NOT QUITE WHAT I WAS EXPECTING...

Such is the amount of vinyl in the cupboard that I’m nowhere near finished the task of converting all the songs to mp3. I’m sort of doing it in a methodical way – the 7” singles that I’ve been amassing again have been converted, and I’m working my way through the 12” singles backwards from Z-A.

I got to the letters F and E the other night, and this allowed me to listen to a couple of things I haven’t heard for at least 20 years if not longer, and what I hear came as a surprise, both pleasant and unpleasant.

Let’s deal with the audio nasty and get it out of the way.

I was sure that the band Easterhouse, a Manchester band named after a notorious housing estate here in Glasgow, had to be regarded as one of the great lost indie bands of the 80s. They were championed by the music press, particularly the NME and Melody Maker, partly because of the way they sounded, but also because they were a band who wore their left-wing leanings on their sleeves.

So I guess I was expecting this to sound a little bit like a cross between The Smiths, The Redskins and Billy Bragg:-

mp3 : Easterhouse – Come Out Fighting

Instead, it’s something that is a very poor punter’s version of sub-standard Springsteen. There is no way this could ever be thought of as indie, nor is it powerful enough to capture the attention of those who love their stadium rock. It is quite frankly piss poor.

I only know one other song by Easterhouse – Whistling In the Dark - which I'm well familiar with as it was on a compilation tape I used to listen to regularly when I was commuting for years back and forth between Glasgow and Edinburgh. But it sounds absolutely nothing like Come Out Fighting.

I’m guessing that I bought this single on the assumption all Easterhouse songs sounded the same, and I reckon I maybe played it two or three times, decided I didn’t like it and promptly forgot all about it. I just wish I had thrown it away as I would have avoided the sheer awfulness of it all the other night.

But for every yang, there has to be a ying…..and it came from a band whose haircuts have had them ridiculed in many forms of popular culture over the past 20 years, particular in one scene in Pulp Fiction.

The thing about A Flock of Seagulls was that they first became famous over in the USA before being noticed in the UK. They were a band who owed a lot of their fame to being on heavy rotation in the period just after the launch of MTV when most major labels and bands didn’t do pop promos.

They came back home to the UK with a big reputation, one that they tried to cement by making all sorts of TV appearances and a major tour. One big problem was that the haircuts and clothes were more memorable than the performances...

There was a lot of hype over the singles I Ran and Wishing which did quite well in the charts. They were OK on the likes of Top Of The Pops when they were miming, but when they appeared on The Old Grey Whistle Test and had to perform live, they sounded awful. Around the same time, I caught them play a show at Strathclyde Student Union, and it was quite shocking. The singer was flat and the band weren’t in tune. And the audience were totally bored. It was all rather sad...

From the night of that gig, I've never made an effort to listen to any stuff by AFOS, until the other night, when I gave a spin to the one 12” single I have:-

mp3 : A Flock Of Seagulls – Telecommunication

Now I’m not claiming it is one of the best records ever made, but it was far better than I remembered. As an electro-pop single, its as reasonable as the sort of stuff from early-era Depeche Mode and Heaven 17. Problem was, for AFOS, the damage had been done as they could never live up to the hype...

Or maybe it was just the fact the haircut is easier to recall than then the music..

Happy Listening.