The Atrocious Music Collection: #22 in a series
Artists: Silicon Teens
Album Title: Music for Parties
Category: Cover VersionsYear: 1980
Cover art style: Post-Android Uprising
Audio Samples: Memphis, Tennessee, and Judy in Disguise
Acquisition: Via my brother, but uncertain where the heck he got it.
Click on picture for full-sized image
I genuinely liked the Silicon Teens. Their covers of early rock tunes are minimal, but cheerfully upbeat in a neutral, Vulcan sort of way. There is a matter-of-factness to the presentation that is 180 degrees away from pretty much all pop music types – Hairbands, Guitar Gods, Art Rockers, Punkers, Elvis, Rappers, Disco Singers, Boy Bands, Glam Rockers, Singer-Songwriters, Liszt, Grungers, whatever. At the base of it, all of these people want to show off, be a Mick Jagger peacock on stage, impress you with their talents, be the center of attention. Even folk musicians want you to revel in their politics and applaud their piety, if we get right down to it.
The Silicon Teens weren’t like those other bands. They were different.
This trait even reveals itself in the way the band members introduce themselves. Right there on the back of the album cover, we get the roster: Daryl (vocals), Jacki (synthesizer), Paul (electronic percussion), Diane (synthesizer). No last names. No pictures. So minimal, leaving it to our imagination. Because they are “teens,” we imagine them as cool, hip, and youthful. Of course the drummer is “Paul” - that’s such a rock-steady name, especially next the clearly more flighty “Jacki,” who probably did all the fancy synth parts, leaving “Diane,” who we might imagine as a plain-Jane type (or should that be a "C-Span-Diane" type?), to lay down the meat of the tracks, the stuff that’s needed to back up “Darryl,” who sings, but is just “vocals,” not “lead singer” – because if he had a giant lead-singer ego, he’d change his name to something less straightforward than “Darryl.” (I am reminded here of the fearsome magician in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, setting off dramatic explosions as he reveals his name is… “Tim.”)
Imagine my horror than, to discover it is all a lie. There is no Jacki, plain-Jane Diane, or Paul, and “Darryl” is really “Frank” (specifically the band’s fictional frontman, Frank Tovey), who is really “Daniel” (as Frank Tovey didn’t perform on the albums, and it was Daniel Miller who sang all the songs). My brain has gone “kablooey,” my mind has been blown. Thanks, Internet!
So let’s get this bad-dream fact-stuff out of the way. Wikipedia tells us that, “Silicon Teens were a British virtual electronic new wave pop group. The project was the creation of Mute Records founder Daniel Miller, with Frank Tovey acting as the band's fictional frontman…Tovey did not perform on any Silicon Teens recordings; all vocals were actually provided by Daniel Miller.”
If we can step back in time, and ignore my shattered illusions, Music for Parties can remain in my heart as an innocent, upbeat disc, where no song lasts for very long, everything is familiar, and nothing much is expected of you. All of these covers are obviously, and hideously, bad, uncaring about any aspect of the song – I mean the words and music, of course, but also the emotional content, the historical context, the soul of the thing, even the idea of what it means to do a cover of a song.
This is truly background music. Only the four original songs, TV Playtime, Sun Flight, and the instrumentals Chip 'n' Roll and State of Shock (Part 2), break up the monotony – barely.
This record is the sonic version of the most processed food you can find at your local gas station convenience store. I’m talking Hostess-pink-Sno Balls-level junk food here people. If you’ve heard one Silicon Teens cover, you’ve heard them all, which I think is also true about eating different Hostess cakes. I’ve linked to two songs above, which is one more than you need, but you can find the entire album online – You Really Got Me, Yesterday Man, Sweet Little Sixteen, etc. – if you want to listen to more. There’s not much point in doing so, but go ahead.
It’s disappointing to find out this whole project was a Milli Vanilli-type venture, but if you need background music for your party that is truly non-intrusive, you could frankly do worse than the Silicon Teens.