I've got a Cosmic Messenger cassette by Jean-Luc Ponty. It gets jazzy in the middle, and may become tiresome. I think the first track, Cosmic Messenger and the seventh track, Ethereal Mood, are both accessible and, well, ethereal, I like them a lot.
Not to my knowledge. Duran started out as support for the equally futuristic Hazel O'Connor Within months they were bigger than her. Reportedly Princess Diana's favourite group they were the darlings of the Smash Hits magazine brigade. I'm not really sure when Def Leppard started to become popular, although I knew two sisters in the early 1990s who were big fans. Listening to the track you posted to me it sounds as if it could have come straight from the 1970s when there were numerous rock bands doing similar numbers. This is something I like which rock fans were listening to when I was at school Of course by the mid 1980s Duran Duran had become an established act and it was synth bands like AHA that were the latest thing. I just clicked over to the video and saw Still clearly the age of the Boombox
This is the only A-Ha song known in the U.S. because it is the only A-Ha song played on FM radio in the U.S. And this is, as far as I know, the only music video by A-Ha remastered in 4K. These guys have many other great songs, but this fixation on a single song make them almost a one-hit band. YouTube and streaming music services have been a blessing, allowing everyone to hear the "long tail" of music that have not made it into MTV rotation back then and that was — and is — not played on Top 40 radio stations. OTOH, speaking of 4K videos, a couple of months ago an iconic George Michael's video has been released for public viewing on YouTube (it was remastered in 2017 or so for a doco about George Michael). This video definitely was played and over-played back in 1990s. But still looks great:
I agree completely. AHA had three top two albums in a row in the UK and were considered big enough to do the Jame Bond theme, putting them in the same league as Duran Duran. Until I met my wife I had always thought of Alphaville as being a "One Hit Wonder" with Big In Japan, which actually got played on Sounds of the Eighties last night. I had never heard "Forever Young" which is a far better song but only made No.98 in the U.K. charts compared to being a Swedish number 1. I can only think that the record company UK representatives had other priorities and didn't promote it. Either that or the lyrics were considered taboo. Bizarrely the video was filmed in the U.K.
Last one one for tonight. Very futuristic for 1975 and the Solina strings still sound superb on whatever DAC is inside the PC
One of the coolest movies to come out of the 80's with a very different soundtrack that, unfortunately was never released as a soundtrack, Real Genius launched Val Kilmer to superstardom. One of my favorite songs was I'm Falling from The Comsat Angles. This is the entire song clip from the movie, maybe I liked it because of all of the boomboxes! Watch the clip to find out why there's so many boomers....
Playing at our local arthouse theatre, REPO Man, yep it was an indy when it came out with a killer soundtrack, the Circle Jerks contributed this accoustic version of their mega-hit!
Who can forget the mega-hit from Freeez with a million boomers in the video? Does anybody own one of these from the video? This song still has some legs, I still like it 28 years later...
They played this on the Wave 105 Golden hour this morning which was 1981 and I was thinking "You don't get a more 1980s sound than this" so it was big surprise to me to read on Wikipedia when it is actually a 1970s recording which didn't make the charts until the third attempt. That also explains why it doesn't sound like Japan's other tracks from the same time. I might have to check out the 1979 album in case there are more like this.
Great songs with boomboxes, next Suicidal Tendencies, Institutionalized, a band I never got to see live unfortunately.
I just caught up with last weeks Sounds of the 1980s and Gary Davies pointed out that it was the Sinclair ZX81s (my first computer) Fortieth Birthday and played Youngsters will probably think it is a song about Tinder It isn't surprising that the instrumental was the title tune for the UKs computer education TV programmes. Time to find out what is predicted for the future
I have known of this track for at least six years but having played it last week it has been stuck in my brain. What is amazing that the entire track is a MIDI file played on a 26 year old ISA soundcard. I have both the soundcard and a Pentium 3 laptop with one built in.