No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack: Eurythmics - "Ministry of Love"

Episode Date: June 24, 2018

Powerpop synth duo The Eurythmics had found mega success behind the time the year 1984 rolled around. But when the decided to tackle the score to the film adaptation of George Orwell's book of the same name, controversy ensues. Hear for yourself why Britt Daniels of Spoon considers this to be a highly overlooked album. For more info, check out our show notes: https://www.nofillerpodcast.com/episode/spoon-kill-the-moonlight-review#sidetrack Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Explore the new Peloton Cross-training Treadplus at OnePeloton.ca. There is no loyalty except loyalty to the party. There is no love except love with Big Brother. All competing pleasures. And you're listening to No Filler. The music podcast dedicated to sharing the often over overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. This is our sidetrack episode for the week.

My name's Quentin. Got my brother Travis with me as always. Travis, how you doing, bud? I'm doing great, man. You know why? Because I'll be seeing your ass in a couple of days. Again? Dude, what a treat.

Mm-hmm. What a treat. So, hold on, IQ. So you're telling me that that was the arrhythmics that was. that was playing in that intro. Yeah. Okay. So hang on, dude.

You jump in the gun, bro. So today we're talking about the arrhythmics. And the reason we're talking about the arrhythmics and we're tying it back to Spoon, according to Britt Daniel in this interview that he did with pitchfork, I don't know off the top of my head what year it was. But we referenced it in our full-length episode last week on Spoon's Kill the Moonlight. I think the question he was asked was, you know, like what's an overlooked album that people should listen to? And he mentions the soundtrack for the movie 1984, which of course is based off George Orwell's book of the same name. This movie came out in 1984 because how could you not jump at the opportunity to release a movie based on this book,

which I think was written on like the 50s in the year 1984 you know you're doing it wrong if you don't really sit in that year and it was by the arithmetic that's kind of like when that date that Marty McFly went to in the future

you remember when the date actually came around? Yeah well actually wasn't that long ago no yeah yeah I don't know why I thought of that but you know yeah that's kind of random dude but yeah you know you know whenever this guy wrote 1984 there's probably filmmakers out there they're like i cannot wait till the year

1984 because i'm gonna make that movie yep so many did i can't jump on that shit yep yeah so this is um this is a soundtrack or you know let's just call it an arithmic's album that Brett Daniel really loves, and he thinks it's something that people should listen to. And yes, that intro clip, I just kind of spliced together a scene from the movie that I found online, and I just overdub it with one of the songs from the soundtrack. So one thing I thought was kind of weird,

and I haven't watched the movie all the way through, but I watched a lot of clips of it preparing for this episode. And it seems like the majority of the clips, at least, just had music from the score. And as I assume most people know, you know, with movies, usually there's a soundtrack that's released that may have like songs, you know, whether there are just songs that are on the radio, you know, that happen to pop up on the movie. Like, I've got the soundtrack for a full metal jacket. And the majority of the soundtrack is just songs from like the 60s and 70s that pop up in the movie, you know? Right.

And then you've got a score for the movie. Think like Jurassic Park, right? What's the name of that guy? Yeah. John Williams. Yeah, John Williams. Come on, man. Yeah.

That's, yeah. When you think score, think that kind of stuff. Yeah. Stuff that was written, composed, stuff like that for the movie. All the clips that I saw of the film had, you know, the actual score of the film in the scene. I couldn't find any clips that actually had one of the arithmetic songs from the soundtrack in it. But that song was called Winston's Diary. And if you've read the book, Winston's the main character.

And that was just some random scene that I pulled from it that I thought was cool. So yeah, that's the arrhythmics, dude. And what's cool about this soundtrack, there's, so the majority of the songs do feature any Linux, who's the main singer in the arrhythmics. Actually, hey, let's backtrack real quick. If you don't know much about the arrhythmics, they were a, a, British, actually, I think they're still around. I don't know if they do stuff together, but I know

any Linux is still actually releasing songs, but they were a British duo from the early 80s pretty heavy in like the early electronic music scene.

And I'm going to actually play a clip from one of their mega hits. I mean, I think when you play a no matter who you are, you've heard this song before. I feel like most people, at least people around our age or older, for sure, have heard this song. Absolutely.

Yeah, so, so this actually was a song that came out one year earlier in 1983 on their third album, Touch. And yeah, dude, I know this one cracked the top 10. I don't know about the U.S., but it definitely cracked the top, cracked the top ten in the UK. So this is a song, or this is the single from that album. It's called Here Comes the Rain Again.

