Synthpop for Life!

Thirty years ... three decades ... nearly a third of a century - call it what you like.

For me, it simply charts the catastrophic coma which only released me to return to a decent existence last year. Or was it really such a calamity? I'm not a natural tragedian and from what I've been hearing about musical trends over the past thirty years, I'm frankly glad to have slept most of it off!

The Autocrats (our 3-piece keyboard act) had just received an airing on Radio 1's John Peel Show which led to our demo, 'Guitar Curfew' getting us signed to a major electronic label. That's when I decided to be an outright idiot on vodka shorts: Wednesday, 23rd November, 1983.

I may as well cherish those final few seconds when I flew off my motorbike at the Underpass. The exhilarating velocity: the excruciating impact before I lapsed into that infernal coma. Nothing could retrieve my inner being from a lost era of near nothingness broken only by occasional astral hovering over my listless physical garments.

I couldn't even get sick of those Ultravox tapes my girlfriend, Liz, wore out on my Walkman during her bedside vigil which I'm told lasted for most of 1984. Then again, I could hardly have tired of their albums anyway: those gentlemen set the standards.

And there I slope again: back through those wasted decades when I should be absorbing the here and now.

And getting bloody served!

It's been a long wait for this vodka and lemonade in more ways than one. Awakened, like some vampire (with a thirst to match) and I'm once again subjected to the subliminal tendency of bar staff to erase particular punters from visual existence.

("WHAT THE F - " : I almost shriek as a gothic geezer nearly winds me with a careless elbow nudge. I'm assuming it's an accident anyway ... sinister looking pillock. In fact, I'd better keep quiet even if something deliberate occurs tonight lest a single clout should secure my slumber for another 30 years!)

Actually, Liz was getting a tad gothy just before my accident, so she should have made quite the portrait of grief at my bedside. Not that she was there when I regained consciousness which some would regard as only natural, I suppose, when it was obviously down to being fickle. There wasn't even a card from her when I awoke! And there was me racing to propose to her that fate-struck night.

Should have taken my time, I suppose. It's not as if any normal girl could have said "no" to a synth wizard with the charts about to stand aside for his expertise. I honestly dread to think how her life may have turned out ... probably listening to dub-step, or techno these days, at best.

It's quite a mixed mob here tonight to see Tenek - one of today's notable electronic groups. Seems synths must have influenced a lot of musical trends but synthpop itself has always been unique. At least I was able to catch-up on the patchy history of the scene through YouTube whilst convalescing and playing about with the type of technology we could only discuss, over schematics for modified synths back in the day.

In that sense, the internet and other digital innovations are mere baby rattles but still an almighty advance from the pages of pulp 80s sci-fi.

(Oooooohhh ... Wow! She looks absolutely gorgeous and a lot like Sam Clark from my school days ... A LOT like her: same new-wave hair, poise and pout but ... yeah, get a grip: that could even be her grand-daughter which would make me a dirty old man for my all-too-flamin-few sins! Nice to see some things haven't changed though and - oh, b*ll*cks! That lovely eyeful obviously cost me the bar tender's attention for a crucial split-second-and-a-half!!!)