No.3 The Jam - Going Underground

I've never really liked Paul Weller. Although I loved The Jam and Style Council (especially their later forays into dance madness), I've never taken to his curmudgeonly nature; I suspect he thinks that civilisation took a fatal turn for the worse with the invention of the wheel and that a Vespa would be perfectly fine if it ran on sled runners and was pulled by woolly mammoths.

But Going Underground turned my world around 180 degrees in 1980. Prior to this, I was politically conservative (if someone in their mid-teens whose main obsessions were music and Manchester City can be considered political). Going Underground's lyrics were the first political lyrics I ever tried to untangle.

This, itself took some doing. The family record player was in our living room, which is where my mother spent at least 75% of her day ironing. (Maybe some day I'll be able to bring myself to tell the tale of the first time I played Ian Dury's New Boots and Panties and how my mother reacted to the first line of Plaistow Patricia, not by hurling the iron at me but with open-mouthed incredulity that such 'filth' could be committed to vinyl - mind you, she'd never heard the 'c' word before, so at least it was a moderately educational experience for her, although an excruciating one for me - 'you know, mum, women's bits...').

Safe to say, I always skipped that song thereafter. (The Sex Pistols' Bodies also served to extend my mother's vocabulary).

Anyway, the following lines of Going Underground galvanised my teenage mind in a way that only sixth form left-wing doggerel can:
'What you see is what you get
You've made your bed, you better lie in it
You choose your leaders and place your trust
As their lies wash you down and their promises rust
You'll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns
And the public wants what the public gets
But I don't get what this society wants.'

Even today I'm not quite sure if these are the correct lyrics, such was the venom with which they were spat out by Weller (a former Tory himself, of course). But the ferocious delivery of these lines energised me and rather alarmed my dear mum who wondered 'who's this 'they' he's so angry with?'

Until A Town Called Malice showed up in 1982 this was my favourite Jam song. And it still sounds absolutely fantastic.

No.2 The Brothers Johnson - Stomp!

Disco and funk had been uneasy bedfellows in the late Seventies, with funksters especially suspicious about disco's motives and authenticity. However, 1980 proved to be the year in which the two not only kissed and made up but got down to some serious afternoon delight.

And what a productive union it was, as masterpiece followed masterpiece. Sat at home in Surrey, yearning to be old enough and cool enough to wear a pair of slick Farahs to Canvey Island's Goldmine Club, I made do instead with record purchasing orgies at the nearest HMV. Well, when I say orgies, I mean one, er, 7" a week. And this was one of them.

The Johnson Brothers, guitarist 'Lightnin' Licks' George and bassist 'Thunder Thumbs' Louis', who had worked with Qunicy Jones, enjoyed a minor hit in 1977 with Strawberry Letter 23 but Stomp! was a top ten hit in the UK, a deceptively slinky funk/disco nugget with an uproarious chorus that encouraged ridiculous dancing. In front of my bedroom mirror at least. And listen to that slap bass - 'Thunder Thumbs' indeed. Enjoy.

No.1 Lori and The Chameleons - The Lonely Spy

Yeah, yeah, so you can splutter on about The Beatles this and the Rolling Stones that. You can parrot the populist view that the 1980s were a ruinous time for pop music. 

But I can prove that they weren’t, that the Eighties not only produced some of the greatest pop music ever, but laid the groundwork for the flourishing, many-headed pop hydra that so enthralls us today. 

The Eighties were remarkable for the dizzying breadth of music on offer. The first few years of the decade saw fantastic disco and funk, from the likes of The Gap Band and Shalamar, mixing it up in the charts with The Jam, Motorhead, Abba, Grandmaster Flash and Bob Marley. Whichever way you slice up that cake, those are extraordinary ingredients.

The Eighties was also a decade that produced some of our most enduring bands. Like it or not, U2, New Order, Nick Cave, Pet Shop Boys, R.E.M., B-52s, Sonic Youth, Depeche Mode, Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Cure all enjoyed longer creative periods than their Sixties contemporaries. From the Seventies, only David Bowie, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello and Mark E Smith can claim a similarly continuous creative longevity – although that’s a stonking ‘only’ list, I have to admit.

Why did these Eighties bands last longer? Simple - they were all born out of the embers of punk and new wave and they retained that restless, adventurous, questing spirit.

Punk may have become a debased cultural currency now (and it was responsible for some terrible bands at the time) but its enduring ideals have inspired some of the finest music of the last 30 years.
 

So here’s the first of 100 reasons why the 1980s were pop’s golden age.

 

Lori and The Chameleons were Lori Lartey, Bill Drummond (later of KLF and dosh-burning fame) and Dave Balfe (former member of Dalek I Love You, and future keyboardist of Teardrop Explodes and inspiration for Blur's Country House) the latter, two coming pop powerhouses.

The band only recorded two singles before 18-year-old Lori opted for a spot of art school instead of pop stardom. The fact that the first single, Touch, only just scraped into the top 75 in 1979, while The Lonely Spy didn't even manage that in 1980, may have influenced her decision. Whatever, while Touch sounds slightly dated to these ears now, The Lonely Spy is sheer, windswept magnificence and early and conclusive proof that Drummond and Balfe knew their way round a pop tune.