XTC - “Sleepyheads”, outtake from Drums & Wires, released on Coat Of Many Cupboards box set in 2002.

This track was originally an instrumental demo called “Disco”. It later surfaced in a slower form on a flexi-pop single as the song “Looking For Footprints.”

Unfortunately the best version of this song, titled “Sleepyheads” on the box set, was never released until 20 years after “Looking For Footprints”, and it’s easily the best version of them all. Drums & Wires is a classic XTC album, but there are at least two songs that “Sleepyheads” could have bumped off the album in order to improve it.

Bill Nelson’s Red Noise “Don’t Touch Me (I’m Electric)” from 1979’s Sound-On-Sound

Somewhere between Contortions, Devo, and early XTC, Bill Nelson decided to try out the New Wave/No Wave synth-punk-spazz-pop thing. This was a very brief phase for Bill Nelson, just barely post Be-Bop Deluxe, just barely before his solo career.

Cabaret Voltaire - “Sensoria (12” mix)” (1984 - original on Micro-Phonies)

While there are many styles Cabaret Voltaire were incorporating in their mid 80s period on Virgin Records, they were creating just as many subtle styles.  (More on that in a bit…)

Mi Sex “Computer Games” (1979) - It’s highly possible the excellent tumblr newwavetimewarp may have already blogged this one, but the video is certainly worth repeating. This would have been a big MTV hit, had it been only a couple of years late.

“Love Is The Slug” by We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Gonna Use It was a perfect musical stop-gap between the genesis of female punk groups such as Runaways, early Slits, Kleenex, etc. and Riot Grrl groups in the 90s.  This is the Bargainous Longerer Mix, produced by Martin Rushent, from the 12” single released in 1986.

I stress the word “musical” in the last sentence.  The aforementioned groups from the late 70s were fiercely independent in their approaches to their music, which is why we thankfully still talk about them today.  In the 90s, not only were the initial wave of Riot Grrl bands fiercely independent, but just plain fierce, on and off the stage.  The latter left a stronger imprint in regards to succinctly wrapping punk rock and feminism — primarily thanks to Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, Team Dresch, and others.

As fun as Fuzzbox (shorthand) were, they had nothing in relation to female bands on either side. Judging from their looks, they seemed like they formed as a reaction to Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop”, which was an international hit the previous year; and they didn’t feel “She Bop“‘s rock volume matched the dirtiness of the lyrics.

Still, it’s hard to imagine an intro that’s as pounding on the toms as “Love Is The Slug“‘s. The fuzz-psych punk that’s wrapped around what sounds like an old rockabilly pop song combined with four women that are trying to affect Adam Ant still manages to evoke glee to this day.  That and this song, admittedly, is a pretty damn close predecessor to Le Tigre’s “Deceptacon”

Ononos “Nonono” - a Yoko Ono/Screamers inspired group that’s rumored to be operating in gutters in the historic Seattle Pioneer Square tunnels.  Best to leave the nosferatu be.

Plastics doing “Copy” live on TV in Japan in 1980.

Plastics, a synth-punk pop group from Tokyo, ended too soon.  Their most known appearance across the Pacific was on a 1981 episode of SCTV where Gerry Todd (played by Rick Moranis), a smug video DJ who inadvertently foreshadowed MTV (just barely), played their video for “Top Secret Man” after a Talking Heads video on his program “The Gerry Todd Show.”  The song featured here is “Cards.”

Both songs appear on their one album released internationally in 1981, Plastics (titled Welcome Back in Japan), which didn’t ignite. That’s too bad, because Plastics would have likely had subsequent albums that progressed from the tight Talking Heads/B-52’s/Devo triangle they had exhausted.  Plastics itself consisted of re-recordings of songs culled from their previous two albums (released only in Japan in 1980) Welcome Plastics and Origato Plastico. And it’s likely the band were really itching to move onto something different.

Plastics are one of the more curious “what if” scenarios of the early 80s.