Muff's Modules & More

amnesia

I havent listenend to any vocal pop music for a good 20 years but decided today to go and get some Depeche Mode, Propaganda and New Order CDs out and its great hearing them again.

Depeche def had 3 periods, the Clark era that i dont really enjoy, I much prefer the mid Depeche, Some Great Reward, Stripped era with the industrial sounds.

I will always remember when I bought my first Depeche CD, CDs were fairly new to our home and the CD of Some Great Reward had been sold with a grease mark on it so there I was listening to the first track for 20 minutes thinking this is the most exciting thing I had ever heard in my life and after 20 minutes sussed out that all that skipping as not intentional. Also adding to it I realied that if I unplugged the output slightly I could hear all the out of phase parts so again that one album by pure accident set me off on a tangent in my life :-)

Propaganda- A Secret Wish is great with Stewart Copeland drumming on the title track and all the great PPG sounds. Incidently its not well know at all but the cassette version and the CD version are mixed differently, when you listen to both you will see most tracks are slightly different. I would love to know if the LP version was also different.

New Order's Power Corruption and Lies is still my fav N.O album. I use to gauge everthing by 1983 ( Blue Monday release).

I bet this listening will only last a few days and I will be over songs again but its nice to go back and relisten after such a break :-)

Whats it like for you going back?

ringstone · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:36 am Post subject:

A few years ago I went and bought up CD re-issues of a lot of the "pop" albums I liked years ago. I drive a lot as part of my job and this sort of stuff gets you less weird looks when you are blasting it out around town lol

Anyway, here's a selection:

New Order - Movement, Power, Corruption and Lies
The Cure - Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Pornography
Simple Minds - Sons and Fascination, Sister Feelings Call (daggy I know but I love Steve Hillage's production on these. It was a short step from there to Krautrock when I was a teenager!)
Echo and the Bunnymen - Porcupine
OMD - Organisation, Architechture and Morality
The Human League - Reproduction, Travelogue

and many others. Probably part of my mid-life crisis kicked off by my partner buying me a box set of alternative 80's music as a present.

I have been listening to 80's pop/rock stalwarts such as Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire, and Wire since I first heard them too... they all bring back lots of great memories!

Cheers
Blair

EDIT: + Soft Cell, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Fad Gadget, The The... list could go on!

Babaluma · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:37 am Post subject:

i never left really, quite often listen to synth pop! love all three of those bands, and loads of others besides. love the new romantic era and associated bands, love erasure etc. never really been into the more academic/bacon frying/electro-acoustic/music-concrete stuff as much. was into noise for a while, but never intend to go back to it, as every time i try i just hate it (whitehouse/merzbow etc).

when i "go back" to suff, it's usually either the goth bands i used to be really into, or early rave stuff, and i do enjoy it a lot!

can't believe nearly 30 years since Blue Monday though, that's amamzing. i listened to it again recently and it STILL stands up, just such a great track.

sersch · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:43 am Post subject:

For some reason I am obsessed with multiples of 5: 5, 10, 15… On synthesizers that I had to "program" via data entry & data readout only, I had to force myself to dial in other parameter values than multiples of 5.

It's the same with the number of years that passed. It feels to me like either no time at all has passed since an event, or all of a sudden the event is a comparatively large & symbolic number of years away, like 5, 10, 20… years. So reading the subject line about "Blue Monday" turning 30 next year just scared me.

I find it hard to not become sentimental thinking about how quickly (perceived) so much (measured) time passed. I know that I should act like a grown-up adult & accept it as an inevitable fact of life, but I guess I just don't want to.

I still do like a lot of the music I heard during my puberty/adolescence, but I do have a hard time deciding why I still like that music. (Which – perhaps not surprisingly – matches quite well with the list you gave, except that I'd add "Frankie goes to Hollywood". "Tears for Fears" anyone?):
Do I like it because it is "really" good and withstands the test of time?
Or do I like it because of the memories & feelings I still connect with it?

Another side of this coin: When I listened to e.g. "Blue Monday" back then, I had the distinct feeling that this was something new, even more, that there was something futuristic about it, i.e. the music was not only "up-to-date", it was…ahead.

Is it an error of my mind to think that today's popular music is more about recombining existing elements & techniques than creating something "new"? Must I take this as the ultimate proof that I am successfully turning into an old fart, mumbling "everything was better in the past"?

In any case, I should use my sentimentality as an excuse for this long, winding & potentially irrelevant post.

e-grad · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 6:45 am Post subject:

sb · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 7:11 am Post subject:

numan7 · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 7:18 am Post subject:

i remember 'twas a pretty lass named mary who turned me onto 'blue monday' / 'power corruption & lies' long, long ago (maybe it was 1984)... not sure that i've ever listened to it in an un-intoxicated state of mind... Drugs

i have a slight to tendency to dial in its drumbeat when using a drum machine, and have to think not to do so!

