In 1978 English band The Motors reached Number 4 on the UK charts with their single “Airport”.
This was another song I got to know through it being played by the resident band at the Majestic Hotel in Palmerston North, New Zealand, when I was a student.
The Motors reached Number 13 in the UK with “Forget About You”.
This is the album version of “Airport”:
I also found this live version of “Airport” from 1978:
Here’s “Forget About You” live:
Both of these tracks are from the album “Approved By The Motors”, as I have just confirmed by looking at my record collection.
And for something a little different, from the previous year, here’s “Dancing The Night Away” (later also covered by Cheap Trick):
Magazine is another of those UK New Wave bands whose music I first heard played by the house band (Snatch) at the Majestic Hotel in Palmerston North, New Zealand, prompting me to buy their album “Second Daylight” with songs like “Rhythm Of Cruelty”, “Believe That I Understand”, “I Wanted Your Heart”, “Talk To The Body”, “Permafrost”, “The Thin Air”, “Feed The Enemy” and “Back To Nature”.
Listening to some of the tracks now I’m not so sure why I bought it, but I think it might have been “Rhythm Of Cruelty” I heard at the Majestic (though I don’t recall the women at the pub being dressed like this…):
“Believe That I Understand” might have been another one I heard in Palmerston North:
Not sure about “I Wanted Your Heart”:
Here are some more tracks from “Secondhand Daylight”, some of them seem a bit obscure for a “post punk” band, but you might like them, so I’ll let you make up your own mind…
“Talk To The Body”:
“Permafrost”:
“The Thin Air”:
“Feed The Enemy”:
“Back To Nature”:
That last one wasn’t quite what I was expecting, think I confused it with “Slow Motion” by Ultravox…
Squeeze are a UK band (I always thought they were called UK Squeeze) who began charting in the late Seventies with songs like “Goodbye Girl”, “Cool For Cats” and “Up The Junction” and continued to record in the Eighties and Nineties.
Actually I’ve just seen that they were called UK Squeeze initially outside the UK to avoid legal conflicts with other bands in North America and Australia, this must have been the time when I first became aware of them.
I don’t know any of the songs from their first album, “Squeeze”, but I do recognise numbers from the second, “Cool For Cats”.
Two tracks from this one reached Number 2 on the UK charts, “Cool For Cats” and “Up The Junction”.
I remember the live band at the Majestic Hotel in Palmerston North, New Zealand, playing “Cool For Cats” in 1979.
Most of their other songs I know I actually taped off a live show in Germany a few years later.
Here’s the 1978 track “Goodbye Girl”:
“Cool For Cats”, from the album of the same name, went to No. 2 in the UK and 5 in Australia:
Many Squeeze songs tell a story, and the 1979 track “Up The Junction”, another No. 2 hit, is no exception (if you’ve heard of the big railway junction just south of London, you’ll get the play on words in this one) :
The following year Squeeze again had a number of singles, one of them was “Pulling Mussels (From The Shell)”, sung here live on TV a few years later in 1985:
Another Squeeze favourite from around this time is “Tempted”:
And “Black Coffee In Bed”:
“Annie Get Your Gun” is a typical Squeeze track:
And this is “Annie Get Your Gun” live in 1982:
I hear Squeeze are together and touring again, must keep an eye out for them…
Looking for a present for my sister in the late Seventies, I bought her the 1978 The Cars album, aptly titled “The Cars”, so I could also listen to tracks like “Just What I Needed”, “My Best Friend’s Girl” and “Good Times Roll”, which I had heard covered live by resident band Snatch at the Majestic Hotel in New Zealand’s university town of Palmerston North.
“Touch And Go” from the 1980 album “Panorama” is another track from The Cars I like, as is “Shake It Up” from the album of the same name, which apparently came out in 1981, though I seem to remember hearing the track before that. (As it was written years earlier by Ric Ocasek, I guess that’s possible.)
A later song by The Cars that has always been a favourite of mine – though I’m not even sure I knew it was from them – is their 1984 hit “Drive”, which was featured at the Live Aid concert in 1985.
This song from 1978 was at Live Aid too…. “Just What I Needed”:
The huge crowd at Live Aid certainly enjoyed it, but I kind of prefer the earlier version, this reminds me of the atmosphere at the pub where I used to dance to this song in the late Seventies:
“My Best Friends Girl”:
“Good Times Roll”:
Can’t say I remember “All Mixed Up”, also from the first album, but I like the sound:
I definitely have memories of “Touch And Go”, from the “Panorama” album:
“Since You’re Gone”, from the “Shake It Up” album, has the feel of an Irish singalong (makes me think of The Pogues!):
And of course, the title track from that album, “Shake It Up” itself:
“Drive”, from the 1984 album “Heartbeat City”:
The sadness in this song is made more poignant still knowing that the singer, The Cars bass player Benjamin Orr, died just a decade and a half later of pancreatic cancer. He was still performing live six days before his death.
Because “Drive” is such a beautiful song, here it is again live:
British New Wave band Ultravox had a hit in 1980 with “Vienna”, but except for the singing of the title, to quote the song itself, “this means nothing to me”.
What I do recognise, however, is “Slow Motion”, from their 1978 album “Systems Of Romance”, which I have.
I haven’t played it for ages, but I remember “Slow Motion” because the band Snatch at the Majestic Hotel in Palmerston North, New Zealand, used to play it when I went there regularly around that time as a student.
I just listened to several of the other tracks from that album, most of them didn’t really resonate, but there were a couple that brought back memories.
Apparently the album didn’t sell that well at the time, but I bought it, on the strength of hearing the tracks that Snatch played.
Here’s “Vienna”, their first mainstream commercial success it would seem, just out of the Seventies in 1980:
This one’s more like it, “Slow Motion”, from 1978 album “Systems Of Romance”:
From the same album, “Maximum Acceleration”:
And another one from “Systems Of Romance”, called “I Can’t Stay Long”:
