Two Tribes

I was fifteen years old when this song was first released straight into the UK's number one single spot in May 1984. That summer the UK's newest and rawest new-wave pop band, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, were upsetting DJ's and the establishment right-wing (left right and centre) with their distinct and fresh brand of shock-pop dance music laden with provocative imagery and lyrics of an overtly sexual - and principally homosexual - nature for the time.

Following up their notoriously banned debut single, 'Relax' was always going to be a tough act but, in a track hauntingly heralded by the sound of nuclear attack sirens, their second single 'Two Tribes' comfortably achieved that distinction. I recall the Channel 4 show, The Tube, broadcasting a preview of the song's controversial video at 1am in the morning, such was the anticipation and concern it warranted with its chilling metaphorical depiction by two actors playing the parts of a pair of be-suited Cold War presidents Reagan and Chernenko (the Soviet premier at the time) pitched in a bloody hand to hand fist-fight to the death in a sand pit.

'Two Tribes' remained at the number one slot in the UK charts for nine weeks that year, effectively for the entire summer and was for many, me included, the one true anthem for the times, pitched perfectly as a backdrop to what was one of the most charismatic and unique years of the decade.

It represented an intoxicating and compelling cocktail of emotions for this fifteen year old at the time, mixing the classic teen-age symptoms of healthy distrust and angst combined with hardened desire for rebellion against establishment, and not least our parents, with the all-too-real anti-war fears and paranoia about the abyss into which that self-same establishment was threatening to lead its children, ultimately towards the prospect of a nuclear winter.

One of many twelve-inch single mixes of the song carried with it the recordings of official British nuclear attack public service tapes, the very instructions that would have been played over telephone lines and radio broadcasts to whomever was unfortunate to have survived long enough to make it past the initial nuclear attack, and who may require to know how to dispose of the bodies of their families. These recordings, ironically made by a well known commercial voice-over artist of the era, added a chilling and perverse dimension to the mood of the times.

Twenty years seems such a very long time when you hear this song played back today and in many respects, the world couldn't have turned out any more differently in the time that has passed since, apart from the sustained anti-war sentiments. But looking back in a personal context, it seems that it was a happy and exciting time for me as I found myself standing on the brink of adulthood in a confused world I was struggling to reach any real comprehension of.

A Child Of The 80's

I've recently become aware of having begun the process of reviewing my life. I suspect that a number of factors have contributed to this state of being; becoming a father last December, losing my own father two weeks later, hitting thirty-five this summer, watching my baby daughter grow up every day and, very recently, fulfilling a major career goal by finding myself at the top of a software company whose applications I began my working life selling cold, in 1989.

In other words, major life changing stuff. But weren't the 1980's weird?

Over the Christmas break last year and in between cleaning, filling, emptying and then cleaning all over again, bottles of baby milk every four hours, I snatched some time playing Grand Theft Auto : Vice City on my PS2. In the last couple of years I've more or less given up on videogames after many years as a hard-core gamer, but this one title was highly recommended and I have to say it really is quite a masterpiece.

As an aside, Rockstar North, the software house which develops the GTA series was formerly known as DMA Design and are still based in Scotland, as they were when I sold them some hardware back in the olden days when prehistoric 486DX-25 rack servers cost forty grand and I was a 'Computer Sales Executive' and David Jones, their then pre-millionaire founder, still had to deal with people like me. Then. But look at us now.

Anyway, Vice City has the most amazing soundtrack which adds significantly to the whole experience of driving around Miami and creating all manner of totally un-PC havoc. Rockstar cunningly decided to incorporate about 10 or so hours worth of real 80's greatest hits music spanning various genres from pop, rock, jazz, soul, funk etc. and where each song was linked by some amazingly funny and expertly cliched mock DJ segments complete with cheesey advertisements. The idea being you could change the radio station in whichever vehicle you'd nicked and listen to your favourite 80's hit music as you drove. An absolutely fantastic idea and actually well worth the price of the game for the music alone.

At the weekend I picked up the CD box set of the soundtrack for £33 at a local Virgin store, containing 7 CD's packed with all the 80's music from the game. So I loaded up my CD changer in my car and now I'm driving about the place listening to what is ostensibly Vice City music and finding it hard to resist the temptation to get out of my car at traffic lights, grabbing a nearby motorcyclist and punching his lights out before making good with his Harley. Seriously, I almost did precisely that today.

And so, I've been listening to 80's music all week like Mister Mister, Flock Of Seagulls, Bryan Adams, Toto, and all those other names we cringe at the thought of.