So I feel like that's one of those timeless songs, you know? I mean, it's 80s through and through, right? But like, that's just one of those songs, man. It's timeless. I mean, I don't, when I hear erythymics I don't

I don't place them in like the cliche 80s sound I mean they're definitely like iconic 80s group

but I'm just saying like they you know they were they had some some unique qualities about them that that made them

memorable you know yeah I think so too their first well I don't so their second studio album had

sweet dreams are made of this in it, which is another one of those timeless songs by the arithmetic. But yeah, there's something, there's something different about them. And so again, it's two people. It's Annie Linux and David Stewart. And Stewart is the brains behind all the electronic stuff, all the weird synthesized stuff that's going on. That's all him. Annie Linux provides the vocals. That's it. And so, by 1984 they had already seen all this success

both in the UK and the US so they said I know what to do let's make a soundtrack yeah let's let's jump on this on this opportunity to do a soundtrack and the reason that they jumped on the opportunity

was because they were getting creative freedom basically to kind of do what they want what they wanted to do for this soundtrack and they actually recorded it in the Bahamas. I don't know if that was their choice or what, but, and one thing that I thought was kind of cool, if you listen to the soundtrack all the way through,

they have a lot of more organic percussion in the mix. They used these drummers that were on the island. They're called Junkanoo drummers. Okay. They're these drummers that play these Conga kind of drums that they heat up over fires to stretch the skins right before they play them. So apparently they had all these drummers from the island inside the studio like lighting up the drum skins like over flames and doing all the stuff. so it was really cool. He says, and by he I say, I mean, Stuart.

Stewart says, I had ten of these guys in the studio, you know, playing all these incredible rhythms, which I used as the backbone of the tracks. I wanted to mix those real ancient tribal ritual sounds with the high-tech modern sound of the arrhythmics, the old and the new, to illustrate what I feel about 1984. with the whole, you know, the whole thing about Big Brother,

et cetera, the way people try to dominate others has been going on for as long as man has been here. That's pretty cool, right? I thought that was a cool thing to do. So shit kind of hits the fan for the arrhythics. There's a lot of crap that went down with them between the director of the movie and their record label, which was Virgin.

So director was Michael Radford. And he had actually commissioned a completely separate score for the film. And he actually wasn't even interested in using the songs that the arrhythmics turned in. So they make this entire story. soundtrack for this movie and he did even tell them about this. The director for the movie didn't even want to use their songs. And they said they were talking with the producer every day basically or every other day. And there wasn't any inference at all with these conversations that they didn't like what

they were hearing. So that's fucking bullshit. But they used it. Well, here's the deal, dude. In comes Richard Branson. The Richard Branson that you're thinking of. Virgin Records. The boss man of Virgin Records.

The guy that's trying to fly people to the fucking Mars alongside. Yeah, yeah. Elon Musk. He, Richard Branson also produced this movie. That's so weird. Yeah. So version records produced this movie. And Richard Branson basically struck up a deal for the arrhythmics

because they also happened to be on his record label. And the version records stepped in to ensure that their songs were going to be used over Radford and Perry's objections. Perry is the other producer of the movie. He also didn't want their songs to be in the movie. That's some bullshit, dude. But the fact that Michael Radford, the director of the movie, is like kind of going behind their back, like, you know, completely, like getting an entire different separate score for the film commissioned and all that

and not telling them about it, that's some bullshit, dude. Sounds like some Ron LaFeed type stuff. Yeah, I was about to say that's some Ron LaFeed level bullshit, dude. Mm-hmm. But anyways, it all worked out. I feel like it was probably more trouble than it was worth for the arrhythmics, because they already had all this success. But in the end, regardless of all that bullshit,

it's a really cool record. It really is worth listening to for sure. The single on this soundtrack is called Sex Crimes, you know, and that's part of that, like, double-speak weirdness that comes about in the context. concepts behind 1984. Did you ever read the book, dude? I don't think I did.

It's worth reading, man. It's good. But yeah, there are single sex crimes also brought about a lot of controversy in the U.S. There were a bunch of radio stations, particularly ones around the Bible Belt, that refused to play the song on the radio because the lyrics were offensive and too controversial. So Annie Linux is like, I think this is bullshit and hypocritical of them, because all of these radio stations played the shit out of Prince's song, Erotic City, which is full of sexual innuendo. Sure. And this song for this movie, 1984, sex crimes, is way more of a political statement than anything else.

Anyways, yeah, so like I said, a lot of shit went down in the process of making this soundtrack for this movie. Actually, I haven't even said the full name of the movie. The name of the book is 1984, but the movie's called 1984 for the love of Big Brother. So, anyways, with all that shit said, let's play my pick for this sidetrack. this is a song called Ministry of Love which is the second to last track on the soundtrack I like this song because her vocals don't really shine through it all

I don't know if she even pops up in this one but they've got they've definitely got those Junk of new drummers on there and there's also some more like tribal singing in there that I thought was really cool. So anyways, yeah, let's play it. Again, this song is called Ministry of Love. So the more I listen, I guess the more the song progressed, the more I liked it, actually. Cool.

