8 1980
At the start of the year, I was back for a school term at Waterloo, and ready to catch up on what I had missed while at work in Ottawa. I remember sitting in J2’s grotty apartment, crowded with milk crates full of records and magazines, listening to new music.
The most heralded of it was the second album by Public Image Limited (PiL). This was the band formed by Johnny Rotten (who had reverted to his birth name of John Lydon) after the breakup of the Sex Pistols. Their first album, "First Issue", had been released in December 1978, but apart from the single also called "Public Image", it had little to recommend it. "Metal Box" was a quantum leap, more stylistically diverse, with heavy dub bass from Jah Wobble and detached, searing guitar from Keith Levene. It came in striking packaging; the November 1979 release was on three 12" 45-rpm records, packed into a metal film canister with the PiL logo embossed on the cover.
J2 played it through for me, sometimes skipping the needle ahead when he felt the point had been made. But the album was clearly a collector’s item; he wasn’t about to lend it to me for taping. Fortunately, it was rereleased as a conventional double LP titled "Second Edition" in February 1980. It came in for much praise in the UK music press, but for me it is a mixed bag. The standout is "Poptones", with unforgettable descending guitar arpeggios, and Levene himself on drums (they had no permanent drummer). Other highlights include "Memories" and "Swan Lake". But there are some weaker tracks, perhaps due to the hasty improvisational nature of the recording sessions.
PiL never did as well again, becoming a Lydon solo project with a rotating cast of musicians before he called a halt to it in the mid-’90s. Later, he was to completely sell out by reverting to the Johnny Rotten stage name, going on reality TV shows, and reforming the Sex Pistols as a touring nostalgia act.
I initially didn’t warm to Gang of Four’s first album, "Entertainment!", also played for me at this listening session. It seemed too angular, with odd rhythms, not immediately catchy. J2 let me take that one home (he had bought it on release in September 1979), and it soon took hold, eventually becoming one of my desert-island discs. Bassist Dave Allen was the only one with formal musical training, and his solid funk lines anchored the band, allowing drummer Hugo Burnham some rhythmical freedom. Vocalist Jon King delivered lyrics that were political but in elliptical ways. But the most significant component of the sound was Andy Gill’s unconventional guitar work. More than any other record, this album defines "post-punk" for me: not what punk bands do when they grow up, but what a band can do if they take the spirit of punk and move forward in their own new directions. I am not alone in thinking this; the album was widely respected on release, and continues to be held in high esteem.
They would never match this work, though there are some gems among their early singles and EPs. Their second album, "Solid Gold" (March 1981), was a disappointment to me, seeming more subdued and cerebral. I saw them tour it, and despite my reservations about the new material, it was a fantastic concert. But first Allen and then Burnham left, and King and Gill eventually called a halt in 1983.
All of them remained musically active. They would reunite at various times and in various configurations involving others for followup albums and tours, only really cut short by the death of Andy Gill in 2020, possibly an early COVID casualty. The 1990 compilation album "A Brief History of the Twentieth Century" is a good place to hear their best work.
This is also the point where I would have heard Essential Logic for the first time, as I described in my madeleine. I liked their only album enough to record it, but it would take a while before I fully appreciated it.
1980 releases started off with a bang with the third Clash album, "London Calling", released as a double LP in January. This was widely acclaimed, and even won grudging admiration from my peers who were less convinced of the merits of punk and New Wave, when the single "Train In Vain" got airplay on commercial radio. I gave it a positive review in the student newspaper, but I was a little put off by the wide stylistic range. I wrote earlier that my reviews were marred by errors, but there was one thing I got right: I speculated that the uncredited horn section was John Earle and the Rumour brass, who played with Graham Parker. I was right, but I had no confirmation of it until I checked the Wikipedia article on this album, just before writing this paragraph, forty-six years later.
