Men Without Hats, "I Got the Message"
2024 wasn’t the best year. It wasn’t catastrophic, either, and it did have its upsides—like our trip to Japan (see “Girls,” “Vuh”); the Guardians’ playoff run (see “Invincible”); and the several live shows I was able to catch, which included Sleater-Kinney, Kraftwerk (twice! see “Radioland”), Os Mutantes, James and Johnny Marr (see “Sit Down”/ “Panic”), Jonathan Richman, the Dresden Dolls and Gogol Bordello (see “Mishto,” “Good Day”), and They Might Be Giants. But these bright spots notwithstanding, for the most part—and without dwelling on the details—let’s just say I’m happy enough to leave this particular calendar year in the dust.
Last year around this time I had a temperature of a million degrees, but I retained just enough presence of mind to post an embed of my Songs I Fell in Love with in 2023 Playlist. By contrast, I haven’t hit the skids yet on this Christmas break—[here the Author knocks wood]—but I’m not bursting with energy, either.
For this I blame the soda fountain at the McDonald’s in Kimball Junction. Any discerning consumer of Coca-Cola products knows that a McDonald’s-poured Coke—or in my case, Diet Coke—is the Platonic ideal of a soft drink. Why this should be is a matter I will leave to the scientists (or philosophers). Water is wet, the sky is gray, and McDonald’s Diet Coke is the best.
The real achievement here isn’t that somebody perfected the formula. It’s that the folks who did it have mass-produced the equipment and supplies and foolproofed their installation and use, so that a McDonald’s Coke (or Diet Coke) is a McDonald’s Coke (or Diet Coke), wherever in the 50 States you might find it. I can’t speak for McDonald’s outposts overseas: good luck finding any kind of soda worth a damn in Europe or Latin America—Asia, too, if Japan was any indication. But for all that, access to a Perfect Coke (or Diet Coke) is within a five-mile drive of anywhere in the United States of America a sensible person might choose to reside.
Except for Park City, Utah. I dunno if it’s to do with the altitude, aridity, or both, but for several years now I have been driving down on the regular from Park Meadows to the Golden Arches at Kimball Junction for my AM and PM fix of Diet Coke. The nectar of the gods, I say to myself, only half-kidding as I turn up into the Drive-Thru lane. Yet as often as I make the trip, I’m handed a cupful of sugary-sweet, substandard soft drink for the sad ride back up the mountain. Lately I’ve decided to reroute to any of the handful of 7-11s in town to get a Big Gulp. They’re of course watered-down, but nevertheless an improvement on the town McDonald’s soda fountain product.
This is my long way around to saying I’m operating under a steadily accumulating caffeine deficit, with the result that I may be underinspired in this moment. So let’s play out the string here in 2024 with a Year-End Recap, because something along these lines certainly served the purpose in the last week of ’23. Here’s this year’s Spotify playlist:
2024 was a lot like any other year, in that I didn’t listen to enough Brian Eno. I did get hold of copies of Here Come the Warm Jets and Before and After Science this year—Jets at Want List Records, an unbelievably well-curated vintage vinyl store that opened just down the block from me back in February, and Science at a store in North Cambridge I only discovered earlier this fall. Maybe add those two record shops to my Short List of What Was Good About This Year. The playlist features “Baby’s on Fire” (Apple Music, Spotify) from Jets: again, I’m lukewarm on the vocals, but good God, that guitar solo. I hear something like this from Robert Fripp and I’m almost tempted to make another run at King Crimson. But I’ve been burned before—and more than once.
After a false start where I cut through the shrink wrap and found two copies of Disc One, I eventually did get hold of both halves of the Harmonia & Eno’s Tracks and Traces double LP, which is a positively delicious suite of ambient electronics—best and most accurately described as Cluster & Eno, terrific in its own right, with the added bonus of Michael Rother’s involvement. That is, Michael Rother from Neu!, whom I’ll see in New York City at the end of March. Harmonia & Eno’s “Vamos Companeros” (Apple Music, Spotify) reminds me of “War of Nerves” (Apple Music, Spotify) from The Pressure Company, a live Cabaret Voltaire recording I bought on CD in 1995 that, as I think about it now, probably softened me up a fair bit for Krautrock a quarter-century later.
Speaking of Krautrock, Carla and I pushed out three more episodes this year. Our most recent release (Apple Podcasts, Spotify) covered A.R. & Machines’ farsighted 1971 album, Die Grüne Reise, which according to rumor inspired Eno’s titling of Another Green World. “A.R.” stands for Achim Reichel, a multi-genre singer-songwriter whose career spans six decades. We plausibly characterized Reichel as “Germany’s Neil Diamond.” Die Grüne Reise arose from Reichel’s purchase of a new tape machine with a “sound on sound” function. The resulting layered guitar effects were original and explosive—so much so that it took twenty, maybe thirty years before sensible people understood and appreciated what they were hearing.
While we were prepping that episode, Carla and I spent some time listening to Reichel’s earlier projects, including the Rattles, who were contemporaries of the Beatles when the latter were gigging in Hamburg. The Rattles carried on without Reichel after he was drafted into the West German Army. Their biggest international hit would be “The Witch” (Apple Music, Spotify), an occult-psychedelic single the Rattles released in 1970, with Edna Bejarano on vocals. As much as I dig A.R. & Machines, I have to say this song—along with its creepy-goofy video—was the surprise highlight of our Krautrock research this year. There’s a certain kind of feral and belting female singer you just don’t hear in today’s music. Grace Slick, Renata Knaup (of Amon Düül 2 and Popol Vuh), and Edna Bejarano are in that class.
