This Saturday, the Sound of The City takes the opportunity to start a trip back in time, since K103 studentradio turns 30 this year.
We’ll start with a visit to an era where A sides and B sides had a meaning to people who loved to listen to music. MTV was a novelty and video clips for songs were seen as something new and exciting.
On the A side: Digital technology and computer generated sounds were a new unexplored territory for the mainstream pop culture and people were amazed at special effects created by vocoders and other extraordinary technological achievements. Video killed the radio star, and an artifficial intellingence creation called Max Headroom did vocals for an avant-garde syntpop group (the art of noise). Rotoscoping allowed pencil scetch animation to be combined with live-action, in order to visually compliment pop songs for the first time, ever. Sampled rhythm tracks were laid down as rules for the next generations to follow, copy and further evolve. Artists facing the anxiety of what to do next, would turn to songs of the past a little less often than nowadays, but when they did they created memorable hits once again. New wave was in fashion and fluorescent colours were suitably accompanying 'far out' sounds and modern-urban-life-related lyrics.
On the B side: This era was marked by songs targeting social issues of urban poverty and alienation, a celebration of sexual preferences diversity, and the last breaths of cold war. Melodic pop music often 'coated' lyrics that were hard to 'swallow', making them to be easier understood and accepted. Independent music labels produced some of the most interesting songs and bands of the decade, while multinational record companies took their first hesitant steps towards the, then, new musical, unexpored –or as some would say, yet unexploited– territory of world music.
New wave, electronica and ska-reggae made use of the progressive, creative approach the punk movement left behind as heritage. Power pop for the dance floors, british jazzy R&B and the so called blue-eyed soul were dominating the charts, taking over from the familiar FM rock that was a sort of left-over-evolution from the previous decade's music creation.
The choices for this show are framed by the relations the songs create with each other, the availability of tunes and the importance to include a variety of sub-genres. Personal preferences highly influenced the final play-list choice, but after all, this is the sound of the city, the sound that surrounds us, our aural wallpaper, the sound that constantly, even if unconsciously, feeds our future memories. There is no way that a decade of song creation could fit into an hour-long radio programme. Many important bands and songs were excluded. Some of them because their life span and creation is wider than a decade, although they helped define it. Some will still be included at the last part of this tribute, so this November do stay tuned!
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