Melody Maker called this single from Roxy Music’s 1980 album Flesh + Blood “hypnotic” and “irresistible”, “insistent” and “unforgettable”. In 1980 I was just a kid, living in Cape Town, and I hadn’t yet heard about Melody Maker.
Television was only introduced to South Africa in 1976, and commercials followed two years later. Prior to television’s introduction, Springbok Radio was the main source of entertainment. I dimly recall listening to the police serial, Squad Cars (“they prowl the empty streets at night”), but I remember fondly the Hit Parade albums - a series of budget compilation records with cover versions of popular songs, packaged in a sleeve with a Page Three type bikini-clad model, posed on a car, panel van or other vehicle.
I came to know and love this song via my Springbok Hit Parade 1980. As I remember it, this one was adorned by a brunette straddling a motorbike parked in what looked like a demolition site. It was an incongruous fusion of elements which no doubt appealed to the young male target audience. I know, because I stared at it long enough as the music played.
I recall sashaying around the lounge room in my pyjamas and slippers on the champagne-coloured shag pile carpet while the LP spun its magic on the turntable. Other times I sat with headphones on and watched the record, hypnotized by the tiny grooves on the disc, and how much they carried - not only the complexity of the sounds recorded there, but the emotional response those sounds triggered in me as I listened to the songs.
My copy of the album was disposed of long ago at a garage sale, I think. I haven’t been able to find a track listing or anything about the album online, but Antmusic certainly featured, and I’m pretty confident in addition to Jona Lewie’s You’ll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties, it also included The Look’s I Am The Beat.
Oh Yeah is such a simple song, but it concerns themes which would evolve into personal favourites over the years - separation, longing, lost love, nostalgia and melancholy - and it’s delivered with such a smooth authenticity that its power hasn’t diminished with age.
Television was only introduced to South Africa in 1976, and commercials followed two years later. Prior to television’s introduction, Springbok Radio was the main source of entertainment. I dimly recall listening to the police serial, Squad Cars (“they prowl the empty streets at night”), but I remember fondly the Hit Parade albums - a series of budget compilation records with cover versions of popular songs, packaged in a sleeve with a Page Three type bikini-clad model, posed on a car, panel van or other vehicle.
I came to know and love this song via my Springbok Hit Parade 1980. As I remember it, this one was adorned by a brunette straddling a motorbike parked in what looked like a demolition site. It was an incongruous fusion of elements which no doubt appealed to the young male target audience. I know, because I stared at it long enough as the music played.
I recall sashaying around the lounge room in my pyjamas and slippers on the champagne-coloured shag pile carpet while the LP spun its magic on the turntable. Other times I sat with headphones on and watched the record, hypnotized by the tiny grooves on the disc, and how much they carried - not only the complexity of the sounds recorded there, but the emotional response those sounds triggered in me as I listened to the songs.
My copy of the album was disposed of long ago at a garage sale, I think. I haven’t been able to find a track listing or anything about the album online, but Antmusic certainly featured, and I’m pretty confident in addition to Jona Lewie’s You’ll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties, it also included The Look’s I Am The Beat.
Oh Yeah is such a simple song, but it concerns themes which would evolve into personal favourites over the years - separation, longing, lost love, nostalgia and melancholy - and it’s delivered with such a smooth authenticity that its power hasn’t diminished with age.
Some expression in your eyes
Overtook me by surprise
Where was I, how was I to know
How can we drive to a movie show
When the music is here in my carThere’s a band playing on the radio
With a rhythm of rhyming guitars
They’re playing Oh Yeah on the radioIt’s some time since we said goodbye
And now we lead our separate lives
But where am I, where can I goDriving alone to a movie show
So I turn to the sounds in my car
There’s a band playing on the radio
With a rhythm of rhyming guitarsThere’s a band playing on the radio
And it’s drowning the sound of my tears
They’re playing Oh Yeah on the radio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springbok_Radio
