Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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, it's another special themed edition and our theme this week is sleep! Haha! I promise to stop you falling asleep with tracks from The Cure, The Pretenders, Roy Orbison, Fleetwood Mac and much more. But first, yes, you already guessed it, Eurythmics.
First up that was of course 'Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)', the title track from Eurythmics' second album in 1983. Let me reveal to you that a survey conducted in 2013 by Spotify discovered that that song is the single most frequently misquoted in the UK. Almost a third of music listeners polled were under the impression that Annie Lennox is singing "Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Cheese / Who Am I To Disagree?". Incredible. Surely everyone knows that cheese causes nightmares not sweet dreams.
That song and its accompanying album catapulted Annie and Dave Stewart into global fame after years of comparative failure. But it wasn't just the music of Sweet Dreams that made Eurythmics superstars, it was The Look, Annie's androgynous image: the fierce gaze, that extraordinary orange cropped hair and her man's lounge suit.
And by the mid 80s, The Cure were another band for whom the music went hand-in-hand with The Look: Robert Smith's smeared red lipstick, black eyeliner and bird's nest hair. After 'Sweet Dreams', that was 'Lullaby' from The Cure's 1989 album Disintegration -- no sweet dreams there for Robert Smith. "The spiderman is having me for dinner tonight". Must have been all that cheese he was eating before bed.
Happier thoughts now, with a song that was written in 1965 by Ray Davies of The Kinks and recorded by them and numerous other artists over the next two decades. I'm going to play probably the best-known version, recorded by The Pretenders in 1981. In a neat bit of circular chemistry, Chrissie Hynde was at the time dating Ray Davies, who she'd met a couple of years earlier when the Pretenders covered the Kinks' 'Stop Your Sobbing'. After that, we'll have The Psychedelic Furs, but more about them in a minute. This is 'I Go To Sleep'.
Love that track. One from the Furs' excellent third album Forever Now from 1982, something of a rebound after the -- in my opinion underwhelming -- Talk Talk. The Furs are, bless 'em, currently mid-way through a globe-trotting word tour. They're in Spain at the moment, covering 8 cities in 10 days, having already completed more than 50 gigs in 10 countries since June. Clearly, one of the hardest-working bands in showbusiness, even if the Butler brothers Richard and Tim could now be using their senior travel passes to get around.
Let's turn back the clocks now for three classics from an earlier era. We'll kick off with The Chordettes, an all-girl vocal quartet from the 1950s; after that the golden tones of The Big O, Roy Orbison, and then another wonderful quartet from the 1960s. You'll know who they are when you hear them. First, Mr Sandman.
The Mamas & The Papas of course with the glorious California Dreamin'. Let's stay there in California for our next track, a timeless song written in 1976 by a 28-year-old girl trying to make sense of the end of her eight-year relationship with a guy with whom she was halfway through recording a new album. "Now here you go again / You say you want your freedome / Well who am I to keep you down?" The rest of the band were also all breaking up with each other and their respective partners. I think you know which song I'm talking about... This is Fleetwood Mac and Dreams.
Now a trio of songs from the UK, even if one of the bands I'm playing originated several hundred miles away in Dusseldorf. Propaganda were a synth-pop band from Germany who signed in 1983 to the ZTT record label founded by producer Trevor Horn and journalist Paul Morley. I'm going to play 'A Dream Within A Dream' from their 1985 album A Secret Wish. The lyrics, incidentally, are a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, the celebrated 19th American gothic author who wrote stories including The Fall Of The House of Usher and The Masque Of The Red Death. After Propaganda, Radiohead with 'Go To Sleep, and then a track from one of the great lesser-known bands of the late 1970s, The Only Ones, and 'The Big Sleep'.
And now for something completely different as Monty Python used to say. Back in the 1950s, the Mexican bandleader Juan Garcia Esquivel was known as the King Of Space Age Pop for his quirky versions of classic big band songs. He was also something of a pioneer in new recording techniques. I'm going to play a track from his album Exploring New Sounds In Stereo. Catchy title, right? It's his very unusual version of the classic ballad 'Boulevard Of Broken Dreams'. Are you ready for this?
OK we've spent the past 45 minutes talking about sleeping and dreaming, but, hey, this is rock n roll. Who needs sleep? To end the show this week, two tracks about other things we could be doing instead of sleeping. In a few minutes, the fabulous title track from Razorlight's first album, Up All Night. But first, the irresistibly cheeky opening cut from the debut album released in 1977 by one of the most unlikely new rock n roll stars of that decade. Yes it's Ian Dury, with the glorious 'Wake Up & Make Love With Me'.
That's all for this week. I'm Simon Tesler. Thanks for joining me for another deep dive into the music archive. I hope you'll join me again same time next week for another great selection. See you then!