1982 Bucks Fizz: My Camera Never Lies

In which Bucks Fizz grow up. Or at least try to. It seems to be an unwritten rule that every pop band who achieve a level of success with some happy, harmless ramalama singalongs will at some point aspire to some artistic credibility in a bid to be taken seriously. Most end up falling flat on their face, and if Bucks Fizz don't exactly end up face down in the gutter, they stumble over their laces quite badly and bloody their hands and knees.

There's probably no better example of a pop band who grew up in public to successfully outgrow their roots than ABBA, and whoever was behind 'My Camera Never Lies' obviously had one eye on the Swedish model in a bid to crack the international market. This is no less apparent in the video that clearly apes the 'Take A Chance On Me' visuals with Jay in particular giving the camera the scary evil eye of a woman wronged.

Starting out with earthereal vocal 'Ahhhhsss' that builds into an urgent, acoustic guitar driven verse, the sound is very new wave, very American AOR and very, very eighties - think The Cars' 'Drive' giving a lift to Pat Benatar's 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot' and you won't go far wrong. Lyrically too we're in darker territory than previous with a theme of a would be lover stalking someone who doesn't want to know ("I’ve been checking you up, I’ve been tracking you down. Funny all the things that I’ve found").

So far, so different, but then the chorus arrives from straight out of a cheap Christmas cracker and undoes all the good work that's gone before. All pretence of intensity and seriousness vanishes in a puff of smoke to be replaced by a shift in tone to a tacky white bread singalong that even Dollar would have rejected as being corny. By trying to appeal to a new, older market while not forgetting the millions who bought 'Making Your Mind Up', 'My Camera Never Lies' aims for two separate stools and misses both by a wide margin.

Ultimately, 'My Camera Never Lies' is all smoke and mirrors, making it rather apt that 'The Wizard Of Oz' is parodied in the accompanying video. It puts on a brave face to try and get in the ring with the heavyweights, but like some Scooby Doo episode where the mask is pulled off the scary ghost to reveal some harmless old woman underneath, it's all just a front to add some gravitas to what is essentially business as usual.

1982 Goombay Dance Band: Seven Tears

Now here's something - Kraftwerk were the first German band to ever top the UK charts, and now barely a few weeks later we had another one (astonishingly, there would soon be another to complete the hat trick, but more of that later).

Throughout the latter part of the seventies, there was a rivalry of sorts between the UK's Brotherhood Of Man (in their own minds at least) and Abba. Both had won Eurovision and both went on to release further hit singles with the Brotherhood's 'Angelo' ripping off Abba's 'Fernando' in a such a shameless manner that the Swede's lawyers must have been poised to pounce. But if Abba were top notch IKEA, the Brotherhood were most definitely chipboard cupboards from MFI with a few panels and screws missing.

I make the comparison because the moment 'Seven Tears' opens with those interminable 'Mmmmmmmmms' and then that plodding 4/4 drum beat, then Boney M's 'Rivers Of Babylon' springs immediately to mind. Also German, Boney M were a spent force by 1982, but the men behind this Goombay band clearly thought there were more miles to be had from this multi racial, happy clappy Euro beat engine yet.

'Goombay' is a variation of drum based music from the Bahamas that is played in a celebratory style, but while there was always a wondrous sense of humour and unpredictability about everything Boney M did, there is precious little celebratory or varied about 'Seven Tears'.

For the whole duration of the track, the rhythm and beat does not change one iota and it plods it's way dirge-like from start to finish in the manner of a hymn sung at a school assembly that has been rearranged by the trendy music teacher to try and make it more relevant to 'ver kids'. Any goodwill you may have felt toward it is ground down by the sheer monotony.

And if that wasn't enough, the lead singer, who manages to look like both Roger de Courcey AND Nookie Bear at the same time, blandly warbles the lyrics of tears running to the sea with all the emotion of a man whose first language is not English and is instead singing phonetically without the first idea of what he's on about. And he probably doesn't. I know I don't:

"Lonely like a stranger on the shore.
I can't stand this feeling anymore.
Day by day this world's all grey
And if dreams were eagles I would fly"

Unfortunately, dreams are not eagles and this is not a good song in any sense of the word. As lucky a number one as you'll ever hear, their luck soon ran out and the Goombay Dance Band did not trouble the British charts again.

1982 Tight Fit: The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Following a long tradition of jerry built bands knocked up to front a surprise hit single, Tight Fit were created purely to publicly perform this version of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' that producer Tim Friese-Greene (who went on to better things with Talk Talk and Thomas Dolby) had recorded with some anonymous session singers. Incidentally, the line up of this Tight Fit had no overlap with the previous version of Tight Fit who recorded the two 'Back To The Sixties' medleys the year before.

Confused? Perhaps. But there's no need to be, and there's no need to be overly critical of manufactured bands either - the song is the thing here and your reaction to this will depend on what you think of it. Written by South African Zulu musician Solomon Linda in 1939, its had a chequered history dogged by lawsuits, copyright issues and mishearings of the lyrics, leading Karl Denver to have a hit with a version called 'Wimoweh' in 1962 which remains the standard reference point for subsequent versions.

