About a decade ago, I visited my Queen is Dead pen-pal/co-author Steve Zeeland when he was living in the largely-forgotten US Navy town of Bremerton, WA. Forgotten, that is, save by the self-described ‘lover of sailors’. In the early 1980s, before he discovered his true, bell-bottomed love, Steve had been… Read More »Love Reaction (Give Me Satisfaction)
From the gender-bending antics of Eurythmics and Culture Club, to the propulsive synthpop of Depeche Mode, New Order, and the Human League, was there ever, asks Mark Simpson, a more spectacular time for pop? In 1983, the year that McDonald’s introduced Chicken McNuggets and the second Cold War was at… Read More »1983: The High Summer of (Synth-)Pop
By Mark Simpson IN THE EARLY YEARS of the 1980s, stretch jeans were all the rage. Stretch jeans and The Human League’s Dare. Both were revolutionary but practical and, when wrapped around youth, snugly-smugly invincible. I was sweet sixteen when Dare was released in 1981 and it confirmed all the psychoses of teenagerdom. We… Read More »Stretch Jeans & Synthpop: The Human League’s ‘Dare’