Visage captures a synth pop peak on "Fade To Grey"

Visage : Fade To Grey

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On November 10, 1980 Visage released the UK#8 single "Fade To Grey", one the 80's ultimate synth pop hits. The band's debut album came out the same day. How could anyone watching the Godley and Creme directed video not believe they were witnessing the future, when men wore makeup and beautiful French women crouched suggestively? Everything that was great about 80's pop is right here, just a matter of month into the new decade.

Who is Visage? It's a who's who of UK pop. There's vocalist Steve Strange who may have first attracted attention as an extra in David Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes" video. There's Ultravox's Midge Ure on guitar and syths and violinist Billy Curie . From Magazine, there's guitarist John McGeoch and from Rich Kids there's drummer Rusty Egan. 

Midge Ure would say in 1983 there was no way the band would get back together to record a second album.

The trouble with Visage was that there were too many chiefs, six characters all wanting an equal say without putting in an equal amount of work. I was doing most of the writing and producing, and we all knew Steve [Strange] was the frontman, but when it became successful, jealousy and the nasty side of the business crept in. That was never the way it was intended. 

But for one album and its exceptional single Visage captured the essence of the decade. A crossroads: one way leading to the synth pop of Human League and Heaven 17; the other way leading to the New Romantic music of Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran. 

Ace of Spades is Motorhead's finest moment

Motorhead : Ace of Spades

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On November 8, 1980 Motörhead released the uk #4 album Ace of Spades. Recorded by the classic Motörhead lineup : bassist/vocalist Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister, “Fast” Eddie Clarke (guitar) and Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor on drums, Ace of Spades is as heavy and as sleazy a rock album as you’ll ever own. The title track, a UK#15 hit, may be the band’s finest moment. (“They say that I was born to lose/‘Cos gambling’s for fools/But that’s the way I like it baby/I don’t want to live forever “.

While Lemmy insisted his band played rock not heavy metal, Ace Of Spades had all the earmarks of the speed metal sound that would come to the forefront during the 1980’s: jackhammer drums, quicksilver guitars riffs, lead bass and throaty roaring vocals .

 In his five star review for Sounds Garry Bushell wrote “Motörhead are heavy metal in the only meaningful sense of the term – everyone else is just pretending.”

 

The Sound debut is post-punk recorded on the razor's edge

The Sound : I Can't Help Myself

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In the first week of November 1980 The Sound released Jeopardy, their critically-acclaimed debut album on the Korova label. Perhaps because of the band's generic "new wave" name,  I missed out on all things Sound. I rank Jeopardy as my best musical discovery from 1980. This is as energetic as post-punk gets, but it came at an awful price for songwriter Adrian Borland, who put his music ahead of his own mental health. On "I Can't Help Myself" he sings  "Left alone I'm with the one I fear".

The Sound. Adrian Borland is third from left.

I'll let the critics of 1980 have their say. Dave McCullough of Sounds gave the album a five star review, writing :

There's a richness and depth here that places Jeopardy alongside Boy (U2) as early eighties tonics for ailing mainstream rock, that gives the almost bankrupt era the spirit and sheer modernity of the best moderns. Its form is a practically incredible, but consistently effective synthesis of Teardrop-meet-Bunnymen ( and survives the strain). The Sound are on to a winner...an inconspicuous but real missing-link between the Modernist Jam and the vibrantly Post Mod Joy Division.

Steve Sutherland of Melody Maker also gave the album the magazine's highest possible rating. He wrote: 

"Jeopardy is one of those records that makes me want to throw all the windows open, crank it up to full volume and blast it out to the world. It clears my head of boredom, strips away the gloom and single-handedly restores my belief in the power of pop to make people stop, think and question. [...] Jeopardy has got more spirit, more soul and more downright honesty about it than any other record I've heard this year".

The album did not sell in big numbers. Adrian Borland threw himself in front of a train in 1999, dying before the reputation of Jeopardy began building to the point where it is now ranked among the best 20 albums of 1980 by RateYourMusic, ahead of those by The Cure, Bunnymen, and Teardrop Explodes.

The Damned get damned moody on The Black Album

The Damned : The History of the World ( Part 1)

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On November 3, 1980 The Damned released The Black Album. Goth elements enter the band's punk sound. Originally, fans got two discs. The first is the studio album featuring the UK#51 single "The History of the World (Part1) ", "Wait For the Blackout" and "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". The second disc featured a strange 17 minute piece called "Curtain Call" on one side with live versions of fan favorites on the other. 

