Propaganda - A Secret Wish

Album Review # 28 Propaganda - A Secret Wish 'One of the most remarkable characteristics of human nature is, alongside so much selfishness in specific instances, the freedom from envy which the past displays towards the future.' Lotze. Hermann Lotze Quoted by Paul Morley on his sleeve notes on A Secret Wish. No, I don't know what it means either! I grew up only once of course. In the early eighties. But looking back it was a very interesting time not completely, accurately documented until now at least to my eyes. It was the most incredibly political of times and this was completely reflected in its music and a transition that took place between 1982 and 1983, particularly in the UK. One by one the Punk and Post Punk bands fell by the wayside, The Clash, The Jam, The Gang of Four, The Specials, The Teardrop Explodes. The ones that survived became lesser forces; the Associates, Simple Minds, PiL, the Bunymen.The new pop bands that had had big chart hits in the early eighties, The Human League, ABC, Soft Cell and Japan lost focus or their interest in being in the Top 10. 'All that we see or seem. Is But a dream with a dream.' In their place came a whole set of, (I'm sorry), shameless opportunists. Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, The Thompson Twins, Kajagoogoo, Howard Jones, Nick Kershaw and Wham! They reflected the age very well, mirroring the shallowness and acquisitional greed that was the times. A friend of mine and I charted those years by walking up and down Richmond High Street every few months when we met, watching the pubs turn into wine bars. Heaven 17's excellent first album Penthouse & Pavement described what was going on as well as any record. Sadly, they too became slightly mediocre thereafter. Only The Smiths really emerged as a new force against all of this. Other, similar minded souls, Prefab Sprout, Lloyd Cole & the Commotions, Aztec Camera and American and Australian counterparts R.E.M., The Go Betweens and The Triffids, offered a different perspective, showed that the guitar based approach was still difficult if not impossible to beat. But they all struggled to sell the records they deserved to. And then there was ZTT. Frankie Goes to Hollywood was of course the label's huge success. I still struggle to get a handle on that band. Clearly huge, subversive pop singles, but not anything I'd choose to play myself. It seemed like populism for its own sake. The big, crude statement. They just weren't for me. The second band on ZTT, Propaganda, were however. They were a sleek Teutonic, pop vision. Kraftwerk fronted by glamorous women. I bought their album, played it a lot at the time, and am listening to it now for the first time in probably twenty years. Opening song A Dream Within a Dream quotes Edgar Allan Poe. The sleeve notes, from NME journalist Paul Morley who was press spokesman for ZTT quotes Lotze. I don't know who he is either. It's unashamedly Art, talking mass culture, technology, concepts of love, beauty, greed and desire. These people have probably read Walter Benjamin. They've definitely watched lots of Art house, European films. The record flows, like some sleek, modern assembly line which I'm quite sure is the effect it's after. It's pretty much a concept. It's robotic modernism. Very much of its time. Kraftwerk, Neu, Bowie, Eno, Iggy, Simple Minds and Japan had paved the way for this stuff. The Modern European vision. Duel particularly is a wonderful pop moment. So good they do it twice. Sadly they have only one of these gems. Although the album sounds great (it's produced by Trevor Horn who knows what he's doing), it's all stretched rather thin. 'Selling your soul. Never look back.' Dr. Mabuse is the record's other great, original moment. Much else here borrows too much from Kraftwerk and Neu. It's named after a character in a Fritz Lang film. Pretty much talking about the Faustian Pact. The parallels between the thirties and eighties are rather chilling in retrospect. A lot of bad stuff went on in that latter decade too. We're still paying the price. I've spent an hour with this record this morning and that's probably enough for a while. As I've indicated it's just too short of songs to achieve the status it aims for. For example there's an entirely unnecessary cover of Josef K's Sorry For Laughing which should have been relegated to a B-Side. There's a sense the group just didn't have enough songs of their own. Lots of surface and not enough substance. One of the reasons I always slightly distrusted Morley. It's all grounded in very good taste in art, literature, films and music. Perhaps I haven't done it justice. It should really have come with a reading list. These things were very popular at the time. As a footnote, I saw the band in my first term at university in Norwich in 1985. They were being recorded for a BBC music programme. The Oxford Roadshow, or something of the kind. There was a pre-recording of a couple of songs with the houselights up before the show started. My memory of it was of a group of rowdy townies shouting 'get your tits out' throughout both sets at the women, particularly Susanne Freytag. It's never a good idea to get too nostalgic about these things. Pearls before swine.