I think we've all come to realize the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is problematic: Jann Wenner's outsize influence; who decides what is and isn't rock 'n' roll?; decades of misogyny; etc.
But if there's going to be one, I definitely want to see my favorite artists inducted. (Even Chrissie Hynde thought better of snubbing the honor, knowing how much it meant to her elderly parents.)
So three cheers, and hopefully many more votes, for Joy Division/New Order and Cyndi Lauper -- and obviously Chubby Checker, Mariah Carey and Joe Cocker belong in a music hall of fame.
And here's hoping the Bangles and B-52's finally get the recognition they so richly deserve. Anyone else you're rooting for?
UPDATE:
OK, you caught me. I fan voted and couldn't not include Billy "Hot in the City" Idol!
I've been on a New Order bender since scanning my old ticket stub from when I saw them in 1986, so was listening to their debut LP while running earlier today. (Excited about their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nomination.) "Movement" came out in 1981, in the wake of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis's suicide the previous year. Like many British albums, it's hampered by the fact that the labels over there like to omit singles that came out in the lead up to an album, so it's missing "Ceremony," "Procession," "Temptation" and "Everything's Gone Green," just as their second album, "Power, Corruption and Lies" didn't include the seminal "Blue Monday," "Confusion" or "Thieves Like Us" singles. (We had them all as 12-inch imports.) But to my point. The first song on the album -- which is quite good despite the "missing" tracks -- is so good, in fact, that you might say another band liked it a bit too much a few years later. Have a listen -- it HAS to be obvious -- and tell me what you come up with. If Men at Work could get sued by the "Kookaburra" estate over "Down Under," then New Order should own this band!
My '90s beau and I have a running joke about how he likes so many of my bands from the '80s -- Tears for Fears, Erasure, Siouxsie, etc. -- but always seems to gravitate to their '90s songs instead of the ones that made them legends. I can't judge him for this one, which came on the other day and gave us both goosebumps.
Addendum to yesterday's post: On Wednesday I drove about three hours -- rather than 15 minutes here and there -- and started to realize/remember that even at its best radio does have its limitations in that you start to see the programmers have favorites, often to a fault. I adore New Order, Echo and the Bunnymen and like U2 just fine. But the Police, Depeche Mode and Tears for Fears are best in small doses. And three or four songs by all of these artist on a trip to Tucson and back was a bit much, even if it did include this gem. Mix it up a bit more, Richard Blade!
If the video for "Hello Again" by the Cars was the most quintessentially mid-80s video of all time, this clip by New Order -- that follows a girl getting off work at a pizza parlor and then joining her friends for a night on the town in New York City, culminating at the legendary Fun House -- has to be the ultimate early '80s video moment!
Hardeep Phull writes of the 28,000-square-foot space that was located at 526 W. 26th St.:
At the Fun House, John “Jellybean” Benitez -- who was the resident DJ from 1981 to 1984 -- spun underground records such as “Walking on Sunshine” by Rockers Revenge and Shannon’s “Let the Music Play,” which hit the Billboard Top 40 in 1984. The DJ booth was inside the mouth of a giant, grinning clown’s head; if revelers needed a break, they could take five to play arcade games that were also inside the vast club.
That club was where “freestyle” blossomed and found its young audience. “They were saying disco was dead, but there were still millions of people going out on the weekend and listening to dance music,” Benitez recalls.
One of the best documentations of that era is New Order’s 1983 video for their freestyle-influenced single “Confusion,” which captures the British band working on the track with dance producer Arthur Baker before heading to the famed club to play the song to revelers. As the group rolls up to the venue, it’s already dawn, but the party is still going hard inside.
“It was very common for us to play works in progress and test them out on the crowd like that,” remembers Benitez, who is depicted in the famous DJ booth with the band, watching the crowd’s reaction.
New Order were so enthralled by the culture of the Fun House (and several other American clubs of that era) that they, along with their label and management, attempted to re-create it with their own club — the Haçienda, in Manchester, England (as portrayed in the 2002 movie “24 Hour Party People”).
While Studio 54 catered to the uptown crowd, the Fun House and its freestyle music represented the sound of the street. But sometimes A-listers would poke their heads in to see what the fuss was all about. “Paul Simon and Penny Marshall came by one night,” Benitez recalls. “Another time Sylvester Stallone and John Travolta were there, and the whole place went nuts. People were following them around the club and, eventually, they had to come up to the DJ booth!”
How about the first New Order song in five years? "Be a Rebel" was intended to promote the group's co-headlining tour with Pet Shop Boys, which has been postponed until 2021. Frontman Bernard Sumner says, “In tough times we wanted to reach out with a new song. We can’t play live for a while, but music is still something we can all share together. We hope you enjoy it … until we meet again.”
Such a treat to have my Detroit-childhood best friend send me a cache of old photos this week, many of which I had never seen before. Kids today have every second of their lives forever documented -- for better or worse -- so it's truly a gift to have something like this fall in one's lap. Here I am, above, at age 15 visiting Mark back in Detroit. We caught the Thompson Twins at the Royal Oak Music Theatre on that trip.
10 bucks doesn't go as far as it used to!
With the picture provider on Sunset Boulevard in 1986
Gillian Gilbert and Bernard Sumner with Stephen Morris just behind after New Order's concert at Mesa Amphitheatre in 1986, the same year and venue where I saw the Smiths.
I've written extensively about these two places in Old Town Tempe: Graffiti's is the bar/nightclub on Mill Avenue where my friend Chantal and I were when we got the news Andy Warhol had died.
And the after-hours restaurant Panic City was the subject of this RECENT POST.