"London Calling" regularly appears on lists of the best albums of the decade, but I really can’t listen to it any more. My fears about its range were confirmed when they released the triple LP "Sandinista!" (1981), a sprawling, self-indulgent mess. It felt as if anything any of them had ever hit record on had been swept up and pressed onto vinyl. I really hated it.
I had already seen them live in fall 1979, in a shambolic concert that I’ve written about elsewhere, and I would see them once again, just before leaving for California in 1982, because J had a spare ticket for their show at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, touring "Combat Rock". This was probably their most commercially successful work, and they mugged their way through cartoonish crowd-pleasers like "Rock The Casbah" and "Should I Stay Or Should I Go?". I did not enjoy the concert. Shortly afterwards, the band broke up (they had already fired their drummer). Individually, they continued to work in the industry, but none of them produced anything of any lasting significance, and they would never manage a reunion.
A more successful concert I attended was by XTC, at the oddly-named War Memorial Hall in Guelph, Ontario in February 1980. I went with J, who had lent me their third album, "Drums and Wires", released August 1979. I didn’t think enough of it to record it, though I did enjoy the single "Making Plans For Nigel", which had gotten some radio airplay the previous fall. The concert was pleasant enough, the band and their music quirky and unusual in solid New Wave style, but I don’t remember a lot about it. Years later, when a lot of compilation albums were being released in CD format, I picked up "The Compact XTC" (1985), and found it to be a really solid collection of music, in a greatest-hits style.
And that would have been it, except that at some point in the 2020’s, I mentioned that concert to my partner, and she said, "You saw them?!". It turns out that, unbeknownst to me, XTC had stopped touring entirely in 1982 after lead singer Andy Partridge developed stage fright, though they continued to release music into the mid-2000’s. She is a big XTC fan, but never had the chance to see them play live. After that, I spent a bit of time listening to their early albums in full.
The Cure’s first album, "Three Imaginary Boys" (May 1979) was not issued in North America; instead, some of the tracks from it together with some singles were put out as "Boys Don’t Cry" in February 1980, and that would be the first time I heard them. It seemed a particularly good collection of New Wave tracks, lifted by good vocals and guitar work from Robert Smith. But it was their second album, "Seventeen Seconds" (April 1980) that was their proper move into post-punk as I described it above. It felt much more substantial, minimal, sober and nuanced. It is probably my favourite Cure album.
"Faith" (April 1981) was a further step into darkness. The tone of these albums reflected Robert Smith’s internal turmoil. J and I went to see them tour "Faith", and by mutual consent, we left after four songs, which was rare for us. Part of the reason was that we had been energized by the very different opening act, UK eccentric John Otway. But the Cure were playing everything as a downtempo dirge, just standing still, dressed in black, looking mournful. I have sometimes regretted that decision to leave, but it just didn’t feel right to us.
The Cure in this time period pretty much kickstarted the entire goth movement, though it was mostly carried on by other bands, such as Siouxsie and the Banshees (for whom Smith served as lead guitarist, in overlap with his Cure work), Bauhaus, and Killing Joke. I didn’t care for these other bands (the odd good single aside), or for goth in general, which I found too limiting. The look can be striking, but it’s also easy to overdo.
In May I went back to Ottawa for my second industrial internship. This time I was living right downtown, a few blocks from work and the canal. Ottawa is at its best in the summer, and I was looking forward to it. But three weeks into term, my roommate and close friend (who I had lived with the previous fall) was in a serious car accident, and spent the rest of the summer in rehabilitation in Toronto. My other roommate was hardly ever around, leaving me basically alone in a large railway apartment. I had other friends in town, but saw them only sporadically. I set up my stereo on the sideboard in the back dining room, and spent a lot of time listening to music and writing letters on a typewriter.
It was to be the summer of Joy Division. I’d already caught up with their single "Transmission" (Oct 1979), which I really liked. It may be my favourite song of theirs, and now my possible candidate for best single of all time (though the B-side is nothing special). But there was a lot of good music around at the time, and they didn’t particularly stand out.