But, actually, it's all sounding not too bad. I suppose there's now some distance between us and the 80's and maybe we can at last begin to look at it a little more objectively. Or maybe it's just because I'm ready to welcome the music of that decade back into my life again in the context of all this retrospective contemplation I'm doing.

Today I was trying to decide which 1980's song I'd pick as being the one that tipified the decade as a whole. After some thought I finally concluded that "Crockett's Theme" by Jan Hammer would be close to perfect, and I seem to recall that particular song was used extensively in the retro 80's movie The Wedding Singer everytime the dweeb boyfriend whose name I can't remember but which was most likely "Brad" since all dweeb 1980's movie boyfriends are called "Brad", pulled up in his De Lorean which always seemed to have "Crockett's Theme" on permaplay. Or perhaps it was the theme tune to Miami Vice? I forget which it was.

As if to make a statement about the 80's and about people who liked Miami Vice.

So, "Crockett's Theme" it is. Unless you feel differently, of course.

What Evil Lies At The End Of Holly Bush Lane?

My car has a satellite navigation computer which has helped me out on numerous occasions given my relatively limited knowledge of the local geography of southern England, having only lived here for a couple of years.

However, it's not 100% perfect. There are a couple of glitches as far as its understanding the entire length of the M1 motorway is concerned and it repeatedly instructs me to exit at the wrong junction every time I traverse north on the M1 from London, heading home.

Having said that I have learned to trust it more often than not, even when it appears to be sending me in the wrong direction or when my instinctive sense of direction would lead me another way. Most of the time 'Betty', as I like to call her, gets it right and she has saved me enormous amounts of time finding places I'd never find in a month of Sundays. But the other day she abused my trust and left me confused and more than a little spooked.

En route to a certain destination I found myself being guided by Betty down an increasingly odd sequence of twists and turns that contradicted my own sense of where we should have been heading. But as I said above, I've learned to trust her and I know to let her just lead the way and so that is what I did. Shortly afterwards we turned off the main road and entered Holly Bush Lane which was a single track road which and the further along it I travelled, the more off-road the conditions became. All signs of civilisation slowly drew back into the distance and a well weathered and beaten up old caravan appeared to my right and whilst it was in poor condition, it looked as if it was habitable; moreover its door lay ominously open, I thought.

I began to question the sense in continuing down what was an increasingly strange route but, trusting Betty, I decided to continue onwards. Such were the road conditions beneath me, I was barely able to move along more quickly than 5mph, weaving left and right, up and down through what seemed like a million pot-holes in the now dusty and increasingly more broken up track below.

Betty barked at me, "Straight On!" as her screen read "3/4 Mile" to the next turning instruction which very, very slowly then became "1/2 Mile" as we crept further and further down Holly Bush Lane.

All that stretched out in front of me was the same featureless dusty track with not a soul in sight and I noticed it was couched in ever-thickening bushes and trees that seemed to creep closer and closer to the centre of the track ahead of me. It was not a welcoming sight.

As the gravel crackled under my tyres as we drove towards the end of the lane I thought about what horrors would I find waiting for me at the end of Holly Bush Lane.

Images flashed across my mind of a lost community of savages, reminiscent of Mad Max's Thunderdome but populated instead by missing business executives who had also been tricked by their evil SatNav systems long before me, only to find themselves trapped forever in a SatNav black hole and forced to live off the land, sitting around from dusk to dawn in their Recaro bucket seats, hunched around a camp-fire for warmth, ravenous and waiting for the next hapless victim to arrive with the fresh promise of some half eaten sandwich crusts or perhaps a luxurious tin of boiled sweets in the glove compartment.

Or would I find hell on earth filled with burned out BMW's, Merc's and other tricked out executive cars, with their owners long since extracted and consumed by some evil force that lived off the fattened torsos of capitalist pigs and 800lb board-room gorillas.

Suddenly the trance that had consumed me lifted and in a flash I slammed on the brakes and the car skidded sharply to a halt, crunching the gravel beneath. "Straight On!" ordered Betty, in a tone that sounded more fraught than usual. There was only a 1/4 mile to go before the end of Holly Bush Lane. We sat motionless for a few moments before I slowly found the sense to reach out towards the SatNav Off button and push it in. My hands still shaking, I then fumbled for the gear stick, hurriedly selected reverse then headed back down the lane in the direction from which I had come.

But to this day I feel a calling, something is drawing me back to Holly Bush Lane and I'm curious to know what's down there, and maybe one day I'll find out or, if not me, then maybe whoever takes ownership of Betty after me. I should warn them about Holly Bush Lane.