The version by 'Tight Fit' does not rock the boat in any way - lyrics, tune and general African feel are faithfully re-created with some rather fine sounding djembe drums being needlessly overlaid by some telltale 'eighties' electronic beats and phasing on the chorus. There's even some squawking bird and chimp effects lest anyone forget we are we in African territory here. Nothing wrong with that I guess.

Bottom line, it's a faithfull enough version that was a staple of any school disco worth it's salt for a few years after and in many ways it encapsulates the eighties for anyone who wasn't there and think it was ten years of big hair and bright colours - if you liked the song before then you'll like this. If you didn't, then Tight Fit are not going to convert anyone.

1982 The Jam: A Town Called Malice

Paul Weller had never made a secret of his passion for Northern Soul and classic Motown recordings, and in 'A Town Called Malice' he manages to pay homage to both (and to the Wigan Casino which closed its doors for good the previous year) whilst kicking against the pricks of a right wing government hell bent on inflicting social misery and injustice on the perceived enemy within - the working classes.

In 'A Town Called Malice', Weller paints a vivid picture of his contemporary Woking home town that manages to distil both essence and substance of the writings of the 'Angry Young Men' of the 1950's who described and railed against the social and political alienation of their times. Though updated by thirty years, Weller's defiantly left wing stance shows a world that has little changed:"A whole streets belief in Sunday's roast beef, gets dashed against the co-op. To either cut down on beer or the kids new gear, it's a big decision in a town called malice".

Arthur Seaton would have recognised those streets, Jo from 'A Taste Of Honey' would have appreciated that decision. And that was exactly Weller's point, and it was a point made with a startlingly evocative clarity in the couplet: "Rows and rows of disused milk floats stand dying in the dairy yard. And a hundred lonely housewives clutch empty milk bottles to their hearts. Hanging out their old love letters on
the line to dry". John Osbourne or Shelagh Delaney would have been pleased to have come up with lines of optimistic hopelessness as good, and yet the lyrics are only half the story here; as politicised as Weller undoubtedly was, he's savvy enough to know that his diatribe would change nothing and that a message reaches a wider audience when it comes gift wrapped with a bow: "I could go on for hours and I probably will, but I'd sooner put some joy back in this town called malice". And the music here is truly a joy.

From the opening lift of 'You Can't Hurry Love's bassline (albeit now plucked out with a masonary nail) to the 'thin wild mercury sound' organ swirl, drum fills and handclaps, 'A Town Called Malice' swings like a motherfucker and does not let up until close less than three minutes later. A short, sharp shock of a tune, it manages to sound ferociously modern and reassuringly traditional in its structure. You could remove the vocal track in it's entirety and what remains would be no less effective at filling a dancefloor, and there's something smugly subversive about mixing anger with such good time music that hits home harder than any number of hardcore punk acts screaming over a three chord thrash. 'A Town Called Malice' captures The Jam at their peak in terms of writing and playing, and at 2.52 long with a killer B side in 'Precious', it was as classic a 45 that had been released to date. Yet hindsight shows it couldn't last; Weller knew he was recycling ideas and recycling music within the current set up. The band were fast losing its effectiveness as a conduit for his vision and soon they would be no more.

1982 Kraftwerk: The Model

For my money, the genius of Kraftwerk was their ability to render precise, mathematical electronic music into something fluid; music that is all French curves rather than set squares and in practical terms it's the difference between the lumbering T-101 Terminator sounds of lesser bands and the smooth liquid T-1000 model that can shape itself to its environment. Which is what 'The Model' did in the musical landscape of 1982, despite being a four year old album track originally intended as the B side to 'Computer Love'.

In the Kraftwerk canon, 'The Model' is fairly unique in that it's quite short and utilises the traditional common structure of popular music. Allegedly inspired by Ralf Hutter's obsession for model Christa Becker, 'The Model' describes the lifestyle of the eponymous female in a stalkerish yet detached third person manner.

Unlike, say, 'Tainted Love', 'The Model' does not sound like someone singing over an electronic backing. In the hands of Kraftwerk, Hutter's dispassionate, emotionless vocals sound like they are emerging from the machines themselves as a by product of them going about the ruthlessly efficient business of producing the music. And it couldn't be any other way:

"She's a model and she's looking good
I'd like to take her home that's understood"

If these lyrics were sung straight then the whole thing would be relegated to ranks of the novelty act, but it's the complete and almost inhuman lack of interest that makes them so interesting. Hutter is casually observing and commenting on an attractive woman in cold machine logic rather than exclaiming 'look at the tits on that babe'.

"I saw her on the cover of a magazine
Now she's a big success, I want to meet her again"

The history of rock and roll is built around various notions of sex and shagging but the attraction here is not sexual, it's rendered almost as scientific fact in much the way that polar ends of a magnet will attract and you simply cannot imagine a Mick Jagger or a Bono or an N.E.Other 'rock star' approaching the subject in anything like the same way.

