Can't Stop Now, Don't You Know

Happy birthday to Vincent John Martin. Who?! Vince Clarke, of course! Born 3rd July 1960.

Here's a rapid fire trawl through the video archives, with ten songs from a day job that's now in it's fifth decade. And a rare headline photo of Vince smiling! Just don't expect the same from the following videos...

This selection features of the greatest pop songs of all time, collaborations with Feargal Sharkey, Paul Quinn, Paul Hartnoll and a reunion with Martin Gore, plus stone cold classics from Yazoo and Erasure and a single from Songs Of Silence, Vince's solo album from last year. And, coming full circle, things start and end with Depeche Mode.

Have a good one, Vince!

1) Just Can't Get Enough (Swap Shop, BBC1 TV): Depeche Mode (1981)

2) Don't Go (uncredited TV performance): Yazoo (1982)

3) Never Never (Extended Version): The Assembly (1983)

4) One Day (Official Video): Vince Clarke / Paul Quinn (1985)

5) Ship Of Fools (Official Video): Erasure (1988)

6) Lowly (Official Video): VCMG (2012)

7) Better Have A Drink To Think (Official Video): Clarke : Hartnoll (2016)

8) White Rabbit (Official Video): Vince Clarke (2023)

9) Ship Of Fools (TopPop, Dutch TV): Erasure (1986)

10) Photographic (Something Else, BBC2 TV): Depeche Mode (1981) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Summertime Special

Side 2 of a cassette compilation of The Undertones, recorded sometime in 1989.

I posted Side 1 on Saturday 25th June 2022, roughly 544,920 minutes ago. Fortunately, The Undertones were a little more prompt. Even as you were listening to the greatest song you'd ever heard, you knew that the new greatest song you'd ever heard would be a couple of minutes away.

I wrote about my reintroduction to The Undertones in the late 1980s, thanks to my brother's copies of the debut album and All Wrapped Up compilation, plus the rather excellent jukebox at The Bell in Stokes Croft, Bristol, our go-to for pre- or post-excessive partying.

Prior to that, The Undertones seemed to be on BBC TV all the time, whether Top Of The Pops, The Old Grey Whistle Test and at least a couple of appearances on Cheggers Plays Pop. As a kid, I liked The Undertones, I loved their manic energy and the fact that the lead singer seemed to be wearing the same hand me downs and secondhand clothes that I had. I was the only boy round our way with a pair of brown Doc Martens. They were a bit too big for me but they'd had a reasonably careful previous owner. 

I know this compilation so well that listening to the debut album still feels a bit odd and out of sequence, so ingrained is this tracklisting in my mind. Side 2 exceeds Side 1's tally of 18 songs by squeezing in another 3 songs, a couple coming in at under one minute, but keeping it all to a pacy 45 minutes.

 

True Confessions appears twice on this mixtape, the album version here sounding like the band had been listening to Donna Summer's I Feel Love and Magic Fly by Space before heading into the studio. It's a very different take and I love it.

The collection wraps up with the B-side of Here Comes The Summer. One Way Love is two minutes and sixteen seconds of lyrical and musical brilliance in it's simplicity, fading out but leaving the feeling that the music will never stop. It certainly won't this weekend: The Undertones will be on a loop. And loud. 

1) Told You So (1980)

2) Family Entertainment (Album Version) (1979)

3) Window Shopping For New Clothes (1983)

4) Casbah Rock (1979)

5) Mars Bars (1979)

6) Smarter Than U (1978)

7) I Don't Wanna See You Again (1980)

8) Wrong Way (1979)

9) Julie Ocean (Single Version) (1981)

10) Turning Blue (1983)

11) Got To Have You Back (Cover of The Isley Brothers) (1983)

12) Jump Boys (1979)

13) She Can Only Say No (Single/Live Version) (1979)

14) Here Comes The Summer (Single Version) (1979)

15) Really Really (1979)

16) Beautiful Friend (Single Version) (1981)

17) Get Over You (Single Version) (1979)

18) Listening In (Album Version) (1979)

19) True Confessions (Album Version) (1979)

20) Jimmy Jimmy (1979)

21) One Way Love (1979)

1978: Teenage Kicks EP: 6

1979: Get Over You EP: 13, 15, 17

1979: Here Comes The Summer EP: 14, 21

1979: Jimmy Jimmy EP: 5

1979: The Undertones: 2, 4, 8, 12, 18, 19, 20

1980: My Perfect Cousin EP: 7

1980: Wednesday Week EP: 1

1981: Beautiful Friend EP: 16

1981: Julie Ocean EP: 9

1983: Chain Of Love EP: 3

1983: Got To Have You Back EP: 10

1983: The Sin Of Pride: 11Beautiful Friend EP

Side Two (45:07) (KF) (Mega)

Side One here

Summertime Special

It's Saturday. it's summer, it's (hopefully) a special day, so it's time at long last for The Undertones.

