Daily Mael 1980

Terminal Jive

Irritating clichéd disco beat and Boney M like chanting can’t save this one. It’s just disco rock by numbers. But kudos for the mention of Art Laboe – the Armenian American disc jockey credited with coining the term “Oldies But Goodies”.

Not too shabby this one. Guitar chug solid too. And another winning chorus. You just know something stereophonic is going to happen in your speakers and, sure enough, you’re not disappointed. Who knows what the ‘smart professors’ and ‘clean marines’ are doing in there.

Was immediately reminded of Duran Duran here, which is bad. But at least these boys are better than those ‘Wild Boys.’ Nothing to get excited about in the lyrics either. The catchy chorus almost makes up for the rest of the song and the warpy guitar break bit’s nice.

Dirty old man pop. Hard to listen to without cringing, but the creepiness is offset by the sharp snappy singalong chorus where you could almost forget the subject matter.

Large slice of self awareness going on here. Admittedly a solid hookline, it’s, again, far too long. I do like ‘They make L. P. records and a few make comebacks and the rest sell shoes to all the other rock and roll people in a disco world’ bit. That horrible squidgy synth instrumental break is hard to take though. The over the top rock n roll drum and guitar ending is kind of funny.

Could almost be Hall & Oates or any soft rock type 80s act. Goes on far too long and really doesn’t get any better. Nothing dates like a formulaic 80s chant. I’ve tried to love this, but it’s just not doing a thing for me. Surprisingly, not even the words can save it. Next!

Here come the plush 80s production stuff. Great pop song nevertheless, ruined by the 80s gloop and bog standard synth sound and that awful synth trumpet. Pretty sure they were aware of this, mind you. There’s a certain weariness and self-deprecation about it. Nice meta self referential stuff too: ‘It’s the break in the song when I should say something special.’

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1967 – 1969