Happy Birthday, Lizzie!

Even though the Queen's Birthday being celebrated today is largely symbolic (her actual birthday was the 21st of April - making her a whopping 85 years old), we still have a soft spot for the monarchy here at SDU. So cheers, Lizzie! Happy Birthday, and hopefully you get some more corgis for your collection.


From their 1977 album Never Mind The Bullocks: Here's The Sex Pistols, here is the brilliant and quite scathing "God Save The Queen."

Happy Birthday, Tim Curry!

On this day, 19 April 1946, one Tim Curry entered the world. We here at Second Drawer Up HQ would like to take this moment to salute a brilliant actor, singer, and performer – holy crap, his breakout turn as Dr Frankenfurter in the 1975 classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show still gives us the willies. Fucking brilliant. Here, for your enjoyment, is Curry and gang (featuring a young Susan Surandon!) performing "Sweet Transvestite!"





Aaaaaand ... for all you Tim Curry fans out there, here's a video clip featuring Tim Curry's top 135 film quotes!





So, happy birthday, Tim. Cheers from all of us at SDU!

Violator Is 21 Years Old. Buy It A Drink.

The date was 18 June 1988, and Depeche Mode had just performed the final show of their Tour For The Masses at the venerated Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. Thus ended their hugest tour of their relatively young career, and the obvious question on everybody's tongues was, How on Earth do they top this?


How, indeed. The tour was filmed by renowned music documentarian D.A. Pennebaker, and later released as the concert film 101. In fact, at the end of the movie, one saw a shockingly young Martin Gore backstage, sitting in the green room with a mixture of shock and elation on his face, tears streaming from his eyes, repeating as a mantra: "What now? What do we do now?" It was a fantastic moment of honesty and, yes, fear in young Gore's features.

After taking a much needed rest, the band hunkered down with their long-time manager Daniel Miller of Mute Records and famed producer Flood in May of 1989 to record what would become their biggest-selling album ever; a dark masterwork featuring some of Gore's most intimate writing to date, and three of their most ground-breaking singles ("Personal Jesus," "Enjoy the Silence," and "Halo" come to mind) that helped launch Depeche Mode into the stratosphere, cementing their place as the world's most successful (and probably only, these days) stadium-filling electronic act of all time.

I'm talking, of course, about Violator. Did you know that it was released 21 years ago, on the 19th of March, 1990? Wow, it's amazing how fast the time has flown by, isn't it? But listening to it now causes one (me, for instance) to realize how immediate and timeless this recording really is. Being the first DM album to utilize real drums (Alan Wilder's bombastic stick work in the highly spiritual "Clean") and certainly a more "rock 'n roll" sound (more guitars, for instance, and some highly stylized harmonica samples), I think Violator was quite possibly the first DM album to solidly register with the "rock kids," and, as such, spread the joy that is DM all over the proverbial map.

Which is a great thing. What's not to love? There's something for everybody here, whether it's the blistering blues influence coursing through the train-inspired "Sweetest Perfection" (sung to, er, sweetest perfection by the eternally-youthful Martin Gore); the stomping rock 'n roll fever that permeates every second of "Personal Jesus;" the haunting spareness of "Waiting For The Night, with probably the most plaintive and introspective vocals ever sung by Dave Gahan (and the twinkling stars represented by Wilder's synths are simply gorgeous); and, of course, Gore's bewitching vocals on the most lovely and romantic "Blue Dress" ("Can you believe - something so simple - something so trivial - makes me a happy man - can't you understand - say you believe - just how easy it is to please me - because when you learn you'll know what makes the world turn")

So! How about cuing up Violator (on vinyl if you got it) and toasting its 21st birthday in style? That's what I did. Cheers, kids. Here's "Halo" for you.

Happy Birthday, Roland Orzabal!

picture: last.fm

Guess who turned forty-nine today? That's right - it's Roland Orzabal from the legendary Bath, UK electronic duo Tears For Fears. So today I'd like to take a look at his (and his partner-in-crime Curt Smith's) certifiable masterpiece The Hurting. I don't know about you, but thinking about it (and then listening to it) make me quite excited!

Sure, Tears For Fears are probably best known for their later work, such as Songs From The Big Chair with its rapid-fire pow-pow-pow of hits "Shout," "Everybody Wants To Rule The World," and "Mothers Talk." These are great songs in their own right, and I have to admit that they're really quite catchy. Please though, don't get me started on the dreck that followed after - namely "Sowing The Seeds of Love" and "Woman In Chains." Let's just say - uh, not so good, guys. But that's just me.

Anyway! Back to The Hurting. Released in 1983, this delightfully morose and inquisitively sensitive record was based in part on the writings of a psychotherapist by the name of Arthur Janov, who had written a book entitled "The Primal Scream." Orzabal and Smith, who had both grown up in troubled homes without their fathers, found in Janov's writings a way to work out their unresolved unhappinesses. Even their name comes from the good doctor's oeuvre: he had written that a good way to get crap out of your system was tears as a replacement for fears. So right there is a reason this record is so damn special - it's a concept album based on the works of a psychotherapist designed to chase out the demons of a spectacularly unhappy childhood.

Surprisingly, though, The Hurting is not necessarily a depressing listen. Sure, the lyrics themselves revolve around such dispiriting themes such as abandonment, loss, sorrow, madness, tension, and nervous breakdowns (Orzabal's father fell victim to one such breakdown after suffering most of his life with arterial sclerosis). But the music - the music! Utilizing a decent mixture of synths, sequencers, live and programmed drums, and guitar, there's a distinct ebullience present in these recordings. "Mad World," for instance, while it features a lyric stating that "the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had," still soars with its tantalizing mixture of tribal drums, brooding synths, and driving beat. "Pale Shelter" grooves along with a lovely acoustic guitar and bass backup, whilst synths noodle in the background. Curt does sing lines like, "And I can't operate on this failure when all I want to be is completely in command," but not in a mopey way at all. It's all an interesting juxtaposition, to be sure. Even arguably the saddest song of the bunch, the poppy "Suffer The Children," sung to the father who's abandoned his child, features in its coda a chorus of singing children, their voices (one of whom belongs to Orzabal's daughter) flitting about high in the cloudy sky like brightly colored birds. (Maybe I've seen The Shawshank Redemption a few times, ya reckon?)

So Happy Birthday, Mr Orzabal. By facing your fears (by exchanging them for tears) and exorcizing the demons of your unhappy upbringing with a band-mate who shared your passion, you've created a piece of art that will stand the test of time. I, for one, would like to thank you. We here at Second Drawer Up salute you!

And, in true Second Drawer Up fashion, I'd like to share with my delightful readers (you know who you are) a single from The Hurting. Ladies and gentlemen, here is Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith from Tears For Fears with their single "Suffer The Children." Enjoy!

Correction: I have been informed by an anonymous commentator that it is, indeed, Mr Orzabal's wife, not his daughter, who is providing background vocals on "Suffer The Children." My mistake! Cheers, Mr or Ms Anonymous!