformed (after some members spent time in Trotsky Icepick), again as The Urinals, in 1996, changed their name to Chairs Of Perception (which is a great name) some time after 2003 and then back to The Urinals in 2008. Awesome.

Adeva

It would be fair to say that I'm not really a fan of house music - I find it rather bland and mechanical - so I was expecting to hate Adeva.  And while I wouldn't go so far as to say I actually like the one song I have by her, I do have a little, er... respect for it.

Bryan Adams

Good old Bryan Adams - everything he does, he does it for you and you and you and you...

I'm a bit surprised, given my substantial collection of compilation albums, that I have only one Bryan Adams song.  More surprising is that it's not Everything I Do, or Run To You - it's not even Summer Of 69.  It's a song I'd completely forgotten existed, but that lives on unremembered, track 6 of Now That's What I Call Music! volume 6: It's Only Love.

Adam & The Ants

Ah, the early 80s.  As far as I'm concerned the period from maybe 1981, possibly a year or two earlier, to 1984 was the absolute peak of popular music in my lifetime.  Post-punk, New Wave, The New Pop, the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, the rise of electronica - there was just so much exciting musical stuff going on that was both interesting and commercially viable, and this was just in the UK.  I've already eulogised over A Flock Of Seagulls and ABC on the blog, so let's add Adam & The Ants to that list.