These posters are popping up around town and every time I see one I get a major frisson. I was about 16 the first time I heard Relax, starting to understand that music had other characteristics than cleverness and tunes and being about sci-fi. It was also important that the first time I heard it, it was really loud. In Top Shop in Derby. We didn't have loud music at home or in the car. I'd only just started going to the Co-op Disco. I only heard loud music via my Walkman. So this kind of thumping, slippery music was a complete revelation emerging from Top Shop's half-decent speakers, in public, bouncing off the walls. It sounded better out in the world than in your head.
(Of course it may have been Chelsea Girl. I don't remember the shop. Or who I was with. But I remember the feeling of the music.)
Listening back now it still seems extraordinary, pivotal, poised between euro-disco and house, pointing at the way that 4-on-the-floor beat would dominate the world, sliding underneath every musical culture becoming the basis of a truly global music. And the textures on top were astounding as well; simultaneously prog and sexy, as befits a man who made both Dollar and Yes sound brilliant.
I spent hours in front of the mirror working out how to dance like Paul Rutherford (whose dancing was arguably a more important contribution to FGTH's commercial and artistic success than anything the rest of the band did.) This was the essential 80s dance graduation - from the elbows-in, head-down, looking-out-from-your-fringe, alternate toe-pointing dance of the OMD/Depeche Mode generation to the chest-out, stand-up, Hi-NRG stylings that Mr Rutherford made so irresistible. I eventually managed a rough facsimile of it but I'm not a natural and I think it burnt all my learning-to-dance chips. Nowadays I can only actually dance to Relax or Enola Gay. Otherwise, I'm sitting down.
Oh hi.
Posted by: Paul H. Colman | October 15, 2009 at 06:37 PM
Trevor Horn comes from a small town a few miles South-West of Sunderland called Hetton-le-Hole, population about 14,000. Beside Mr Horn, the town also gave us Bob Paisley, League winning manager Harry Potts (Burnley 1959-60), Bobby 'Pop' Robson and Ralph Coates.
Pretty good going, eh!
Posted by: smithylad | October 15, 2009 at 06:48 PM