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Rock, pop, soul, funk, jazz and reggae: a curated musical journey like no other, reminding you of some forgotten favourites and introducing a few undiscovered gems... Simon Tesler is the former publisher and editor of 1980s music, media and pop culture magazine BLITZ.
Hello, this is Simon Tesler with another selection of great Sounds from the music archive. This week, our theme is TIME, and in the next 60 minutes I've got great selection of tracks for you including no fewer than ten bands making their first appearance on this show, including Soulwax, Culture Club, Cyndi Lauper and, yes, you already guessed it, Coldplay with Clocks.
Coldplay's 'Clocks' followed by Culture Club with 'Time'. Appropriately, 'Clocks' was one of the last songs written for Coldplay's A Rush Of Blood To The Head album, and was at first not going to be included. The album had been recorded in a hurry to meet a June 2003 deadline but the band were not entirely happy with the finished product. So they persuaded the record label to push back release by two months while they worked up the new song to be included. A case of putting back the album rather than putting back the clocks. It was of course probably the finest song on the album, now considered among the greatest ever written.
Culture Club's 'Time' was only the second single off their second album, the follow-up to 'Do You Really Want To Hurt Me', and even now it sounds astonishingly mature for a band that had only been in existence for a little under a year. George was still only 21 when he wrote those lyrics. Incredible.
*** SIDEBAR on Boy George from BLITZ magazine -- blitzmagazineuk on Instagram ***
BLITZ caught up with George several times over the course of the 80s, not least in three turbulent years between 1984 and 1986 when he was at the peak of his fame, but struggling - and eventually failing - to cope with the sheer pressure it brought with it in the form of relentless and intrusive attention from the tabloid press.
Oct 1984 BLITZ 25. George wrote his own article for us about his love-hate relationship with the media, and Fleet Street in particular. Photographs by David Levine. "As a public figure I am well aware of both the power and the importance of the press. I do not doubt for a moment that the constant coverage I receive has helped to further my career and make me almost as well-known as Nelson's Column or Big Ben. But after three years under the hammer I know that when they dish the dirt they really go to town with no holds barred, and it's almost always the case that when one paper is pro-Boy George all the others are making voodoo dolls."
Jun 15th 1986 BLITZ/Levi's Designer Collection. Just five days after a front page story broke in The Mirror regarding alleged drug problems, a noticeably gaunt George appeared onstage with supermodel Vivienne Lynn at the Gala Fashion Show for the BLITZ Designer Collection of customised Levi's Denim Jackets.
Sep 1986 BLITZ 45. "I became the boy next door, a sort of potato print of the Queen Mother. You know, I'd just become this sort of *thing*. And *I* as a person ceased to exist. 'Boy George' was just somebody else that other people had ideas and expectations of and I just had nothing to do with it, I went along with it."
As the tabloid feeding frenzy reached its crescendo, George gave an exclusive interview to deputy editor Tim Hulse about drugs, the intense pressures of stardom and his brutal treatment by the media. The accompanying photographs were by Paul Gobel. George recounted how he had voluntarily handed himself in to the police and admitted possession of heroin. "They took away my braces, my belt, my shoelaces and threw me in a cell. I was halfway through my treatment and I was very ill and I just cried. I felt so guilty in that police cell..."
And then finally... a calmer and cleaner George appeared once more in July 1989 in BLITZ 79, in a gorgeous portrait that formed part of a series of iconic images by French photographers Pierre et Gilles. "Boy Georges" as Krishna!
BLITZ 45 is available to download for free at blitzmagazine.co.uk where you'll also find a video of highlights from the BLITZ Designer Collection stage show.
*** END OF SIDEBAR ***
After two quite mellow tracks to open the show, let's ramp up the tempo a little with the next four songs. In a few minutes, we're turning back the clocks for three tracks from the late 1970s, from The Saints, Buzzcocks and The Stranglers. But first, Belgium's Dewaele brothers David and Stephen, better known as Soulwax, with 'Any Minute Now'.
'Any Minute Now' from Soulwax, followed by 'No Time' by Australian rockers The Saints, then the wonderful wordplay of 'Time's Up' by Buzzcocks, from their Spiral Scratch debut EP. And finally a pitch black tale of urban revenge from The Stranglers: 'Five Minutes'.
Was that all a bit intense for you? OK, let's slow down time once more for three lovely songs from Cyndi Lauper, The Housemartins and The Doobie Brothers. Do any of you know the movie Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion, with Lisa Kudrow from Friends and Mira Sorvino? If you do, you'll remember the scene in which they dance with Scottish actor Alan Cumming to this first song. If you don't know the movie, I insist you check it out as soon as you finish listening to this show. It's an absolute cult classic from 1997. And this of course is 'Time After Time'.
