Pete (L) and me (R) at his house c August 1982

 

TIME BLOCK !

The 'Vox, Foxx  and assorted shennanigans

Two lads walking to school, morning, Lancashire around the time of The Falklands War - they are 15  or 16 - they are obssessed by 1 music 2 girls 3 music 4 swearing - because they are terrified of girls, they are full of bravado, but would never ever even risk actually engaging in meaningful conversation with one.  They worship them from afar, as they worship the twin muisical beacons of their early teenagerdom - Ultravox and John Foxx - they are aware of and approve of the Midge Ure Ultravox, but of course, these two 

'Conesseiurs' of sound much prefer the early stuff - there is a slightly superior knowingness about the fact that 90% of Balshaws (their school) know 'Vienna' but only the elite few (nerds and weirdos) know 'RockWrock' - an early Ultravox blast of saxophone honking, sweary chorus, punky (but not quite 'punk', whatever that was s'posed to be in 1982) 'rock on Tommy' dafteness.  The clique, the circle , the chosen few - who would cast despairing eyes cloudwards at the sheer ignorance of the masses - pre-internet, early video age, you had to hunt for this shit, and I mean, go on a mission - and you got the knowledge from older brothers (scary) or friends' older brothers (cool) and the NME or Sounds and............PEEL - the mighty John Peel - whose radio show was....The Holy Grail.  The form that this idol worship took was a mixture of extreme swearing and fantasy scenarios where John Foxx would call round our respective houses, wanting to borrow something or be friends with us and/or generally be a fucking dead weight in our cool lives. We found this infinitely amusing as we trudged to school - a factory for fodder as far as we were concerned.  The walk to Balshaws High School, captured, recorded by Google Maps - engrained in those suburban pavements ('When I am dead and gone, my vibrations will live on') are the echoes of the curse drenched walk to school - the sheer joy of very rude cussing and cursing peppered with daft 'Pete and Dud' (another reference point) style fantasies (Sophia Loren) of snubbing the coolest pop star on earth.

They sounded something like........this

P (lancashire accent) 'You'll never guess who had the fucking cheek to knock on my door last night'?
S - (lancashire accent via birmingham and home counties) 'What mate, last night when you were busy'?
P - 'Well, I'd just put the kettle on and I was getting on with reparing me bike in the kitchen..'
S - 'Don't tell me......'
P - 'Yeh, well there's a knock at t'door, just as I'm doin' the fiddly bit, well I've had to put me forks down and get the door'
S - 'Tsk'
P  - ' And I've opened the door....and d'you know who it fookin' well was Steve?'
S-  (exasperated - rolling eyes to heavens) 'Who'?
P - 'FOXX'!
S - 'Nooooo - fookin' cheeky bastard'
P - 'Yep - stood there with a daft grin ' (Affecting stong Chorely accent) Oh hiya Pete, I just popped round t'see if you wanted a hand with yer bike'
S - 'Fuckin'; Foxx again'!
P - 'Cheeky bastard'
S- 'Fookin' cheek - told him to piss off I hope?
P - 'Well Steve, I tried, but he started cryin' like a right jessy, so I had to let him in'
S - 'Fookin' ell Pete yer too soft - Bowie 'll be round next, you watch'
P ' Already in't living room'
S 'Cheeky set of shits'

TIME BLOCK !

My Conversation

 

 

A northern teenager's bedroom - early 80's. Two teenagers (who will be referred to here as Numaniod SP and Numanoid SR) peel posters off walls to be refreshed, updated - out with the old in with the new.  'The old' - Boomtown Rats (not cool enough), any guitar band (other than Bunnymen/Teardrops) Heavy Metal (apart from Motorhead but this is never admitted publicly, privately or mentally) - 'The new' - Numan, Foxx/Ultravox, The Cure, The Passions, Throbbing Gristle, The Fall, Fad Gadget, The Human League - these are the 'headliners' - countless other smaller league bands and artists jostle.  Not that Numanoid SP ever had any heavy metal posters up - this would have been social suicide.
I mean c'mon - Iron Maiden? Peeerleaze - give us some credit for....taste....intelligence......refined and nuanced appreciation....sophistication.........in a word  POSEURS!

Numan, though, was GOD to us during our school years and just afterwards - Gary Numan was  transgressive in every way in the late 70's and early 80's.  A 'pop star' who looked about as alien as possible in the testosterone driven, aggressive and macho world of music and the wider UK culture - constantly accused of ripping off Bowie (God rest his soul) Numan actually offered something that was far more nuanced and 'British' than Bowie's broad canvas of expression.  Gentleness and introversion, paranioa and fear, anger and alienation - perfect for teenagers! Gary presented his fairly narrow and specific reference points (Burroughs, Philip K Dick, Science Fiction/Futurism, Artificial Intelligence and machine culture, dystopia and human suffering, broken hearts and mental illness along with metaphors for human experience couched in Ballardian materials  - glass, steel, metal.) in such an imaginative, bold and theatrical way, that he became a huge global star in his early twenties - but most of the music he put out between 79 and 82 still sounds fresh and current.

We are not Gods
We are not Men
We are not making claims.......
We're only boys

Back to the poster peeling teenagers: Numan's metalic classic, The Pleasure Principle is playing on the turntable, as My Conversation starts, the two lads hum and sway in time to the long, dense pulsing synthesiser track - a sort of futuristic Pinteresque slice of British sang-froid, 'uptightness' and an veiled treatise on the hideous hack journalists who berated and viciously attacked Numan at every turn. But with a genius sleight of hand, Numan was also singing a cold rejection letter to his fans in 'My Conversation' (US - an we loved it!) - we were only 'viewers' , he couldn't possibly love us, we were strangers (a key figure in Numan's lexicon of imagery) and Numan had inverted the pop star code to show affection and love to his adoring fans.  He later softened with bitter sweet songs of love and loss to his fans ('Please Push No More') but in 1979 he may as well have had a giant FUCK OFF flashing constantly in enormous red letters in the fabric of the fantastic light shows his gigs contained.   None of this mattered to us - we just liked the tune and the way Numan sang it - we liked the words because they were odd and interesting - non of that I love you/you love me pap that we hated at the time. And we loved the sythesisers' deep powerful sound - something from the future distilled into a hum, a noise, that melded in with the solid bass and drums:

Numaniod SR - oh this is ace, I love this one

Numanoid SP - you know it mutha fucka!

Numaniod SR - (singing along)

Oh it's so easy
When parts take over
My conversation
Is nothing more than lies



(both singing now - also, possibly some air drums and a bit of air synth miming going on- maybe even a specialist bit of air bass that Numaniod SP was good at - some Numan stares and head jerks would definetly be thrown in, sometimes at each other, sometimes at inanimate objects like tea cups and school bags))

You're just the viewer
So cold and distant
I've no intentions
Of saying "I love you"

My conversation

We are not gods
We are not men
We are not making claims
We are only boys

You are not strong
You are not force
You are not regular
You are just wrong

There are no faces
This is my complex
You are my picture
I call you 'mirrors'

These are not my tears
Not my reflection
Am I a photo?
I can't remember

My conversation

And then IT happened - a psychic event on an unprescedented scale!

To put this event in context, there needs to be a slight diversion/tangent/reverie into the finer points of Numan fandom and the general standards of pop music standards for refined young gents in the early 1980's - we did not have a list of rules, but there were rules; unspoken, tacit, understood but rarely mentioned, the rules, if committed to paper would have looked something like this ( The 10 Commandments of Numan):

1 Thou shalt purchase the new Numan single on 7" and 12" vinyl on the day it is released
2 Thou shalt have all of Numan's back catalogue on LP
3 Thou shalt be familiar with all track listings/running order on all albums and be able to demonstrate as such when called upon to do so
4 Thou shalt know all lyrics off by heartand know where instrumental breaks are in all tracks - divergence from this knowledge is considered blasphemy
5 Thou shalt attempt to look like Numan in at least one of his incarnations risking violent attack
6 Thou shalt have thine right ear pierced and risk the wrath and scorn of society at large
7 Thou shalt have at least 6 posters of Numan up, one being the 1979 Pleasure Principle Tour (even though none of us had seen it!)
8 Thou shalt even buy the dodgy first Tubeway Army album* and covet the Blue Vinyl version, known amongst Numan fans as simply 'The Blue Album' (it even had a different cover to the standard black vinyl version and cost a small fortune amongst collectors)
9 Thou shalt seek, find and buy 'Are Friends Electric' on picture disc
10 Thou shalt attempt to see Numan take off in a plane from somewhere at least once

* Numan's first LP,  'Tubeway Army' (1978) actually stands up fairly well these days - I listened to it again in its entirety and there's hardly a 'duff' track on it!


Back to the  psychic event on an unprescedented scale!

So as we are gyrating and grooving  to Numan, each in our semi- seperate worlds but within the four walls of Numanoid SP's tiny bedroom, the instrumental section rolls round again and we prepare for the synth lead that takes the place of Numan's vocal line but perhaps an octave higher - we both sing , at exactly the same time, in exactly the same place - 'My Conversation' to the tune of the lead synth - an unprecedented event , as every self respecting Numanoid knows there are no lyrics in this section!
Aghast we turn to each other


Numanoid SP - Did you just sing 'My Conversation' then, during the instrumental bit?

Numaniod SR - Er yeh, you did as well didn't you?

Numanoid SP - Oh my God - yes! We're fucking psychic - we're tuned in baby

 Numaniod SR - Fook!

(Both together) 'That's weird'

As far as we were concerned, the chances of us both singing an unprompted line in an instrumental section of a long song, at exactly the same time,  were about as likely as being able to nail a futurist blancmange to a glass pyramid.  From this moment on, we are musical brothers in arms, psychic twins in the music maelstrom!
It is a link that still works!