In going overboard compiling around 60 plus possible songs to review for Little Hits, I discovered that ten of my selections dated from 1981, and the number increases to over 20 if one includes 1980 and 1982. Most of these tunes I discovered post-’82, usually on college radio. It might be a stretch, but I think there is a unifying aesthetic to a bunch of these tracks. Most of them are from the UK, or are influenced by various trends in the UK around that time. What appeals to me most about that period was the sense that bands were reaching beyond punk and embracing all sorts of ideas and combinations of sound, with a kind of pioneering full-steam ahead into the unknown spirit. Sort of like if somehow the promise of side one of Television’s Marquee Moon had finally come to fruition across the spectrum of underground music. Even the retro garage stuff seemed fresh, I guess because it was the first wave of recycling and the very idea of recycling seemed fresh, almost punk. Maybe it’s nostalgia getting the better of me, but it’s hard to get excited about the retro-post-punk acts of the past few years because they seem so studied, so self-aware of their musical antecedents, so unable to operate without an ironic tinge, so concerned with mimicking the attitude and sound in just the right way rather than tearing off into their own thing.

One record I actually heard and purchased in 1981 was this track by a duo called the Holidays. I’ve yet to find any biographical info about the group, other than they seem to be from Scotland. Which kind of makes sense in a low budget Roxy Music, proto-Aztec Camera/Orange Juice way. I heard it one warm July night in a taxi in a suburb of London, at the height of my Anglophilia. This was the summer of the wedding hype of Charles and Diana, Brixton riots, National Front. It was a dumpy and grumpy museum of a country. The excitement of punk had morphed into self-parody, leaving a gray rainy vacuum in its place. The Specials “Ghost Town” was the number one song on the radio. I had my first sighting of Motorhead fans.

Anyway, I made the cabbie turn the radio up and wrote down the Holidays, buying the single the next day in town. Neat sounds, clever rhythmic stuff going on with the drums, chirpy keyboards, and a decent, appropriate, and not-over the top usage of the saxophone, one of the hallmarks of many records from the 1981-era. Maybe I heard the song on John Peel’s show. Radio was mostly awful, so I think it must’ve been Peel’s doing. Peel would premier U2’s “Fire” and the Jam’s “Funeral Pyre” as I lay in my too-small bed watching the sun set into twilight at 10 pm – dark, foreboding, urgent music, perfect for the times, and for my dramatic moody late teen head (I worshipped both bands back then). But the Holiday’s tune was romantic and ambling, kind of lyrically interesting and just sort of different. It still make me gently happy. On that July night it made me want to meet a nice lass with a hot English accent and make out with her on a hazily-backlit bridge to the strains of “Waterloo Sunset”.

Andrew Chalfen