I've been watching old Top Of The Pops clips. It's how us cool people spend our leisure time. Back in the 1950s, our hobbies would have been weekends in Margate or afternoons down the bingo getting razzed on prawn cocktails. Not for us modern kids.
I actually want to talk about 808 State, which won't be a surprise for regular readers of this blog. They appeared on Top Of The Pops for three of their singles. They performed their breakout hit Pacific State in November 1989 when Simon Mayo was the presenter. When Cubik hit the charts a year later, they were compered on by Anthea Turner. And Manchester DJ Gary Davies was MC when they played In Your Face in the summer of 1991. That latter programme also featured Chris Isaak, Nomad featuring MC Mikee Freedom, and Julee Cruise doing her dreamy Twin Peaks theme.
808 State were deliciously experimental. They still are: 2019's Transmission Suite is a cold-war cooling tower of steaming creativity: chills and thrills all the way. But considering how relatively undeveloped dance music was in the late-80s, Bob State were wild. Take, for example, their 1989 album 90. It starts with the floaty hypnosis of Magical Dream, ends with the liminal industrialism of The Fat Shadow, via the acidic chatter of 808080808. Expand the discography, and we quickly reach the squelchy acid of Flow Coma, the lift music of Lift, the gospel of 10x10, and that psychedelic guitar-mageddon of Cubik.
808's Graham Massey appeared at the Louder Than Words festival last November. He was speaking at the launch of Matthew Collin's Dream Machines, which I've written about here. At this event, he recalled playing Cubik to a record company exec from Warner Brothers. The suit didn't seem too fussed about the track, but thankfully producer Trevor Horn took the bait. Horn signed 808 State to his ZTT label, which had previously achieved hits with Art Of Noise and Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
"We were surprised because we didn’t sound like the pop music of the time," said Graham on the interest from ZTT Records. "Trevor Horn was a great champion of what we were doing, and such a great pioneer of sonic stuff, so we felt like he really had our back."
Horn encouraged the band to edit their tracks for a radio-friendly audience. And, of course, it worked. Graham added: "I remember the thrill of hearing [our songs] on builders’ radios, those paint-splattered radios that scaffolders had, and we were like: yeah, pop music!"
Graham described the band as four individuals with colliding record collections. "It’s opulent," he said. "It’s a lot of ideas crushed and spat out into very colourful ways. We were exploring ideas. With studio time being so rare and expensive, and the equipment being so exciting, it seemed like you shouldn’t keep doing the same thing."
And he described their 90 album in particular as an exploration of ideas and a celebration of the sampler. "The sampler was such a fresh and exciting tool that we were still learning to use. Plus I was learning to be an engineer. I was trying to ape Prince records with the tiny little delays that make psychoacoustic spaces. It wasn’t just notes and musical melodies."
Thank the lucky stars and the miraculous moons that Top Of The Pops was there to promote such zany music to the masses. The programme stopped its regular broadcast nearly two decades ago, and we are poorer as a result. However, we shouldn't be too downhearted.
A few years ago, I was at a Dreadzone gig. You might remember them for bucolic protest rave tunes such as Fight The Power and Little Britain. The gig was full of crusty old folks like me. But I found myself on the front rail next to two young women: early twenties at a push, all glammed up and ready to party
"How on earth did you find out about Dreadzone?" I asked.
"The internet," they said. They had discovered the band online, at it had become their "thing". And they didn't even need Anthea Turner to help make that happen.
Further Fats: Oh, puppies, why do you live? (2006)
Further Fats: 808 State's number tracks in number order (2013)