I learned of Ian Curtis’s death by suicide, on the eve of their North American tour, in a snarky comment by J in a letter talking about the cancellation of their Toronto date. But he took a more respectful tone in a follow-up: "You have to hear this," he wrote, of the "Love Will Tear Us Apart" single (June 1980). He brought it with him on a visit shortly afterwards, and we played it a lot. Both of us preferred the version on the B-side, with stronger guitar and backbeat. But that was a minority view; it became known as the "Pennines version", and I don’t think it was officially available again until the 2015 remaster of the "Substance" compilation. The A-side, with its soaring, dominant synth theme, became the one that everyone heard.
The legend was cemented with the release of the "Closer" album in July, which I bought on vinyl, rare for me (I also picked up "Unknown Pleasures" on vinyl, even though I had a taped copy, even rarer). It is generally regarded as their best work, though I still prefer the first album. "Unknown Pleasures" has the feel of someone trying to work through a difficult present into a possibly hopeful future, while "Closer" feels like an admission that it’s not going to happen. It was obviously made before Curtis’s death, but it sounds as if it were made afterwards. The production, by Martin Hannett, is brilliant.
There were aspects of a death cult in some people’s adulation of Joy Division (NME published a letter in which a fan wrote "Ian Curtis died for our sins", with a predictably scathing response), but for J and me, it wasn’t about Curtis or the way he died. It was about the complexity of the songs, their honest acknowledgement of daily struggles, and the fact that there wasn’t going to be any more music. Apart from my social ineptitude, I had little to complain about; I was on track for a good career and a good life, and I knew it. But, day to day, it could still be hard, even though the difficulties were largely inside my head.
There was going to be more music, though, because we hadn’t heard everything yet. The band had inexplicably released "Atmosphere / Dead Souls" as a limited-edition single in France in March. Factory Records released "Atmosphere" in September, but it was backed with a re-recorded version of "She’s Lost Control", a song from "Unknown Pleasures". Once again, my minority preference was for the original, which makes good use of a delay unit on the vocals, but the new version got a lot of airplay, with its sparser, more electronic feel. "Dead Souls" did not become generally available until it was released on the compilation album "Still" (October 1981) along with other obscure tracks. It is a stunning track that would have fit in well on "Unknown Pleasures". The vocals don’t kick in until more than two minutes into the song. If one has to take both A-side and B-side into account, I must take my nomination for best single ever away from "Transmission" and award it to "Atmosphere / Dead Souls".
The remaining three members of the band regrouped under the name New Order, later adding the guitarist’s girlfriend on keyboards. They put out a good single, which had been written and even recorded by Joy Division, and a subdued first album, "Movement", with one brilliant track (the first one, titled "Dreams Always End", an allusion to a lyric on "Unknown Pleasures", where Curtis sings, "They say that dreams never end / They don’t rise up, just descend"). J and I saw them in concert in 1981, and didn’t care for it. We settled down to wait to see where they’d go.
Anton Corbijn, who had taken some iconic photographs of the band, made a feature movie about them, "Control", in 2007. The film looks great, but the other aspects that make a film are missing. I didn’t care for it, or for the 1995 memoir by Deborah Curtis (Ian’s estranged wife) on which it was based. A much better overview can be had in the documentary "Joy Division" released later the same year. The three remaining band members give extensive interviews, and come across as ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary phenomenon. There’s a lot of live footage, including a TV performance of "Dead Souls". I still have this documentary on DVD, along with "24-Hour Party People", the 2002 Michael Winterbottom feature film about the rise and fall of Factory Records, which focusses on Joy Division for the first part. It’s told in an effective break-the-fourth-wall style, including frequent flash-forward asides by Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson, and a number of cameos, including the real Howard Devoto (from Magazine) disavowing a scene just after he has acted as an extra in it while an actor plays his younger self doing something outrageous. The film may not be historically accurate, but it captures the zeitgeist well, including parts of musical history I’ll discuss later.
