Talk Talk is one of the few '80s bands I like. I'm a pop-music advocate (when it's good) but honestly I'm not a fan of most '80s "New Wave"...
It was 80's bands who inspired me not only to play bass, but fretless, whom I liked and still like to this day. But the songs were a bit off the mainstream-
To name the primary three, the first would be Icehouse featuring Guy Pratt on the
Sidewalk and
Measure for Measure albums, and whoever it was who played bass on the
Man of Colours track "The Kingdom".
The thing about Icehouse was that, although they wrote straight up pop songs like "Hey Little Girl" and "Street Cafe", they also wrote deeply, haunting and atmospheric pieces like this one, the first fretless bass line I ever learned-
The subtle beginning with the roto-toms and the bass' three note slur at 1:22 still knock me out to this day-
I also liked the tracks "No Promises", "Angel Street", "The Flame", and "Spanish Gold" from that album.
The next would be The Fixx with Dan K. Brown's lovely work on the
Walkabout album in 1986. Although the single was "Secret Separation", my two favorites were the relatively unknown "Read Between the Lines" and "Camphor", featuring nice work on Dan's Wal MK II fretless five- in fact they were so unknown that I was the first person to post them on YouTube as they did not appear on anthologies and
Walkabout was no longer in print, nor were those two songs available as downloads from Amazon or iTunes.
A quick aside, after about six months to a year and so many views, a temporary hold was put on public viewing of those vids (though no castigation regarding copyright violation), after which the hold was removed and the videos appeared with a notice that they could not only be downloaded individually but that the entire album could be purchased via Amazon or iTunes.
Here are the two vids I submitted back in 2009 or so, debuting their appearance on YouTube- with the first, I added the pictorial and both have the lyrics, which I thought were phenomenal, in the description-
Made me want a Wal MK II fretless five, but alas they were rare and very expensive, so I had to settle for a good replacement, the Warwick Thumb NT 5-
Finally, Thomas Dolby's
Golden Age of Wireless album- always liked "One of Our Submarines" although I hated "She Blinded Me with Science" (did not know it was the same artist, having never made the connection when I heard them on the radio. It wasn't until the advent of the internet that I have found out who it was.); the paired songs "Wreck of the Fairchild/Airwaves" featuring Mark Heyward Chaplin comping with his Fender Jazz have enthralled ever since I discovered them much later when I friend shared "Airwaves" at around 2009.
As with my other T-Bird club members, there are a lot of bands I have liked, but these are the ones who influenced me to play bass -
So, that's pretty much it- I tend to be song oriented, and not so much loyalty to bands on the whole-
Kept the CD:s though, as they didn't want to buy them.
