Thirty Five More Minutes Of Planet Mondo 80s

As promised this Side 2 of the tape that Planet Mondo put together for The Vinyl Villain circa 2009, a period when JC was absent from the blog for a while and various guests filled in. This post along with loads of others were lost when Google deleted the original Vinyl Villain blog without warning back when the music industry saw music blogs as the enemy. JC recovered some of his lost pages and posts and started again but a lot of them were thought long gone. My chance finding of a home burned CD of the Planet Mondo contribution (with the photograph of the sleeve that I'd downloaded from TVV and printed off) has filled in one of those gaps in JC's back pages. 

Prompted into action by last Saturday's post JC has since re- discovered a slew of lost posts, up to forty of those guest posts written in 2009 while he was away. He's going to post them over the upcoming weeks as part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of The Vinyl Villain. His starting point with the reproduced original Planet Mondo C60 post is here. 

Side 1 Sound Of The Crowd was all about the then modern 80s dancefloor sounds, synths, drum machines and electronic pioneers. Side 2 Creatures Of The Night is a different beast, same nightclub perhaps but a different night, the Thursday night when the freaks and the weirdos come out, the goths, the Cramps fans, indie kids, post- punkers and assorted misfits who want their turn under the lights on the floor. 

Side 2 Creatures Of The Night

• Gina X Performance: No GDM
• The Bollock Brothers: The Bunker
• The Cramps: Human Fly
• Bauhaus: Largartija Nick
• Tuxedomoon: No Tears
• Siouxsie and The Banshees: Spellbound

Gina X Performance was a dance rock/ art project from Cologne, singer Gina Kikoine and producer Zeus B. Held. Their electropop/ synthwave sounds, 'robotic soul' they called it, pulled together pop and performance with experimental. No GDM is a blast of 1979 action. Nice Mover, the follow up, was the opening song on Andrew Weatherall's hugely influential 9 O'Clock Drop compilation. 

The Bollock Brothers were formed by London DJ and promoter Jock McDonald and with various musicians including at different times Killing Joke's Youth and Jimmy Lydon, brother of John. They released several albums, mainly cover versions with Led Zep, Sex Pistols, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Bowie and Vangelis among others given The Bollock Brothers treatment. The Bunker is from 1980 and is an uncredited cover of No GDM by Gina X Performance but with new lyrics. Nice selection and sequencing by Planet Mondo.

Human Fly by The Cramps is from 1978 and is, well let's see, one of the best singles of that decade or any other. An unholy mash up of 50s rockabilly and late 70s punk, Lux and Ivy's love of horror and sci fi with a nod of the head to ? And The Mysterions 96 Tears. Brothel creepers, white shirts, drainpipe jeans and quiffs and sunglasses after dark, 96 tears and 96 eyes. 

Bauhaus's Lagartikja Nick is from 1983, dark and pounding gothic punk, a standalone 7" on Beggar's Banquet. Lagatija Nick is a Spanish term for the devil. Bauhaus are along with Alan Moore Northampton's greatest cultural export. 

Tuxedomoon formed in San Francisco in 1977, avant garde/ experimentalism with synths, violins, sax, drum machines- gothy post- punk open to jazz, classical, funk, anything. They relocated to Europe in 1981. No Tears is frantic synthpunk from 1978 and sounds utterly brilliant all these decades later. 'No tears for the creatures of the night/ No tears/ My eyes are dry...'

Spellbound was a 1981 single from a point when Siouxsie and The Banshees were well into their imperial phase. John McGeoch's guitars sound, yep, spellbinding and Siouxsie's voice is confident and enthralling. Intense goth/ post punk for the creatures of the night.