Today we’re looking at See You, which is one of my favourite Depeche Mode songs. Yes, there’s a classic red phone box in the video, along with a lot of other gloriously 20th century tech. I promise I loved the song before I knew that!
The video opens in a dark and deserted Hounslow train station, which is a good start. ‘London by night’ is one of my favourite settings. ‘London by night in the ’80s’ is even better.
In a world before phone cameras, people actually used photo booths for purposes other than getting a terrible mugshot that will be immortalised on one’s passport/driving licence for ten years! The vague sort-of-plot of this video begins here, with these photos of a girl whom Dave Gahan is seeking, or something.
I don’t remember ever seeing a photo booth on a train station platform! At first I assumed that the ‘Isle of Wight’ poster was for the music festival, but the festival wasn’t running in the ’80s, so it must just be a pretty tourism poster.
The red phone box, which is the centre of a slightly odd scene where Dave stares at Martin Gore while he’s making a phone call, is obviously the very best bit of the video. Obviously.
We suddenly cut to a Homebase-type store, which is full of the kind of chintzy-looking pink/peach lampshades that were absolutely everywhere when I was little.
Conveniently, the store also has a photo booth in it, with more photos of the mysterious girl lying around. It’s interesting that photos from booths already had to be ‘passport approved’ in the early ’80s, as I thought that HM Passport Office only started to get really pernickety about rules for photos in the ’00s. It’d be nice if you still only had to pay 40p!
It wouldn’t be a home improvement store without a TV department, and those are some super ’80s TVs.
The music section actually looks very similar to a 2019 music section, as physical media has come full circle! I went into HMV the other day and popped up to the music floor out of sheer interest. It was all classic albums on vinyl as far as the eye could see, with the CDs relegated to a couple of racks at the back – because who buys CDs anymore? I didn’t spot any singles though.
The girl in the photos turns out to be the cashier at the store, which (finally) explains why the setting randomly switched about two minutes previously. Dave buys a copy of the See You single, which is like an extra-specially dorky version of the dorky thing where bands wear their own band merch in public.
The video ends with a slightly sinister CCTV monitoring scene, though I do like all the pretty computer keyboards. I remember when keyboard buttons were all orange and grey like that!
Today on ‘Dee’s Favourite ’80s Music Videos All Have Classic Red Phone Boxes In Them’, we’re looking at Heaven 17’s 1982 video for Let Me Go. Fun fact: this was never a Top 40 hit. However, it is my favourite Heaven 17 song, and was my absolute highlight when I saw them at Electric Dreams in December.
The video opens in a black ‘n’ white deserted London, where the members of Heaven 17 are approaching a red phone box with its door hanging open, rather like the ones you see nowadays in areas where councils are not performing proper phone box upkeep. The phone is off the hook and repeating the automated voice from the speaking clock on a loop.
It’s not clear at this point what has happened to everyone else in London – there was a discarded Evening Standard fluttering about at the start of the video with the headline ‘British Electric Foundation crashes – Share prices halved – city rumours confirmed’, but that doesn’t really tell us anything (British Electric Foundation was the predecessor project to Heaven 17, so it’s probably just an in-joke!). However, Heaven 17 are still here and still walking purposefully towards…something.
In addition to the classic red phone box, we have a bonus classic red postbox that has spit out all its post (this doesn’t really make any sense, but the alternative explanation is that when people found it was full, they just dumped their envelopes in front of it instead of going off to find a different one that wasn’t full, and frankly that’s just silly). I’m not as obsessed with postboxes as I am with phone boxes, largely because the former are still in common use and therefore not an endangered species on British streets.
Anyway, this is the point when Glenn Gregory realises that Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh have disappeared into thin air (I suppose that must be what also happened to everyone else, although I’m not sure what it has to do with the British Electric Foundation crashing).
I’m sure this slo-mo sequence of Glenn running past the National Westminster Bank (the old name for NatWest, fact fans) is meant to be very artistic and beautiful, but as a recreational runner, every time I see it I just think, ‘He’s not wearing the appropriate gear!’
Inside the…train station? (it’s sheltered but open to the elements from the sides, and there’s a bench), there’s lots of cash fluttering about, adding to the forboding feeling of ‘London city types in the ’80s all disappeared into thin air’.
The video then briefly turns to colour for a ghostly crowd sequence. This type of ‘single person swimming against the tide of a crowd’ scene is something I associate more with Kate Bush’s 1985 video for Running Up That Hill, but apparently Heaven 17 did it first.
But soon Glenn returns to the empty black ‘n’ white world, and what’s this? Why, it’s a GPO 332, the standard GPO phone issued between 1937 and 1959! Glenn doesn’t bother using it – it’s clearly just here in the video for aesthetic decoration, and it performs that job beautifully.
The video ends with a shot of the swinging receiver in the phone box again, with the speaking clock still repeating itself over and over to a nonexistent listener. A nice, suitably haunting image to finish on!
Another raft of current chart hits where the video’s only recently been released!
Jax Jones and Years & Years – Play
Daft, colourful, supermarket-checkout-themed video with lots of miniaturised people dancing on one of those motorised belts you put your shopping on. I highly approve of this one!
Calvin Harris and Rag ‘N’ Bone Man – Giant
Slightly trippy video with a nonsensical, unclear story. At first it seems to be a depressing tale about a young guy whose mother has a prescription pill addiction, and I’m going to guess that the rest of the stuff in the video is just part of his fantasy about escaping his life, because it’s all random shots of Calvin Harris living a secluded, self-sufficient life out in the woods with lots of fishing and campfire cooking, and then there’s some people riding horses, and then Rag ‘N’ Bone Man appears to be playing the role of some kind of nighttime forest dance cult leader, although he doesn’t actually dance himself. Anyway, some of the imagery is quite pretty, and I guess that’s the important thing in a music video.
Sam Smith and Normani – Dancing With A Stranger
The setting for this one is all very grey and minimalist, and I (obviously) love the ’80s-inspired grey leather sofas in Sam Smith’s otherwise empty living room, but it’s pretty bleak-looking until everyone starts dancing.
One of the things I love spotting in ’80s music videos is classic red phone boxes. You could probably have guessed that, if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time. The combination of ’80s music and the red phone box aesthetic makes a video several hundred percent better.
As I’ve discussed before, the UK started phasing out red phone boxes in 1985. The fact that so many are still standing thirty-four years later shows you how ubiquitous they were, and this was even more true in the ’80s, when they were still the standard UK phone box.
Tracey Ullman’s video for My Guy – her 1984 cover of Madness’ 1980 hit My Girl – is everything a 20th century telephone nerd could want in a music video. In addition to the aforementioned red phone box, there are classic phones a-go-go – none of them a GPO 746, sadly, but still very period-evocative. Let’s take a look!
At the start of the video, Tracey is dropped off at the bus stop in the rain by her boyfriend after an argument. This doesn’t involve telephones, but it does involve a super ’80s pimped-out car. Love that cadmium yellow colour!
Unlike many music videos to which I will be subjecting you all in the future, this video doesn’t actually contain a full-length shot of a classic red phone box. We get this close-up instead, where a cheery-looking individual is sabotaging Tracey’s phone call to her boyfriend with the help of some pliers. Those holes in between the red bars of the phone box are meant to have glass in them, incidentally (I believe this is known as a window). Music videos have never made any sense, and this one is no exception.
Again, no phones here, but I’ve always liked this girls-in-dinner-suits dance routine.
Of course, as I’ve discussed when doing my Now! marathon, the most notable thing about the video (assuming you don’t share my 20th century telephone obsession) is the Neil Kinnock subplot:
Neil first arrives at the end of the dance routine to partner Tracey in some kind of dance style that you don’t see on Strictly.
He then appears in a slightly more expected role, showing up to canvass at Tracey’s mother’s house. Side note: do party leaders actually go canvassing themselves during election campaigns? I know they at least sort of have to pretend that they’re still regular MPs in addition to spending a lot of time shouting at each other in the House of Commons.
Unfortunately, Neil’s bitten off more than he can chew with Tracey’s mother (also played by Tracey), who starts showing him all her photo albums. I love all the classic Labour slogan posters on the walls.
Neil shows up for a final time in the fast-food place where Tracey works, reading a paper. All the mosaic tiling and fancy plants look a little upmarket for a fast-food place. Maybe such places were just better in 1984.
Back to the phones! Tracey spends most of her work day waiting for the restaurant’s telephone to ring. I can’t place this model even after rummaging through a lot of databases on classic telephone sites, but it looks similar to a GPO 772 or 782.
The video ends without any resolution to the question of whether Tracey’s boyfriend is going to stop sulking and ring her back. They should have made a sequel.
I love music videos, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to babble on about them once a week from now on. Sometimes I’ll be discussing videos from modern chart hits where the video was released too late to be discussed on my New Hits Friday post, but usually I’ll just be banging on about the ’80s, when music videos, like everything else, were so much better. You have been warned.
I’m starting with Howard Jones’ Life In One Day (1985), which works on multiple levels and is a real hidden gem among ’80s videos.
The video starts out not looking like a music video at all. It looks like a Top of the Pops performance instead, complete with an introduction from a presenter (I think it’s Tony Blackburn, but the picture quality is so poor I can’t be sure) about how they’re not going to play the music video because Howard Jones is live in the studio. As the performance begins, there are a lot of jumps and scratches in the tape, like it’s from a dodgy old VHS copy that somebody’s had for years and has played over and over until it’s become degraded.
The original joke, of course, was that viewers would think there was something wrong with their TV picture and get up to perform percussive maintenance on their boxy mid-’80s TVs. A few commenters on the YouTube video describe doing exactly that back in the day.
But what’s so brilliant about the way the joke has aged is the accidental prescience of the way it works in the YouTube era. Here’s the thing: when you search for a music video for an ’80s hit song, YouTube will also throw up a whole load of contemporary performances of the song on music shows like Top of the Pops. Most of them are uploads of VHS copies that people taped off the TV when the show was first on, and so the VHS copy is thirty years old and features the exact kind of jumps, scratches, and other picture issues that were deliberately inserted into the Life In One Day video.
As such, the automatic reaction of a YouTube searcher to this video (it was certainly mine) will be: ‘oh, FFS, this is just the TOTP performance – where’s the actual music video?’ As such, modern viewers are fooled in a way that the video creators couldn’t have imagined back in 1985! Nothing makes this clearer than the fact that the top search on YouTube for the song is ‘howard jones life in one day official video’, which is exactly what you put in when you’ve just watched what you believe to be the opening few seconds of a Top of the Pops performance, shut the video in frustration and try to find the ‘actual’ video instead.
I think this is partly also due to the fact that the Life In One Day video is rarely shown on TV nowadays (I’ve certainly never seen it on any of the UK music channels on my TV package) – perhaps because the joke is (ironically) seen as dated now – and so people are more likely to hunt for the video online.
Anyway, the rest of the video is great too – the imaginary VHS-recording viewer starts to change channels, but the TV keeps flicking back to the performance, and then the song and lyrics start to seep into the other programmes – a newsreader’s words, the background music in laundry detergent adverts, the featured video in a record company advert. It’s all very cleverly done, but of course it’s the initial joke that I find to be the real standout feature of this video.
I noticed from the end credits that Godley and Creme were involved in the production of the video – they did some brilliant videos during the ’80s, so I’m sure I’ll end up discussing them again soon.
So, on Saturday while Geth was away in Lancashire, I did my weekly setting of TV recordings. I do this every week because, other than music channels, I never watch TV live – Geth and I are both just too busy to commit to (and remember) the timeslot when things we might want to watch are on, and even if we did remember, it would inevitably be the case that when the timeslot actually arrived, one of us would be NOT AT ALL in the mood for watching that particular show, and would want to do something else. Probably me.
This is one of the few areas in life where I am not a 20th century throwback, although, to be fair, it was definitely easier to remember TV timeslots when there were only four channels and no internet to distract you.
As such, I do a weekly setting of recordings, which looks something like this:
Scan this week’s issue of the Radio Times for running TV (road races, triathlons and athletics) among the sports coverage.
Use the digibox to set recordings for all of the above (unless it’s something that I know is going to be available on BBC iPlayer for a good month and the box is running out of space).
Use the digibox guide to go through the entire schedule for BBC Four for the week. BBC Four shows a lot of compilations of music performances by 20th century musicians, documentaries about 20th century musicians, and old episodes of Top of the Pops.
Set recordings for all of the above.
Worry about the box getting full and make a concerted resolution to catch up with lots of TV this week.
Realise that what will actually happen is that, five nights out of seven, Geth will want to watch YouTube channels about boardgames and Star Wars on the XBOX 360, and I will want to read random blogs online.
Go through the digibox history and try and find some old stuff to delete in order to make room.
Delete some old athletics from a year ago, and some Christmas films we recorded a year and a half ago.
Make mental note to add the Christmas films to my Amazon wishlist. (Spoiler: this will not happen.)
Use the digibox guide to go through the entire schedule for Vintage TV for the week. Vintage TV shows a lot of interestingly-themed playlists of 20th century music, modern-day concerts by musicians who were big in the 20th century, My Vintage shows with musicians talking about their favourite songs, and My Mixtape shows with non-musician celebrities talking about their favourite songs.
Set recordings for anything that looks interesting. Resist setting recordings for every single ’80s playlist. (I did actually use to record these, and it meant we NEVER had any space on the box and I was spending my whole life with Vintage TV recordings on in the background.)
So yeah. That’s what I was doing on Saturday night. Before I did that, though, I had to scroll through the guide in order to change the channel from Radio 4 to Vintage TV. Geth listens to Radio 4 every morning to catch the news headlines (he used to watch the BBC News channel before they started doing that godawful Victoria Derbyshire programme in the mornings), and so he always leaves the digibox on the Radio 4 channel. I, on the other hand, can’t stand listening to the news in the current awful climate in which we live, so while I’m doing my setting of recordings I like to have Vintage TV on in the background.
As I scrolled between Radio 4 (channel 704) and Vintage TV (channel 82), my eye was caught by what appeared to be a brand new channel on channel 88.
A brand new music channel.
A brand new music channel, dedicated to the ’80s.
A brand new music channel, dedicated to the ’80s, run by the people behind the Now! That’s What I Call Music compilations.
Welcome to Now! That’s What I Call ’80s, a music channel that they kindly invented just for me.
Well, that’s not quite true. According to Wikipedia, this channel has actually been running since 2013 as Now! That’s What I Call Music (they changed it to a dedicated ’80s channel in 2016, and added a ’90s version in 2017), but it’s never been part of the BT/Freeview channel lineup until now, so I’ve never come across it.
Obviously, I’ve spent the last few days with it constantly on in the background.
It’s been nice to have another retro music channel to enjoy. Vintage TV is great, but it only has so many videos available, so it gets a bit samey after a while. Now! That’s What I Call ’80s plays lots of videos that I’ve never seen on Vintage TV, and the kind of playlists it does are the kind of thing I’ve always dreamt of seeing on a music channel – Official UK Top 40 of the ’80s, for example, which is heaven for a chart geek like me. Most of the shows are narrated by Radio 1 DJs from the ’80s and ’90s – Mark Goodier, Simon Bates, Bruno Brookes – and there was one presented by a couple of the actors from Grange Hill, which is the kind of modern-music-channel fun nonsense that I miss on the more grown-up Vintage TV.
In short, I love it, and I’m so glad to have an extra music channel to watch.
I’ve got a feeling that an extra stage has also been added to my weekly setting of recordings. Similarly to Vintage TV, the trick will be restraining myself from recording EVERYTHING.
Day 2, and today’s collection was released on 26th March 1984. I briefly just now considered adding a daily ‘fun fact’ to this feature about what was going on in the news at the time, but frankly that would probably be so depressing that I doubt I’d still be functioning by July, so let’s make it a contemporary picture from the ol’ family album instead.
This was the way the world looked in March 1984, with Grundig TVs and vinyl collections and houseplants everywhere! My dad is still into building harps and other folk instruments, proving that some things don’t change.
Right, on with the music!
Track 1: Queen – Radio Ga Ga
I love Queen and their shamelessly anthemic rock, and this chanty, clappy track is no exception. Sing along!
Track 2: Nik Kershaw – Wouldn’t It Be Good
I prefer The Riddle, but this one’s still a great track, especially for the video with the dodgy ’80s special effect applied to Kershaw’s suit.
Track 3: Thompson Twins – Hold Me Now
It’s nice ’80s pop, but I don’t find this one particularly exciting.
Track 4: Matt Bianco – Get Out Of Your Lazy Bed
I wasn’t familiar with this one. Fairly typical for Matt Bianco, that ’50s rock ‘n’ roll style done on ’80s synths. Not playlist-worthy, but a good bouncy track.
Track 5: Carmel – More, More, More
Two mid-century throwback tracks in a row (this one has more of a ’60s lounge feel) are making me crave some straightforward ’80s synthpop. Come on, Now! compilers…
Track 6: Madness – Michael Caine
…and it’s Madness. That’ll do in a pinch! A little more sedate than most Madness tracks, but I love the tune.
Track 7: The Flying Pickets – Only You
The original version by Yazoo is my favourite song of all time (I walked down the aisle to it). I love this a cappella version too, though it has become a bit too associated with Christmas for this time of year due to its status as the UK Christmas number one for 1983.
Track 8: Nena – 99 Red Balloons
I always hear the original German-language version of this song, 99 Luftballons, in goth clubs, proving that goths will dance to anything if it’s in German. I do like this one, though.
Track 9: Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Slightly cheesy admission: I used to listen to this song every day after work in 2001 when I started my first job aged sixteen, purely due to the lyric ‘when the working day is done‘. I’m nothing if not literal. It was around then that I was first getting into ’80s nostalgia and had cultivated an appropriate ’80s playlist using Audiogalaxy (remember that?). This was a highlight, though I consider it a bit overplayed nowadays.
Scary time statistic: 2001 was the exact midpoint between 1984 and 2018. Ouch.
Track 10: Tracey Ullman – My Guy’s Mad At Me
I love this one mainly for the video featuring contemporary Labour leader Neil Kinnock. From my 2018 whimsical millennial viewpoint, I really like the fact that he used to do stuff like that, though I can understand why it resulted in the mid-’80s British populace not taking him seriously enough.
Politics aside, there is also a pleasing quantity of 20th century telephones in the video, and I am a huge geek for 20th century telephones.
Oh yeah, and there’s a song here too! It was originally a Madness song from 1979, and though I love Madness, I think I might actually prefer this version for the unexpectedly gentle intro.
Track 11: Matthew Wilder – Break My Stride
This one is often featured on BBC coverage of running events, so I’m quite fond of it for that reason. It’s probably a good thing that my clumsiness with constantly knocking headphones out means that I can’t listen to music while running, because my running playlist genuinely would be stuff like this, rather than properly hi-tempo ‘run faster’ music. Who wants to work out to boring modern trance when you can have Gassenhauer and the Chariots Of Fire theme tune?
Track 12: Julia & Company – Breaking Down
A bit disco for me, but a pleasant background track.
Track 13: Joe Fagin – That’s Livin’ Alright
It’s very dad-rock, not really my kind of thing.
Track 14: Hot Chocolate – I Gave You My Heart (Didn’t I)
There was a point a few weeks ago when Geth was complaining about Vintage TV always playing Hot Chocolate’s dafter tracks (the channel’s current favourite seems to be Girl Crazy) rather than their serious songs. I was like, ‘Geth, NO ONE listens to Hot Chocolate for their serious songs!’ I do stand by my point that they’re better at party tracks than ballads, but in recent weeks I have developed a liking for It Started With A Kiss, and this one’s all right too, what with its pleasantly lazy sax solo.
Track 15: Snowy White – Bird Of Paradise
A bit slow for me, but it’s a nice tune. I do like the epic guitar solo in the middle as well.
