Listomania! - 1981

Just after we got back from New York City in December of 1980, Debbie informed me that she was indeed pregnant with child number 2. Being a veteran of such things by now, I happily took it in stride and started working bucketloads of overtime. We moved into a brand new townhouse and I painted and decorated the new baby's room. Ultrasound was brand new and they gave Debbie one and then handed me a Polaroid of my new child. It was a very grainy black and white shot and it looked like a goldfish to me. Taylor (I liked the name) Noriko (after Debbie's Dad Norisuke) Paul was born nearly 2 weeks late on Friday,July 17, 1981. Weighing in at 10 lbs-plus, she damned near killed her poor Mom, who is about 5' tall and pretty tiny. Medicine wasn't as precise and careful as it is now. I was present for her birth and I started to worry when they passed me an oxygen mask and told me to put it over Debbie's nose and mouth. She kept passing out from the pain, I suppose, but at the time, I said to the doctor "Do something, she keeps passing out! Why isn't there someone here to give her this oxygen! I'm not a doctor!" Then, I really started to panic when he turned to a nurse and said,"Maybe we should have done a Caesarean." Maybe?! Maybe?!! It occurred to me that maybe I was in need of an oxygen mask myself! Somehow (I know how, but I'll spare you the gory details, dear readers) Taylor was born and they cleaned her up and passed her to me and my first thought was that she looked like a little miniature Buddha. So, for the first few months of her life, she was known as such. I had a ballgame in St. Thomas the next day, so I took Gord with me and had the wives of some of my teammates look after him while I was playing. So, all through the game, while out on the field, I would hear, "Hey Dad, are we going to bring Mommy home today? Is my new sister my sister?" and other burning questions to his 3 year old mind. Of course, everyone was howling at him the whole game and I was quite happy when it finished. Taylor was a quiet, happy baby, who was easily pleased and pretty content, as opposed to her much more demanding brother. She slept through the night right from day 1 and I was spared those awful 3 in the morning feedings. She is now 29 (gulp!) and is quite a stunning and smart young woman who can keep a whole room in stitches and is not as quiet as she was as a baby. Like her old man, she is obsessed with music and unlike her old man, she can play pretty much any instrument there is, including horns, guitars and keyboards. She lights up my life with her smile and I'm as proud of her as I am of Gord. I'm very lucky to call her amongst my best friends in this world! Music in 1981 was quite different to anything I had listened to before. I was totally into stuff from the U.K. and started to become more trendy by embracing the New Romantic movement with all their hair-dos and synthesizers. Here's the list:

Top 10 Of 1981

10. Ghost Town - The Specials

Remember Chuck and Lady Di's wedding? Well, this tune about race riots and unemployment in the U.K. was #1 at the time of that fairytale wedding. Talk about fantasy meeting reality! Right-wing skinheads had a habit of turning up at Specials gigs, disrupting the shows with violence and racial slurs at the blacks in the band and the audience. Coupled with the rise of unemployment under Thatcher, the pot boiled over and several cities burned, including the Specials' hometown of Coventry. As a result, several clubs where the bands used to play were closed and the cops started arresting people of colour without cause. The song itself has a heavy air about it, even though it has a slow, skanky ska beat. Jerry Dammers' organ playing dominates for me, sounding like a carnival organ at times, and like a funeral dirge at others. The horn section adds great punch and there is some excellent soloing. "This place, is coming like a ghost town, no job to be found in this country, Can't go on no more, the people getting angry." No work on Maggie's farm no more.

9. Joan Of Arc - Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

This has to be one of the most gorgeous melodies ever written. This was the era of machinery folks, and this song is all synths and drum machines and mellotron. I love the beginning line, "A little Catholic girl who's fallen in love." The vocal is so earnest and sincere, sung by lead vocalist Andy McCluskey. These guys had a rather large following in Toronto, even before this, back as far as 1979. This is the first single from the album Architecture And Morality, considered by most critics to be their best. While playing a show in Toronto, Canada's Martha & The Muffins opened for them. Martha Ladley, the Muffins' keyboard player, came up with the name Architecture And Morality when McCluskey was trying to think of a name for their new record. They went on to have much more commercial success when their song If You Leave was included in the soundtrack to the movie Pretty In Pink in 1986. "Now she's on her way to another land. We never understood why she gave her hand." Put your left hand in, put your left hand out......

8. Message Of Love - The Pretenders

I love the way they count this one in with the clicking drumsticks. Then it's all floor toms and chunky chords, all disjointed and so good! Are those guitars? The funny thing about these lists is what makes it and what doesn't. I like the Pretenders debut album a lot. I like it a whole lot better than the 2nd album, which this song is taken from. But, there just wasn't room in the 1980 list for a song from the debut. So, weird stuff like that keeps happening with these lists. The album, creatively titled Pretenders II, was the last to be recorded with the original band line-up. Soon after its release, the guitarist, James Honeyman-Scott, died of a cocaine overdose. Shortly before that, bassist Pete Farndon was fired for his drug problem. He died about 1 year later from a heroin overdose. Chrissie Hynde had come to London from Akron, Ohio in 1973 in hopes of starting a career in the music biz. She wrote for the NME for awhile and then got the band together in 1978. I love her purring, tough- chick vocals on those first 2 records. She was a pioneer in being a female fronting her own band of guys and she proved tough enough to handle whatever was thrown her way. "Now look at the people in the streets, in the bars. We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Not if you're face-down in the gutter!

