Pop music – level 42: late hippies

The Mark Knopfler of Bass: Mark King. Both marks managed to elicit new sounds from an old -fashioned instrument. A song from the Dire Straits or Level 42 can be seen after a few bars.

The fact that both bands did not find any images worth mentioning is unusual for an industry in which pretty much everything that is reasonably successful or promising is adapted, copied or plagued. This speaks for the outstanding craftsmanship, but also for the fact that the music contained something that was evident.

The 80s say that they were cold and cynical, especially in comparison with the idealistic 60s, but also with the sober 70s, when – the teapot within reach – they were snuggled closely to save at least the little luck (if it hadn’t worked with the big dreams). Punk and New Wave also ended this illusion. There was no real life in the wrong. And if you couldn’t change the world, you at least wanted to face it cool. “Yes to no” was a campaign in 1986 by the Zeitgeistschrift “Wiener”, which was quite good for the general basic attitude – “The world is bad, it’s right for me!”

Level 42 were never cool. Mark King looked like a sad, pouting boy who was teased too often in the school yard. Drummer Phil Gould and his brother, the guitarist Rowland “Boon” Gould, on the other hand, looked like Softies. This was the name of young men in the 80s who appeared too sensitive to the world. And at least on “Boon” Gould also affected this. He suffered from depressive bumps and panic attacks in 2019. Only keyboardist Mike Lindup, who radiated serenity and happiness, did not really fit in the group picture. On the other hand, he also contributed the least to the creation of the songs.

They were preferred in the key. Over the years, the sound became more and more lively and easier over the years – from the bass -heavy radio to the synthsized pop – but the texts caused leading melancholy. Even in love songs, it was always about the fundamental. Mark King complains that his girlfriend expects his strength from him. He should always be “a good man in a storm”. But that is exactly what – now it is fundamentally – he has been trying since his birth: fulfilling the social norm.

These are lines that don’t fit into the 80s at all. A decade in which one sang to society everywhere – whether in neon bars or Gruftikelers – and the song of individuality and self -fulfillment. Finally grown up and let the sow out!

Level 42 stayed on the outside. For them, “grown up” is a synonym for deformed, disillusioned and deranged. Whoever gets older will not become wiser either. On the contrary. “Thesis Changing Years, they add to your confusion” (“Your confusion grows with the changes that have the years bring”) says in “Something About You”, the song with which they succeeded worldwide in 1985. And in »Children Say«, their own parents are presented with the receipt for the betrayal of their childhood dreams: »They Close The Door, But They Can’t Lock It, ‘Cause Something of their Childhood Remains. And they’ve felt it before, when the man in their pocket counted the cost of their material gains «(” You close the door, but you cannot lock them, because something of your childhood is in between. And they already felt it when the man in their pocket calculated the price that they had to pay for their wealth “).

Her biggest hit “Lessons in Love” from 1986 skin in the same notch. »All the dreams that we were building we never fulfilled them. All the homes that we were building we never live in «(» All the dreams we created we never fulfilled. We never lived in all the houses we built «).

All of these lines feel familiar and yet unreal. They look like it falls out of time. It is typical hippie thought. Words from a long past era. And in a decade, they were considered to be coolness like a monstrance in front of them, as a rather uncool. Suddenly you understand why Level 42 did not find any imitators in the 80s. Musically, they might break new ground, but spiritually they moved on paths that rejected the past.

The fact that they were still successful shows that there must have been many teenagers and twens at the time who shivered in the coolness. People who did not necessarily want the music of the 60s and early 70s, but the attitude to life of that time. For them – the sensitive among the discotheers – Level 42 offered the right complete package. You could dance splendidly to her hits (on school fates “The Sun Goes Down (Livin ‘It Up)” was the perfect hinge piece between “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by the Simple Minds and “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson) and at the same time indulge in the melancholy. World pain, the groovte. Something like that cannot be copied.