5. Gary Numan – Replicas/Living Ornaments/The Pleasure Principle
Here’s how it went (allegedly – I didn’t do History at school)
Top of The Pops Studio “bod”, sometime August 1979: OK, Gary, we remember what you were like when “Are Friends Electric” went to Number 1, but what we would REALLY like you to do now, is to, well, you know, PLAY THE GAME. PLEASE?? Smile a bit. SMII…III…LE!! That’s it, Gary ! Bit less make up, people! Well done, Gary! Errr…Gary?
Gary: No. F*ck off. I don’t do smiling. I do moody. And mean. And dangerous. That’s what the f*ck I do. Could be worse, I might not do stairs. Or soft lighting. Good luck in the future with those, by the way. What I’m ALSO going to do is have somebody playing the keyboards whose sole role is to hit ONE key on the piano to simulate a handclap. HE might do smiling. Go ask him. I don’t. So F*ck off.
And thus, Gary did Cars on Top Of The Pops. And it went to Number One. Britain fell in love. Vince Clarke decided to jack in his Accountancy course at college (I dunno, I’m not Wikipedia) and buy a keyboard (or three). Phil Oakey got a haircut. So did Martin Fry. And a nice suit.
Anyway, Gary! He’s Mean! Moody! Dangerous! He doesn’t smile! He went on Multi-Coloured Swap Shop! He didn’t even smile on that!
The music? Does it matter? Oh, alright then, listen to anything from him in this era and remember that British Electronica owes, well, most things to Gary Numan. (Just don’t tell Brian Eno).
Don’t listen to: Music for Chameleons. Expunge those three words from your memory. And certainly don’t watch the video.
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5 Comments
Selected Ambient Works vol. II is vastly superior! At times achingly sad, often utterly terrifying, but never anything less than transcendentally enthralling. Some of 85-92 has dated horribly, but I doubt Volume II will ever age. If the brain patterns that make up lucid dreams could be set to music, that’s exactly how they’d sound.
You do have to hear the vinyl version, though. The CD version omits Stone In Focus, one of the most stunning and affecting pieces of ambient music ever written.
At the time, I was more caught up with the whole “Aphex Twin signs to Warp, let’s go for the big sell” aspect. He didn’t help, by not giving the tracks titles, but calling them “Textures”. Uh-huh. When Richard James is on top form, he towers over say, Boards of Canada and Carl Craig but SAW II isn’t top form. It’s hype over content. Sorry.
Nobody towers over Boards of Canada (sorry), and I first heard SAW II almost a decade after its initial release. I’ve therefore never been prithee to a single piece of hype, which surely alone proves that a lot can be said of its content?
Great to see my favourite genre acknowledged but to ignore Depeche Mode seems a bit remiss I can name 3 albums during this period that would have made the top 5 not to mention there influence on a number of acts that followed after 89
David. Bowie. Low.