Used-Bin Bargains: Yaz

Yaz - Situation (Mute 1982)

Yaz - Upstairs at Eric's / Mute

Though I try hard not to be an egomaniac, sometimes I wonder about how readers think this blog works. Is it just that Jordan and Michael and I are thirds of the same whole, equal tastes with duties split up on the same great albums? Hardly. The truth is we disagree and our areas of emphasis are very different. If you've been reading us for any length of time, you can pick up pretty quickly on where our strengths are. I'm learning, but I'll be honest: Funk and soul from the 70s all sound pretty good to me. Michael's quality filter is much more attuned to that sort of thing... But on the flip side, it's tough for him to discern which 80s synthpop doesn't suck.

Michael: there are very few things i liked about the 80s
Michael: hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, ghostbusters... that's all i got
Me: Magazine? Sonic Youth's best stuff? No and New Wave?
Me: Turbo everything.
Michael: i like latter day sonic youth, and i can take or leave both waves
Michael: i think i may be 10 years behind the typical popular curve, so ask me again in 2015
Me: NES. Contra. The greatest videogame code ever.
Me: And Yuri Andropov died! I don't see what's not to love.
Michael: ok, you got me on those two
Me: I'm just saying, there's more to the 80s than VH1 gives credit for.
Me: The Cars?
Michael: meh
Me: Billy Bragg?
Michael: meh
Me: Public Enemy?
Michael: i'm bigger on very early 90s rap

You get the idea. So Jordan and I take on the 80s and we try to do Justice to them, but judging by my campus and a truckload of music that's been coming out lately, I don't need to tell you the 80s weren't a total waste of time.

All that's a long-winded introduction to Yazoo aka Yaz (there was an American label that already had the name), and it's easy to forget all of the new wave groups that emerged right after the groundbreakers... So easy, in fact, that James Murphy himself has forgotten them in recent live renditions of "Losing My Edge." I would credit my personal discovery of Yaz to him (because I'm a tool), but I actually first heard Yaz on the Rules of Attraction soundtrack (because I'm a tool). That's what Audiversity's all about: Bringing such disparate people as James Van Der Beek and Bret Easton Ellis together with Yaz. And making me look like a tool. Because I'm an egomaniac. Connecting the dots.

Those dots for Upstairs at Eric's start with Alison Moyet in 1977, the best time to be 16, pissed off at the British school system, and primed to leave for a record shop with no future in South East Essex. But fate would have its way with her long beyond the years the punk-rock scene did: The Vandals, Screamin' Ab Dabs, The Vicars and The Little Roosters were just some of the creatively named groups that Moyet was a part of. Like virtually everyone else in Britain who saw the light of post-punk though, by 1981 Moyet had graduated to the new decade, the brave new world of hairspray synthesizers.

The other half of this story involves another Basildon child who helped nurture synthpop, Moyet and Erasure in quick succession: Vince Clarke was an Essex lad with violin and piano skills behind him when he met Andrew Fletcher and they formed No Romance in China around the same time Moyet was starting her record store gig. The band, like so many of Moyet's forays into punk, was short-lived: They lasted just two years and Clarke was a guitarist for French Look with third member Martin Gore when they changed their name to Composition of Sound. Clarke was a singer for the band, but he didn't like it: Hiring Dave Gahan in 1980 was right about the smartest thing they ever did. Depeche Mode has enjoyed a fruitful relationship since.

When the band's primary songwriter decided he was no longer comfortable with the line-up, he quit following 1981's remarkable debut Speak and Spell and a tour. It didn't take long for Depeche Mode to pick up the pieces in Clarke's wake, but the lack of starry-eyed reminiscing was mutual: Clarke and Moyet had formed Yaz by the spring of 1982. Evidence was their first single: "Only You" and "Situation" are, respectively, the a- and b-side of the first single the duo released. The British took to it kindly: It went straight to #2 in the charts and set an immediate precedent. Interestingly, these songs were originally proffered to Depeche Mode as a parting gift but they apparently declined.

Thank goodness they did, because these songs (along with "Don't Go," the third single which hit #3 in the UK and #1 on the Billboard dance charts) eventually formed the basis for their late-August debut LP: Upstairs at Eric's is a quintessential electropop record and fits in nicely alongside obvious synth-based duos like Soft Cell or Naked Eyes and the rest of the British contingent that had cleaned up its image and packed away their guitars in The Human League or Bronski Beat or, in a metaphorical sense, New Order.

Though "Situations" is a dancefloor stunner and has been re-released several times to much success, Yaz never seems to come up in conversation when discussing the great synthpop groups of the genre's heyday in the US partly because it never went anywhere near the Top 40. 1983's follow-up to Upstairs at Eric's, You and Me Both, is just as good if not better than the debut... And still the group continues to be bogged down by time, Napoleon Dynamite and "Can't Hardly Wait." But as "Situations" (and virtually every other song on Upstairs at Eric's, so named for producer Eric Radcliffe's apartment) proves, the natural pop chemistry of Moyet and Clarke was abundant. It is unfortuante that they decided to part following their sophomore release as Moyet went on to a solo career and Clarke went on to help start Erasure, but what was is just as good as what might have been in Yaz's case. I've seen Yaz in a bargain bin quite often and it baffles me that you wouldn't want to have these albums in your collection... Unless, of course, you hate the 80s or are a decade behind the typical popular curve.