Happy Birthday King of Synthpop

 

Today Vince Clarke turns 65 and it is time to pay tribute to his work here. Born in Essex he studied violin and piano. Influenced by Sparks, Human League and Fat Gadget he formed with a schoolmate a short lived band which became Depeche Mode after Martin Gore and Dave Gahan joined the band. Clarke wrote the most of the songs for their debut album Speak & Spell, a record that changed everything in synthpop. Not only that they were an all-synthesizer band, they were clever enough to write songs with great hooks.

Shortly after this album he left the band, because the sound of them got a darker touch and he formed with Alison Moyet, another schoolmate, Yazoo. They released two albums and with Upstairs at Eric's they reached the charts. Since then, it has become clear that Clarke's songs need a great voice to come to full fruition.

As erratic as he appears, he dedicated himself to a new project after the second album and founded The Assembly. But not much more than Never, Never, in which Feargal Sharkey is allowed to sing, remained.

With his next project he found a destination for the next years. In Andy Bell, he found a voice that would shape the sound of Erasure through an advertisement in Melody Maker.

In 2003 Erasure released Other People's Songs an album with cover versions in which the cover version by Steve Harley stands out above all (because it is also a great song).

Happy birthday Vince

Drinking In My Sunday Dress

I'm not a huge fan of country music but I always loved good voices and great songs in this genre. Although I'm not a great expert in this genre there some artists and songs that are very close to me. One of them is Maria McKee. I noticed her back in the early 80s when she came around with her band Lone Justice and gave us that pure and raw cow-punk sound. Since then I followed her career and was surprised many times about her ability to write great songs. So she wrote 'A good heart', a smash hit by Feargal Sharkey, and 'Show me heaven' that was a hit from the movie 'Days of Thunder'. I love her for the ballads she wrote and sung but today I want to introduce you a song that's got more power in it. It's an uptempo song in which she tells us about the time she has to spent until her love comes around. NME has written once about her: Their voice can take up it with the breakable passion of Patsy Cline, the glowing soul of Aretha Franklin and powerful blues of Janis Joplin, No more words to add.

Maria McKee - Drinking In My Sunday Dress

Recreation: The Singha style

Recreation for working people means getting a couple of days off from work. Here it is normally that you work for six days to have one day free to do things of your own pleasure. Also a lot of people work in places that was located a long distance from their hometown. So it could happen that one friend you know from former days appears suddenly to your place and you decide to spent some time with him talking, drinking and eating. Whilst they talk and drink they decide to phone to some other friends to join them.

That's what happend to us last sunday. I got a call from a good friend to join their party a we went off to get a TukTuk to ride us to the next town to join them. As we arrived, allready six people where sitting on the porch - each of them a glass of arrack with lime infront. Arrack is a local liqour and you can compare it to a brandy. It's very tasty and you won't have headache the next day.

If one bottle is empty they call a TukTuk-driver to get the next bottle, some cigaretts and some litte food (grilled fish, coconut-pieces and some sweet stuff). Sometimes it takes a longer time untill the driver brings the next round because he hadn't so much money with, so that he just had to find someone who borrows him some money. And this game goes on and on and on until they decide that it's time to finish.

We had a very funny afternoon there. We were treated like we know them all for a long time. It's still amazing to have people around who are allways open hearted. Sure: they are also proud to have us around. By the way I recognized, that this men's thing - all femals were in the background, telling no words until the party is over. I guess this will never happen in western hemisphere.

This one is from the lovely Maria McKee.In the eighties she did the lead vocals in a band called The Lone Justice. They did a raw mixture of Country, Rock and Punk called CowPunk. It was an american band, but her roots are irish and at the age of 19 she wrote the song Feargal Sharkey made famous - a good heart.

Enjoy and have a good time


Maria McKee - Drinking In My Sunday Dress