Jon Savage On Eighties Electro

Ramble, rant or reminisce, this is an artist’s opportunity to pen their own Clash article.

This issue, writer Jon Savage - who released a mixtape of Eighties electro last year - discusses the germination of his neon compilation and gives a neat history of some of the key players and records of the scene.

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“The idea for this classic electro compilation came – like all the others I’ve done - from making CDRs for friends. I make iTunes compilations all the time - on whatever is the musical obsession of the moment. Occasionally, and without any planning, they fall on fertile ground and begin the slow and agonising growth towards becoming an actual legitimate disc.

‘Dreams Come True’ began as a CDR celebrating a blithe and carefree moment in black dance music: the electro of the early and mid ’80s. It was a time of great discovery for me: apart from a couple of electronic disco tunes like ‘(You Make Me Feel) Mighty Real’ and ‘I Feel Love’, you hadn’t been allowed to like dance music during punk - in retrospect a ridiculous attitude. In 1982 - the year that the compilation starts - I was living in Manchester. When the Hacienda opened in May, I became one of the revolving crew of DJs, along with Hewan Clarke, Mike Pickering, and Claude Bessy. The arrangement was fairly loose: because there was hardly anyone in the club, nobody was telling you what to play - apart from the punters insisting on Killing Joke and Culture Club.

They were ignored. Both Hewan and Mike were blackmusic experts and during those few months I was exposed to a full range of possibilities: early rap hits like Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’, consciousness-raising epics like Brother D and Collective Effort’s ‘How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise’, as well as the Peech Boys’ proto-Electro classic ‘Don’t Make Me Wait’.

There was a crossover then between black dance and the white avant-garde: Afrika Bambaataa had started it with ‘Planet Rock’ – another Hac favourite - and you had New York DJs like Francois Kevorkian remixing Yazoo’s ‘Situation’, or John Robie doing a killer reworking of Cabaret Voltaire’s ‘Yashar’. New Order, the Hacienda house band, had picked up on this New York flavour big time.

So I started filtering ‘Situation’ or the Extra T’s cheesy but irresistible ‘ET Boogie’ alongside Soft Cell’s ‘Torch’ or Suicide’s ‘Dream Baby Dream’ and it all fitted. I loved early electro for the same reason that I loved acid house when it started to manifest in 1986. It was futuristic, sexy and made no bones about its prime mission: to have a blast and to celebrate the moment.

After the rigour and Puritanism of punk and post punk, which was, of course, pleasurable in a perverse way for a while, it was like coming out of monochrome into technicolour. Also rock was turning very dreary in the early to mid ’80s: apart from The Smiths, Husker Du and REM there was very little and the Live Aid syndrome was just around the corner.

There’s no rock record from 1984 that’s as good as ‘Love Ride’ by Nuance featuring Vikki Love. It’s got everything: a brutally simple synth melody, great handedited beats by the Latin Rascals, a crap rap, breathy vocal samples, a single entendre lyric, orchestral stabs and a truly orgasmic ‘poppers bit’ – the climactic breakdown where the samples go wibbly-wobbly and the dancefloor erupts.

Oh, and the lyric prominently uses the word ‘ecstasy’. The early rave scene didn’t invent MDMA use: I remember hearing about it in 1983 – shortly after Cindy Ecstasy made her guest appearance on Soft Cell’s ‘Torch’. Like the house scene that would soon supersede it, electro was - as the Streetsounds compilations that did so much to promote the style had as their slogan - Aural Sex. It was definitely a case of free your ass and your mind will follow. A couple of the songs on ‘Dreams Come True’ - like Klein & MBO’s monstrous Euro/Electro ‘Dirty Talk’ - feature suggestive female laughter that’s so over the top that it becomes camp. Then there are the orgasmic moans of Vikki Love and the uncredited vocalist on The Latin Rascals’ ‘Lisa’s Coming’.

Electro was also in the ground level of the sampling/digital approach that revolutionised music making. Much of the beatwork on the early records is hand done – like The Latin Rascals’ razor edits – but in records like Janice’s ‘Bye Bye’ (from 1986) you can hear multiple references that include The Flintstones TV theme and the flying monkey chant from The Wizard Of Oz.

You can hear traces of the electro approach - melodic and minimal, sensual and technological - in house classics like ‘Mystery Of Love’ by Finger Inc. or Raze’s brilliant ‘Break For Love’. You can then follow it through to the modern minimal techno released by Richie Hawtin or the Kompakt label. Then there are the ‘old skool’ electro classics recycled in today’s breakbeat scene. There are a few omissions from ‘Dreams Come True’. I’d have loved to include Shannon’s ‘Give Me Tonight’ - her super-hysterical follow up to ‘Let The Music Play’ - but it wasn’t available. That’s the problem about doing compilations by the book: you’re at the mercy of unnamed individuals, some of whom care nothing about the music they are administering.

The eleven full-length cuts on ‘Dreams Come True’ showcase electro’s great gift to the world: a lust for life and a sense of fun rarely matched today. I love angst, I really do, but sometimes in life you just want to shake your booty, strut your funky stuff, and push push in the bush - all those alliterative entendres. I defy you to put on Yazoo’s ‘Situation’ and remain unmoved.”

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ClashMusic also talked to Jon Savage as part our our Factory Records celebrations. Read our interview with him HERE.