The "Influential Records" Game Addenda, Part 7

These are some of the other records that impacted me during the Punk era.

I don’t remember when I first heard Ultravox. I remember seeing their first, self-titled LP on the stand in Inner Sanctum Records. And I’m pretty sure I already had Ha! Ha! Ha! by the time my neighbor Luis brought Systems Of Romance over to play one afternoon (or was that the record I was playing when he came over to introduce himself and he turned me on to Ha! Ha! Ha!?). Systems seemed to be heading off into the future, a future that unfortunately replaced John Foxx with Midge Ure. By the time I got to see them, this is the version it had become: smarmy posturing and too-sincere New Romanticism. Blech. But Ha! Ha! Ha! struck just the right note at the time; angular, angry guitars, edgy synths and electric violin, aggressive, timely lyrics and the almost-robot presence of Foxx. Once he had split from the band and released his solo record Metamatic, that LP also influenced my electronic path momentarily, created entirely with drum machines and synths as it was. But the textures that Ultravox then could get were certainly an added inspiration to use a synth in Terminal MInd, and even before that I’m sure that songs like “Fear In The Western World” were pushing my lyrics (I even had a song called “Fear In The Future”!).

Television just sort of seeped into consciousness. In the context of what we knew about the early Punk scene at CBGB in New York, they were an interesting and welcomed response to the “anti-musicianship” crowd. It was greatly empowering that a band could bash out some mid-tempo, intertwining guitar rock, with songs that hit a more literate point in their lyrics and arrangements, and play melodically and sharply. Marquee Moon was in the record collection of everyone I knew at the time, and rightly so.

I remember hearing the debut Tubeway Army record in Inner Sanctum Records. Hanging out there a few times a week was always an education, the parallel one I was pursuing while going to Art School at UT. Once it became clear that Terminal Mind was going to play shows regularly, I needed to get my own bass guitar and amp; I bought them with a student loan check! Again, the synth in those early TA records were calling my name, but this first one also had the lead-off lyric lifted from Philip K Dick, which gave it even more significance. And I was delighted by the choice to mix out all of he cymbals, rendering the production drier and more futuristic sounding, as if it came from deep space and landed in the subway. The songs were more consistent on the followup Replicas, which I also loved, and they were now familiar with the sci-fi synths, but the first one caught me by surprise and influenced my writing and playing.

Speaking of drier and more futuristic sounding production: Joy Division. We were now in Post Punk territory exclusively, and heavily effected guitars and droning baritone vocals felt right at home. But why stop there: producer Martin Hannett went ahead and turned the drum sounds inside out and mixed the songs as if they were radio transmissions from another dimension. A certain dark sense of dread permeates all these records I have listed here, but none so completely as Unknown Pleasures. Their time was tragically cut short by the suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis, but their next act New Order, while certainly managing to be a commercial hit and extend their time, never could muster the artfulness and psycho-dramatic impact of Joy Division for me.

There will be more to come of these “other” records…