After their 1986 album Black Cel­e­bra­tion, new wave leg­ends Depeche Mode ful­ly com­mit­ted to being the most glo­ri­ous­ly gloomy band next to The Cure to appear on sta­di­um stages. Earnest pleas for tol­er­ance like “Peo­ple are Peo­ple” and play­ful­ly sug­ges­tive vamps like “Mas­ter and Ser­vant” gave way to atmos­pher­ic dirge‑y wash­es and fune­re­al tem­pos made for mop­ing, not danc­ing. The move defined them after their ear­ly break­out with an image as a kind of New Roman­tic boy band.

The Depeche Mode of the ear­ly 80s was always edgi­er than most of their peers, even if they looked clean cut and cheru­bic. They were also more exper­i­men­tal, draw­ing from Kraftwerk’s dead­pan Ger­man dis­co in their min­i­mal­ist first sin­gle “Dream­ing of Me” and mak­ing indus­tri­al pop in Con­struc­tion Time Again’s “Every­thing Counts.” Theirs is a body of work, for bet­ter or worse, that launched a hun­dred dark­wave bands decades on, and their very first incar­na­tion may remind indie fans of oth­er lo-fi indie pop artists of recent years.

Before they were Depeche Mode, they were a min­i­mal­ist post-punk/new wave band called Com­po­si­tion of Sound. They record­ed two demo tapes under the name, “one with Vince Clarke on vocals and gui­tar,” notes Post-Punk.com, “Andy Fletch­er on bass and Mar­tin L. Gore on syn­the­siz­ers, and one [above] just after the arrival of Dave Gahan in the band, short­ly before they were renamed.” These tapes, from 1980, are the first record­ed man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Depeche Mode line­up.

Clarke and Fletch­er began play­ing togeth­er in the 1977 Cure-influ­enced band No Romance in Chi­na. They formed Com­po­si­tion of Sound with Gore, who’d played gui­tar in an acoustic duo, in 1980 and recruit­ed Gahan that same year whey they heard him sing Bowie’s “’Heroes’” at a jam ses­sion. By that time, they’d most­ly giv­en up on gui­tars, after Clarke—who left Depeche Mode after Speak & Spell to form the huge­ly influ­en­tial syn­th­pop band Yazoo (or Yaz in the U.S.)—encountered Orches­tral Maneu­vers in the Dark. The three-song demo at the top rep­re­sents that evo­lu­tion­ary step in action.

The first track, “Ice Machine,” was released as the b‑side of “Dream­ing of Me,” Depeche Mode’s first artis­tic state­ment of intent on their long­time label Mute. Fletch­er plays bass gui­tar on this and the oth­er two tracks, “Radio News” and “Pho­to­graph­ic,” but the songs are oth­er­wise rudi­men­ta­ry ances­tors of Depeche Mode’s synth-dom­i­nat­ed sound, which would per­sist until they brought gui­tars back into the fore­ground in the 90s.

It appears they did play a “hand­ful of gigs” in the tran­si­tion­al phase of Com­po­si­tion of Sound, as Mar­tin Schnei­der writes at Dan­ger­ous Minds: “The first COS show with Dave Gahan on vocals hap­pened on June 14, 1980 at Nicholas Com­pre­hen­sive in Basil­don.” The gig went well, accord­ing to Clarke, “because Gahan ‘had all his trendy mates there.’” Their last show in this incar­na­tion “sounds like some­thing out of This is Spinal Tap.” 

They played at a youth club at Wood­lands School in their home­town of Basil­don. “Their audi­ence con­sist­ed of a bunch of nine-year-olds. ‘They loved the synths, which were a nov­el­ty then,’ remem­bers Fletch­er. ‘The kids were onstage twid­dling the knobs while we played!”  One won­ders if any of those kids went on to start their own fash­ion­ably min­i­mal­ist syn­th­pop bands….

via Dan­ger­ous Minds/Post-Punk

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lost Depeche Mode Doc­u­men­tary Is Now Online: Watch Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode Releas­es a Goose­bump-Induc­ing Cov­er of David Bowie’s “Heroes”

A His­to­ry of Alter­na­tive Music Bril­liant­ly Mapped Out on a Tran­sis­tor Radio Cir­cuit Dia­gram: 300 Punk, Alt & Indie Artists

