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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 more great Sounds from the music archive. This week, our theme is ROADS and their associated urban infrastructure! You'll get the idea in a minute. I've got a great selection of tracks for you including seven artists making their first appearance on this show, including Sheryl Crow, Lou Rawls, Stock Aitken Waterman, and yes, these guys, U2.
U2's classic anthem 'Where The Streets Have No Name' followed by XTC with 'Traffic Light Rock'. We probably all remember that astonishing music video for 'Streets', with U2 performing it on the roof of a liquor store in downtown Los Angeles while the police tried to shut down the performance on safety grounds. Bono's lyrics are not of course about Los Angeles, but actually an oblique reference to the band's childhood in divided Belfast, where all the streets were either Catholic or Protestant. Bono's dreaming about a place where there are no such divisions. It's also, though you may not realise it, an incredibly complicated song, with lots of chord changes. The band worked on it for literally weeks before they got it right. Brian Eno, who co-produced the Joshua Tree album from which it was taken, once said he thought around half of all the time they spent recording the album was spent just on that one song.
A change of style now. Let's funk things up a bit. First up, virtually the only song actually performed by the legendary songwriting and production team Stock Aitken Waterman under their own names rather than for someone else. After that, 'No Turn On Red', another one-off, the only song David Gamson recorded under his own name. He's best-known as a producer and session player, most notably on Scritti Politti's gorgeous Cupid & Psyche 85 album -- you probably remember 'Wood Beez', 'The Word Girl' and 'Absolute'. And then, here's Grace... But first, 'Roadblock'.
Yup, Grace Jones with 'Pull Up To The Bumper', which is on the surface, like Grace said, about driving down those city streets, but may be about something altogether different and more X-rated. I'll let you study the lyrics some time and make up your own mind.
Now for something rather less cheeky. Some old school soul from one of the giants of the genre Lou Rawls about growing up poor in the windy city Chicago. After that, a joyful track from Van Morrison from his 1979 album Into The Music. First up, though, Lou Rawls and 'Dead End Street'.
Now for two great singer-songwriters from, respectively, Kennett in Missouri and Pinner in Middlesex, both singing about the road of life. First up is Sheryl Crow with 'Every Day Is A Winding Road', from her second album. And then we'll have a classic from Reg Dwight, better known to you and me as Elton John. It's the title track from his 1973 album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Like almost all of Elton's greatest songs, the lyrics were written by long-time musical partner Bernie Taupin and are about his desire to leave fame and fortune behind and get back to his childhood roots on a farm in Lincolnshire. But first, Sheryl Crow.
Two more songs about the road of life now, but they couldn't be more different from one another. In a few minutes, a lovely gentle song from Goldfrapp's fourth album Seventh Tree about a bright and hopeful future. That's 'Road To Somewhere'. Before that though, Talking Heads with 'Road To Nowhere', from the Little Creatures album. Despite its deceptively upbeat tempo, it's actually a pretty bleak tale. David Byrne wrote later, "I wanted to write a song that presented a resigned, even joyful look at doom. At our deaths and at the apocalypse... (always looming, folks). I think it succeeded. The front bit, the white gospel choir, is kind of tacked on, 'cause I didn't think the rest of the song was enough... I mean, it was only two chords. So, out of embarrassment, or shame, I wrote an intro section that had a couple more in it." Here it is, Road To Nowhere.
*** SIDEBAR: DAVID BYRNE in BLITZ Magazine from blitzmagazineuk on Instagram ***
Despite its upbeat tune, 'Road To Nowhere' is actually pretty bleak. David Byrne said later: "I wanted to write a song that presented a resigned, even joyful look at doom. At our deaths and at the apocalypse... (always looming, folks). I think it succeeded..."
We caught up with David Byrne in April 1988 for BLITZ 64, just before the release of the final Talking Heads album Naked. The interview was by Jon Wilde with photographs by Steve Pyke.
"I've never tried defining myself. I guess people are asking me to do it all the time. Am I a nervous person? Am I happy? Those things. They are generalisations. It's really hard to decide about those things...
The word genius is thrown at you a lot, Jon asked. Do you sometimes think that, underneath it all, you are as big an idiot as the rest of us?
"Haha! Am I an idiot? Gee! I haven't thought about it like that. But I don't like to be burdened with words like 'genius'. It's like throwing a big weight on your back. If I start feeling like an idiot, that's often when my best ideas come. When I can occupy a part of my mind with other things.
"When I was writing words for songs and things, I would carry around this small tape-recorder with a tiny cassette in it. Often I would have my best ideas when my mind was doing something else. In a car or in a shower. I'd be showering when some idea would come to me and I'd have to reach out to speak into the tape recorder, hoping it didn't get soaked. That is not what we really think of as idiocy. It's just a moment when I am able to free my mind from thinking too much."
*** END OF SIDEBAR ***
To close the show, a classic track from the prog-rock supergroup Yes. Let me make a strange confession here. In my early years as a music obsessive in the mid-1970s, as I was moving from the movie soundtracks over which I had obsessed in the first half of that decade but before I discovered punk rock in late 1976, I was a huge Yes fan. There were two reasons. One was the music of course, but the other was those incredible album covers by Roger Dean. Actually my interest in Yes coincided quite bizarrely with a similar obsession with Dr Feelgood. I know, right? And if you were to dig out my school books from 1975 or early 1976 you would find them covered in doodles in which I copied Roger Dean's swirling Yes logo alongside the grinning cartoon Dr Feelgood logo. What a strange kid I was.
Anyway, when it came to Yes, my particular passion was the earlier albums - Fragile and Close To The Edge - before the slightly more self-indulgent excesses of Tales From Topographic Oceans and Relayer. I'm going to play the standout track from Fragile, the wonderful 'Roundabout' -- still keeping to that roads theme you see. Now, if you've never heard Yes before, suspend any prejudices you might. This is a track that still impresses today with its alternating blend of gentle mysticism and straight-out heavy rock. Yes, and 'Roundabout'.