Step Back In Time (part one)

Now I've had a little breather after dealing with my main record buying years, I can turn my attention to the days when Gwen Stefani was just a glint in Madonna's pants & Bananarama still ruled the charts. It's time to look a little further back at some of the groovy sounds I was largely oblivious to that emanated from the flat, black, revolving platters of the past.

Very few of these tunes punctured my conciousness at the time, mainly because my first pubic growth had not yet forced its painful way though my skin & I was thusly obsessed by varying levels of pre-teen cheese (oh how times have changed). So, these are all my current favourites of the era with a large, hulking dollop of hindsight, otherwise you may have been subjected to more Boney M than is healthy.

Yes Kids, brace yourselves for this Kylie-endorsed journey into the mists of pre-history, join me as we... Step Back In Time (woof).

1987
Big Black - Songs About Fucking
Eurythmics - Savage
Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares
Guns n Roses - Appetite for Destruction

Big Black - Now this deserves a mention if only for its title & the gorgeous combination of pink, green & panting woman on the sleeve. Main Big Black man, Steve Albini, curiously neither particularly big nor black, is most famous for being über-producer to such indie/grungey stars as Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Pixies, The Breeders; and now fronts equally ace band, Shellac. Chock full of ear-stripping guitar and a fair amount of unintelligible shouting, with a Kraftwerk cover thrown in for good measure.

Eurythmics - Not immensely popular at the time of its release, I seem to recall, but 'tis my favourite of all the emanations from Miss Lennox's honking mouth. A little bit pop, a little bit weird, a little bit scary, a welcome return to their electro roots, after their commercially successful, but not entirely satisfying dalliances with Stevie Wonder & Aretha Franklin.

Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares - More weirdness, brought to public attention by Ivo Watts-Russell of 4AD records after receiving an unlabled cassette of 15 years-worth of recordings by the ethnomusicologist Marcel Cellier of the Bulgarian State Radio Female Vocal Choir. Otherworldly & mesmerising with intricately woven vocal harmonies, it fits in completely with the mid-eighties sound of 4AD, despite originating from a completely different time & place

Guns n Roses - Now is the time to rock. The complete antithesis of the kind of music my 12 year-old brain found acceptable, mindless noise. My present day brain, on the other hand, finds it witty & fun, with large dollops of guitar riffage, not at all mindless and not even all that noisy. The sort of cheese I was listening to at the time would probably qualify as mindless, but is all the more spangly because of it. Anyway, it's a shame that Axl & co never reached such heights as this again (and probably never will, judging by their lacklustre set at Download last year) though they got close with the odd song. There's not a single duff track here, in fact they might as well have re-released this as their Greatest Hits and left it there.

1987: Jon the 12 Year-Old's Top Five Tunes
Madonna - Who's That Girl
Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Perpetuum Mobile
Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield - What Have I Done To Deserve This?
Kylie Minogue - I Should Be So Lucky
REM - It's The End Of The World As We Know It