Side 1 of a mixtape, compiled some time in 1989 and one of my most treasured DIY cassettes, having been with me on many travels to different parts of the globe.

 

Hopping back a few years prior to this, my reawakened love for The Undertones was purely and simply the fault of my school friend Stuart. No, not the Stuart that I've mentioned here before, but another Stuart at another school (I moved house and schools a bit as a kid). Both Stuarts have ginger hair and that is pretty much where the similarity started and ended. 

 

One school coach trip, circa 1986, Stuart and I were sat together and talking about music. In all likelihood, I had hogged the coach's tape deck as I was usually the only one with the presence of mind to bring along some homemade cassette compilations. In fact our music conversation may well have kicked off with Stuart telling me what crap taste I had, as I remember that this led to him extolling the virtues of Feargal Sharkey and co, having recently bought the compilation Cher O'Bowlies: The Pick Of The Undertones.

 

It felt like everyone loved The Undertones, growing up. They seemed to always be on kids TV (Cheggers Plays Pop especially) and Top Of The Pops, their singles were extremely catchy and although Feargal Sharkey looked a bit naff in his jumpers and bad haircut, The Undertones were uniformly brilliant. However, by 1986, the band were already a distant memory and although Feargal Sharkey looked even more naff in his snappy suits and even worse haircut, the record buying public seemed to love him even more.

So, it's fair to say that The Undertones weren't foremost on my mind at the time of that conversation. Stuart didn't have Cher O'Bowlies with him on that school trip and I never got to borrow it from him. 

 

Around 1987/1988, my older brother was living in a bedsit on Jamaica Street in the Stokes Croft area of Bristol, then - as now - brilliantly placed off the city centre and in the heart of a vibrant community of pubs, clubs and creativity. A regular haunt, as it was just across the road from the bedsit and especially invaluable for the Sunday stumble in for a hair of the dog, was The Bell. Apart from it's convenient location and focal point, The Bell also boasted a truly brilliant jukebox, chock full of vinyl 7" treasures, including The Undertones' You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It!). I would play this every visit.

My brother also had two albums by The Undertones: the self-titled debut from 1979 and their record label's definitive closing statement from 1983, the singles compilation All Wrapped Up, A-sides on one disc, B-sides on the other, and sporting a striking if somewhat unrepresentative cover photo, as seen above.

I loved these albums and ended up 'borrowing' them when my brother went on the mandatory pre-University InterRail trip with a girlfriend, moving his stuff temporarily back home. Don't worry, unlike some of my record collection, which mysteriously went AWOL with near-identical copies turning up wherever my brother happened to be living at the time, I did the decent thing by returning his records and getting my own copies later on. 

By the time I recorded this mixtape, these two records by The Undertones were all I had and, to be honest, all I thought I needed. I've revised my opinion since I bought the rest of The Undertones' albums, although I still have absolutely nothing by the 21st century Feargal-free incarnation of the band.

Summertime Special (yes, intentionally named after the crap early 80s BBC TV variety show) is a beast of a compilation: 18 songs in a little over three quarters of an hour, a mix of hits, B-sides and album tracks; the common thread is that they are all brilliant. 

Girls Don't Like It is the second song on their first album, following Family Entertainment, but it was always going to be the opener on my planned mixtape, followed by the swift 1-2 of Teenage Kicks and True Confessions from the debut EP. No spoilers in saying that all four songs from the EP made it onto the cassette, Emergency Cases later on Side 1, Smarter Than U on Side 2.

 

As the 1980s arrived, The Undertones took a different musical turn, with a poppier, more soulful sound. Wednesday Week and Julie Ocean are wonderful songs but I can see that the band's appeal was (to quote from Spinal Tap) becoming more selective at this point and, until the All Wrapped Up compilation, I had no particular recollection of their later singles. 

 

I wrote last year about The Undertones' final single Chain Of Love's harmonica line and it's striking similarity to Culture Club's Karma Chameleon, released a few months later in 1983. I rate all of the later singles, particularly The Love Parade. The version on All Wrapped Up appears to be exclusive to the compilation, an edit of the 12" removing the keyboard intro with an early fade at the end, but retaining the middle instrumental section that was unsatisfactorily cut from fourth album The Sin Of Pride.

I don't think I quite managed to get the whole of The Undertones' debut and All Wrapped Up onto two sides of a C90 cassette, but I came pretty close. Rest assured that any favourites missing from Side 1 will almost certainly be on Side 2 when it eventually makes an appearance here.

In the meantime, put on your Doc Martens, turn up your jeans, zip up your Parka despite the summer heat, crank up the volume, press play and just let it all go. You can rest tomorrow.