And being merely human, how could they? Throughout the eighties, Kraftwerk made a virtue of distancing themselves from their human alter egos and pushed the man machine concept to it's limits by sending electronic mannequins of themselves to play live at concerts. And even though Hutter and co went to extreme lengths to exorcise any element of the human condition from their music, what remained pulsed with a life of its own, much like HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey. And though they sang about robots and computers Kraftwerk's music always throbbed with a human pulse of it's own that was clinical but never cold.

Words like 'innovators' is bandied around far too readily within the realms of popular music where any old rope is put on a pedestal for the easily pleased to worship at, but Kraftwerk are a band for whom it can genuinely be said they gave more to the future than they took from the past. 'The Model' still sounds like it could have been recorded yesterday and both it and the band unwittingly (and probably unwillingly) inspired a great many of the acts who will appear in these lists. 'The Model' is not their best track, not by a long way, but its success and wider recognition cannot be begrudged nor its influence denied.

1982 Shakin' Stevens: Oh Julie

Another Shakin' Stevens single, another obscure-ish cover ver....oh, hang on, it's not. 'Oh Julie' is a bona fide Stevens original. As far as pastiche can be original that is.

Freed from the constraints of covering other people's songs, Steven's doesn't stray too far from the feel good, good time music tree (wouldn't it have been something if he'd gone Goth?), but far enough to replace the backbeat driven R&R rhythm of old with an accordion lead Cajun whirl that wouldn't be out of place soundtracking a barn dance.

For the lyrics, Stevens has taken down his 'Big Boys Book Of Rhyming Words' from the shelf and constructed some verse that any eight year old with learning difficulties would be proud to call their own:

"Whoa Julie, if you love me truly"
"Julie, love me only, Julie, don't be lonely"
"Baby, don't leave me, honey, don't grieve me",
"Stay with me, baby, lay with me maybe" (steady on Shaky!)

and so on, giving the the sneaking suspicion that there never was a girl called Julie and that he just chose the name because it had the most (and most convenient) rhymes.

'Oh Julie' sounds like something that was knocked up in minutes during the sound check and even Stevens' normally excitable delivery sounds more akin to a shoulder shrugging 'will this do' here. And clearly it did do because it got to number one, but I can't for the life of me imagine who would want to listen to this in the privacy of their own homes. Or anywhere really, because it commits the chief cardinal sin of any dancing party song - it's boring as hell.

1982 Bucks Fizz: The Land Of Make Believe

The second number one from the Eurovision winners, 'The Land Of Make Believe' is a surprising departure from the snappy, poppy fayre they'd served up previously. 'Making Your Mind Up' it's not.

Rather, the use of the child's voice and the random and rather surreal lyrics have always reminded me of Traffic's 'Hole In My Shoe'. But whereas Jim Capaldi was describing a leaky boot that was anchoring him to reality through a rather bad acid trip, it's unlikely that any of The Fizz had been breaking out the LSD to record this. So what's it all about?

The verses flow by with a purpose, with the oddly staccato vocals seemingly skipping and building to some great conclusion only to have it fall disappointingly flat at the chorus which doesn't quite make it; 'The land of make believeeeeeeee' just trails off awkwardly, missing a note or a beat or something to resolve it and it feels a bit like a perfect triple back flip marred by a shonky landing.

The lyrics to this were written by Peter Sinfield who had previously provided the words for King Crimson and Emerson, Lake and Palmer (he wrote "I Believe in Father Christmas" for example) so the man has some pedigree. But his claims that 'The Land Of Make Believe' was an attack on Margaret Thatcher's right wing social policies has to be taken with a cellarfull of salt:

"Something,
Nasty in your garden's,
Waiting patiently,
'Till it can have your heart"

Maybe. If you look hard enough. And it is a big departure from 'You gotta speed it up, you gotta slow it down", but when the meaning of something is buried so obscurely then it ceases to have any meaning at all, and anybody can see any face in any wallpaper if they look hard enough and want to see it. Far better I think to treat it as a harmless piece of nonsense that borrows quite heavily in tone from Chuck Mangione's own 'Land Of Make Believe' from 1973:

"How I love when my thoughts run to the land of make believe
Where everything is fun forever.
Children always gather around Mother Goose and all her rhyme
They fill the air with sounds of laughter.

Jack and Jill are hard at work helping children dream awhile,
And Snoopy's making smiles for grown-ups".

Yes, quite.

Anyway, part of the problem comes from over analysing I think, in much the way 'Baa Baa Black Sheep loses it's fun and innocence when it's examined for racism. Neither Sinfield nor any of the band were Bob Dylan and to try and impute some great meaning where none exists detracts from the fact that this is a good pop song that, while not built to last, would have aged far better had it not been drenched in some truly awful Linn drum programming. But there are worse crimes to commit in the world of popular music, and in this decade at least. Bucks Fizz are by no means the only band to stand accused of this.