The second disc upset the band. Rat Scabies told the press "Just as we are trying to hammer home a value for money policy, the radio company come up a scalper!If any of our fans have been caught with this turkey, bring it to a gig and we'll autograph it as a gesture of good faith"

 

Adam and the Ants drive the "final nail in the coffin of punk"

Adam and the Ants : The Human Beings

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On November 3, 1980 Adam and the Ants released the UK#1 album Kings of the Wild Frontier. While the album wound up in American cut-out bins where I found a cassette copy in a Woolworth's, Kings of the Wild Frontier created a huge sensation in the U.K. and Europe where Adam Ant woke up one morning to discover he was the biggest pop star in all the land. How did they achieve such fame and sales?

"We stole what we could, like magpies," guitarist Marco Pirroni said. "We used ocarinas, echo chambers, textures from John Barry and Ennio Morricone soundtracks, rockabilly guitar riffs from Duane Eddy and Hank Marvin. We were even twanging rulers on desks and recording the results!"

Stan Keaton of Sounds gave the album a 5 star review, writing "if you're expecting a half dozen re-workings of the jungle drum beat of  (UK#4) "Dog Eat Dog" and "Kings" then forget it. A whole quilt of styles are played out here. It's the Ants' most accessible work to date, wholly satisfying and without doubt one of the year's most exuberant releases."

I played my Woolworth's cassette quite a bit, but it's not like I wore face paint out in public. Much.

As I wrote earlier the Ant Invasion was in full swing. You can't say you weren't warned. The band made their intentions known. On "Jolly Roger" they chant in unison "It's your money that we want/ And your money we shall have!" Ant called the album "the final nail in the coffin of punk".

 

Bauhaus release Goth classic In The Flat Field

Bauhaus : Stigmata Martyr

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On November 3, 1980 Bauhaus released their debut album In The Flat Field on 4AD Records. The album, which sounds like a soundtrack to your worst nightmare, has achieved legendary status as the first true goth album. On "Stigmata Martyr" Peter Murphy, raised a Roman Catholic, recites "In the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit" in Latin. On stage, lit starkly for dramatic purposes, he would act as though he were being crucified.

Red Starr of Smash Hits was not impressed with the album:

Mostly it just sounds like Banshees reject material - dark, edgy songs of soulless waffle posing as tortured imagery with hardly any melodic content- and no amount of self important vocals, shrill guitars or pounding drums can inject life where none belongs.

NME described the album as "nine meaningless moans and flails bereft of even the most cursory contour of interest, a record which deserves all the damning adjectives usually leveled at grim-faced 'modernists'." Reviewer Andy Gill then ultimately dismissed them as "a hip Black Sabbath". Dave McCullough of Sounds was also negative: "No songs. Just tracks (ugh). Too priggish and conceited. Sluggish indulgence instead of hoped for goth-ness. Coldly catatonic."

Bauhaus would have the final say. Any Goth seeking inclusion in that dreary world apparently needed this album as a passport. 

Stray Cats release Runaway Boys and ignite rockabilly revival

Stray Cats : Runaway Boys

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On November 1, 1980 Stray Cats ignited a rockabilly revival with the release of their UK#9 single  "Runaway Boys".  Earlier that year NME raved about an American band that had become "a hot property, their every move charted by a swarming posse of A+R men". The band was called The Stray Cats, a Long Island trio of teens from Jerry Seinfeld's hometown. They weren't catching on in New York City clubs so they packed up their bags, including Lee Rocker's six foot tall acoustic bass, and moved to England where they were called "pioneers of postmodern rockabilly and arguably the hottest band currently doing the rounds on an otherwise uninspiring London gig circuit." 

Word of their performances attracted both record execs and luminaries like Jerry Dammers, The Pretenders, members of The Clash, The Banshees and even Jagger, Richards and Ronnie Lane. The Stray Cats played Eddie Cochran covers, but they already had a strong set of originals like "Rumble In Brighton" and "Runaway Boys". 

 Arista Records signed The Stray Cats in September, sending Brian Setzer, Slim Jim Phantom and Rocker directly into the studio to record their debut 45. From Smash Hits: