Information Society - "Walking Away"

(Debuted November 26, 1988, Peaked #9, 18 Weeks on the Chart)

Yesterday, I mentioned that I was surprised to learn that "Buffalo Stance" was not taken from a New York artist, and today I have to admit that I'm once again surprised to learn about the place of origin for another act. In this case, I'm surprised Information Society was a Minneapolis-based group, since their electronic dance material sounded like it was done by a British group.

What doesn't seen to be a surprise is that there was a Star Trek fan in the group. Just as their earlier hit "What's On Your Mind" contained a sample of Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock saying "pure energy," the song "Walking Away" begins with William Shatner as Captain Kirk saying, "It is useless to resist." Though I grew tired really quickly of their first hit, there was something about "Walking Away" that caught my ear in 1989 despite the fact that I wasn't a fan of dance/pop at all.

Neneh Cherry - "Buffalo Stance"

(Debuted April 1, 1989, Peaked #3, 24 Weeks on the Chart)

Sometimes even the guy who has all the answers can find something to learn. Here are some things I didn't know about Neneh Cherry: She was born in Sweden. She was based out of London. At the time the song came out, I would have bet anything that she was a New Yorker. I only would have been partially right, though. She grew up in New York City but quit school and moved to England when she was 14.

When she was working over there as a singer, she began a personal and professional relationship with Cameron McVey. In 1986, McVey was part of a duo named Morgan McVey and they recorded a B-side to one of their singles that eventually was re-recorded as "Buffalo Stance." The song was a fusion of rap, R&B, pop and the dance music that so thoroughly saturated the airwaves then. Because it was so different yet similar to other sounds heard on the radio and on MTV, it became a big hit, reaching #3 on the pop chart, topped the Billboard dance survey and reached #3 in the U.K.

On a personal level, "Buffalo Stance" taught me (and many of the kids I grew up with) what the word "gigolo" meant.

The Cult - "Fire Woman"

(Debuted May 27, 1989, Peaked #46, 11 Weeks on the Chart)

I'm amazed this was not a Top 40 song, since it was all over the radio and MTV when it was a current song. That said, I was spending a lot of time listening to rock stations and avoiding the local Top 40 station because I had gotten sick of having to hear New Kids on the Block once every other hour, mixed in several songs that seemed to have the same exact drum machine programmed behind it. And this song was tailor-made to be enjoyed by a 16 year-old boy.

The Cult was a British band fronted by Ian Astbury. Though it was their first American pop hit, they had been charting for years in their native U.K. and I had known about them from hanging around a record store while their Electric album came out in 1987. I really didn't pay any attention to them then, but that changed in '89 when "Fire Woman" blasted from my radio speakers. The guitar attack at the beginning hooked me quickly, but the relentless drive of the song was irresistable.

Siouxsie & the Banshees - "Peek-a-Boo"

(Debuted October 15, 1988, Peaked #53, 13 Weeks on the Chart)

In 1988, "Peek-a-Boo" sounded a lot different from what was being persented as hit music at the time. It was both refreshing and unsettling. And not surprisingly, it wasn't a pop hit because there was little room on the Hot 100 for nonconformity in 1988.

However, the song caught the ear of college radio, where the nonconformists tend to be more easily located. That burgeoning audience was finally served with its own survey when Billboard debuted its Modern Rock Tracks list on September 13, 1988. The very first #1 song on that chart was Siouxsie & the Banshee's "Peek-a-Boo."

Studio effects were used to give the song its distinctive sound. First, a recording that was recorded but not used on an earlier album was flipped upside down, with an accordion, bass and extra drum beat added. Siousie Sioux also recorded different lines of the song on different microphones, giving a sonic "image" of coming from different directions when listened to on headphones. The entire production took a year to finish; what was originally intended to be a B-side for another single eventually became too good to bury on a record.

Jermaine Stewart - "Say it Again"

(Not Available on iTunes)

(Debuted March 19, 1988, Peaked #27, 12 Weeks on the Chart)

For the regular readers of this blog living in the United States...Happy Thanksgiving. Today's entry will be a short one.

Jermaine Stewart has already been featured on this blog for his hit "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off" but his second biggest hit has been largely forgotten even though it would reach the Top 40 on its own. On that note, here's a video to give it a little more exposure. Although it was soon forgotten after its chart run, it actually stands out among some of the other material that hit in 1988.

The Jets - "Make it Real"

(Debuted April 16, 1988, Peaked #4, 20 Weeks on the Chart)

Between 1986 and '88, The Jets had five singles reach the pop Top 10, which might be surprising to those who weren't around in the era. The last of those Top 10 hits was "Make it Real," which would also turn out to be the group's last Top 40 hit before the original lineup splintered apart and focused on other projects and interests. The group didn't break up in the sense that many bands do, since the members are all brothers and sisters. They were eight siblings (out of 17) from the Wolfgramm family, of Tongan ancestry but raised in Minneapolis.

