Bad Boys Blue -- "Lovers In The Sand" (1988)

Admittedly, if you live in the US, there's a microscopic chance you've ever heard of Bad Boys Blue. And with a corny name like that, I don't blame you if you didn't want to hear about them. However, it took knowing another music fanatic to stumble across the band that never made it on these shores.



From the late 80's through the early 90's, I made weekly Saturday morning pilgrimages to the Sam Ash Music store on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills to check out new keyboard and recording equipment and shoot the breeze with the sales people. One of them, Leck, seemed very attuned to a lot synth-based dance and pop music coming out of Europe but not making a dent here and made mix tapes of them for me. One tape in 1990 contained four or five songs from Bad Boys Blue.

Bad Boys Blue could definitely be filed under Europop, which was the style of music pretty much created and pioneered by ABBA. With the definite emphasis on "pop," the genre has simple chord structures, insanely hooky melodies, fluffy arrangements, bubblegum lyrics, a slightly corny feel, and dance beats leaning towards disco, all in a compact 3 or four minute song. Throughout the 80's, the style gravitated from live instruments to synthesizers and drum machines.

The closest well known group that veered into Bad Boys Blue's wheelhouse was Erasure in its 80's heyday, with songs like "Stop," "Chains of Love," "Chorus" and "Star." Bad Boys Blue is like crossing Depeche Mode with the Archies.

While all the Bad Boys Blue songs on the tape were absolutely enjoyable, the one that kept sticking in my head was "Lovers In The Sand." How many times have you heard a song and wondered why it never became a huge smash? This was a perfect example and probably a bid for the group to make it in the US.

Opening with a radio DJ from "KLW in sunny California" raving about "temperatures around 30 degrees Centigrade (!!)," a powerful drum machine beat revs up and the song launches right into the chorus hook.

Now this is a super hook, folks, the kind that songwriters kill for, played high on a bell-like synth. And for some street cred, a little vocal scratching action ("Lovers, lovers!"). Big simple chords, sexy-ish background vocals from all three Boys ("Now all I wanna do... is just to be with you!"). Lots of little percussion sounds playing 16ths, big gated snare drum on the quarter beat, and a wonderful airy reverb around it all.

To love this song, you have to have some appreciation of bubblegum music and big quasi-corny hooks.


I didn't want emotions, did not dare
Cause I've lost too many love affairs.
I was in the mood to have some fun
Somewhere in the sun.
I blame it on the southern summer nights,
When I lost my heart at first sight.
Now all I wanna do
Is just to be with you.

Lovers in the sand
Walking hand in hand
And dreaming of the last night
We shared.
Lovers in the sand
Deep in love again
And now that I have found you I know
I'll never let you go.


If there was any support behind this song in the US, if there was any real justice, these guys would be on VH1 "Big 80's" video programs for years.

So here they are, Bad Boys Blue with their "Lovers In The Sand" video.

The Thompson Twins -- "The Gap" (1984)

One of the more commercially successful artists of the New Wave era, the Thompson Twins were at the right place and the right time: off-kilter band name (named after characters in the Tintin cartoon), bi-racial personnel, funky feathered hair, a push to the dance floor, and a tremendous knack for writing great pop songs.

At the time, which Sirius Satellite Radio now likes to call "the first wave of alternative music," if you could combine commercial instincts with an eccentric twist and a dance beat, you had a damn good chance to succeed.

The Thompson Twins' sound was based on two strong elements: analog synths, and lots and lots of percussion -- not just drums, but hand percussion of all kinds, which added an international flavor. They worked with producer Alex Sadkin down at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas, home to other beat-heavy artists like Duran Duran, Grace Jones, and Robert Palmer.

While Arista Records had momentary success with their other New Wave act, Haircut 100, the Thompson Twins had several worldwide hits, spawning all kinds of 12" singles, and a few greatest hits albums. The threesome came right from central casting: a good looking white guy with a droning voice (Tom Bailey), a curly blonde woman who often dressed in downtown fashion and a big cap (Allanah Currie) banging away on electronic drums, and a black bass player/percussionist who, for some reason, didn't seem to say much at all (Joe Leeway). Not surprisingly, Leeway left the band not long after they peaked with this Into The Gap album.