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Alice’s Restau­rant. It’s now a Thanks­giv­ing clas­sic, and some­thing of a tra­di­tion around here. Record­ed in 1967, the 18+ minute coun­ter­cul­ture song recounts Arlo Guthrie’s real encounter with the law, start­ing on Thanks­giv­ing Day 1965. As the long song unfolds, we hear all about how a hip­pie-bat­ing police offi­cer, by the name of William “Obie” Oban­hein, arrest­ed Arlo for lit­ter­ing. (Cul­tur­al foot­note: Obie pre­vi­ous­ly posed for sev­er­al Nor­man Rock­well paint­ings, includ­ing the well-known paint­ing, “The Run­away,” that graced a 1958 cov­er of The Sat­ur­day Evening Post.) In fair­ly short order, Arlo pleads guilty to a mis­de­meanor charge, pays a $25 fine, and cleans up the thrash. But the sto­ry isn’t over. Not by a long shot. Lat­er, when Arlo (son of Woody Guthrie) gets called up for the draft, the pet­ty crime iron­i­cal­ly becomes a basis for dis­qual­i­fy­ing him from mil­i­tary ser­vice in the Viet­nam War. Guthrie recounts this with some bit­ter­ness as the song builds into a satir­i­cal protest against the war: “I’m sit­tin’ here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough to join the Army, burn women, kids, hous­es and vil­lages after bein’ a lit­ter­bug.” And then we’re back to the cheery cho­rus again: “You can get any­thing you want, at Alice’s Restau­rant.”

We have fea­tured Guthrie’s clas­sic dur­ing past years. But, for this Thanks­giv­ing, we give you the illus­trat­ed ver­sion. Hap­py Thanks­giv­ing to every­one who plans to cel­e­brate the hol­i­day today.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His Sar­cas­tic “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer” in a 1988 Film By Gus Van Sant

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

William Shat­ner Raps About How to Not Kill Your­self Deep Fry­ing a Turkey

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Left­over Thanks­giv­ing Turkey

Many of us first encounter Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe—now deserved­ly known as the “God­moth­er of Rock and Roll”—in footage from her 1964 appear­ance on a Man­ches­ter rail­way plat­form. She arrives by car­riage, struts out before a dilap­i­dat­ed train sta­tion, plugs in her cus­tom Gib­son SG, and belts out in her pow­er­ful sopra­no, “Didn’t it rain, chil­dren!” for an audi­ence of spell­bound Brits. The tele­vised per­for­mance, part of The Amer­i­can Folk Blues Fes­ti­val that toured the coun­try between 1963 and 1966, made a sig­nif­i­cant impres­sion on blues and rock gui­tarists of the Inva­sion gen­er­a­tion.

Yet Tharpe’s influ­ence extends a gen­er­a­tion fur­ther back, to rock and roll’s acknowl­edged fore­fa­thers. She was 49 when Kei­th Richards and Eric Clap­ton had the chance to see her on TV, and had been tour­ing Europe since 1957, reviv­ing a career she launched in 1938 when she released her first sin­gle, “Rock Me,” and took the stage as a reg­u­lar per­former at the Cot­ton Club.

Born Roset­ta Nubin in Arkansas in 1915, she start­ed per­form­ing in church­es and revivals at 6, and scan­dal­ized many of her gospel fans by singing sec­u­lar music. But her force­ful, soar­ing voice and inno­v­a­tive gui­tar play­ing most­ly drew them back again, along with thou­sands of sec­u­lar admir­ers.

She was a rock and roll pio­neer in every respect: a gospel singer who crossed over onto the pop­u­lar charts, a black queer woman play­ing the fierce lead for mixed audi­ences dur­ing seg­re­ga­tion, fronting tour­ing bands that includ­ed the all-white Jor­danaires, best known for lat­er back­ing Elvis. She was “America’s first gospel rock star,” notes the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame intro­duc­tion above, before there were such things as rock stars. Her 1945 sin­gle “Strange Things Hap­pen­ing Every Day,” with its “hot gui­tar solo,” Will Her­mes writes at Rolling Stone, “was the first gospel sin­gle to cross over on the Bill­board race charts” and is some­times cit­ed as the first rock and roll song.

The fol­low­ing year, she met singer and piano play­er Marie Knight. The two became lovers, record­ed “Up Above My Head,” and toured togeth­er in the late 40s as a team before Tharpe mar­ried her third hus­band at Wash­ing­ton, D.C.’s Grif­fith Sta­di­um in front of 25,000 fans. At the height of her fame, “she influ­enced innu­mer­able… peo­ple who we rec­og­nize as foun­da­tion­al fig­ures in rock and roll,” says biog­ra­ph­er Gayle Wald. John­ny Cash named her as his favorite singer. “Every­one from Jer­ry Lee Lewis to Aretha Franklin” to Lit­tle Richard “cred­it her musi­cian­ship as an impor­tant influ­ence on them,” writes Erin White at Afrop­unk.