In "Make it Real," the lyrics express a hope that -- on the anniversary of their meeting -- a couple still has a chance to get together. She still holds a flame in her heart, but he wasn't ready to settle down. There are two ways of looking at this: the first one says that she's being vigilant, while the other one wants to tell her to get over him if he isn't calling her back. In addition to reaching the pop Top 10, it was their second #1 single on the adult contemporary chart.

Climie Fisher - "Love Changes (Everything)"

(Debuted May 14, 1988, Peaked #23, 18 Weeks on the Chart)

The things that get remembered from childhood...when "Love Changes Everything" was a hit single, Rosie O'Donnell was working as whatever VH-1 called its VJs. After the video played, she came on and began a bit about how Climie Fisher sounded like something you would yell when you accidentally hit your hand with a hammer. She then went on to illustrate her point by pretending to do it.

Actually, Climie Fisher's name came from the last names of its two members. Simon Climie was the singer and Rob Fisher played the keyboard. Fisher had previously been part of another hitmaking duo earlier in the 1980s called Naked Eyes. The pair had met as a result of working together as studio musicians and wrote most of their own material. They recorded a pair of albums before moving on to other projects, and Fisher sadly succumbed to cancer in 1999.

"Love Changes (Everything)" comes across as a slickly produced record awash in the synthesizers that were nearly ubiquitous in the 1980s. It's also laden with catchy hooks that will stick in the back of the mind well after the song stops playing. If you don't mind a heap of sugar in your music, this song should be a nice little trip down a nostalgic lane; however, if you like less pop and more guitar sound, this might not be your tune.

The Communards - "Never Can Say Goodbye"

(Debuted January 30, 1988, Peaked #51, 9 Weeks on the Chart)

For my friends who tried to tell me in 1988 that disco was a long-dead relic of the 1970s, here's part of the fodder I tossed right back at them. "Never Can Say Goodbye" is a remake of a song that was one of the earliest disco hits (by Gloria Gaynor, which itself was a remake) done in the then-current Hi-NRG dance beat. At the time I was asking what the problem was with 1970s disco when the same songs were being recycled with a new beat, and was essentially told that the beat was what made the "new" versions better. I disagreed then and still do.

The Communards were a British-based dance group led by Jimmy Somerville, who was featured here a few weeks back as a member of Bronski Beat. It was the second of two Hot 100 hits for the band, and both were songs that had been big disco singles in the 1970s. Though "Never Can Say Goodbye" failed to reach the Top 40, it was a #2 dance hit, as well as a #4 hit in the band's native U.K.

Go West - "Don't Look Down - The Sequel"

(Debuted August 1, 1987, Peaked #39, 13 Weeks on the chart)

Go West was a British duo made up of Peter Cox and Richard Drummie. Their first LP in their native U.K. came out in 1985 and included a hit song called "Don't Look Down" which would later be remixed and titled "Don't Look Down - The Sequel." That would be the version that was released two years later in the U.S. and became their first Top 40 single Stateside. They would go on to notch a couple more Top 40 hits in the early 1990s.

"Don't Look Down" was a hit song during the early months of the school year. I know that because I moved to Tennessee for a short time that year (I grew up in northern New York and went back there in 1988). The cafeteria played a local Top 40 radio station over the speakers, which was something that never happened at my old school. Anyway, hearing "Don't Look Down" today brings an image in my mind of the new school's cafeteria and of myself trying to get along as an outsider.

Kenny G - "Songbird"

(Debuted April 4, 1987, Peaked #4, 22 Weeks on the chart)

The instrumental was a dying format on the pop chart even in 1987. While dozens of hit songs were instrumentals during the 1950s and 60s, the form begin winding down in the 1970s and was nearly crushed by the death of Disco. By the 1980s, the few instrumentals that were hits were theme songs to movies or TV shows.

That didn't mean the format was dead, however. Jazz artists were still performing instrumentals and so were New Age artists, but they just weren't getting much attention with radio stations or music video channels. In fact, Kenny G (real last name Gorelick) had been playing professionally since he was still in high school, playing his saxophone for the Love Unlimited Orchestra, and continued as he worked his way through college. He signed his own record deal in 1982 but worked in collaboration with a number of artists as well.

In 1987, his Duotones LP let the rest of the world that wasn't focused on the jazz world know who Kenny G was. "Songbird" would become the first instrumental track to reach the pop Top 10 that wasn't a theme song in over a decade, and he soon became the biggest-selling instrumental artist in history.