While "The Gap" was not as monsterous a hit as either "Doctor! Doctor!" or "Hold Me Now," but it held special meaning in the summer of 1986 when I was helping run a house in Fire Island. Rampant socializing and togetherness in a house dubbed "Obsession" across from Flynn's dockside bar and restaurant in the Ocean Bay Park section, the residents took this song as a kind of theme song. Every weekend night, you could find them on top of couches, tables and ledges, often with weird hats and cheesy fake plastic guitars, turning "Into The Gap" in a ritualistic dance, much like the way everybody knows how to do the Hokey Pokey, Electric Slide and Chicken Dance (not that I endorse those last obnoxious two).

With an Egyptian synth motif, syncopated hand claps, a convenient slave ship "uhhh," a gated vocoder riff opening on the beat ("I-I-I-I!"), jingles, jangles, bongos, tambourine shakes, and middle Eastern exotica, I can vividly picture this sunburned group of boyfriend and girlfriend hunter singing along:


East is east (four claps), west is west (four claps),
Two diff'rent colors on the map.
We say break the line (four claps), chew the fat (four claps),
Keep moving out into the gap!


Other than those fond memories, that's pretty much all the Thompson Twins are also these days, unfortunately.

Below, the Thompson Twins open a 1985 San Diego concert with "Into The Gap." As you can see, the guys were huge and had a really fun stage show. Makes you wish you could have been there.

Haircut 100 -- "Love Plus One" (1982)

Haircut 100 was truly one of the New Wave era's coulda-shoulda been stories. Just when they exploded onto the scene with their first album, Pelican West, their main songwriter/singer quit for a solo career and they were never the same trying to replace him.

During this period, many bands were taking rock, soul and dance music, and combining them into new and exciting songs. As a rebellious response to the repetitive disco era that proceeded it, many new artists were suddenly landing on college and "new rock" radio stations as imports, and being snapped by major US labels.

Such was the case with Haircut 100, which was mainly the vehicle for singer/songwriter Nick Heyward. They landed out of nowhere on WLIR-FM in the early 80's with their first import single, "Love Plus One" and you'd never really heard anything like this. Whereas a number of English New Wave acts were borrowing from soul and Motown (Spandau Ballet, Paul Young, Naked Eyes, Kim Wilde, The Jam, etc.), Haircut 100 took a decidedly South American route.

As you'll see from the video below, they dressed like good little English school boys, like a smiling bunch of goody two-shoes. Every video I've seen of them, they've been in an unusually chipper form, wearing the kind of clean cut semi-preppy outfits any mother would love to see on their daughter's dates.

After the opening scratchy guitar chords, a catchy marimba riff marks time with the kick and hi hat, the electric bass slides down, and it's this upbeat pop tune with a slightly Latin feel, a soprano sax wailing away, and some congas under the mix. Heyward's got the typical vocals of the era -- almost disaffected, nothing amazing, but totally capable of carrying the clipped melody. And if you're going to spend the time studying the lyrics, well, they're almost nonsensical.

I, I went off to the right
Without saying goodbye, goodbye
Where does it go from here?
Is it down to the lake I fear?
Ay ah ah ah ah ah
Ay ah ah ah ah ah
Then I call
Ring (ring) ring (ring) ring (ring) ring (ring)
La la love plus one
Ring (ring) ring (ring) ring (ring) ring (ring)
When I call love.


They are fun to sing, as truly silly as they are. But this is what a great pop single was at the time -- just different... clocking in under four minutes, danceable, happy as hell, and unfailing melody.

Thank God, Arista signed these guys up and released Pelican West in the US. However, they probably lived to regret it when Heyward suddenly bolted the group to go it alone at the height of the first album's fame. While Heyward made a bit of a dent in the UK by himself, he pretty much went nowhere here. What could have been.

One guy who really did make it in the band besides Heyward (if you call his career as such) was American-born drummer Blair Cunningham, who actually joined Chrissie Hynde and her Pretenders later on after original drummer Martin Chambers, played with Paul McCartney and others.