But it was her gui­tar skills that most awed musi­cians like Chuck Berry and Elvis. Pres­ley “loved Sis­ter Roset­ta,” the Jor­danaires’ Gor­don Stok­er remem­bers, espe­cial­ly her play­ing. “That’s what real­ly attract­ed Elvis: her pickin’.” Tharpe’s style con­tains with­in it a trea­sury of the ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can pop­u­lar music that would trans­mute into R&B, rock­a­bil­ly, and rock and roll—from west­ern swing to coun­try to gospel to jazz to the blues. At the top of the post, see a com­pi­la­tion of solos from her tele­vised appear­ances, includ­ing some seri­ous shred­ding in lat­er con­certs in the late six­ties, broad­cast in col­or.

Tharpe con­tin­ued to tour the con­ti­nent until 1970, when she played her last con­cert in Copen­hagen. She died three years lat­er, near­ly obscure in her home coun­try, her lega­cy over­shad­owed by male artists. But we should hear her in Chuck Berry’s first records, and “when you see Elvis Pres­ley singing ear­ly in his career,” says Wald, “imag­ine he is chan­nel­ing Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe.” Thanks to revived inter­est in Tharpe herself—from Wald’s 2008 biog­ra­phy to her 2018 induc­tion in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame—the “God­moth­er of Rock and Roll” con­tin­ues inspir­ing new play­ers to pick up the gui­tar, espe­cial­ly those who aren’t used to see­ing gui­tarists who look like them in gui­tar hero his­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Rock Pio­neer Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe Wow Audi­ences With Her Gospel Gui­tar

Revis­it The Life & Music of Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe: ‘The God­moth­er of Rock and Roll’

New Web Project Immor­tal­izes the Over­looked Women Who Helped Cre­ate Rock and Roll in the 1950s

Mud­dy Waters and Friends on the Blues and Gospel Train, 1964

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

In 1983, Rolling Stone pro­claimed it the year of the “sec­ond British Inva­sion,” a “gold­en age” of music from the likes of Duran Duran, Span­dau Bal­let, Cul­ture Club, the Human League, Depeche Mode, and oth­er radio-friend­ly synth pop hit­mak­ers. The label stuck. Thir­ty years lat­er, CBS News com­mem­o­rat­ed the year “a slew of [New Wave] acts came over to the states with their synthesizer-driven/R&B‑inspired music.”

Amidst this fren­zy of praise, no one men­tions the Clash, who played their final show in 1983. The year pre­vi­ous they hit num­ber 8 on the Bill­board Hot 100 with “Rock the Cas­bah.” Com­bat Rock arguably proved that punk was still rel­e­vant in the ear­ly 1980s, though a punk trans­fig­ured into dance­floor-friend­ly funk, dub, and spo­ken word exper­i­men­ta­tion. Just as arguably, the Clash should be prop­er­ly seen as lead­ers of the true sec­ond British Invasion—an inva­sion of British punk and post-punk bands in the late 70s.

Four charm­ing lads who’d grown up play­ing in the clubs, they spoke a work­ing-class idiom, wrote in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent voic­es, took a con­sis­tent­ly anti-war stance, and took punk where it had not gone before with stu­dio and world music exper­i­ments. One needn’t com­pare their 1979 dou­ble album Lon­don Call­ing to Sgt. Pepper’s—though it does top sev­er­al crit­ics best-of-all-time lists—to see its sim­i­lar influ­ence on con­tem­po­rary music.

Its title track even hit num­ber 30 on the Bill­board Dis­co Top 100 chart in 1980, a move that helped open the door for sev­er­al dozen punk-inspired British New Wave bands to come. Lon­don Call­ing wasn’t uni­ver­sal­ly beloved. The com­mer­cial aims and more pol­ished deliv­ery divid­ed punk fans, and some crit­ics panned the album. None of that has mat­tered at all to the mil­lions of devot­ed fans world­wide. Its icon­ic cov­er has become just as rec­og­niz­able as the orig­i­nal that inspired it.

Now, and until April 2020, tru­ly devot­ed fans can expe­ri­ence that album as no one has before by see­ing in per­son, the actu­al Fend­er Pre­ci­sion bass that Paul Simenon smashed in the cov­er photo—only one of the many his­toric arti­facts on dis­play at the Muse­um of Lon­don in a free exhi­bi­tion cel­e­brat­ing the album’s 40th anniver­sary. Vis­i­tors can also see “Mick Jones’s 1950s Gib­son ES-295,” writes Ellen Goto­skey at Men­tal Floss, “Joe Strummer’s white 1950s Fend­er Esquire,” and a pair of Top­per Head­on’s drum­sticks.

