S’Express - “Superfly Guy (The Fluffy Bagel Mix)” (1988)

303! 303! 303!

This was the first song I heard that bludgeoned ears with that infamous 303 bass synthesizer sound, very popular in acid house.  Initially, I heard *of* the track via a Bomb The Bass track (“Shake It”) that teased with a sample of this, leaving me wondering where the hell to get the full thing.  I found the “Superfly Guy” Cd-single shortly after, used, which had this as its final track.

If there’s such a thing as wearing out aluminum pits and valleys, this CD single was one of the first for me.

All that and a Texas Chainsaw Massacre sample to boot! 

Wire “Eardrum Buzz (single version)” from 1989. Wire’s biggest hit. Tons of cameos! Wire at their wackiest!  Colin almost Stooge-esque! (As in The Three Stooges, not the, um, Stooges.) Graham with a military cut, sans mullet! Bruce with a hat, wig, makeup, shades, and tambourine!  Robert Gotobed being very Gotobed.  And one of the best prototypes of modern indie pop ever recorded.

Stump’s “Chaos” (from 1988’s A Fierce Pancake)

Take Captain Beefheart worship, add highly intensely campy frontman, manage to get both Hugh Jones and Holger Hiller to produce your one and only album, and.. well, the results are strange, but highly inventive and unique.

I can’t blame anyone for not being able to deal with the front man in this video, or even his singing. You either love him or hate him, I guess.

Has there ever been a greater band from Cork, Ireland?

“Don Quichotte” was a novelty Latin synth pop hit by the French group Magazine 60.  While the group are classified as italodisco, “Don Quichotte” doesn’t showcase any such traits. If anything, it’s a humorous extension of the subtle clave rhythms present throughout Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express album (hat tip to Jeff Chang for that observation), but adding some strange characters and sounds over it, making this track more akin to Yello, if anybody else. The version here is the extended remix done by Martin Rodriguez for the U.S. 12” release on Baja Records.

“Don Quichotte” arrived at a puzzled crossroads for electronic dance pop. The forefathers of synth pop were waning - Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk both. There were more novelty hits than longevity hits that year. This track seems like an odd crossroads/rest stop for future late 80s dance styles such as freestyle (called “latin dance pop” then) and elektroclash.  Either way, this song dropped like a bomb on Los Angeles dance radio stations and dance floors when it came out.

None of the above will change the fact that the song is batshit insane, especially when you climax with the words “Marijuana, wha…what’s going on? You’ve got a whole new brain, I feel crazy!” “¡NO SEÑOR, DON QUIXOTE Y SANCHO PANZA NO ESTAN AQUI!” (Bless you, crazy French Latin synth-popsters.)

Artists United Against Apartheid “Sun City” (1986) — while the song is very much of its time (to put it mildly), the video is a bit cooler than I remember. There’s a lot more momentum in the cameos, the walking, the backdrops… they actually rock instead of stand in place like blessed dashboard dancer dolls. Even Bono isn’t as relatively embarrassing as he is in his own band’s videos.

The oddest thing is Ringo.  Didn’t know he literally sounded like Keith LeBlanc drum programming.. OH WAIT