Track 16: Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Relax
This one was actually a childhood favourite due to its re-release in 1993 (and subsequent inclusion on another compilation, The Greatest Hits Of 1993, which was the first album I ever bought for myself, on cassette). As an adult it’s one of those wedding DJ songs where I can’t resist dancing.
Track 17: Eurythmics – Here Comes The Rain Again
I love Eurythmics, especially their more melancholy numbers like this one. Synth line + Annie Lennox’s voice = instant win.
Track 18: Howard Jones – What Is Love?
Great song, more lovely synth, pretty video shot in Paris. 1984 in a nutshell.
Track 19: The Smiths – What Difference Does It Make?
The Smiths are one of my ‘soundtrack of 2003-2004’ bands, when I was busily acquainting myself with the entire back catalogues of every major goth and indie band from the ’80s. I always liked this one as it’s quite jaunty.
Track 20: Fiction Factory – (Feels Like) Heaven
Nice pleasant jingly track, fairly standard ’80s pop.
Track 21: Re-Flex – The Politics Of Dancing
Good head-nodder, but nothing special for me.
Track 22: Thomas Dolby – Hyperactive!
Great, unusual song for the time. Love that bassline, the high vocal on the chorus, the trumpets, the general bizarre atmosphere of the track.
Track 23: China Crisis – Wishful Thinking
Nice comforting synth, nice dreamlike vocal, generally nice background music. Not one I could dance to, but a lovely tune.
Track 24: David Bowie – Modern Love
I love Bowie, but this is on the duller side for me. Let’s Dance is the real stormer on that album in my view. I do like the ‘get me to the church on time‘ lyric, though.
Track 25: Culture Club – It’s A Miracle
I’ve always found Culture Club a bit hit and miss, and this one’s a miss in my book. There’s something kind of annoying about it, probably due to the overly-upbeat instrumentals and Boy George’s cheesy lyrics and…yeah, this one is too much even for me. Sorry.
Track 26: The Rolling Stones – Undercover Of The Night
It’s driving me nuts that the title isn’t written as Under Cover Of The Night. I realise it’s deliberate, in order to add to the sexual meaning of the song, but it’s still painful to read.
As for the song itself, it’s classic Rolling Stones with added ’80s guitar and funk bass. What’s not to like?
Track 27: Big Country – Wonderland
I have to be in the right mood for Big Country; a lot of the time (today included unfortunately) the guitar instrumentals drive me mad.
They’re emblematic of a sound that was very particular to Scottish pop-rock in the ’80s – it’s difficult to explain, but when I come across a Scottish pop-rock band from that era that I’m not familiar with, I can always tell they’re Scottish without looking it up (and it’s not an accent thing, they all sing with transatlantic accents). Some day I’ll work out what the exact musical reason is, but for now I’m just going to call it a superpower.
Track 28: Slade – Run Runaway
One of my favourite songs from one of my favourite bands (huge glam rock fan here)! Brilliant shout-along anthem.
Unfortunately, Slade have never got round to putting their music on Spotify (sort it out, record label that I can’t be bothered to look up right now!). This meant I had three options for reviewing this song: 1) wade into the dumping ground that is our study and open all the boxes in there trying to find my Slade CDs; 2) find the song on YouTube; or 3) just add a tribute version into the Spotify playlist instead. I went with the extremely lazy 3), just so I wouldn’t have to pause my playlist. Sometimes, I am just as terrible as everyone else in this wretched decade of convenience.
Track 29: Duran Duran – New Moon On Monday
Without looking ahead to the track listings on the next few Now! editions, I imagine the first few entries of this blog feature are all going to feature the words ‘I love Duran Duran’ somewhere. This one is no exception. I love Duran Duran, especially their first three albums with the classic lineup, and I love this song. Epic chorus, great instrumentals, daft video (especially the ridiculous 17-minute version). Brilliant ’80s fun.
Track 30: Paul McCartney – Pipes Of Peace
My eye is twitching at having to listen to an unabashedly Christmas song out of season (this one was featured on our family’s favourite Christmas compilation, That’s Christmas, which I grew up with in the ’90s, so it’s very associated with the festive season for me). Lovely song…when it’s December.
