1981 new year

1981 events
The year started dominated with the Lennon murder. Lennon was everywhere - and he'd been nowhere for 5 years.

memorial 

At school it was the run up towards picking options for O Levels - end of 3rd year and associated exams. So I lost a bit of sleep over that but I was an OK student even despite my issues which, may I remind you, remained undiagnosed and unknown even to me, essentially; at least I remained in denial with flashes of self awareness every now and again.

I was now 14. In the terms after Xmas, somewhere along the way, my parents decided to book a foreign hoiliday. I was excited. So first passport and that sort of shit going on.

charts on 4th of January 

HHGTTG started on the BBC - on 5th of January - something I was anticiapting and had been aware of generally since the stage play was getting a lot of publicity on Luxembourg - and the radio series, obvs. The little gang of nerds that I was part of had been talking about it for a while. And another major Geek event was  Tom Baker leaving Doctor Who and replaced by Peter Davison who was t.v. vet so that seemed strange. Not a doctor, but a vet. 

and on 8th of January I bought my first ever Bowie album. I'd been thinking about Bowie for a while. I loved the Scary Monsters singles, Alabama Song and Space Oddity, and I'd borrowed a bunch of tapes from Alex H at school to test him out. One of the tapes was 'TRAF of Ziggy Stardust and TSFM'. I also borrowed The Man Who Fell To Earth, which to my ears sound like someone had taken a heavy metal album and sprinkled it with Bowieish bits between all the grungy guitar. Which wasn't far off what it actually was tbh. Bowie didn't have much control over the music - he was letting his boys just have fun with it. 

I have this abiding memory of walking across Dartmoor with the school and talking to Alex H about the tapes - probably sometime in 1980. But I obviously liked what I heard because here I was in January 1981 - on Bowie's birthday (by complete coincidence as I didn't learn that till later) buying my first Bowie album. and I loved it. It was my way in.

I've been wracking my brains trying to remember the order in which i bought the other Bowie albums and I can't do it. Pin Ups was early because I loved Sorrow, and so was Ziggy and aladdin Sane because they classic, but also because they were £2.99.

Heroes came fairly early, Low was later, Scary Monsters I bought 3 times, the first time in Andorra and it didn;t play, the second was vinyl from somone at school and it was scratched to shit, the third was probably in 1983 - a brand new copy from WH Smiths.

Hunky Dory was also probably among the early ones because of the budget price, Diamond Dogs was a bit later, then Lodger in 1983, Space Oddity was never cheap, I seem to remember, and of course I wasn't sure about TMWSTW so I left it a bit. The first live album was Stage, then Ziggy Live in 1983, and David Live I think in 85, along with Young Americans. Then that was it. Of course I picked up new ones as they came out which is why i have a complete collection of ll the Let's Dance and Tonight era 12 inches. I also bought his 60s stuff on various compilations -  Another Face and A Second Face - then Love You Till Tuesday in 83/ 84 (?). A Second Face was a Xmas present, just as I think Low was.

20th Feb 1981

 

20/04/1981

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_and_Girls_(The_Human_League_song)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sound_of_the_Crowd

g

27/07/1981

It may have been the appearance of the two girls in the Human League that pushed my dysphoria to the limit. I wanted to be as pretty and as stylish as those two. I knew i wasn't a guy when i was admiring those two in complete envy. Me and Stephen N would pick the songs apart - listen to them round his house. I loved the b sides most. "Hard Times" was just fantastic.

Musical purchases in Andorra. The Bowie cassette didn't play. I really had my eye on Krafterk's Computer World at the time too. But it would be years before i finally obtained a copy.

                        

Vienna arriving in the charts

Mum and sister with drunken driver in Andorra

i had very poor photography skills - dyspraxia? 

28/09/1981

27/11/81

I was amazed how this little unknown band that me and Steve were listening to in his room, that seemingly nobody else had heard of was suddenly mainstream. It didn't even take a year. They were played everywhere. My Dad knew who they were. I remember hearing them at Saltram - probably on the car radio as we arrived to go for a walk. I even talked to my Dad about them. 

Dare came out on the 16th of October so I didn't have long to wait for the album, but it seemed longer. I had money on my birthday so I made do with Reproduction, the first album, and Non Stop Erotic Cabaret by Soft Cell. 

a stomping good album 

  

about as LGBTQ+ as you could get in 1981

John Peel show

1981 started promisingly, when an association that would continue throughout the rest of the programme's history was initiated. New Order had been formed following the...death of Ian Curtis, and... the new band recorded their first session in January. 23 February 1981 saw the first play of their debut single 'Ceremony' with John being so impressed he played both sides in succession, although he had not initially planned to do so. 
John Walters started a side project, Walters' Weekly, that took him away from Peel show production for two years (although he would continue to contribute a pre-recorded Wednesday show during this time, and stood in for JP for two weeks in June).

"Looking back, it does seem to be a very slack period. It seemed to be a million-and-one bands called 'Dance' something. Punk had become an historic thing. It was a trough after a peak." (John Walters, as quoted in The Peel Sessions, p. 110.)

Despite Walters' somewhat gloomy recollection, several notable musical highlights punctuated the show. In June, JP played Laurie Anderson's O Superman, gaining it exposure that would see it being played by Dave Lee Travis, amongst others, eventually reaching number 2 in the charts.[4] The Birthday Party, whose post-punk noise had been championed very early on in 1980, were to record two further sessions in 81 and a final one in 1982 before metamorphosing into Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. An unknown Sheffield band called Pulp were in the studios in November, but would take another twelve years to attain stardom.

One of the ascending stars of that year were Altered Images, whose Happy Birthday entered the UK Top 10, but who had been Peel favourites since he heard a demo tape containing 'Dead Pop Stars' and given them a session in September 1980. Like his preoccupation with Sheena Easton's 'Nine To Five' 7 inch (what he called a "perfect pop single") the previous year, this was the betrayal of something approaching a mid-life crisis, as he declared Clare Grogan to be "the only person, apart of course from my wife, who could have persuaded me to go into a recording studio and sing."[5] The year was rounded out by the 1981 Festive Fifty, which for some reason actually had 60 places, presumably because JP wanted to see whether the lower rungs of the chart would provide more interesting fare than the by now traditional punk and post-punk fare of the top 20. This format was soon to see a radical change.

Musically, the year was notable for giving first airings for many bands such as Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Sisters Of Mercy and the Associates who would go on to considerable fame. In July, the first Cocteau Twins session was broadcast. 

https://peel.fandom.com/wiki/John_Peel_Show

Xmas - i did get Dare. Also - it's most likely i got Invisible Sun in 81 as I was such a police fan. I remember a discussion with the athlete (Richard?) who stayed with us - he liked the Clash, but also the Police and we were discussing the cover of Invisible Sun. Another album I most likely had in 1981 (birthday or Xmas) was Madness "7". But it was the last gasp of my ska obsession. I didn't want any more Madness albums and The Specials split, the only of the 2-tone ilk i kept going with were The Beat. I never did sell my Beat records. But the Beat's third album was substandard and I never bought or asked for that either. Howver, Wha'ppen remained a favourite album of mine for years. I never really stopped playing it until I left home. And of course, the new Numan album which I'd been waiting patiently for since October. My aunt liked to buy me the Numan albums.

       

                             

So what was going on with my musical tastes? Several things all fighting it out for domination I think. I was laughed at at school for not picking a tribe and sticking with it but music was great and I wanted to hear it all. Tbe electronic stuff took me into a different plane of existence. It was out of this mundane reality and into strange and uncharted territorities. 

Plymouth in 1980/1981 - note the Theatre Royal being constructed