The Friday Canon: OMD

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

OMG its OMD! You get SIX ticks covering the awkward synthpoppers' seventeen Top Forty hits.



Check out Andy McLuskey's BEAK!

[Poll #1024857]

I was going to combine this with a canon for top OMD side project Atomic Kitan but it will have to wait!

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I wd need to look at some other chart site to check but I get the feeling OMD had a huge clutch of singles that fell just outside the Top 40.

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

http://www.polyhex.com/music/chartruns/chartruns.php

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

All five of those are terrific! Telegraph wd have muscled something else out of a tick ("Souvenir" maybe?) - "Never Turn Away" has a really gorgeous riff.

Junk Culture and Crush both quite overlooked I think!

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

(haha you were quick off the mark there. I thought I deleted that post and replaced it with the one below within seconds!)

Junk Culture and Crush both quite overlooked I think!
Yes! Fairlight/Emulator/whatevs heaven!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The thread starter gets deleted posts delivered too - this is an annoying feature rly as it leads to LJ conversations getting even more broken than normal!

Bubblin under

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Ed! I must remember existence of that site.

Tom appears to be right about "the huge clutch" - there were loads of OMITD singles in the late 80s and early 90s that just missed the 40.

But of the earlier, funnier material, i.e. first 6 alBUMs (after which I went off them), there is:

Red Frame, White Light (peaked at #67) - this is grebt
Telegraph (#42) - almost as grebt
Never Turn Away (#70)
La Femme Accident (#48) - more grebness
If You Leave ("from the Pretty in Pink OST") (#42)

[the-roofdog.livejournal.com]

electricity didn't make it? rly?

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

yeh that surprised me too.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I needed at least twice as many ticks. Early OMD was grate.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

yes 12 'any good at all ticks' from me. first 5 singles in this list are must haves. then i had 1 tick left and i could have gone anywhere. i might switch to secret if it doesn't get any more blimmin ticks.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

I know precisely 1 of these tracks. Shameful to admit perhaps, but apart from 'Walking On The Milky Way', OMD are a complete mystery to me. I love that song though, but since no-one else has ticked it yet, I'm guessing that it's quite different to their earlier material?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It's maybe a bit more commercial - I remember it as being good but yes, different.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

it was basically 'All The Young Dudes' rehash no?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Who/what is/are OMD?!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Orchestral Maneouvres In The Dark - early 80s synth-pop band, did a couple of quite experimental albums then went quite middle-of-the-road pop (but still pretty good except for when their singer tried to be 'soulful'), then broke up and the lead guy became the svengali and songwriter for Atomic Kitten!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

You might like the early stuff - quite stark electropop - but danceability was never a strong point and the singer had a voice like a sad goose so maybe not.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Also, Atomic Kitten themselves only had a couple of good songs! So I don't have much faith in their songwriting either.

I like sad-goose-voiced Akon but suspect that OMD are not really in the same ballpark.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

if you remember Cosmos 'Take Me With You' from a few years back it lifts it's bleepy signature from 'Messages'

Using all resources to the best of our ability

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

NOES too much love for boring Joan twofer, not enough for lovely snippety Genetic Engineering!

Re: Using all resources to the best of our ability

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

On the other hand delighted to see "Tesla Girls" getting love.

Re: Using all resources to the best of our ability

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i get gonfused as to which joan song is which...

but yes, HURRAH for tesla girls :)

Re: Using all resources to the best of our ability

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

haha! BURN THE WHICH!!!

sorry.

Re: Using all resources to the best of our ability

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes i voted for both of em as i forgot which is the good one!

also: i am goin to see "st joan" on tue -- £27.50 :(

Re: Using all resources to the best of our ability

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

"The Waltz" Joan Of Arc is the one which is a bit waltzy (I have never heard it called this outside everyhit!) i.e. "Joan of Arc / had a heart" as opposed to "Little Catholic girl who's fallen in love"

I have never liked Architecture and Morality and am a bit baffled that it's settled into rocklore as their 'best album' - too many directionless synthscapes, not enough awkwardly off-balance pop.

Re: Using all resources to the best of our ability

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

blimey they could easily have made Japan's 'Ghosts' themselves eh? the vocal style is very similar. i don't know much Japan tho, and i have still to hear John Foxx's 'Metamatic'.

Re: Using all resources to the best of our ability

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

Really? I only know them from their singles, and since my interest in early 80s synth pop has grown I obviously went out and bought A&M as that's allegedly the 'classic' album. Which early ones are better then?

Re: Using all resources to the best of our ability

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

Tom, i think, has a thing for Dazzle Ships which i think came after A&M. it is their 'experimental' album. it is very good and in some ways a more consistent album than A&M.

Re: Using all resources to the best of our ability

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I like the debut more too, and the two poppier mid-80s ones (Junk Culture and Crush), and I'd probably like Organisation more if I could remember anything on it aside from the singles.

But Dazzle Ships is my favourite yes!

Re: Using all resources to the best of our ability

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

as discussed in this very community! (http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/245579.html) ahem

Re: Using all resources to the best of our ability

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

Re Joan vs Joan: the [i]1001 albums you must hear etc[/i] buke says that they "wrote two separate paeans to the most famous of French Catholic martyrs -- both were called 'Joan of Arc' and both were released within months of each other as singles. It was only due to bosses at Virgin panicking that the second single was differentiated by having the moniker 'Maid of Orleans' added in brackets."

So the everyhit titling seems well apocryphal. Also I like this type of prank, although I too have never managed to get into [i]Architecture and Morality[/i] (a title btw that Half Man Half Biscuit have forever destroyed for me with their song title "Architecture and Morality, Ted and Alice").

Re: Using all resources to the best of our ability

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

[i]Argh![/i]

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I voted the only three I could remember. OMD seem a very forgotten band - I don't think I've heard or seen their name on TV since The Chart Show ended.

[mippy.livejournal.com]

Souvenir is one of the most depressing singles ever.

"Romance of the Telescope" (b-side to joan of arc)

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/old-ft/nylpm/2005/05/heaven-knows-their-recipe/

not entirely typical of them, for those that don't know, but not far off their formula either.

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

OMD's only really bit hit in America was "If You Leave" - a terrific song which isn't even on this list. They had a handful of other top 20 and top 40 songs, and I do enjoy what I know, but I do think it's odd that the one song they are known for in America isn't even top 40 in Briton.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

PRETTY IN PINK soundtrack there in action

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

also FACT, this is evil stepmum Stella off of Eastenders favourite film.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

I don't know any OMD songs!

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

for a long time, OMD were unjustifiably high in my last.fm charts, because I happened to "rediscover" their greatest hits album shortly after I signed up (and then - this being the digital age -- went back and delved into all the other albums. rock solid, IMO, as far as the singles go -- this is one of the few canon votes were I really felt the number of ticks was totally insufficient. speaking purely empirically, i think crush is my "favorite" album, although something about the singles seems less clever than their earlier stuff. i played dazzle ships a lot but it never really grew on me (and i never heard 'genetic engineering' as a single!) on the other hand, i never got tired of listening to it either.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Something I just remembered (and I dunno why I didn't remember this when I posted on poptimists about Dazzle Ships last year, cf. link upthread): in my student days I used to have this fantasy about performing DS in its entirety "live". I had it all worked out in my head, the venue (small, intimate), the instrumentation, the staging, the lighting...

OMITD responsible for my one and only wanna-be-a-rock-star moment there.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I don't know any OMD songs apart from 'Dream Of Me', which was on Now 25. I will go away and research before ticking.