LIST 81 - 09/12/11 (1981 special)

Hello again,

Yes, you've read the title right - it's a 1981 special. Having managed to do 20th-anniversary Lists for each of the last three years planted the seed in my mind to try to go back an extra decade, and in the end I wasn't too hard pushed to find a nice sample.

Quite a few of these emanate from childhood, 1981 being both the first year (as a ghastly, precocious, trivia sponge of a six-and-a-half-year-old) that I used to watch Top Of The Pops religiously and the first I was gifted a radio, and from then on the appetite for music developed quickly and voraciously. Mind, watching the disembodied head of John Lydon floating menacingly around the TV screen c/o the BBC vision mixer's trickery could easily have put me off TOTP for life. That was frightening!

The version of "We Could Send Letters" included is that from the original 7" release, and thus from Aztec Camera's debut; whilst "Tally Ho!" is the debut single from The Clean and could as a result conceivably lay claim to being one of the cornerstones on which Southern Hemisphere indiepop developed. Discuss!

A List of songs all from the same year clearly doesn't lend itself to a Then And Now feature, but I hope the conclusion of a song by the Teardrop Explodes leading into a song about the Teardrop Explodes passes muster as an alternative. [sings] I hope it does. It really doooooooooes... Thankyou.

J x



XTC – Smokeless Zone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt9f4Lh4OD8

PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED – Flowers of Romances
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E_0bBGjL70

AZTEC CAMERA – We Could Send Letters (original)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_6Y4oT7UQ

FSK – Teilnehmende Beobachtungen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5bqD040YjM

WIRE – Our Swimmer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUwb5De18PQ

NEW ORDER – Everything’s Gone Green
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRgHSxWnhqk

THE HIGSONS – I Don’t Want to Live with Monkeys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbnX_oLnJQA

SUGARHILL GANG – Apache (Jump On It)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQObWW06VAM

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY – Release the Bats
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R8pECW3UHs

IAN DURY & THE BLOCKHEADS – Spasticus Autisticus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKnBgJG9A8E

ANTI-PASTI – Let Them Free
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5x1amsbnG0

THE DURUTTI COLUMN – Enigma
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v0-GHSZuCA

JOHN COOPER CLARKE – Tw*t
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS5QMT-JUt4

THE CLEAN – Tally Ho!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVkC8W_-a-8

SCRITTI POLITTI – Lions After Slumber
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1ieWRclcfs

DEAD KENNEDYS – Too Drunk to F*ck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ7pgElCPXE

YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS - Clicktalk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-bdMST0ljI

YOKO ONO – Walking on Thin Ice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft7-xEiwvJw

KIRSTY MACCOLL – There’s a Guy Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL2GmaI3Xus

THE TEARDROP EXPLODES – Passionate Friend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGkrkcoTILc

THE FRESHIES – I Can’t Get “Bouncing Babies” by the Teardrop Explodes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvU8MddmEkw