Their first single – Telecommunication – was a Electro-Dance Beat, piece of new wave pop that sounds like an early New Order, Still, their early offerings were enough to land them an opening slot on Squeeze’s US tour, and the next six months were spent building up a substantial American following. The band, founded by hairdressers Mike Score and Frank Maudsley, Score’s brother Ali, and Paul Reynolds was a late product of the Liverpool music scene that produced such hard hitting pop acts as Echo and the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes. There’s probably no better early ’80s’ example of this than A Flock of Seagulls. (3) So much better than Duran Duran.It took musical training and talent to program a drum machine and sing to synth, and a bit more effort to craft a look and sound that was original – or odd – enough to get noticed by record companies, and then by the record buying audience. ![]() (2) Includes bonus photos of their haircuts. ![]() (1) Doesn't pretend they "advanced" from their debut. I might even claim that this was where the idiots took over the studio if I hadn't noticed that their weakest cut by far-1985's terminal "Who's That Girl (She's Got It)," designed to convince us that they're human beings-is the-one-they-produced-themselves. If they were never as sublime as "Chewy Chewy," they were never as icky as "1, 2, 3, Red Light," and unlike the Ohio Express or the 1910 Fruitgum Co., they-wrote-all-the-songs-themselves. But hell, "What Am I Supposed to Do" even has a decent lyric. There are too many slow ones on number two, so I don't play both sides indiscriminately like I do with the debut. I'm not just being campy, either, except insofar as camp means the luxury of surrender to stupidity-in this case to sheer, sensationalistic aural pleasure, whooshes and zooms and sustains and computerized ostinatos and English boys whining about their spaced-out, financially secure lot, all held aloft on tunes Mr. If you think I enjoy enjoying this epitome of new-wave commercialism, this pap beloved of no one but MTV-addled suburbanites (not even NME, ever!)-well, you're right. And if the cheerfully mechanical voices and cheerfully mechanical melodies do once or twice venture toward cheerfully mechanical lyrics about the direly mechanical end of the world, well, that's just the shape of bubblegum to come. The human drummer and all-too-human guitarist provide reassuring links with a past these boys have no more intention of giving up than you, me, or Rod Stewart. But I think it's a hoot-so transparently, guilelessly expedient that it actually provides the hook-chocked fun most current pop bands only advertise. This is very silly, and I know why earnest new-wavers resent it. ![]() Robert Christgau: CG: A Flock of Seagulls
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