These three are from when I went to Los Angeles for Mark's brother's wedding at the beginning of 1985. "The War Song" by Culture Club and "We Belong" by Pat Benatar ruled the airwaves, and Bartles & Jaymes ruled the refrigerators!
And these last four are from Mark's first visit to Phoenix in the summer of 1979.
Spiraling out of control with my sister, Jennifer
Attention whore
First visit to Big Surf, which I hear is closed this year for the first time. (I'm surprised Gov. Ducey didn't insist that it open for maximum infections.)
It's funny dating a "child of the '90s." While there is a remarkable amount of pop-culture overlap, it's funny how many times the bands Damian and I have in common don't always line up in eras. Nice to see that groups I considered to be '80s wonders -- Everything but the Girl, Depeche Mode, the Cure, Tears for Fears, New Order and the like -- continued to make good music, scooping up new fans along the way.
Went into a bit of a New Order hole over the weekend, which caught even me off guard. (Was it all those "most influential albums from my teen years" memes on Facebook?) As I dug through my music library I was surprised to realize I was this huge fan from back in the day -- culminating with my seeing and managing to meet them at Mesa Amphitheater back in 1986 -- who barely owns any music by them now. As I read through their discography I discovered I had wound up with nothing but a bunch of singles and "Power, Corruption & Lies" in my iTunes library because the bulk of my love affair with remnants of Joy Division took place in the early '80s when my oldest brother was away at college at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. Bill would come home every other weekend with a pile of laundry and a pile of records -- often import 12-inch singles he'd found out about from the local New Wave station.
The first two Pretenders albums, Altered Images' "Happy Birthday," Romeo Void's "It's a Condition" and Bananarama's "Really Saying Something" and "Shy Boy" 12-inchers (b/w the superior "Don't Call Us") were definitely highlights. But it was the "1981-1982 (Factus 8)" EP by a British synth band called New Order that introduced me to a whole new sound, paving the way for the Human League, Heaven 17, Depeche Mode, O.M.D. and Yaz. All five songs were instantly likable. But it was "Temptation" -- "Up, down, turn around, please don't let me hit the ground! -- that I listened to over and over again until my mom asked if there was something wrong with my Yorx stereo (that spun records just a tad too quickly) my parents got me for Christmas at Price Club, the precursor to Costco. From there Bill brought home 12-inch versions of "Blue Monday," "Confusion" (not to be confused with the overproduced 1987 version recorded for "Substance") and "Thieves Like Us." Then in May 1984 he graduated from college and my supply dried up.
From what I can remember, the band put out "Power, Corruption & Lies" with none of the singles I had grown to love -- and during the magical year of 1983 when I had minimal cash and a long list of must-buy albums -- so I didn't get it until another "Why don't I own more New Order?" moment in the CD era. (Still, I recall being completely fascinated with the album from reading about it and seeing its cover art singled out in my copy of U.K.-published copy of "The Rock Yearbook 1983.") The band then released its first high-profile U.S. release -- promoted with a video of "The Perfect Kiss" directed by Jonathan Demme -- but despite my now having my first job, I passed on "Low-Life" because what I heard didn't really catch my ear the way their earlier material did. "Bizarre Love Triangle" got me -- and the world excited about the band all over again -- and then the "Pretty in Pink" soundtrack gave us the neurotically wonderful "Shellshock." What I didn't realize was that at this point I sort of stopped paying much attention -- you could hear New Order constantly on any alternative radio station or dance club -- and that's when the band apparently reached the height of its popularity. The rather delightful "Regret" in 1993 would become their biggest U.S. single (I didn't even know it by name until I played it yesterday!), and they would go on to score more than 20 Top 20 singles in the U.K. in the '90s and aughts, including some World Cup anthem I've never heard of that topped the charts in 1990! Still, some 35 years since my brother first brought home that EP, it's those early songs -- the "Oh, you've got green eyes/ Oh, you've got blue eyes/ Oh, you've got grey eyes/ And I've never seen anyone quite like you before" refrain from "Temptation" still gives me goose bumps -- and the sublime "Power, Corruption & Lies" (it's hard to top songs like "Age of Consent," "5-8-6" and "Your Silent Face") that maintain my status as a major fan.
Ironically, I do have the first CD by The Other Two, Gillian Gilbert and Stephen Morris' '90s side project that I love so much!
It's hard to pick the best year of the New Wave. But with the gender-bending of Eurythmics, Culture Club and Marilyn and the propulsive synthpop of Depeche Mode, New Order and the Human League, Mark Simpson argues 1983 was a high-water mark for pop experimentation. Read HERE.
First time seeing the pre-Kathy Valentine Go-Go's performing at the legendary Hurrah's on West 62nd Street in NYC. That's Margot Olavarria on bass, not that you see her for more than two seconds! Order HERE.
After Ian Curtis killed himself, Joy Division regrouped and played their first gig in New York as New Order at Hurrah on Sept. 26, 1980. They opened for A Certain Ratio.
This " states I've been to interactive map " is fun, especially because you don't need to sign up or give them an email ad...
Fake Jan Alert
My blog is featured in Susan Olsen's tell-all about the ill-fated "Brady Bunch Variety Hour"!
Little Kenny
Growing up in Madison Heights, Mich.
Back to the Old House
The Web leads to an unexpected return to a house I grew up in.
Oceans 11
Carlsbad, Calif. (2008)
1983
Go Behind the Music of my high-school band, A La Plage
A Death in the Family
Little Larry left us too soon.
Once I Had a Love
With Debbie Harry
'Jungle' Fever
With Robert Buckley
Roger & Me
With Roger Federer
Step Brother McMullen
With Ed Burns
Headline News
With Thomas Roberts
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