J’s weekend visit to me was not all quiet mourning. We were, after all, two males in our early twenties. There was a lot of drunken buffoonery and myth-building. Key in this was the first Undertones album (eponymously titled). I had seen them open for the Clash in that chaotic 1979 concert, but I hadn’t previously heard this album, originally released in May 1979, but with a rerelease in October 1979 adding two singles, notably "Teenage Kicks", which became legendary as the only song that long-time British DJ John Peel ever played twice on the same show. A quote from the song is engraved on Peel’s tombstone.
The album is full of chirpy uptempo songs with pretty basic lyrics, but it is incredibly catchy. It continued to be high on my playlist for the rest of the summer, infecting my other Ottawa friends. For some reason, I didn’t immediately listen to the three further albums they released before their breakup in 1983. I would catch up with the release of the 1994 CD compilation "The Very Best of the Undertones", after which I sought out their back catalogue. My delay seems inexplicable in light of the fact that I was an active fan of a later band formed by some of the core personnel, which I will write about shortly.
I’ve written elsewhere (link above) about the Heatwave Festival held north of Toronto in late August. It was billed as the first punk / New Wave festival, but in fact it was really the last as well, at least in terms of the range and quality of good current bands. It was there that I saw Talking Heads live for the first time, debuting the more complex, African-inspired music (with an augmented set of musicians) that would be released as the "Remain In Light" album in October, when I was back at school. This was, in retrospect, their peak, though they had a few surprises left, as we will see.
September saw me back at school. It was clear that I was not cut out for corporate work, and I left the program that had me alternating work and school every four months. I would finish my undergraduate degree with regular school years, and a research internship at the university the following summer.
Bruce Springsteen released the double LP "The River" in October. I borrowed it from J, and taped it, but it was clear I had moved beyond, and I didn’t listen to it, or his other albums, very much after that. I didn’t give "Nebraska" (1984) a proper listen; I should try again, as it gets a lot of praise still.
At the other end of the spectrum, U2 released their first album "Boy" in October. This was originally supposed to be produced by Martin Hannett, but he was too torn up about Ian Curtis’s death to work. He spiralled further into addiction and self-neglect, and died at age 42 in 1991 of heart failure. Even without him, "Boy" was a fresh and compelling set of songs. In the reminiscence linked above, I write about J and me seeing them play in 1981 at an obscure Toronto venue, a great concert. Unfortunately, with each successive album, they got more pretentious and overblown, and I stopped paying attention a few years later, after which they achieved a high level of global fame. They still haunt every new iPhone purchase.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark were originally a two-person band, Andy McClusky on bass and Paul Humphreys on keyboards, with both contributing vocals. Their debut single, "Electricity" (May 1979) was originally produced by Martin Hannett, but the band felt it was overproduced, so they rerecorded it. It’s an early synth-pop milestone, a bouncy number miles away from the ponderous prog sound I was fleeing when I switched from Team Synth to Team Guitar in 1978. Their eponymous debut album was released in February 1980, though I probably heard it that fall, as I have no recollection of it before then. It’s full of such catchy numbers. Their second album, "Organisation" followed on closely (for me) in October. They played Kitchener-Waterloo twice before I left for grad school, and at one of these concerts, J and I managed to get into the dressing room (J was actually writing reviews for the city newspaper by then) and have an extended interview with Andy McClusky. I checked out after their hermetic third album, "Architecture and Morality", which seemed to me to be final in the same way that Ultravox’s "Systems of Romance" was. And, sure enough, OMD took a similar path to later success with a more commercial approach.