Also on dis­play are “sketch­es from artist Ray Lowry that depict scenes from the Lon­don Call­ing tour,” as well as an ear­ly sketch by Lowry of the album cov­er, and “pho­tos tak­en by Pen­nie Smith (who snapped the Lon­don Call­ing cov­er image).” View­ers can see Strummer’s type­writer, his note­book from the rehearsal and record­ing of the record, and Simenon’s weath­ered late-70s leather jack­et.

The exhi­bi­tion may be free, but tick­ets to Lon­don are pricey. Still, fans can play along at home with the Lon­don Call­ing Scrap­book, a 120-page hard­back book full of archival mate­r­i­al and includ­ed in Sony’s anniver­sary re-release of the album. But no lover of the Clash is with­out their own copy of Lon­don Call­ing. Put it on in cel­e­bra­tion and judge whether, as the Muse­um of Lon­don writes, its “music and lyrics remain as rel­e­vant today as they were on release.”

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear The Clash’s Vanil­la Tapes, Demos of Near­ly Every Song From Lon­don Call­ing

“Stay Free: The Sto­ry of the Clash” Nar­rat­ed by Pub­lic Enemy’s Chuck D: A New 8‑Episode Pod­cast

The Clash Play Their Final Show (San Bernardi­no, 1983)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

“I feel that there is ‘Before Blade Run­ner’ and ‘After Blade Run­ner,’” says direc­tor Denis Vil­leneuve. “The movie was like a land­mark in film his­to­ry aes­thet­ic.” The quote comes from this FACT­magazine pro­mo released ahead of Villeneuve’s 2017 sequel Blade Run­ner 2049, which exam­ines the impact the sound­track had on sci­ence fic­tion films and elec­tron­ic music, as well how its entire aes­thet­ic echoed into the ‘90s and beyond.

Com­pos­er Van­ge­lis and direc­tor Rid­ley Scott had worked togeth­er pre­vi­ous­ly on a Chanel com­mer­cial, and the com­pos­er had thought the choice to use his music was “brave,” accord­ing to Vil­leneuve. A few years lat­er Van­ge­lis would be asked to com­pose the score, which he did, impro­vis­ing over footage.

The gear­heads in the doc point out the Lex­i­con 224 reverb, a great ana­log effects unit, as well as the “beast,” the Yahama CS80, which would often go out of tune. (Check out YouTube user Per­fect Cir­cuit try­ing out some of its fea­tures).

“The best time (the synth) found its voice was on that album,” says musi­cian Kue­do.
The doc also inter­views Tricky, Gary Numan, Ikoni­ka, Abay­o­mi, Clare Wieck, Kue­do, Mogwai’s Stu­art Braith­waite, and music pro­duc­er Hans Berg, all of whom have found Blade Run­ner creep­ing into their work inten­tion­al­ly or sub­lim­i­nal­ly. Ikoni­ka even calls her music alter-ego a “repli­cant,” after the film’s androids. But the film for her was a warn­ing: “You could see the future tak­ing over and it would be the good times,” she says about the ear­ly ‘80s. And “then Blade Run­ner was like, after that, this is going to hap­pen.” The sound­track has gone on to have its own series of re-releas­es, just like Scott has released a Director’s Cut of the film.

First, it was nev­er prop­er­ly released as an album until 1994. Imme­di­ate­ly bootlegs appeared col­lect­ing much more of the score from the film. In 2002, the best of them, the “Esper Edi­tion,” deliv­ered 33 tracks from the score. (And there’s a fur­ther “Retire­ment Edi­tion” of the “Esper” kick­ing around out there.) Then in 2007, Uni­ver­sal Music released a 25th anniver­sary edi­tion, with an extra disc of music com­posed for the film and *anoth­er* disc of *new* music Van­ge­lis com­posed for the release. All of which shows a work that is beloved and held dear by fans.

Now that we’ve hit the month depict­ed in the film, and Los Ange­les doesn’t exact­ly look like the open­ing scene (smoke and fire, yes; rain, not so much), it’s time to take stock of its dystopi­an vision.

As musi­cian Kue­do says, “Almost 40 years lat­er we’re still chas­ing it, but it’s still there ahead of us.”

Note: Vil­leneuve chose Christo­pher Nolan favorite Hans Zim­mer to com­pose the sequel’s score, work­ing with Ben­jamin Wallfisch…both much safer choic­es than Van­ge­lis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Blade Run­ner Get­ting Adapt­ed into a New Ani­me Series, Pro­duced by Cow­boy Bebop Ani­ma­tor Shinichi­ro Watan­abe

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Stream 72 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner: Relax, Go to Sleep in a Dystopi­an Future

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.