This week’s Revenge of the 80s Radio show features a conversation with Wang Chung‘s Jack Hues, who will be on this year’s Regeneration Tour. Our interview leads off the second hour of the show and is available at the end of this post.
Hues’ background in the UK’s local music scene led him to partner up with Nick Feldman and, later, Darrin Costin to form Huang Chung. As the band moved its talents to Geffen records, the name change to Wang Chung was the next step to international stardom with their big hit “Dance Hall Days,” a track that was actually originated during the Huang Chung years, with strong 40s big-band and jazz influences that foretold the future for Hues: Wang Chung continues to produce hits, combining electric new wave with real horns and early jazz elements. The Mosaic LP featured their biggest hit to date: “Everybody Have Fun Tonight.” Costin left the band before that project and after the 1989 album, The Warmer Side of Cool, Hues and Feldman pursued other projects. One of Hues’ recent experiments is with a new jazz band, The Quartet, which evolved from some of his past ventures in that genre. The Quartet performs throughout the UK; some of their music can be found on The Quartet’s MySpace page.
Tonight, Wang Chung’s Jack Hues is my guest on Revenge of the 80s Radio. Jack and longtime bandmate Nick Feldman are back together and will be on this year’s Regeneration Tour (get tickets here).
During our conversation, Jack and I talk about the musical path that brought Huang Chung together and soon became Wang Chung. There are some stories behind some of their hit songs and interesting projects as well. Jack is also a well-respected jazz man in the UK, performing with his new band, The Quartet. We also talk about the Regeneration Tour and the making of a new Wang Chung album slated to come out in 2010.
Jack has been on the UK alternative music scene since the early 1970s and has more plans for The Quartet. Our conversation leads off the second hour of the show.
We will also feature classic alternative tracks from artists including the Boomtown Rats, Missing Persons, Big Country and Adan and the Ants.
Revenge of the 80s airs live on Friday nights 7-9ET on Q99.1FM in the Hudson Valley (www.wtbq.com) and on Wednesdays 12noon Melbourne, AUS time on Radio 80s 87.6FM. Podcasts are available on Saturdays after the live show. We also air Wednesdays 6-8pm and Saturdays 10am-12noon on The Volt.
According to Exclaim News, record label Claremont 56 announced it will release music from former Liquid Liquid vocalist Sal Principato‘s 1980s side project “Fists of Facts,” capitalizing on the huge trend of re-releasing creations form classic alternative bands of the era.
Exclaim’s Brock Theissen says the company will press about 500 special-edition 12″ vinyl records consisting of four previously-unreleased tracks. The cuts have apparently been on cassette tapes and kept aside for around 25 years. Claremont 56′s President comments on the music in the Exclaim article.
Like Liquid Liquid, Fists of Facts had the feel of a new wave/alt-urban mix — a concept ahead of its time that gained more presence in the mainstream in the very late 80s and early 1990s after other alternative bands took on the hybrid genre. Elements of punk, new wave, old-school hip-hop and reggae dominated Principato’s style and Fists of Facts became a vehicle for him to become more hard-core.
This week, our guest on Revenge of the 80s Radio will be Jack Hues. He and Nick Feldman partnered up with drummer Darin Costin to form Huang Chung, which later became known as Wang Chung. Hues and Feldman will be on this year’s Regeneration Tour with Terri Nunn and Berlin, ABC, Cutting Crew and Missing Persons.
Hues and I discuss the origins of Wang Chung as well as some interesting insights on some of their biggest hits. Along with their appearance on Regeneration Tour 2009, there is some other big news going on with Wang Chung, including a new album that Hues and Feldman are expected to finish in 2010 (we will play a track from the upcoming CD; they will also play some new music at the concert). Hues is also quite busy with his hybrid Jazz group, The Quartet. We spend a good amount of time during our conversation talking about the new band, the music and Hues’ jazz influences. More about The Quartet can be found here.
Our interview will lead off the second hour of the May 29th show.
The podcast for our May 22, 2009 Revenge of the 80s Radio show is up and available at the bottom of this post.
This week, we have wall-to-wall classic alternative cover songs of the 1980s. The art of the cover song was not a new phenomenon then, but it was a bit different from eras past. The 50s and 60s found the recording industry a huge platform for artists who performed work previously released by another singer or group. In many cases, the covers sounded very much like the original or companies would have an unknown artist perform the track for special compilation edition records (hence those Time-Life infomercials for 50s-era music collections constantly assuring buyers that they have the “original recordings by the original artists”). It was the late 1960s when artists would begin to understand that covering a song means putting their own twist on it or making some improvements to the first cut. There were folk versions of old rock tunes and acid rockers found ways to make some songs stand out more by doing them in their style while still paying homage to the original (Blue Cheer’s “Summertime Blues” and The Zachary Thacks’ “Little Red Book” comes to mind here). That trend continued in the 1970s as popular bands of the time would recreate an oldie by turning it into a fun 70s style pop song.
