CLASSICPOP

Rik Flynn

Editor

By 1981, punk had gone soft, the first wave of electronica had spiked, and the Iron Lady was at No.10. The recession had bitten hard.

Promises of harmony, truth, faith and hope seemed no more than toxic rhetoric for those deprived communities staring down indefi nite unemployment. Sus law led to minorities being stopped and searched; racism was everywhere. The riots that broke out in Brixton, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester in ‘81 seemed inevitable. Beyond politics, nature’s sinister forces were also at play; AIDS was tearing through the gay community, and friends were being buried as discotheques became cathedrals of unified – hidden – hope. Out of this whirling maelstrom came some of the fi nest music ever made. The youth grabbed what was within their reach. The Sex Pistols and Kraftwerk – clumsy musicianship and sequencing, mohicans and synthesizers – had once stood at opposite sides of the hall, but the do-it-yourself mindset remained the only viable choice for most teenagers. In curious union, the still largely foreign world of technology offered a bewitching rabbit hole through which they could slip away, escaping the sombre mood of the streets – still with virgin ground to break.