Below is the official "Love Plus One" video, shot on some kind of kitschy jungle set with torchlights and swinging vines on a sound stage somewhere. Heyward seems just a bit goofy, nodding his head to the right in case you don't understand the first line of the song (I didn't, for years).

War -- "The World Is A Ghetto" (1972)

In 2002, journalist Barry Walter pretty much summed up the early 70's War musical phenomenon in Rolling Stone. I can't say it better than this:

It seems unfathomable today that War's The World Is a Ghetto was the best-selling album of 1973, a triple-platinum chart-topping blockbuster back in the days when few albums even went gold. Released in late '72, War's fifth album in three years had only six songs, three of them more than eight minutes long, all recorded live in the studio by six black Americans and one Danish harmonica player, who had the biggest Afro in the band. None were polished singers, and their sound was as much Latin jazz as it was funk or R&B, their sensibility more FM rock than AM pop.

The Los Angeles-based War was all about two things: the groove and the message. Walter talks about this album being six songs with three of them eight minutes long -- that was pretty much the description for every War album. They depicted not only the African American projects experience in a search for peace and brotherhood, but adapted the Latino barrio as their playground too.

Hands down, these guys were one of the all-time great rhythm sections of the decade.

Half the albums were filled with jam session instrumentals, fiercely locked into groove, often ascending with an upbeat mood, like an inner city summer street party. Even some of the songs that became hits were lengthy workouts, edited down for radio play.

While "The World Is A Ghetto" was following all their other hits up the charts, one night I was tuned into WNEW-FM in its progressive rock days and the familiar low wah-wah chords of the song come out. They are ticked off in measures by the snare's rim, the C#m7 flowing into the Dmaj7th chords. But the chords went on a little longer, and I said to myself, "Hm."

This was the first time I was hearing the album version of "The World Is A Ghetto," late one night. While the opening verses and choruses were straight off the single, they proceed to have an ebb and flow jam with Charles Miller's sax going long and slow, giving and taking with the band who gradually grow louder and more challenging, all over that same two chord verse pattern. The beautiful warm bass has that nice simple two note riff then follows the chorus melody, eventually spiraling into the jam's frenzy. Once they take the thing off the roof, they simmer down, for a final verse.

There's no need to search anywhere,
Happiness is here, have your share,
If you know you're loved, be secure,
Paradise is love to be sure.

Don't you know, that it's true,
That for me, and for you,
The world is a ghetto.


War sings that chorus like a mantra over and over as Howard Scott's electric guitar just does crazy rock solos around it. "The World Is A Ghetto" is War's self-proclaimed 10-minute journey to an imagined (or is it?) planet of peace and brotherhood.

Nowadays, you'd never hear a song like this on any rock station, but in the early 70's, these guys were accepted as hip by all radio formats.

Notable cover versions of this song include George Benson on his In Flight record and Ahmad Jamal's lengthy Fender Rhodes excursion.

While I could not find a live video of the band doing this song, I did find one showcasing this mesmerizing album version of "The World Is A Ghetto."

Ian Dury & The Blockheads - "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" (1977)

It would have to be a very, very bad song for anything called "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" to miss. Fortunately, Ian Dury was a witty master of words with well-chosen collaborators and a cooking band behind this bent three-minute anthem.

In the October 2007 issue of UK music production magazine Sound on Sound, journalist Richard Buskin accurately called Dury's music "pub-rock disco." Dury recruited a band of fellow R&B-loving Brits for an unlikely blend of 4/4-heavy beats, funk bass, and comical lyrics. The musical director was the brilliant keyboardist/guitarist Chaz Jankel, who was totally in synch with Dury's musical direction. Jankel would go on to write the Quincy Jones hit "Ai No Corrida," record his own solo albums, and score various films.

Picture the unlikeliness of of Ian Dury & The Blockheads: The heavy Cockney-accented Dury, limping from a childhood bout with polio... disco, funk & R&B beats when punk rock was raging... recording on Stiff Records, the pistol-hot British indie rock label that gave us Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe... Dury's sharp satirical lyrics which belied the disco beats.

