Music For Pleasure also ran

It's one thing to blatantly copy Simple Minds twenty years after the fact, but it's another thing to have had a similar sound contemporaneously.  Leeds band Music For Pleasure released their first album, Into the Rain, in 1982, the same year as Simple Minds' New Gold Dream.  Given the timeline, and the fact that New Gold Dream was a profound change of direction for Simple Minds, I don't think either band influenced the other, they just both hit upon the same sound at the same time.  That Simple Minds garnered all the success was probably because they already had some degree of popularity; the muddy production of Into the Rain may also have kept MFP off the airwaves.  Consider the opening track, "Light"--

Music For Pleasure - Into The Rain - 01 - Light

Music For Pleasure

Something I didn't notice at the time but have just learned in reviewing the liner notes is that Music For Pleasure had no guitarist, just keyboards, bass, and drums, but they managed not to sound anything like the typical synthpop of the era.  After being dropped by Polydor in 1983 they released a few records on their own label, Whirlpool, before breaking up in 1985.  One of the highlights of that batch is "Walking" from the Chrome Hit Corrosion EP, which I love for the rocking (but guitarless!) jam at the end of the song.  Listening to it just now, that final part of the song sounds like something Danzig would do a few years later, even down to Mark Copson's tortured vocals:

B1 Walking

Music For Pleasure

Some members of Music For Pleasure were later in The Danse Society and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry.  The current Music For Pleasure band has nothing at all to do with the original one.

Comments

[Johnny Smoke]

Heard a little Alien Sex Fiend's Dead and Buried (but better vocals) and maybe a little dash of Love and Rockets.

[Burl Veneer]

Oh yeah, Alien Sex Fiend!  I was all set to see them at the King Kong Chinese restaurant in 1986, but when they saw the place they refused to play there.  It was a few more years until I finally saw them at the 9:30 Club in DC, though they used so much stage fog "saw" is maybe overstating it.  I've been meaning to post something of theirs, but they're one of the bands with too huge a catalog for me to settle on a single track or two.

[Johnny Smoke]

I got to see them at a small club in KC back in the early 90s. I believe Foetus opened for them. It was a great show but what I remember the most is Mrs Fiend, who was in the band (keyboards maybe?) hen pecking on Fiend. She seemed to be riding his ass the entire show, but you couldn't really tell what the problem was. It was the oddest thing I'd ever seen. Kind of like a Sharon/Ozzy Osborne relationship.

[Cornelius Valle]

[this is good] Completely I share your opinion. Idea good, I support.

[zhy]

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