At first, you know, I was kind of consumed with like the, I mean, I love, I've always loved the 80s synth sound. So, yeah. And especially that, like, that sci-fi type, um, Like you said, Tron kind of sound, you know what I mean? Yeah. But the drumming, so here's the thing, especially when the female vocals came in, it really reminded me of remain in light by the talking heads, which came out in 1980. On that record, specifically, David Byrne was influenced by this Nigerian musician named Filakuti.

And so, like, throughout the album, you've got these African polyverbalry. rhythms and and funk and whatnot and those kind of vocal female vocal tracks like thrown into songs here and there especially the Great Curve track three on that record so anyway I feel like that may have been something that was going on in the 80s with like afro beat sort of influencing pop music you know yeah and I totally get why David Stewart of the arrhythmics uh went this route for this movie like he was saying you know 1984 deals with man overtaking man basically which is something that has been going on since the dawn of of the human race really you know yeah um so it's kind of cool to to choose these more tribal sounds to go you know juxtaposed alongside

these arithmics, like 80s, synthetic sounds. I thought it was really well done. So that's our sidetrack for this week. Thank you, Britt Daniel, for shedding some light on this album for us. I never in a million years. Dude, I mean, honestly, I probably never would have listened to this, ever. I would never even know that it existed. especially if the majority of the movie happens to just have the score other than the score rather than the arithmetic songs for the soundtrack.

Right. Which is fucking weird to me. I don't know if maybe that was the thing that happened more in the 80s where they would have a soundtrack that was really songs that were even separate from the movie itself. But yeah, man, I don't know if I would have ever listened to this soundtrack if it wasn't for Brit Daniel. So, thank you. Bradenio. I love you. We know.

So, wrapping this up, next week, we're going to do something a little bit different. We're going to get back into the, more of the electronic, down-tempo kind of stuff, and cover Lossils,

um, shit, fourth studio album, uh, called First Narrows, which came out in 2004. So again, dude, we find ourselves in the early 2000s, God damn it.

We can't fucking escape the early odds, bro. No, but yeah, you know, this is not, well, this is not an emo record or a indie rock record. Or a post-punk or indie rock, yeah. Yeah. It's just funny that, like, we're not even doing this on purpose, but we sure are covering a lot of albums from the early 2000s. And again, I mean, you know, we're 30-year-olds. this is the early This is when we were

listening to music on our own discovering music on our own for the first time So it makes sense Yeah But yeah eventually So you know what

But hey We just did a side track on the arithmetic From the early 80s So Yeah dude We did echoing the bunny man A couple weeks back I mean

Yeah you're right You're right Our Emo episode Had a ton of stuff From the 80s So I mean you know We're spreading it out

Truth. But I'm really excited to cover Lossel because I feel like for me, Lossel, and, you know, kind of like what we were saying about Toska, Lossel had a big influence on the kind of music that I listened to going forward in that genre, you know? I love his sound. I think he inspired me to listen to more of that kind of music. and seek it out, you know? Yeah.

So, yeah, he's sort of in a league of his own, I think, as far as the way he approaches ambient music. The way that he adds drum beats and percussion and whatnot is to me is what makes it. Because it's electronic. I don't really like the term IDM because dance music, you would not classify this as dance music. whatsoever. But you can't dance to Lossel, dude.

No, not at all. Absolutely not. But what I'm saying is, you know, I guess the term IDM is kind of used for like more like backgrounds type electronic music, you know what I mean? Yeah. Electronic music that you're not going to hear in a dance club, you know what I mean? Right. Yeah. So, but hey, let's not get too into it, bro. Yeah. We've got a whole episode to cover. Right. So, yeah, that's going to be our, our our full episode next week's we're going to cover Lossil's

fourth studio album First Narrows and I guess well you know what I almost forgot hop on to our website no-filler podcast.com there you can find show notes

for each episode including notes for our side track episodes you can stream our podcast directly from our website We've got SoundCloud players embedded on there. And you can also subscribe to us on iTunes. Please leave us a comment.

Let us know how we're doing. Pretty much any podcast app that you listen to podcasts on, we should be on there. You can find us on there. You can subscribe to us through there. And, yeah, as always, thank you so much for listening. For our outro song for this one, I'm going to just do another song from this soundtrack by the U-Rhythmics. This one, I feel like it could have been like a standalone arithmetic song.

So is this playing during the credits or something? You know, probably. Yeah, this is just a good arithmetic song, I feel like. This was track three on this soundtrack. It's called For the Love of Big Brother. And that's going to do it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Quentin.

My name is Travis. Take care now. Bye bye then.