+ 0 - 0 | § ¶The Edge Of the Eighties
There are so many 80s music collections being released these days that I must admit to being more than slightly bored by most of them. The trouble is, so many of them are either padded out with singles that are so obscure that I can’t even remember them or they have the same repetitive handful of hits from the likes of Culture Club, Duran and Dead Or Alive. If I get one more CD with ‘You Spin Me Round’, I swear I’ll tear up my leotard!I’m glad to say that the newly released Edge Of the Eighties (3 CD) set is a good deal better than the average. It begins magisterially with two of the truly great songs of the early ‘80s, Ultravox’s Vienna and Visage’s Fade To Grey… But then it branches out into some less obvious highways and byways of 80s music. There’s Soft Cell singing the wonderful ‘Torch’ rather than the more frequently anthologized ‘Tainted Love’. There’s David Bowie singing the far from obvious ‘Up The Hill Backwards’ - and there is, inevitably, Dead Or Alive but (for a nice change) singing one of their other hits - ‘That’s The Way (I Like It)’.
There is a pretty good mix of 80s music here, as a matter of fact - ranging from the super well-known performers such as Adam and the Ants and Siouxsie and the Banshees to the unjustifiably forgotten (by all but their fans, that is!) bands such as Telex and Swansway.
Get over to Amazon for a look at the full track listing.
Meanwhile, as a tantalizing taster, here is a live recording of a great track from the album, Our Daughter’s Wedding (ODW) singing Lawn Chairs... I remember seeing ODW once. In the Hammersmith Palais, I believe. If my memory serves me well, they were then support act to Classix Nouveaux. What a great line-up!
