The 80's were a strange time, being that people wore neon, wore Wham shirts and that whole friendship pin fad. You know, just the lame stuff that you probably won't ever admit to doing. I guess at the time it was cool, but wow, how bad it is to go through a box and find a neon 'choose life' t-shirt. It wasn't mine I swear! The 80's was sort of the same way musically, being that there are bands you probably might admit to listening to (Smiths, New Order ect), and some you would probably only do with torture (Twisted Sister, Culture Club...). Musically, the 80's was a melting pot that found all the genera's combining into a musical soup. Early on, it was minimalistic synth music and post punk music that drove the market, thankfully disco was dead at this point (until Erasure brought it back). At around 1985, we saw probably the best period of 'retro 80s' giving us The The, The Smiths, Modern English, OMD and The Scary Thieves. Tracks by these artists are well documented on the many 80's collections that are out there, namely The Hardest Hits Series. It seems most collections seem to center around 1985, perhaps they agree with my sentiment that 1985ish was the best 'vintage'. The only downfall to the mid 80's period was the plithora of one-hit-wonders that became so abundant. It's not to say they were bad, just only good for a single or an album. The Scary Thieves were a prime example of this. They released one great single 'The Waiting Game', which is on most of the many collections to be found, and then faded away. This track is a great representation of 1985 at it's best. You could get a record contract based on a few good songs, and a single, and play hope for the best after that. Even I probably could have gotten a record contract playing the pan flute out of my arse. The sad reality is that the music industry had flooded the market with a pile of semi-talented artists, and quickly made whatever money they could before these artists were summarily dumped. The Scary Thieves had this brilliant single, and nothing else to really speak of, but does that make them fodder? Not really, they got their 2 second of fame, and can now show their grandkids just how many collection cds that one song got onto. Just don't go and do a reunion anytime soon! If you're looking for an album, good luck. You might find the 12" for 'Tell Me Girl', but that's a venture in itself.
Track 1, The Waiting Game
Track 2, Live In Another Day
Track 3, The Waiting Game (7" Version)
Grab the tracks here!
UK Parlophone Records 1985, 12 R6094
Personal ratinf 3.5/5
5 comments:
Another nice post. I found this today while searching around and thought you might be interested.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150209666522&fromMakeTrack=true&ssPageName=VIP:watchlink:middle:us
It's a maxi single for Dying in Vain. I've seen the album around online on torrents, is it a good "album"? Cheers.
Disco although commercial and trendy for the 80's had roots in Funk, Blues and Rock and Roll. Add a heavy element of Classical music and even Gospel, yep you read me right, GOSPEL.
Listen closely and you'll see that at the real core of 70's Disco were all these elements and ADD real musicians playing real instruments with real musical knowledge.
Jazz was also morphing into some amazing fusion stuff and I see how that genre sort of fed from the musicality of Disco.
If you look closely, Disco has been stereotyped down to bellbottoms and loud clothing and dancing in studio 54s, glitter balls, etc.
But at the core of Disco was romantic, sexy, free, musically rich...music..
Oh yes, but you like The The...so that explains your background.
yep, not a big disco fan. Not sure I'm missing much.. I had enough with my older sister torturing me with that crap thanks. Yes, it has it's merits, just none that will compel me to guy it anytime soon. And yes, I like The The, nothing wrong with that :)
I know a bit about Scary Thieves - much of the somewhat interesting story used to be on this website: http://www.nerocam.com/MP3/ (an early music blog!). All that is left there now is a few references to Scary Thieves and details on a couple of the singles he once posted - not sure what happened there. For a while he was selling CDR copies of their unreleased album as a guy that was in the band sent him a promo/advance copy of the album he had after he posted one or two of their singles.
Apparently their album got shelved by the label as one of the guys in the band had an affair with the significant other (wife/girlfriend) of a label exec who got pissed enough to try to kill the band's career - the band got a couple of advances, released 3 singles but no album - apparently no other labels would touch them after that due to them being 'released' by the original label.
I think all 3 of the singles they released were pretty strong (Dying In Vain, The Waiting Game and Tell Me Girl) - other than those tracks, the album wasn't great - I bought a CDR of it from the above mentioned website!
Later!
LOl i personally know someone in the band ;)
I love their music its fucking amazing
They should have been hugggggggggge
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