Mag & The Suspects, Erection
Dark female voice. Lo-fi, flat 1980s sound and a danceable number.
The only song I know, of a woman singing about the immediate anticipation of a man entering her.
Only found out about this a year or so ago.
Thing the group are from France, though the internet only has rumours and educated guesses about whose these guys were and where they were from.
I’d love to hear from anyone who was actually listening to this in 1982, and how they came across it.
New Order, Turn the Heater On
When I heard this for the first time, a YouTube discovery from around five years ago, I felt like I was dreaming.
New Order doing a slow dub track. What an idea, and it worked so well.
Just think of the directions it could have taken the band if they’d taken this further.
But is was a one off.
Cover version. Done in recognition of the original being a favourite of Ian Curtis – they say.
So my two favourite songs from 1982 took me forty years to discover – that’s the internet for you.
Would love to hear from anyone who was listening to both this track and Erection by Mag and the Suspects – sixty somethings may only appply.
What was happening in 1982?
Kazuo Ishiguro was stunned by Proust in an old flat in Sydenham
In 1982 Kazuo Ishiguro and his girlfriend, moved to a flat in Sydenham. The flat had no sink. Dirty dishes were put on an old tea trolley and wheeled it into the bathroom.
One day Kazuo came down with a virus and spent a few days in bed. During this time he became engrossed in Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Transfixed (he was) by the tangential thought associations; the vagaries of memory seemed to move the novel from one section to the next.
Kazuo – who worked in TV at the time – thought about doing the same thing on the big screen.
Looking back now, I can see that those three days recovering from a virus in a bedroom in Sydenham, going over the same 20 pages of Proust, were a key turning point in my writing life. Everything I have subsequently written has been determined by the revelations that came to me during those days.
Jimmy arrived from Malaysia to study at Cordwainers Technical College in Hackney
Four years later he opened a shoe shop (I think, in London) renting an old hospital building.
Charlene Duncan, working in a sweetshop in Ilford, found she was No 1 in the States
Charlene Duncan, working in a sweetshop in Ilford, London, found she was number one in the United States. Born in the States in 1950, she’d recorded a song in 76, which didn’t do great, she lost her recording contract, and ended up in Ilford. However, in 1982, disc jockey Scott Shannon started playing the song at the behest of a girlfriend. For whatever reason, second time round, the song flew up the charts. But it doesn’t feature in this one