 

1) Girls Don't Like It (1979)

2) Teenage Kicks (1978)

3) True Confessions (Single Version) (1978)

4) Life's Too Easy (Single Version) (1982)

5) Let's Talk About Girls (Cover of The Chocolate Watchband) (1979)

6) Billy's Third (Album Version) (1979)

7) It's Going To Happen! (Album Version) (1981)

8) Chain Of Love (Album Version) (1983)

9) Fairly In The Money Now (1981)

10) Wednesday Week (1980)

11) Emergency Cases (1978)

12) I Gotta Getta (1979)

13) My Perfect Cousin (1980)

14) Top Twenty (Single Version) (1979)

15) Male Model (Album Version) (1979)

16) I Know A Girl (1979)

17) The Love Parade ('All Wrapped Up' 12" Edit) (1983)

18) You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It!) (1979)

1978: Teenage Kicks EP: 2, 3, 11

1979: Here Comes The Summer EP: 14

1979: The Undertones: 1, 6, 12, 15, 16

1979: You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It!) EP: 5, 18 

1980: Hypnotised: 10, 13

1981: It's Going To Happen! EP: 9

1981: Positive Touch: 7

1982: Beautiful Friend EP: 4

1983: The Sin Of Pride: 8

1983: All Wrapped Up: 17

 

Side One (46:10) (Box) (Mega)

You Never Really Saw...

I unearthed this CD-R, which I compiled and burned on 1st June 2005, featuring "alternative 1980s twelve inch mixes". 

This got me reminiscing about going to alternative clubs in Bristol, such as Badlands and The Whip. The latter I've discovered has had it's own Facebook page for years...I'm always late to the party! 

In all honesty, I think the majority of these songs would never had made it near the turntable of most of the clubs I went to at the time. Attempting to play The Icicle Works or U2 would likely have resulted in a Snakebite shower, but Is This The Life, How Soon Is Now?, Uncertain Smile and She Sells Sanctuary were regularly played, along with Fetish by Vicious Pink and Nag Nag Nag by Cabaret Voltaire. 

I'm not sure if it was always there, but I remember Badlands being in a small room above a huge club called Busbys (maybe Ritzys by that time), so there was always the fun of 'mingling' with the mainstream crowd on the way in and out. The Whip was even more fun in that respect as it was in The Studio, in a small room off the main club area, and you had to run the gauntlet of pissed up lager louts dancing to Stock, Aitken & Waterman to get to and from the bogs. 

A limbering up session at The Bunch Of Goths on Denmark Street usually got you ready for the long night (& morning) ahead, followed by an 'all back to mine' at someone's place in Stokes Croft or a 'keep going til the dawn' refresher at the wonderful Jamaican Good Food in St. Pauls. Great times.

1) The Love Parade (12" Version): The Undertones (1983)

2) Is This The Life (12" Version): Cardiacs (1988)

3) Summertime (Extended Version): Fun Boy Three (1982)

4) Hollow Horse (Long Version: The Icicle Works (1984)

5) She Sells Sanctuary (Long Version): The Cult (1985)

6) Finest Worksong (Lengthy Club Mix): R.E.M. (1987)

7) Two Tribes (Carnage): Frankie Goes To Hollywood (1984)

8) How Soon Is Now? (12" Version): The Smiths (1984)

9) Driving Away From Home (I Mean After All It's Only 'Dead Man's Curve'): It's Immaterial (1986)

10) Two Hearts Beat As One (Club Version): U2 (1983)

11) Skin Deep (Extended Version): The Stranglers (1984)

12) Uncertain Smile (Extended Version): The The (1982)

 

You Never Really Saw... (1:18:33) (KF) (Mega)

Any Time You Took My Name I Had To Change It Back Again

I've been listening to The Undertones a lot in the past week, mostly from their eponymous debut and posthumous A- & B-sides collection All Wrapped Up (featuring the infamous Dressed To Grill cover photo, which you can read about here).

Chain Of Love was The Undertones' final single as an active band, released in April 1983. Taken from the album, The Sin Of Pride, released a couple of months earlier, it failed to chart. By July 1983, the band (or at least the original line up with Feargal Sharkey) had played their final gig and gone their separate ways. 

It was a sad end for the band, as The Undertones had evolved and grown over four albums and thirteen singles. Fergal Sharkey reflected in 1986 that "Everybody wanted us to be these 16-year-old kids covered in acne and playing Teenage Kicks" and you can empathise. Appearing on ITV's Razzmatazz in what appears to be Marc Almond's Soft Cell wardrobe was perhaps a leap too far for a public with a locked image of the band in naff jumpers, parkas and Doc Martins. However, it's an energetic (mimed) performance which, according to the comments accompanying the You Tube video below , left an impression on at least one audience member. 

It's a shame that the single failed to set the charts alight, though you have to wonder if Culture Club were recording in the studio next door at the time. Released in September 1983, Karma Chameleon topped the UK charts for 6 weeks, with a strikingly similar harmonica motif.

Chain Of Love (Performed On ITV's Razzmatazz, 13 May 1983): The Undertones

 

And here's the excellent B-side, Window Shopping For New Clothes, following the popular You Tube trend of literally videoing the vinyl being placed and played on a turntable...

 

Window Shopping For New Clothes: The Undertones (1983)