Timeslip moment again...
...and back we swoosh once more to 1981, a landmark year pour moi. I had just started my first job (in the clerks' office at the Magistrates' Court) in October, and my new-found spending power happily coincided with a whole swathe of music for me to spend my pennies on!
New LP releases in October forty years ago included Depeche Mode Speak and Spell, Human League Dare and The Associates Fourth Drawer Down and what was to become the UK's best-selling record ever, Queen's Greatest Hits [and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's Architecture and Morality was on pre-order]...
In the news headlines? Norman Tebbit's famous "get on your bikes and look for work" speech at the Tory Party conference, an IRA nail-bomb at Chelsea Barracks killed two civilians and injured 40 people, the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat by members of his own armed forces, The Unabomber, CND, the judgement in the European court that Northern Ireland's laws criminalising gay sex contravened the European Convention on Human Rights, and the death of the telegram after 139 years. In our cinemas: The Fox and the Hound; History of the World: Part I; Endless Love. On telly: Bergerac; Tenko; and my favourite-ever series Brideshead Revisited.
And what of our charts this week in '81? The mighty Adam and the Ants Prince Charming had just been dethroned after four weeks at the top, and also present and correct were The Human League, Toyah, Depeche Mode, The Police, Bad Manners, Godley & Creme and Ottawan - but, holding off the onslaught of the fuckin' Birdie Song [to the mass applause of a grateful nation; it never did hit #1] was this magnificent cover of one of Leslie Gore's campest moments:
Love it - but four decades ago?!
Footnote:
Stars of 1981 Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet, Neil Buchanan (of children's TV show Art Attack!) and mullet-wearing DJ Pat Sharp are all 60 years old in October 2021, joining a mass of '80s "names" who've already passed that milestone this year - including Alison Moyet, Suggs, Martin Gore of Depeche Mode, Gillian Gilbert of New Order, Roland Gift of Fine Young Cannibals, Duran-Durannie Andy Taylor, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Jay Aston of Bucks Fizz, Lloyd Cole, Keren Woodward of Bananarama [and bandmate Sara's 60 in December], Olympians Fatima Whitbread and Carl Lewis, Heather Locklear, Christopher Atkins, "Curly Watts" in Coronation Street Kevin Kennedy, Harry Enfield, Eddie Murphy, Maxi Priest, Boy George, Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal of Tears for Fears, Woody Harrelson, Catherine Oxenberg, Enya and Michael J. Fox... Terrifying.
