In 1980, after some disagreements over musical direction, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh left the Human League. This left the group as singer Phil Oakey and Adrian Wright, “Director of Visuals”, whose job it was to provide lighting and slides for Human League shows. Not a lot of musicians then ! This also happened 10 days before a European tour which promoters started to threaten to take legal action over if the shows did not go ahead.

In a matter of days Oakey recruited Susan Ann (Susanne) Sulley and Joanne Catherall after seeing them dancing together at the Crazy Daisy nightclub in Sheffield and Ian Burden from Sheffield synth band Graph so that the tour could be completed. 

Post tour Oakey was introduced to Producer Martin Hannett by staff at Virgin Records. Hannett moved the group to his studio in Berkshire away from the Sheffield studio they were still sharing with Ware and Marsh who were now known as Heaven 17. In Berkshire they recorded “The Sound Of The Crowd” which became their first Top 40 hit. Finally, manager Bob Last suggested former Rezillos guitarist Jo Callis join the band and the stage was set.

“Dare” was recorded between March and September 1981 and released in October. The songwriting was pretty evenly split between Phil Oakey, Jo Callis, Adrian Wright and Ian Burden, 9 originals and a cover of the theme tune from the film “Get Carter”. The album gave up 4 Top 15 singles (“The Sound Of The Crowd” #12, “Love Action” #3, “Open Your Heart” #6 and of course “Don’t You Want Me”, the Xmas 1981 #1 single) and reached number 1 in the album charts 2 weeks after release.

Oakey got exactly what he wanted, a shiny pop sheen almost entirely removed from the groups previous sound, and hits. The singles, especially “The Sound Of The Crowd” and “Love Action”s B-side “Hard Times”, were still big club favourites, filling the floor at Romeo & Juliets and the like. But it’s musically a very different Human League from the first two albums, lyrically too. These are mostly sparkly pop tunes set in a synth-pop world and not the experimental sci-fi electronic music of “Reproduction” and “Travelogue”. There’s still darkness within (see what I did there?), “Seconds” recounts an assassination (JFK, Lennon maybe) and “I Am The Law” has a title culled from 2000AD comics superstar Judge Dread’s catchphrase.

None of this is to say that “Dare” isn’t a good album, it absolutely is, a pristine chunk of slick 80’s pop. But if you ask me to choose, I’ll take “The Black Hit Of Space” over a drunken singalong to “Don’t You Want Me” every time.

The Sound Of The Crowd - https://youtu.be/xK9uUqvpLyQ

Back when we were talking about Heaven 17 I mentioned Romeo & Juliet’s in Birmingham. It was a big, plush “normals” disco/nightclub in the City Centre. But downstairs in a little side room that probably held about 150 people max, a little scene developed based around the Bowie & Roxy nights that were springing up at the time in the early 80’s. The DJ would play Bowie & Roxy, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Eno, post Punk stuff like Magazine and Bauhaus, Kraftwerk and other Krautrock stuff. Neu! And La Düsseldorf, plus the developing synth-pop records by Yellow Magic Orchestra and of course the Human League.

Tracks from “Travelogue” made up a big chunk of the playlist and would cause a rush to the dancefloor where you’d find couples (boy/girl, girl/girl, boy/boy, we weren’t fussy) doing “that” dance (ask me to show you one day it’s too hard to describe) to “The Black Hit Of Space”, “Only After Dark” (a cover of a Mick Ronson song from his first solo album "Slaughter On 10th Avenue"), “Crow And A Baby” and “Being Boiled”.

The Human League of “Travelogue” (and its predecessor “Reproduction” (which featured another R&J’s dancefloor killer “Empire State Human”) were a very different animal to the poppy confection that had all those hits and produced “Dare” later in the 80’s. This is much darker, moodier stuff than that which came later. As much as I like that Human League MkII, “Travelogue” will always be the sound of the Human League to me.

Crow And A Baby - https://youtu.be/wJUvU6j51ME

A.K.A the E Street Band play Punk Rock…no, really, if you’ve never heard The Hold Steady generally or this album in particular then just imagine the E Street Band playing Punk Rock. Track one, side one “Constructive Summer” starts out with a powerhouse, thrashing Punk rock guitar leading us in. That theme is then taken up by the piano and if you didn’t know better you’d swear it was “Professor” Roy Bittan playing it (it’s not, it’s the Hold Steady’s Franz Nicolay). Then as the drummer counts it off and the rest of the band crash in singer Craig Finn hits us with

“Me and my friends are like, The drums on “Lust for Life”…”

Now I say singer but Craig Finn talks through these songs as much as he sings, on this one he sings/talks you through an idea of how we should all hang out with our friends more and do our thing in a spirit of positivity. How our younger years should have shown us that perhaps the things we were told back then were best for others and not us, before hitting us with one of my favourite lyrical couplets in a song that I’ve heard in a long, long time

“Raise a toast to saint Joe Strummer, I think he might've been our only decent teacher

Getting older makes it harder to remember, We are our only saviours”

The Hold Steady are originally from Minneapolis but are now based in Brooklyn, New York. They have released 9 albums of which “Stay Positive” is the fourth. I like all of them but “Stay Positive” is my favourite.

“Constructive Summer” disappears on a fading power chord and then “Sequestered In Memphis” comes steaming in with  another Bittan-esque piano blast and if at the end of the intro Bruce Springsteen started singing you wouldn’t be at all surprised. It tells a story of boy meets girl, they head off to get it on, next thing you know boy is getting questioned by the police seemingly about the girls murder. Now I’ve known this record for a good while and it was only while looking up the lyrics to this song that I discover that although singer Craig Finn has said this album is about ageing gracefully while staying true to your youthful philosophies there is also, some fans say, a subplot concerning a murder in a smalltown of which this is the first song. I can tell you no more and further investigation shall be entered into.***

Another standout on this record is “Lord I’m Discouraged” and the reason this one does it for me is (and here’s a statement that rarely escapes my lips) it has a fantastic guitar solo ! I pretty much 100% hate guitar solo’s, there are a very few that I can be bothered with so let’s call it 99.99999 (recurring) % of guitar solo’s that I hate. If forced to name it my favourite guitar solo is on the Sex Pistols “Did You Know Wrong”. My brother knew this well as, when he went to see the Pistols in Finsbury Park, just as Steve Jones was sliding into said solo Miles phoned me back in Brum so I could hear it live. I like Neil Young’s solo on “Cinnamon Girl”, it’s one note, what’s not to like. There are a handful of others, none of which spring to mind right now. I’ve very, very rarely heard a guitar solo that adds anything to the song other than allowing a guitarist an opportunity to thrust his nether regions at the audience. But the guitar solo in “Lord I’m Discouraged” works, firstly because it does add something to the song and partly because there’s a bit of it that sounds like a part of the keyboards on Manfred Mann’s Earth Bands version of Springsteen’s “Blinded By The Light”…giving this record another spurious Springsteen connection. The song itself is quite depressing and about a girl with a serious substance problem, but don’t let that put you off.

There’s nothing on this record that I don’t like (other than the copy I have plays at 45rpm which is a real pain on my downstairs record deck on which I need to move the drive belt to play 45’s). Punk Rock meets the Boss in a back alley somewhere twixt Jersey and Minneapolis (Youngstown OH seems appropriate) with a previously unknown murder mystery thrown in (maybe)…in the spirit in which I started this Albums Thing project and as the lyrics go ”We gotta stay positive”…

Constructive Summer - https://youtu.be/pnSAn6HIfzk

*** “Sequestered In Memphis”, “One For The Cutters”, maybe “Both Crosses” and “Joke About Jamaica” refer to deaths and murders, some similar in nature, but to call it a concept album about a murder is stretching things a little.