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1979 Pink Floyd: Another Brick In The Wall Part Two

Straddling the decades like the colossus the band was, the last number one of the seventies would also be the first number one of the eighties. And an unexpected one at that - with the punk wars a not too distant memory, few could have predicted that arch proggers Pink Floyd would release a chart bound single twelve years after their last, let alone one that would take the coveted Christmas Number One slot. But they did, and they did.

A taster for their eagerly awaited new album, 'Another Brick In The Wall' both alone and in context mined the seam of rampant misanthropy that Roger Waters uncovered on the band's previous 'Animals' album, a record which in it's own way was as anti-establishment and anti-status quo as anything The Clash managed to snarl. Which isn't bad going for such a deceptively simple schoolyard singalong; a clipped guitar rhythm walks through the song like Nile Rodgers in a leg brace to carry the recurring 'All in all it's just another brick in the wall' refrain, a line that would only become relevant in the context of the album as a whole and of Waters' central thesis that alienation breeds an extreme fascistic outlook and a tendency to look for scapegoats to pin your own ills on (well this is still prog after all).

But never mind the this bollocks, what schoolkid didn't take great delight in the play school anarchism of "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom, teachers leave them kids alone". Howls of outrage duly followed - just Google the phrase to see how the controversy has resonated over the years, and in an age where the once 'no-go area' of 'Anarchy In The UK' gets played on daytime radio as a 'Golden Oldie', there's still something uncomfortable about this that gets the right people's backs up. And that's why, ultimately, I find there is something wonderfully subversive about having schoolchildren singing 'We don't need no education' in the number one spot at Christmas (it's Waters' own genius to include the 'ill educated' double negative in their saying it). Gilmour's fluid as water guitar solo in the outro is a joy too.

1979 The Police: Walking On The Moon

If 'Message In A Bottle' was a clattering approximation of roots reggae, 'Walking On The Moon' was an excursion into dub. Of sorts. The Clash had already dabbled but The Police were the first (I think) of the new wavers to construct a wholly original song that's part homage to the genre and part collaboration with the world of pop.

A metaphor for falling in love (according to Sting "being in love is to be relieved of gravity"), the density of the former song is blown apart into wide open spaces with each of the band almost broadcasting from the safety of their own separate planet. And yet with rather less going on, 'Walking On The Moon' holds it together far more concisely than 'Message'; Summer's standard reggae skank is punctuated by Copeland's drum rim cracks and Sting's three note bass figure that all skitter shambolically close to the cliff edge of disaster but never fall off. Oh, and lets not forget that glorious sunburst of a guitar chord that shimmers throughout like sunlight on water and gives aural effect to the butterflies in the stomach feeling of falling in love.

'Walking On The Moon' can sound throwaway and almost childish on surface listen if you take it literally. Which is what I did in 1979 (the space rocket themed video didn't help). But I was listening to it with my head back then; I've since learned to listen with my heart and on that front the song's delights are endless. Not for nothing is it my favourite Police number one.

1979 Dr Hook: When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman

Dr Hook had been purveying their own brand of country tinged pop since the late sixties, but even such old hands as them found that disco thang irresistible, and 'When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman' comes attached to a bleached white 'Rock Your Baby' groove that although out of time in 1979, suited their audience and the more laid back barroom vibe of the tune to a tee.

To my mind, Dr Hook have always had an air of mischief about them, but even at this remove I can't tell if that "When you're in love with a beautiful woman, it's hard (It's hard, you know it gets so hard)" entendre is intended or not (though I'd like to think it is). I can give them the benefit of the doubt on that one, but what's less forgivable is the overall 'message' of the song - i.e. that good looking women are a bunch of lying, scheming, untrustworthy bitches who will horse around behind your back with your mates at the drop of a hat, with the corollary being that ugly women will stay faithful and because they're grateful for anything they can get. And nobody else fancies them anyway. Hmmmm.

Well I'm not going to dip my toe into the murky waters of sexual politics here - it would be like trying to explain why the anvil floated by a balloon in a Tex Avery cartoon is impossible physics. Suffice it say the whole thing is as tongue in cheek as a saucy seaside postcard and it breezes along at such a clip that you're not really given time to ponder anything too deep. File this under "A harmless enough diversion".

1979 Lena Martell: One Day At A Time

If you look at it head on, then 1979 sets out a number ones stall that's a splendid array of seven inch artefacts and trinkets, much like the Ambassadors in Holbein's painting proudly showing off their worldly chattels for us to envy. Maybe they're not entirely representative of all that was going on in music at the time, but it's a decent stab, and far better than 1977 (when this song was in fact originally released) managed. Even the brash naffness of 'I Don't Like Mondays' pushes its way to the front with an unavoidable 'me too, me too' shout that everybody recognises. Something for everyone in fact.

