Seven Songs for the Week #143 - 31st Dec 25

Heard in a shopping centre this week. This song reminds me of 1987 and the arrival of music channels to Dublin televisions. Prior to that, there had been six channels: the four UK ones and Irish stations RTE 1&2. Then along came Super Channel and Music Box and a bunch of others. Later in the year, MTV Europe appeared initially only after midnight. This track from Wax was on Music Box a lot and the video is still expensive looking and just the kind of thing you don't see any more - proper multi modal animation. The song is infectious, from the goofy "one two... hold it... now" opener, to the whoas and bouncing keyboards.

Cut from a similar mid-1980s cloth as Wax. A fondly remembered one-off hit.

This track was a big hit for DH, but (a) did not herald Hall as a separate hit-making machine from Oates and (b) seems to have been forgotten as much as the Hall & Oates hits have been remembered. It's a pity, and continues the mid-80s rush of the first three songs on this list.

I heard this on the radio this week, and it really is lush. The only ELO song to get to number one in the UK, you don't hear it quite as much as yer Monsieur Blue Skies and Sweet Talking/Evil Women. Probably due to the fact that a solo Jeff rerecording has permeated in recent years on Greatest Hits albums and the like, and the soundtrack album sits apart from the main ELO catalogue. Anyways, what's not to love.

A rabbit hole I went into this week was reading/YouTubing about the Yamaha GX1 synth. The first polyphonic synth (i.e. you could play more than just one note at a time, and could do proper chords like a piano) in it's full set up it weighed nearly a ton and cost the modern day equivalent of about $300k. It can be seen in ELP's FanFare for the Common Man video, and Led Zeppelin's Knebworth footage. Benny from ABBA loved his and it appears a lot on their last few albums, notably here. Oddly this track is in Atmos on Apple Music, and no other 70s/80s ABBA track is.

Stevie also mastered the GX1, it's the stabs of strings on Pastime Paradise. Village Ghetto Land is another good example of what the keyboard could do.

Looking for more GX1 music, I found this 1977 album that features only the GX1, called GX1 and with this title track. Rick van Der Linden was a dutch musician and figurehead behind a prog/classical band called Ekseption (what a great terrible name).