Bop!

cheers

amnesia · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 8:45 am Post subject:

30 years is phuking frightening especially since I still feel 25 inside. I wasnt 25 when it came out by the way :-)

I guess you leave songs behind because of the baggage.

Personally once I had mastered how to write a good song I lost interest and wanted to explore space and sound more so.
I also got extremely fed up with 3rd grade poetry that pop music has hung so close to, ie the rhyming.

I guess that is where the Cocteau twins were brilliant, a human voice but made up words. Just not enough synths for my liking.

Pentachoron · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:36 pm Post subject:

The movie “24 Hour Party People” is also worth a look, for its dramatization of the beginnings of New Order and Factory Records.

amnesia · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:42 pm Post subject:

ignatius · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:43 pm Post subject:

richard · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:48 pm Post subject:

still can't dance to it though

Pentachoron · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:49 pm Post subject:

And for a somewhat different take on Joy Division’s end and New Order’s beginning there’s “Control” – highly recommended.

Paraphonique · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 11:28 pm Post subject:

rekem1000 · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 11:45 pm Post subject:

Reminds me I must fix up that Moog Source that's been lying around for years now...

3vcos · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 12:02 am Post subject:

I was thinking of starting a new thread but...

2012 marks the 30th anniversary of New Order's track 5-8-6

I always liked the instrumental more. ;-)

And even better is 'Video 5-8-6' and 'Prime 5-8-6'

(I always loved how new order had different versions of songs. I think I have over 10 officially released versions of Fine Time.)

tokyocat · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 12:50 am Post subject:

For New Order I only really like the first album Movement, it sounds closer to Joy Division than their later stuff and Martin Hannet (a fifth band member in my opinion) was still with them. But I do also like some of the singles such as Ceremony, Blue Monday, Everythings Gone Green, Regret and True Faith.

I love a lot of late seventies and eighties pop, rock and new wave music. I still listen to these artists regularly:

Icehouse, Eurythmics, Sisters Of Mercy, Dire Straits, Blondie, Yello, The Police & Sting, The Blue Nile, The Cars & Ric Ocasek, Divinyls, Peter Gabriel, The Replacements, Enya, Clannad, Robert Plant's The Principle Of Moments, Simple Minds, Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music, Birthday Party & Nick Cave, Belinda Carlisle, Pink Floyd, Billy Idol, Talk Talk, Bauhaus, Alison Moyet, Clock DVA, Tears For Fears, Midnight Oil, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Tackhead, Spandau Ballet, Art Of Noise, Dragon, Talking Heads, Pink Floyd, Pet Shop Boys, Shona Laing, Genesis & Phil Collins, Human League, Fields Of The Nephilim, David Bowie, Kim Carnes, Tina Turner's Private Dancer, This Mortal Coil, Cindytalk, Breathless, Bourbonese Qualk, Bruce Springsteen, Jon & Vangelis... a huge list of stuff.

tokyocat · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 12:51 am Post subject:

Also agree that 24 Hour Party People is a great movie. I haven't seen Control yet but I will get around to watching it one of these days.

tokyocat · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 1:05 am Post subject:

For fans of early New Order I strongly recommend the compilation The John Peel Sessions. It contains different recordings of early tracks and some exclusive material from 1981 and 1982. Recording quality and production is excellent, also the arrangements and instrumentation are substantially different from the official album versions.

Pentachoron · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 1:28 am Post subject:

Pentachoron · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 1:47 am Post subject:

oozitron · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 7:46 pm Post subject:

I love all this stuff. PC&Lies is easily on my favorite 12 albums ever.

I am still trying to find a competent vocalist/guitarist to do Depeche, New Order, OMD, etc stuff with. A long-time dream :-)

Drew

solitaryzen · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 7:48 pm Post subject:

Minimoog56 · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 7:50 pm Post subject:

Still have my ticket to see Joy Division at the market Street Cinema in SF, too bad they had to cancel the show...

ringstone · Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 8:53 pm Post subject:

solitaryzen · Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 12:25 am Post subject:

Yeah, definite Kraftwerk influence on Empires & Dance (this album is also quite reminiscent of the first two Human League albums, and was produced by John Leckie who did the awesome re-recording of Being Boiled the same year).

amnesia · Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 12:33 am Post subject:

Just watched Conttrol again today...its a great film

decaying.sine · Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 12:44 am Post subject:

ian curtis' pain is in his songs. i lost my baby brother the same way and it's a pain i don't want to feel again.

Viva the artistic expression of pain versus the sad hopeless feeling that can be and the drowning. Can't believe it was so long ago.

amnesia · Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 12:59 am Post subject:

sorry to hear that Decaying SIne.