This series will include songs from various decades. The only thing that they will have in common is the fact that I think they are cool as hell; goth rock, disco, deathrock, punk, darkwave, new wave, soul, rap/hip hop, folk, alternative and more will be featured. Hopefully you will find out about some songs that you have never known about, that will drive you in a quest to find out more about these bands. Questions about the music I feature? Please ask away because I love talking about this subject.

I know that worshipping everything ’80’s’ is trendy as hell right now. However, I was actually a teen in the 80’s so I have the absolute right to wax and wane over the music from that period of time.

With all of that being said this song will always remind me of my late 80’s club going days. Back in the late 80’s, before the word goth was heavily used in the SF Bay Area, clubs that played weirdo music were called ‘alternative’. The term back then mostly meant the music of bands who never got much mainstream radio play. Sometimes those kind of stations would play ‘alternative’ music past midnight so you had to stay up late to hear it and hopefully record it if your trigger finger was fast enough. In the SF Bay Area there were a few stations that would play alternative music regularly, so I was pretty lucky in that regard. Also, there was a local TV station that would air ‘alternative’ videos every afternoon and they would have guests like Adam Ant.

The day of my 17th birthday in 1988 my friend drove me to a club called One Step Beyond that was in Santa Clara California. All types of people went to that club; mods, goths, new wavers, punks,etc… That being the case they played a very wide variety of music, everything from rap/hip hop to early 80’s new wave hits. That was the night that I first heard this song. I loved it because it’s sound really gave it a sci-fi kind of vibe. You could watch Blade Runner and automatically think that this song would fit neatly into its soundtrack.

For years I didn’t know who made this song! Since this was the time before the internet that was a pretty regular occurrence. You didn’t want to seem uncool by asking who made the song! Sometimes I didn’t care and would ask anyway but for some reason I missed asking about this one. I’m not perfect! I finally found out about twenty years ago that Visage, who was an early 80’s new wave band, were the ones who made it! I remember listening to it over and over again absorbing it like a sponge. Happy in the knowledge that by golly I finally learned who wrote the song that perfectly encapsulated my late 80’s/early 90’s club going experience.

I hope you enjoy this song as much as I do because it’s very nifty.

RIP to Steve Strange, the singer and creative force of Visage who died in 2015.