Even more promising for me, initially, was Depeche Mode, who started as a four-piece (three synths, one lead vocalist). I fell in love with their first single, "Dreaming of Me" (February 1981), courtesy of J2. The next one, "New Life" (June 1981) was even better, and "Just Can’t Get Enough" (September 1981) continued the upward trend. I was expecting great things from them. But their debut album, "Speak and Spell" (October 1981) was a big disappointment. Their previous two singles were the only good songs on it (the first one did not appear), and their composer, Vince Clarke, had already decided to quit the band.
Depeche Mode went on, again, to considerable commercial success, and the core of that band continues to tour and record. I followed Vinnie Clarke to Yazoo (Yaz in North America) where he teamed up with powerful singer Alison Moyet for two good albums. He finally found his own commercial success with Erasure, formed with vocalist Andy Bell. They had a massive series of hit UK singles, and are still recording also. I picked up an Erasure greatest-hits compilation on CD, but the music, trending disco and house, is not to my taste. I prefer the Depeche Mode singles compilation, though I let it come up on random shuffle rather than programming it deliberately. That was pretty much it for me and synth-pop, until I started to collect actual synth hardware during the COVID lockdown, and spent some time catching up on what I had missed.
It had been a fantastic year for music, but it wasn’t over yet. Two brand-new late entries each kept me interested for several more years. Both came out of the intense and ever-mutating Liverpool scene that arose in response to punk and New Wave. J and I saw each of them at small club dates in Toronto in 1981.
The Teardrop Explodes was dominated by lead singer and bass guitarist Julian Cope. They released the album "Kilimanjaro" in October 1980. It was firmly grounded in Liverpool pop, with a psychedelic tinge; in retrospect, fairly conventional, but with a compelling style. Their second album, "Wilder" (November 1981) was a big step forward, quieter, more lyrical, more introspective, with some truly beautiful songs. More than any other record, it signifies for me my last months at Waterloo.
J and I would see them tour "Wilder" in early 1982, at a larger but still modest venue, and once again we got backstage for interviews, where we spoke to Julian Cope (stoned to the gills) for well over an hour. It was probably the best music interview experience either of us would ever have, but neither of us took any notes, and we had no usable material from it.
The Teardrop Explodes splintered soon after that. Julian Cope embarked on a solo career, the earliest and best part of which I missed due to my move to California, though I caught up with it later on CD rereleases. I followed him until "20 Mothers" (1995), as he developed a sort of musical shaman persona, with nods to paganism and prehistoric British Isles culture. He has continued to self-release work since then (making it difficult to acquire, had I continued to be interested), and has written several books, including a memoir and a novel.
Echo and the Bunnymen released their first album "Crocodiles" in December 1980. Though they sprung from the same roots as The Teardrop Explodes, their sound was different, sparser and more austere, with fewer chord changes and less overt pop focus. The combination of Ian McCulloch’s soaring vocals and Will Sergeant’s virtuoso guitar work was somewhat reminiscent of U2, but with more ambiguous mystery and less deliberate sincerity. They were to prove more successful, with three excellent follow-up albums, culminating in "Ocean Rain" (May 1984). Their eponymous fifth album, recorded under the shadow of mental health and drug problems, was a mess, and they soon crashed. A few years later, the core duo reformed a group of the same name and continue to tour and release material to this day, but the spark was gone.
I’ve pushed some distance past the titular year on this page, because in the next installment, I’m going to skip ahead more than two years. I have never been able to successfully write about 1981. There was a mythologized summer drive across the US and back, to help a friend find a place to live in Berkeley, at which point I decided that I had to live there too, for all the wrong reasons.
Musically, in those two years, I followed trends that were well established in previous years. I mostly listened to music I already had, or new albums by bands that I already appreciated. Socially, I would have made a decent high-school senior, but I was not so good at being a senior undergraduate. I would talk too much when with men, and not enough when with women. I wrote a lot for the student newspaper, going well beyond music and film reviews. Most of it was self-indulgent juvenilia, but I was good enough at it for them to rarely edit me. In short, I was allowed to get away with too much, and needed to move to a place where I couldn’t. That would also result in significant changes in my musical experiences.