Unfortunately, just like that painting, if you view it from a sharper angle then a grinning skull of death appears. Cliff Richard is at it's jaw, but it's head is made up almost entirely of 'One Day At A Time'. Because unfortunately, 'everyone' also includes the miserable git next door forever banging on the wall to keep the noise down and telling you to get to bed because there's school tomorrow.

Religious songs are a rare occurrence in the UK charts, let alone at number one, so there's a novelty here from the outset that could have papered over some of the cracks. Not that I have anything against that genre - regular readers will know my long-standing love of gospel, but whereas that particular field is uplifting in its joyousness (even for a non believer like me), 'One Day At A Time' is a sermon of self righteous finger wagging on the trials of a believer down here amongst all us heathens.

Kris Kristofferson's song has been insanely popular over the years, and Scottish (though Scotland via Texas judging by the accent she adopts) singer Lena Martell's version is as good as any of them. By which I mean good if you like this sort of thing; coming across like Dana's mum, Martell's voice fair drips a pious sincerity, but those people next door are sincere too and 'One Day At A Time' has a 'holier than thou' aloofness that's about as welcome and irritating in the 1979 line-up as having those neighbours turn up frowning on your doorstep when you're busy enjoying yourself.

1979 Buggles: Video Killed The Radio Star

Although not quite a common household fixture in 1979, video was marching relentlessly over the horizon as the 'next big thing' in technology and, in the eyes of some, it's arrival was something to be feared rather than celebrated. Not feared by everyone, but by those who saw it as erasing the comfort of the past with the shock of the new. By people like Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, the duo who made up Buggles. Both were professional musicians from disparate backgrounds who would go on to forge disparate careers in music. As Buggles, they weren't one hit wonders but they should have been, though I don't mean that sarcastically; Buggles should have come, made their statement with this song and then departed. Perfect.

Perfect because,as a single, 'Video Killed The Radio Star' is a fully formed creation making a stand alone statement that needs no follow ups or a hastily recorded (and very patchy) album (can you name either)? And that's because it's a multi-faceted song that exists both concurrently and independently on a variety of plains. On one hand it's an elegy for the passing of what Thomas Dolby would soon term 'The Golden Age of Wireless', while on another it's a simple, catchy pop song. Either way, impossible to ignore it's cusp of the eighties setting and the context in which it was operating:

"I heard you on the wireless back in Fifty Two
Lying awake intent at tuning in on you".

Lyricist Horn would have been three in 1952 so there's every chance he's writing from memory, and that use of 'wireless' instead of radio is a clever device that ages his own experience and separates it from (for example) my own contemporary exposure to the likes of Tony Blackburn and the gang. In 1979, only my parents still called radio the 'wireless' and Horn is merely pointing out that the ignorance of my generation was part of the problem. And as far as problems go, I'm not sure what can be read into the title refrain of the song being sung in a broad and comically obnoxious American accent, but it all contrasts with Horn's olde tyme vocal compressed to a mono whine that powers the glow of nostalgia that he's celebrating/mourning.

Neither am I sure whether the fact that the song's video was the first ever shown on the then new MTV is ironic or not; was MTV meant to be the 'bad guy' in all this? A similar song could have been written circa 1927 to mark the passing of silent films with the emergence of sound ('Talkies Killed The Silent Film Star' maybe), while today there's every chance the young girl dialling up the old valve radio in that striking video is now a woman baffled by MP3 players. My point is that times change, they always will yet the people who get most hung up on it are always those who refuse to change with them.

Hindsight has shown that video no more killed the radio star than home taping killed music. It may have prolonged the careers of those where innate talent took second place to image, but in our brave new world of downloads and virtual music that we can never hold, the very concept of 'video' seems as quaint and distant as rationing (in fact, the "put the blame on VTR" line had almost become obsolete as an acronym before the song was even released).

Which is what music effectively was in 1979, by modern standards anyway - if you wanted to hear this song then your choices were to either buy the single, the album or else wait till it came on the radio. In the course of typing this I've found no less than nineteen different sources where I can stream or download (legal or otherwise) this tune and that's without really trying. "We can't rewind we've gone to far" - that's a lesson that record companies need to learn now that the genie is out of the bottle, but 'Downloads Killed The Video Star'? I doubt it. Music is as alive as it ever was and by that analysis Messers Horn and Downes are a pair of old and in the way party poopers peddling a woefully misguided song.

But isn't all this just a teeny bit pretentious though? On another plain, isn't 'Video Killed The Radio Star' just a novelty song by two jokers with funny hair and big spectacles? Maybe. There was something insanely catchy and comforting in Buggles, something that showed the those keyboard things could be a good laugh in the right hands. M had hit number 2 with 'Pop Muzik' in April and this was just something out of the same mould. Again, maybe.