*** SIDEBAR from BLITZ magazine on Onstagram -- blitzmagazineuk ***
'Time After Time' is a beautiful song, co-written by Lauper with Rob Hyman, co-founder of The Hooters, her backing band for the album. Lauper and Hyman were each then struggling with issues in their respective romantic relationships, but 'Time After Time' was actually just a working title, picked from a movie of the same name that happened to be playing on TV. Lauper tried afterwards to choose a different title, but couldn't find one that worked better. She's So Unusual provided her with a string of hit singles, including 'Girls Just Want To Have Fun', 'She-Bop' and 'All Through The Night' but 'Time After Time' was the biggest success, giving Lauper her first US #1. It was memorably covered by many other artists, including most notably the legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis.
BLITZ caught up with Cyndi Lauper in Dec 1986 for BLITZ 48 as her second album True Colours came out. Mark Cordery interviewed her and the accompanying photographs were by Annie Leibovitz.
"I don't play any instruments," she told Mark, "so when I write I'm backseat driving, singing to them what I hear in my head. The good thing about that, I think, is that if the singer writes the melody then it's suited for a singer, and I love a good melody, one I can dig into. With 'Time After Time', it's a strong melody, but it's not a very wide range. It's an emotional range, though."
What did you think when you heard the Miles Davis version? "Ohmigod, that's wild, I couldn't believe it. I thought, and I still think, that he's one of the greatest soloists of all time, and for him to do my song completely freaked me out. It would freak anybody out."
"My father's half German and half Swiss but I was raised Italian. My mother's all Italian, Sicilian. I'm a hybrid there, y'know? You got the German hot temper, an' you got the Italian hot temper, an' you got the Swiss guy in the middle sayin' 'Hey! Let's calm down...'"
"I can let things go. Sometimes I meet people who I always felt did me wrong, and did, y'know, but the funny thing about fate is that when you do well you always meet the people who did you dirty. And when you meet them sometimes they're not doing so good, and it's so unfortunate, their situation, and you just feel like... let it go, because fate played its own nasty little trick, didn't it? It's a funny thing, this success..."
'Time After Time' also provides the soundtrack for one of the most memorable scenes (and there are many to choose from) in the movie Romy & Michele's High School Reunion, one of the quirkiest and most unusual comedies of the 1990s, and also among the best films ever made about female friendship.
Lisa Kudrow (then already a big star in Friends) co-starred with Mira Sorvino and Scottish actor Alan Cumming in a hilarious and often surreal tale of two ditzy best friends who make the fateful decision to attend their old high school's ten-year reunion, despite the fact that they were always shunned and picked on by the popular kids. Because they've achieved nothing in their lives since they left school, Romy & Michele invent a lie that they invented Post-It Notes to impress their former schoolmates, with disastrous consequences.
But it turns out that the class dork Sandy played Alan Cumming - who always had a secret crush on Michele -- has become immensely wealthy and is now the envy of the whole class. This is the scene when he asks Michele to dance... The hilariously tongue-in-cheek sequence was staged by Smith Wordes, an actress and choreographer who had previously worked with Madonna and Michael Jackson.
It's a wonderful film -- if you've never seen it, waste no more time. Me, I'm going to go watch it again.
*** END OF SIDEBAR ***
Three classics. Although Cyndi Lauper may be more famous for upbeat rockers like 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' and 'She Bop', her two finest songs are arguably 'Time After Time' from the debut album and then 'True Colours' from its follow up. Then the lovely voice of Paul Heaton on The Housemartins' 'Think For A Minute', and finally the golden tones of Michael MacDonald, one of the great white soul voices of past four decades, on 'Minute By Minute' from The Doobie Brothers.
Two more great voices now. Youssou N'Dour is arguably the single most famous singer in all of Africa. Born in Dakar in Senegal he became a superstar in his home country in the 80s and then established an international profile during the following decades working with a roll-call of celebrated Western artists including Peter Gabriel, Sting, Paul, Simon, Bruce Springsteen and many more.
More recently he has entered politics and was appointed as Senegal's Minister for Culture & Tourism in 2012. He continues to play an active role promoting Senegalese culture abroad. I'm going to play his glorious duet from 1994 with our very own Neneh Cherry. After that, tracks from The Selecter and Matt Bianco. But first, '7 Seconds'.
The Selecter were of course one of the second wave of Two-Tone new-ska bands in the late 70s. That was their third single 'Three Minute Hero'. And then, Matt Bianco, the jazz-funk band that were an absolute fixture of the European charts in the second half of the 80s with a string of hits. That was 'Half A Minute', with lead vocals from their regular backing singer Basia Tretreleska.
Just enough time for two more songs. First up, American soul star Homer Banks with '60 Minutes Of Your Love' -- written by Isaac Hayes and David porter and later covered memorably by Dr Feelgood. And then, to close the show, a song that needs no introduction. 'Time' from Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon.