The video for Honeydrum’s new song, Traci’s on the Phone, is sort of a warped 80′s k-hole of that era’s graphics and fashion. It’s cheesy neon bliss for the masses, taken from the EP from AMDiscs called Pleasures of the Sun.

SPONSOR

I had to put up with some seriously obnoxious jocks and drunken highschool kids at a recent show featuring flavor-of-the-moment acts that did the whole ecstatic, 80s electro thing that’s so popular these days. Lots of fluorescent colors. I had to blast some death freaking metal when I got home, and Hooded Menace fit the bill perfectly with their doom-leaning, aural assault. Nothing pisses me off more than tepid, uninspired music, and nothing makes me feel more alive than real, gut-wrenching, skull-pounding, giddily sinister heavy metal.

Next big things don’t often come as hot as Melbourne band, The Galvatrons. They’re still on the low down, but with a debut album on the way, this band will soon be everywhere. The four-piece rock-synth outfit do glam 80s better than the 80s acts did, with the attire to match. Currently on a small-scale tour of Australia, they’re worth seeing now before the crowds arrive. The Galvatrons have also already played the country’s biggest festivals, and supported Australian rock royalty such as The Presets, The Panics and You Am I.

This guy is my favorite DJ. He’s the inventor of the mash-up, but his skills go way beyond that. I love to DJ, but when i do, I play a lot of classics. I don’t stick to new stuff because I’m not trying to pull out the top forty banger for the club. That’s what I like about the way Z-Trip plays. He actually inspired me to start DJ-ing in the first place. He mixes hip-hop with classic rock, eighties, and all sorts of weird stuff you wouldn’t think would go together. He’ll have people dancing to Deep Purple, for instance, who would never usually listen to a Deep Purple record. It’s a real skill to be able to entertain and educate at the same time. That’s what I try and do with my art, and that’s what I enjoy about DJ Z-Trip: that ability to slip the cool, lesser known songs in there, which works because of the inertia of the stuff people do know. He understands how to navigate that balance.

Nouvelle Vague are as sultry as a warm summer’s day. Their exotic blend of acoustic jazz and pop has reinvented a handful of the 80s most hummable tunes, whilst simultaneously putting the Fresh back into Frensch – whoops, that should be French — music. Yes, a bad joke is a wicked thing. But frontman Marc Collin’s Playlist isn’t.

Wire / Marooned
Wire were probably the best of the post punk movement. I’m really impressed by the production on their music, which still sounds very fresh and modern. But as for the lyrics? Hmmm. Well, I’m still not sure I understood everything!

Billie Davis / Nobody’s Home to go Home
Melanie Pain from Nouvelle Vague gave me this song recently and I became totally addicted to it. The production, the mix, the bassline, and the vocals are all awesome. As is the chord progression. It really is from the golden age of pop music.

Broadcast / Hammer Without a Master
I’m a big fan of this band, especially of their earliest recordings. It reminds me of the 60s, when anything was possible in pop — like mixing Stockhausen with The Doors, or whatever Miles Davis did with Around The Corner. The title of this song is probably a reference to the Pierre Boulez masterpiece.

Emiliana Torrini / Nothing Brings Me Down
This is the kind of voice that I like. In fact, it’s one of the few songs in English where I can listen immediately to the lyrics. I don’t know why. I guess it’s just beautiful song-writing.

Hot Chip / Bendable Poseable
The latest Hot Chip album is absolutely incredible, with amazing production. It makes me think a bit of Talking Heads. I think it’s certainly the most interesting album of 2008. They present a new way to write and produce pop songs today. It’s a perfect mix of vocals, synths, electronics, guitars and piano.

Kiko / World End Rock Up
This is a really good techno track from a French band who aren’t so famous at this time, though I’m wondering why not! It reminds me of the very good UK band, Depeche Mode. I’ve always been into this kind of ‘dark’ European disco thing. I’ve got a huge collection of vintage keys, fx, and beat-boxes, and I’m actually working on a project with the French actress and director, Julie Delpy, where I will use them.

Leila / Why Should I? (featuring Terry Hall)
I’m a big fan of Terry Hall. What he did with The Specials, FB3, and The Colourfield in the 80s was just perfect. And he’s still doing very interesting things. I was more than happy when he came into my studio to record a duet for the next Nouvelle Vague album. I didn’t expect anything from Leila, after the deception I got with her second album, but I must say that she came back with something really good here.

Julie London / Lonely Girl
Julie London is my favourite singer ever. If one day I have to save only one album from my collection, I will take her second LP — Lonely Girl. She just kills me. I bought a DVD on Ebay recently where she sang on a cheesy American show and still sounded incredible. It’s just so modern.

SPONSOR

It sounds like a cliche to say it, but they just don’t write em’ like they used to: the soulful melodies, the crisp acoustics ringing out across murky lyrical lines. The Alan Parsons Project was an experiment in creating perfect, somewhat sinister, pop. With Eye in the Sky they succeeded, then added in an extra layer of prog-rock for good measure.

I love the 80s! Bring them back, please, at the very least so I can dance about like a member of Madonna’s posse and wear day-glo like there’s no tomorrow. Only there is. And it comes back to haunt you in it’s its full polaroid glory. Hmm, perhaps that rats tail wasn’t such a good idea after all.

I recently got to see David Byrne’s installation piece, Playing the Building, at the Battery Maritime Building in lower Manhattan. It was opening day, but I got there on the early side, and everything was pretty well organized, so it wasn’t too difficult or slow to get in. The piece is pretty straightforward – it’s an antique organ that is attached to the building via an array of pneumatic and electrical tubes that connects each key to a pipe, pillar, or metal beam. When you depress the keys, they make a percussive, whistling, or vibrating sound depending on what they’re attached to. The building itself was pretty impressive, and it was as breathtaking to see the historical architecture as it was to see a great piece made by the Talking Heads frontman.

I ran a series of 80s nights in New York last year — showing cult 80s movies and playing classic cuts from that era of kitsch and spice — purely so I could spin After The Fire’s Der Kommissar over and over. Yessir, this was the future of music in 1983. Pity no one was listening.

SPONSOR

Man, I remember shaking my tail to Come on Eileen many moons ago — when rat-tails were a right of passage and Molly Ringwald held both the lock and the key to my tiny pitter pattering heart. Back then it was all ice-skating and fairy floss; skateboards and trading cards. It was bags of chips by the rusty school fence and sunburnt faces on crackling summer days. It was Pepsi and Milo; showbags at the Easter show; and games of Twister by the electric heater. And all the while a soundtrack of pure musical and lyrical indulgence played on and on and on. Mighty props to the 80s. If it weren’t for the misdemeanors and feeing of unbridled potential that pervaded that decade like a bad New Romantic haircut, then every year since wouldn’t have made any sense at all.

We interviewed Marc Collin, the creative force behind French group Nouvelle Vague, who along with a series of 80s acoustic tribute albums also released an installment in the popular Late Night Tales compilation series.
What was the most underrated of the 1980s New Wave bands and which was the worst successful band of that era?
‘Difficult to say … the sound for example should have been much bigger but also some bands like Section 25 (I got a live recording from 1984 and it’s acid house!) missed the success. I’m thinking also of Mecano, an incredible Dutch band. As for the worst, well what happened to Simple Minds, Human League, and The Cure after 1985?’

How many albums did you listen to in order to put together your tracklisting for Late Night Tales?
‘I didn’t listen to the tracks I selected. I put my selection together only by memory! I like to work only in a theoretical way. It was only when I was supposed to do the running order that I listened again to the tracks. And ultimately they didn’t keep my running order!’

If the mix could be summed up with one track off the compilation, which one would it be?‘Maybe Cibelle by Phoenix because there’s a lot of influences in this track – from experimental, to bossa, pop, jazz and so on’.