And ok, if we're taking it on that level then the song has aged well. Any tricks and traces of late seventies electronica are largely absent and the track is straight, gimmick free with an unforgettable chorus that nags in the brain with the faintest hint of a statement of unrest the way Pink Floyd's 'We don't need no education' shortly would too. But I think there's more to it than that and that such analysis does both Horn and Downes an injustice.

Because let's not forget, 'Video Killed The Radio Star' was co-written by Bruce Wooley who recorded the song first with his band Camera Club (with Thomas Dolby on keyboards, to square this particular circle). In their hands it's an unremarkable, typically 'eighties' synth drenched mess that drives a coach and horses through everything I've highlighted Buggles as achieving. So rather than the song itself having any innate power, it's by their re-recording that Horn and Downes made it remarkable and gave it a new dimension the way, say, Jimi Hendrix turned Bob Dylan's lyrical apocalypse of 'All Along The Watchtower' into an aural one.

I think for me, the key has always been in that video. I've always found something faintly disturbing in the blank yet accusing stare of the young girl after she climbs the mound of junked radios, a kind of 'how DARE you fuck all this up for me?' look which has always conveyed (to me anyway) an intent that this isn't just a camp singalong - "I met your children, what did you tell them'? What indeed?

But as I said, times change and, ironically, it's the exact opposite look to the one I get from today's twenty somethings when I try to explain the past joys of buying a seven inch single like this one on a Saturday morning trip to town when nowadays they can listen to it from nineteen different sources without leaving their bed. That's how I understand the song anyway.

But you, of course, can take it anyway you want.

1979 The Police: Message In A Bottle

The fact that The Police were a) a trio of blonde pretty boys who, b) played reggae has always been an anathema to many. As one who was there, I remember the very title of 'Message In A Bottle's parent album 'Reggatta de Blanc' (which loosely translates as 'white reggae') was like painting a big red target on each of their arses for the purist music writers of the time to kick. And kick they did, because how very dare they? But that's not to say that The Police ever made a career of trying to chant down Babylon - true the rhythms of reggae and ska dominate on at least their first two albums, but rather than promoting any kind of Rastafarian message the choppy guitar lines and prominent bass are used to spice up what would otherwise have been largely ordinary pop songs.

They weren't unique in this either - reggae was big business down at The Roxy too, courtesy of DJ Don Letts who brought in his own record collection when there were no released punk records to play. The Clash, The Ruts, The Members, Stiff Little Fingers, Public Image Ltd et al all incorporated roots reggae and dub into their music to compliment the rebellion of their own genre, albeit to greater and lesser effect (and certainly to lesser critical mauling). And that Roxy connection is pertinent - that's actually Stuart Copeland on the cover of 1977's 'The Roxy London WC2' album; the punks might have held them in high a regard as the weekly writers, but they were there at the outset. For my own part I'm ambivalent. I've written elsewhere here about my distaste of smug white men playing reggae for whatever reason, but I can't say The Police have ever raised any serious ire within me. When they make it work, they make it work well, but even when they don't the results are rarely less than passable.

'Message In A Bottle' at least tries to make it work; Copeland picks out a standard reggae beat on the kickdrum but hammers the Toms double time on an opening salvo while Andy Summer's B G A E riff cascades hand over fist through the whole song like a waterfall. It's busy, it's unpredictable and it has a ramshackle charm that's fun to listen to; if there's a weak link here then it's Sting himself who provides it. On much of their previous output his vocal is a standard new wave snarl cum yelp, but on 'Message In A Bottle' he unwisely tries to inject some patois into his delivery. Unfortunately, it sounds as genuine as a racist comedian lampooning 'The Banana Boat Song' with his 'sea oh' and 'me oh' inflections and irregular modulation ("a YEAR has PASSed since I WROTE my NOTE") providing a comic aura of novelty that fits ill with its subject matter.

Because in its theme, 'Message In A Bottle' is a precursor of sorts to REM's 'Everybody Hurts' but without the reassurance. Sting is lost and alone in a world that doesn't care, but in reaching out with his message 'to the world' the only responses he gets are a 'hundred billion' similar messages from people in the same boat. So tough luck.

And that's where it ends, though in fact, 'Message In A Bottle' doesn't conclude at all; by the fade out Sting is in no better place than he was at the start, and the repeated 'I'm sending out an SOS' drags on and on with all the conviction of a social inadequate signing up to a dating website. It's not that Sting is under any moral obligation to square the circle on his metaphorical song of loneliness with a conclusion, but we just don't care enough to care; desperation is a very unattractive trait and it all goes to make 'Message In A Bottle' an unsatisfying listen at heart and a song I can take or leave. Though mostly I leave it.