7. Seconds - Human League

This is one of those songs where only synthesizers can work. It is a very sombre treatise on assassination, purportedly about the killing of JFK. The music is droning, the drum machine pounds out a monotone beat, and Phil Oakey sings it in his clear and cool baritone. This song is from the biggest album of '81. Dare. It brought synth-pop to the masses, with the big hit Don't You Want Me blaring out of stores, bars and cars that summer. This was always the song for me though. The subject matter really hit home, especially coming just a few months after John Lennon being gunned down. The finishing touch is the dirge-like chord changes which set the mood perfectly. The refrain of "It took seconds of your time to take his life" is absolutely haunting. "All day, hiding from the sun. Waiting for the golden one, waiting for your fame." I never wanted to be famous that badly.

6. Charlotte Sometimes - The Cure

This is the sound of The Cure back then - very minimalist, spooky and swirling with Gothic imagery. The drums sound like they were covered with a blanket and recorded in the closet. Robert Smith's voice is cloaked in restraint, almost muffled. Apparently, the song was inspired by a children's novel of the same name. The melody is beautiful and sad and the lyrics sing out about Charlotte's inevitable drift into darkness. Simon Gallup is a great bass player, but the thin production on this song buries his bass under the mix. I like the live version of this even better, as the sound is clearer and you can hear how great these guys are at playing their instruments."Charlotte sometimes crying for herself, Charlotte sometimes dreams a wall around herself." Is that what they mean by Charlotte's Web?

5. Absolute Beginners - The Jam

Ok, chin up everybody! Here's something a little more uptempo and uplifting. This is a single-only release by The Jam, who didn't put out an album in '81. Driven along by some wicked guitar playing by Paul Weller, this is the start of his exploration of soul music. The horns are brilliant, Stax-Volt inspired blasts of brass, punctuating the beat laid down by drummer Rick Buckler. The words and title were inspired by Weller's favourite book at the time by Colin MacInnes, which was turned into a very bad movie a couple of years later. The little trumpet tribute to Penny Lane ends the song on a very high note. This is a very danceable tune as well, so get up offa that thing! "Come see the tyrants panic see their crumbling empires fall, then tell 'em we don't fight for fools 'cos love is in our hearts!" Panic on the streets of London.....

4. Arabian Knights - Siouxsie & The Banshees

Here come the Goths again! From their 4th album, Juju, this song is quite a bit ahead of its time lyrically as it comments on the treatment of women in the Arab culture. New drummer Budgie is the star here, all pounding tom-toms and slashing cymbals. The guitar sounds kind of Middle Eastern to give the song context, and Siouxsie puts in a great vocal, especially during the parts where she chants "ho-ha-ha-ho." The band was really starting to hit their stride by now and they could really create an interesting atmosphere and feel in their songs."Veiled behind screens, kept as your baby machine, whilst you conquer more orifices of boys, goats and things." Ewww!

3. Love Song - Simple Minds

This is about as close to Disco as I ever get. What a huge groove! The bass just carries things, moving your feet and making you get out on the dance floor, willingly or not. From their album Sons And Fascination, this is the first song I ever heard by these Glaswegians, who would become my fave band for a few years, from '83 to '86. I love the way Jim Kerr could deliver his vocals like a preacher, making a believer out of me in his talent, if not the almighty. There is guitar in this song too, but it is not the featured instrument, even though Charlie Burchill could really play. It fills in the gaps though and lends a squealing bit of menace to things. "I cut my hair, paint my face, break a finger, tell a lie, so well so well." Well, it was the '80s.....

2. Show Of Strength - Echo & The Bunnymen

This is the lead track from their 2nd album. Heaven Up Here, my fave album by them. This song has all the Bunnymen earmarks - the bubbly bass by Les Pattinson, the searing leads and jangly fills by guitarist Will Sergeant, the crisp timekeeping of the late drummer Pete De Freitas, and, of course, the Liverpudlian foghorn vocals of the inimitable Ian McCullough. The Bunnymen were always just weird enough to allow the cool kids to like them, but melodic enough for others to take notice. This is classically dark and urgent Bunnymen stuff here, but the real standout is always McCullough. He is one of the greatest frontmen of all time, in my humble opinion. Oh yeah, I do so love the a capella ending too. "A funny thing is always a funny thing, though sadly things just get in the way." Funny, like a fart joke, especially to us guys, right fellas?

1. Say Hello, Wave Goodbye - Soft Cell

Ok, this song is, I'm pretty sure, the single best breakup song ever written. Sung by the great Marc Almond, it is pure heartbreak. Call it dramatic, call it overdone if you will, but it will fall on deaf ears here. Any song that starts out with the line "Standing in the door of the Pink Flamingo crying in the rain" cannot be dismissed so easily. One is compelled to listen, as I was. and the song just grabs your heart and throws it on the floor and stomps it into tiny little pieces. Dave Ball wrote the music and played and programmed all the machines on this song, and he did a brilliant job, certainly on the little lead synth line that runs through the whole song. This was back in the '80s remember, when dressing like a gay sold records, but actually admitting it to the lurid British tabloids didn't sell anything but newspapers. The hypocrisy of the times dictated that a gay man, Marc Almond, had to change the lyrics to make them about a girl. If you don't like this song, that's OK, but I fail to see why as it is a masterpiece! "Take your hands off me. I don't belong to you, you see. Take a look at my face for the last time. I never knew you, you never knew me, say hello goodbye." Crushing!