Melody Maker - Unknown Pleasures - 20 Great Lost Albums Rediscovered - # 7 ABC - The Lexicon of Love

1982 was a fabulous year in the UK for Pop music. Probably the best we had here after those golden runs between '65 and '67 and '70 and '72.  '80 and '81 had been pretty great but 1982 was the icing on the cake. Every Thursday night on Top of the Pops there was a fabulous array of outsider bands making a stake for the highest places in the charts.

 I was sixteen at the time and everybody at my secondary school, watched Top of the Pops every week. Pretty much everybody I'd say. Then we'd go to school the next day and discuss what we'd seen and heard. There were so many wonderful singles, so many wonderful bands.

ABC were right in the thick of things. They had any number of huge hits that year in addition to The Lexicon of Love, which for many was the album of the year,  and certainly stood out in that respect, even among a field of incredibly strong contenders.

So what did we think of them at the time? Not very much I'd say. In their lame jackets, with their greased quiffs and dance routines as I remember they came across as faintly ridiculous. My main recollection concerning them at the time was David O'Connor, the Scouse kid at our school curling locks in his hair on the desk behind me and my friend Philip before English classes and aping Martin Fry's spoken interlude in The Look of Love and not in remotely flattering terms. How little we knew.

We didn't read the NME where Paul Morley and Ian Penman dissected the band, their records and every move they made. We didn't know enough about Pop history to understand the reference points to great records and moments of the past. We didn't understand that Trevor Horn was defining Eighties production. We didn't really know how good their records were.

But we also didn't know how many of these bands would crash and burn within months. That Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran and Wham! would take over and that Kajagoogoo, Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw were waiting in the wings. All far more representative of the Thatcherite monetarist world we were heading towards than this odd set of bands who'd seized the moment in 1982 before almost immediately blowing the opportunity they'd opened up for themselves. We should have appreciated ABC ore certainly. By comparison to what was coming they were Motown itself.

David Stubbs says pretty much the same here in his second entry for this book. His essay seems slightly more rushed than the one about Captain Beefheart but it's still worth the read. As for my take on it. Some of it plods, the singles just soar,  Poison Arrow and All of my Heart particularly, plus a couple of others.  But I understand only too well why it made such a splash and people loved and still love it like they do. In many respects The Lexicon of Love is a one off.