I’m continuing to chase John Foxx across the landscape. See “Saturday Night in the City of the Dead.” This year my dogs got hold of the last Foxx-era Ultravox! LP my record collection was missing. The alternate version of “Hiroshima Mon Amour” (Apple Music, Spotify) isn’t included on my vinyl copy of Ha!-Ha!-Ha!, but I prefer its guitar-heavy mix over the sax-and-drum-machine arrangement that did make the record. And you can hear it as a bonus track on the streamers. Foxx’s first solo record, Metamatic, leans more heavily into synthesizers. When I hear a song like “Metal Beat” (Apple Music, Spotify), I wonder why Foxx never got the acclaim and sales Gary Numan did.
I’ve spent the past two years dragging Midge Ure for wrecking Ultravox. Earlier this month Google’s algorithm turned me on to a Making of … documentary for “Do They Know It’s Christmas” (YouTube).1 I hadn’t realized Midge Ure and Bob Geldof were coequal partners leading that project. And I’m reading that Midge only joined Ultravox after John Foxx left it. So maybe I should let old Midge off the hook.
Holly & the Italians were a fun discovery this year. Years and years ago I saw Transvision Vamp’s revved-up “Tell That Girl To Shut Up” video (YouTube) on MTV. I grabbed the song off Napster and it’s been a staple of my playlists ever since. During the COVID lockdown the New York Times published a writeup of “12 Forgotten Classics by Women-Led New Wave Bands.” At the time I didn’t notice the Waitresses’ “No Guilt” (Apple Music, Spotify) on that list; it would be another two years before I found my way there by other means. (See, um, “No Guilt.”) But I did fall head over heels for The Cosmopolitans’ “(How To Keep Your) Husband Happy” (Apple Music, Spotify)—SHAPE UP! BURN UP! TONE UP … WITH DEBBIE!—and I learned that “Tell That Girl To Shut Up” was written and first recorded by Holly & the Italians. In early November I found a copy of Holly’s first record, The Right To Be Italian, in the used racks at Rough Trade in Rockefeller Center. “I Wanna Go Home” (YouTube) kicks that LP off with a bang, but alas, it’s not available on the streamers and so didn’t make the Spotify playlist.
The Flying Lizards make a late entry, after I found a vintage radio promo pressing of their 1979 self-titled debut in Salt Lake City yesterday. I always dug their deconstructionist cover of “Money” (Apple Music, Spotify). Turns out they did the same trick with “Summertime Blues” (Apple Music, Spotify). Compare the Flying Lizards’ version with Blue Cheer’s (Apple Music, Spotify)—these covers couldn’t be more different, but I’ll take them both. Devo of course got here first and planted a flag, with their willful and perfect mishandling of “Satisfaction” (Apple Music, Spotify), but for me this sort of thing never gets old. All that said, I went with a Lizards original, “TV” (Apple Music, Spotify), for the Playlist. I anticipate playing the hell out of this record this winter.
Of the considerable time I spent in front of the television in 1982, I’d say for at least half of it I had the dial tuned to MTV waiting for them to play “The Safety Dance” (Apple Music, Spotify) again. So much fun, that video, and until just now I was so bought into its medieval may-poling theme that I never saw the power lines and telephone poles in so many of the shots. It’s as if my mind willed them into invisibility, and I had to assume an altogether different, “music critic’s” frame of mind before they could appear again.
I couldn’t get enough of “The Safety Dance” back in the day, so I went out and bought the 7-inch single, which had “Living in China” (Apple Music, Spotify) on the back. Then I couldn’t get enough of “Living in China.” But that was where it ended.
Turns out I’d have done well to save up for the full album. I finally did buy a vinyl copy of Rhythm of Youth at Used Kids Records in Columbus 42 years later (see “No Escape from Heaven”). There’s not much on this record that isn’t knock-your-socks-off brilliant. Men Without Hats are classified as synth-pop, but they weren’t purists on the matter. Rhythm of Youth features guitars, electric and acoustic, and a live drummer. There’s even a castanet player credited on “Cocoricci (Le Tango des Voleurs)” (Apple Music, Spotify). In this respect MWH weren’t all that different from Duran Duran or my beloved early Ultravox. Their synths-and-strings blend only feels exotic to me, because so many of the bands I came to love later would choose one mode or the other. The Doroschuk Brothers, who made up three quarters of Men Without Hats, were classically trained musicians who grew up in Montreal loving OMD and Gary Numan. Integrating strings and electronics was therefore as natural for them as singing in English and French.
There are a handful of absolute bangers on Rhythm of Youth, but from my first listen, “I Got the Message” (Apple Music, Spotify) stood out from the others. Poppy, powerful, perfect—and for that matter spot-on for 2024:
I got the message, and the message is proof. There really is a thing they call the rhythm of youth.
C’est long, c’est dure. Frappons non têtes contre les murs.
Rockonteurs (Apple Podcasts, Spotify) principal Gary Kemp features in this video, too, including in a delightful acoustic guitar jam with Geldof and Paul Weller. Kemp played bass for Spandau Ballet—not one of my favorite bands, but of all the musicians mucking about on the Band Aid set, Gary comes off as the most likeable: energetic, fully at ease, and from all appearances over the moon just to be involved. It’s no wonder he and co-host Guy Pratt are able to pull so many terrific interviews into their show forty years later.