Tired Beyond Love

That's how I feel tonight.

The Discos of Christmas Past - No 3

1984

was one of the great Christmas party seasons. I spent much of it getting obliterated in a strange pub / club / Italian restaurant / knocking shop called Nonno's in Preston, an appropriately nihilistic name.

The original "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was number one (factual answer: Ethiopia is the second oldest Christian state in the world, after Armenia, so yes, I think they probably do) and elsewhere in the Top Ten Prince was threatening to party like it was 1999, Strawberry Switchblade were ripping off one of Sibelius' best riffs, and a (still heterosexual) George Michael was trilling

"Last Christmas,
I gave you my heart
And the very next day
You went off with that tart..."

But this was the tune that made me want to

• go out and buy a sampler,
• study Kandinsky and the Italian futurists,
• forgive Paul Morley his unreadable NME articles, and
• dance like a drunken idiot.

Close To The Edit
ART OF NOISE

It has one of my favourite basslines ever, naked men by the legendary Victorian photographer Eadweard Muybridge, and some line drawings that look like an influence on the young Homo Escapeons.