I have that on 7", one of my all time faves of the 80's!

Could be a good feature on Sounds Of The 80's - songs that got a lot of airplay but weren't hits. One that springs to mind is Tom Tom Club's The Man With The Four Way Hips. This was forever getting played on Steve Wright In The Afternoon on Radio 1 in the 80's. It never cracked the Top 75 though. They did it on the stage at Glastonbury this year!

HI all - on air. Had a bit of Jacko, Bangles, and she's using Howard Jones' Mental Chains as a musical bed..

Anyone listening?

Ahh - can't beat a bit of Level 42!

I just love this show. Excellent.

Bit late joining here but listened since the start. Great bathtime listening on a Saturday night!

What's with this Simple Minds and U2 connection? I've never connected the two in any way.

All excellent artistes. Try and check out some of the DJ-only Razormaid tracks which consisted of exclusive remixes of 80s acts. They present an unfamiliar take on much-heard tracks and minor gems and obscurities.

A bit quiet on here, has Sounds Of The 80's already lost its sparkle?

Not got a chance of listening myself tonight, will catch up later.

I heard a bit last night but fell asleep during a Radio GaGa

I missed last nights show but it's poor that Radio GaGa was played again only a couple of weeks after it was played as part of the featured album The Works.

Me too. I listen twice each week.

I've finally caught up tonight with the show from Saturday night.

GaGa was rather predictable I agree. An interesting point to note is that Roger Taylor picked Relax as his favourite single of the 80's. This was the record that kept Queen's "comeback" single Radio GaGa from being a number one hit, when it kept it at No2 for a couple of weeks in February 1984. Clearly Roger has forgiven it, but I do recall how disappointed I was at the time.

Had to laugh when discussing Live Aid, predictable but essential when talking 80's Queen, when Sara Cox says that 9.1 billion people watched it that day! Absolutely miraculous I'd say, as the world population is still only 7 billion now. I think Roger kind of knew she was wrong but left it aside. I guess she got the figures the wrong way around and it was more likely 1.9 billion. Personally I always thought at the time they said the figure was a round billion or so which seems more realistic.

Well I'm listening to Sounds Of The 80's tonight. Kim Wilde guesting shortly too. Top 5 hits from this week in 1986 to feature.

Anyone else listening?

I've always connected them because my brother played them a lot in the '80s. Both had big, echo-laden guitars, both sang anthemic stadium songs, both got involved heavily in human rights and anti-Apartheid etc. Very early Simple Minds was very different from very early U2, but by the mid-80s they were very much in a similar area. Of course, U2 survived the '90s cull of '80s bands far more successfully than Simple Minds did.

There wasn't much choice though. Roger Taylor was the guest, and other than A Kind of Magic (which they played in the background during the conversation), did he write any other big '80s hits? Obviously they played it because it was his song.


It was 1.9 billion, according to Wikipedia anyway. So yes, she did get it the wrong way round. Daft woman.

The guest later on, Kim Wilde, is infact the person I suggested would make the perfect presenter for Sounds Of The 80's a few weeks ago when it began.

A lot of late 80's tracks being played tonight I've noticed. Kim Wilde had 2 very separate 80's burst of success, one in the early 80's and again in the late 80's.

The intro to Some Like It Hot by Power Station sounds identical to A View To A Kill by Duran Duran.

Bob Harris popping in for a chat...just to prove that he will actually be live after midnight when his own show begins!

And one of the Series 1 Fame breakout hits...

Probably the same drum machine.

Both groups released albums produced by Steve Lillywhite in the early 80s.

Nice to hear Yellow Pearl (TOTP theme from the early 80s) earlier

I loved that loads at the time, nice it was played tonight. Was that not Valerie Landsberg singing it? Just checked her out, she was born the same week as Madonna, and it's her 29th wedding anniversary today (1st Dec) too.

The Yellow Pearl song by Phil Lynott that became the TOTP theme throughout much of the 1980's was not the same as the one I downloaded as a single off iTunes that disappointed me a couple of years ago. The one on the radio was a far better and more obvious TOTP theme version than what I ended up with.

Maybe because they were both produced by an allegedly coked-up Bernard Edwards? Although AVTAK is Roger Taylor, and SLIH is Tony Thompson. Same MIDI/8-bit tech though.

I think the '80s was probably the era when records by different artists started sounding very similar because they were all using the same technology. It's like Linn Drums and the Prophet Synthesizer - they were on almost everything. It got worse when Stock-Aitken-Waterman effectively took over the charts.

Well a few months ago on Radio 5's weekend segment where they discuss music, The Virtual Jukebox, on tonight again from 2.30am, it was argued that the middle to late 1980's production sound is the most dated of them all by one of the guests. A particular record torn apart for this was infact by a 70's pop icon, Barry White and his comeback hit in 1987, Sho' You Right.