The 1980s, as an era of new sound, technology and creativity, produced possible the most interesting covers in music history. From Wall of Voodoo’s version of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” to Devo’s “Satisfaction,” some of the great American classics were re-translated and admired by a new generation of listeners who wanted something different but understood what great music was.
Later on the recording industry “suits” started winning their choke hold on mainstream radio play lists and found that bland, mellow versions of once-great songs would “test well” and make lots of money. Soon came Celine Dion and her watering down of “The Power of Love” and “I Drove All Night.” Consequently, the industry kept churning out short-lived manufactured acts that all sounded like the typical “pop diva” or “boy-band lead whiner” and made money from the masses by having them strip the soul from what was great music (did I not mention that awful version of “Time After Time” by some trendy-boy-du-jour in a prebious post?).
This Revenge of the 80s show features classic covers by artists of the era including Captain Sensible, Strawberry Switchblade, The Tom Tom Club, Louise Robey and The Cure.
Tonight’s Revenge of the 80s Radio show will feature classic cover songs from the era. There were some very good and quite interesting ones done then. The art of the cover song is lost on some people today; my take on the right approach to performing someone else’s work is to either improve on it or put a special spin on the piece. In recent years, the music industry has allowed generic pop singers to perform mellow generic versions of once-great tracks. One bad cover that still sticks in my craw is the whiny version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” by some boy-band-sounding singer (kind of like Kyle Troy from The Adventures of Ford Fairlaine). In the 1980s, new wavers and alt-rockers of the time found ways to make the music their own while at the same time paying tribute to the original.
Among the classic covers we will feature are performances by Trio, Laibach, Strawberry Switchblade, The Little Girls, The Fine Young Cannibals and Blondie.
Revenge of the 80s airs live on Friday nights 7-9ET on Q99.1FM in the Hudson Valley (www.wtbq.com) and on Wednesdays 12noon Melbourne, AUS time on Radio 80s 87.6FM. Podcasts are available on Saturdays after the live show. We also air Wednesdays 6-8pm and Saturdays 10am-12noon on The Volt.
Original Coconut Adriana Kaegi has put up a new and interesting video blog on things happening in New York City. In her “NYC Events Videos” website, Adriana offers a VIP’s look into fashion, lifestyle and music events in New York.
The site launched just over a week ago. Its first features include an important charity event, a real Chocolate Bar (you will have to go to Adriana’s blog to see it) and an opening showcasing work from three 80s artists. Adriana Kaegi was a guest on Revenge of the 80s a short while ago; she is a founding member of Kid Creole and the Coconuts, President of Dear Addy Productions and is soon releasing her new album, “TAG.” She has also recently completed a documentary, Me and My Coconuts, about her experiences with the legendary 80s band. Adriana’s work as a video producer and internet entrepreneur is well-recognized and critically acclaimed. NYC Events Videos is another example of her creativity and is an excellent addition to her long list of credits.
Thomas Dolby, the man who brought new wave synth-pop to a new level, has a newly-released CD/DVD compilation out. It’s called The Singular Thomas Dolby, spanning his illustrious solo career.
While Dolby is best known in the U.S. for his mega-hit “She Blinded Me With Science” and smash “Hyperactive” — the latter of which includes a real trombone rather than a synth-brass effect — Dolby has also been an astounding keyboardist and accomplished producer for several other projects. He wrote “New Toy” for Lena Lovitch, performed with 80s rockers Def Lepperd and produced musically divers artists like Joni Mitchell, Lea Thompson and George Clinton. I put Lea Thompson in there because I am one of the people who actually LIKED Howard the Duck and found Thompson to be a talented singer for Dolby’s Cube. “Howard’ never got a fair shake from the Academy (yes, the same “Academy” that thought Julia Roberts was so wonderful playing a bland hooker in Pretty Woman; these were dark days for the Oscars).
Fans of Dolby will be happy to find his deeper cuts alongside the classic tracks (although they omitted “Howard the Duck”) and some bonus surprises on the DVD.
As for future plans to tour: according to his official website, details for late 2009 concerts are to come.
Due to some financial considerations, Heaven 17 will not be on this year’s Regeneration Tour, according event organizers. The band was to have been included in a lineup featuring Terri Nunn and Berlin, ABC, Cutting Crew and Wang Chung (with Missing Persons for some shows).
Red Entertainment, who operates and promotes the tour, says dates that include Berlin on the bill will likely be a four-band lineup while they seek replacements for shows without Nunn and her band.
It would have been nice to see Heaven 17 perform in the U.S. this year, but economic circumstances can not always be helped. Red Entertainment did an excellent job last year finding other bands to take on dates where the Human League did not appear, recruiting The Romantics, Missing Persons and 10,000 Maniacs as fill-ins. They should be trusted to come through for classic alternative fans again.
The podcast for our 5/15/09 Revenge of the 80s Radio Show is up and available at the bottom of this post.
Back by popular demand, the second hour featured our Classic Alternative Dance Party with tracks from Yaz, The Flirts, Dominatrix and ABC. In the first hour, we played tracks from artists including Jason and the Scorchers, Boomerang, REM and Voice of the Beehive (with a Happy Birthday going out to Tracey Belland — May 17th).