I remember hearing the song in college and admiring such a blatant song title when the radio was full of syrupy schlock at the time. Let's face it, in 1977, the top songs were Leo Sayer's "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing," Stephen Bishop's "Save It For a Rainy Day," Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life," and Kenny Nolan's "I Like Dreamin'." There was nothing remotely edgy or punk about them.

But there was no way to miss when you had a singalong chorus like this:

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.
Is all my brain and body need.
Sex and drugs and rock and roll.
Is very good indeed.

Fuzzy guitar line echoing that famous "sex and drugs" chorus, with that rhythm section in a funky groove, Dury's lyrics are quite mild compared to the chorus, and you've got to really listen when that accent is so strong. As a matter of fact, I'm not quite sure how the verses connect with that chorus except the verses seem quite conservative compared to what he's proclaiming in the chorus. Maybe that was his inside joke, but they are sung practically like nursery rhymes:

Every bit of clothing ought to make you pretty
You can cut the clothing, gray is such a pity
I should wear the clothing of Mr. Walter Mitty
See my tailor, he's called Simon, I know it's going... to... fit!

And if that wasn't a bit twisted enough, Dury starts yelping like a dog during the outgoing choruses, while some kind of ragtime chorus is heard building, sounding vaguely Zappa-ish.

In Buskin's Sound on Sound interview with Dury's producer/engineer Laurie Latham, he recalls: "That song was recorded with hardly any equipment. Chaz played his Gibson ES335 through my little Selmer amp, which had a blown speaker — that's what you hear the 'Sex And Drugs' riff going through..."

Below is a video of the boys doing the song live in 1977 and talk about being locked in a groove... You also get to see the dark showman side of Dury too, in a dapper black derby and kerchief.

Big Country - "In A Big Country" (1983)

One of the greatest rock songs of the so-called "New Wave era." When this song broke in 1983, the "New Wave" genre of music hit the mainstream after bubbling under at college and more progressive rock stations.

"In a Big Country" created a mold of English rock anthems that was later followed by U2 and the Britpop bands that came 10 years later. As with many New Wave songs filling the airwaves, it didn't sound like anything else: snapping intro drum fill, shearing major guitar chords, deep kick drum, and the band's hallmark -- twin guitar leads mimicking bagpipes. The galloping beat drove what sounded like a call to arms to a friend in need:

I never seen you look like this without a reason
Another promise fallen through, another season passes by you
I never took the smile away from anybody's face
And that's a desperate way to look for someone who is still a child.

In a big country dreams stay with you
Like a lover's voice fires the mountainside
Stay alive

I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered
But you can't stay here with every single hope you had shattered

I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert
But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime

Not surprisingly, Big Country was from Scotland, a multi-racial group as well. While this "theme song" was their biggest US hit, they had many terrific songs from this time which can be found on The Crossing album (which is still in print and merged with their great Wonderland EP) and the greatest hits album.

After the success of "In A Big Country," the band's subsequent albums stalled in the US, coming up against the next big music phase of "corporate rock," yet were smashes in the UK. As a matter of fact, after their US success died down, they just succumbed to the trend and hired one of the hot producers of the day, Peter Wolf, to produce the "Peace In Our Time" record. They probably figured if he could work wonders for Wang Chung and Jefferson Starship, it would click with them... the album flopped, despite one great song, "King Of Emotion."

The story gets much sadder from here, as lead singer Stuart Adamson fell into depression and alcoholism while the band lost its sizzle. They did their farewell tour in 2000, culminating in a sold out show in Glasgow. One year later, Adamson went missing, and after his bandmates searched for him, they found he had committed suicide in Hawaii.

If you like the song "In a Big Country" as much as I do, you owe it to yourself to explore the albums I mentioned above. You would discover one of rock's great unsung bands.

Instead of the official MTV video for "In A Big Country," below is their appearance on Saturday Night Live (you'll see Dick Smothers do the quick intro), just so you can see the power of this band live. Turn it up!