Let's inaugurate the month's merry Mayhem with the first of another two consecutives, beginning with this shit-hot slice of 1980s New Romantic FM madness.
Very few live tapes of this band in its initial configuration exist, but thankfully there's at least one.
I remember getting the cassette of their first EP Pleasure Victim at Korvette's in like 1983 or something.
Astonishingly, they are still out there -- well, at lest the singer and a bunch of new cats are -- playing these tunes a full 35 years after they hit like a hammer with songs about Paris trains and sexual roleplay.
It's impossible to describe in today's terms how out there and controversial their first big song was.
Now there's unclad hoes on every music channel gyrating about what their man's body tastes like on what drugs, so the fetishistic fantasy quality of Sex (I'm a...) has been all but muted by the passage of time.
Of course they had other hits, some of them way more poppy and less challenging. But that first EP had it all, and for a bit this was the new hot band everyone was talking about at school.
Anyway this tape captures them in all their glorious advent, when all they had out was that EP. This was dubbed straight to a Maxell cassette (remember them?) off the air from a radio station in Boston that was broadcasting the event live 35 years ago today.
Berlin
The Metro
Boston, MA
5.2.1984
01 radio intro/Masquerade
02 The Metro
03 Pictures of You
04 No More Words
05 Dancing In Berlin
06 In My Dreams
07 Touch
08 Tell Me Why
09 Sex (I'm a...)/radio outro
Total time: 42:59
Terri Nunn - vocals
John Crawford - bass, synthesizer
Ric Olsen - guitar
David Diamond - synthesizer
Matt Reid - synthesizer, vocals
Rob Brill - drums
Marietta Waters - vocals
master cassette of an off-air FM capture from WXKS-FM in Boston
277 MB FLAC/May 2019 archive link
Yes, that's right. The band that hit with the song about riding on the Metro is playing live in... The Metro. Meta blog is meta. Kinda takes your breath away, doesn't it?
I'll be right back in 24 with a special centenary celebration, but do enjoy this quick trip to Berlin, by way of Boston.--J.
