Oof. This one’s a bit heavy.

Download: The Chase – Propaganda (mp3)

Somehow one doesn’t expect the lead singer of New Order to be dressed like this.

This photograph is like the 1980s captured in one shot, full of so many signifiers of the era it could be a tableaux staged by some conceptual artist as a commentary on the decade of greed and flash.

I don’t know where the picture was taken but it looks like the typical suburban home of the newly-property-owning, Thatcher-voting class known as Essex Man. The building work is a sign of the re-make/re-model boom years and the sports car (red, probably) an obvious symbol of gaudy, flaunting-it, Loadsamoney success and excess — a major upgrade from the owner’s previous XR3i and paid for with the profit from selling British Gas shares.

Sitting on the bonnet is the dream girlfriend (after Samantha Fox anyway), Page 3 stunna Linda Lusardi looking like the archetypal Essex Girl with her frizzy perm, short skirt, tan legs and white high heels, all dressed up for a night out at Stringfellow’s.

This is the new England that Maggie created where the past has been dumped in a skip and future is brand-new, turbo-charged, is having an extension built, and has big tits.

Download: Goodbye 70s – Yazoo (mp3)

Thought I’d end the week as I started it, sort of girls-with-guitars bookends.

This is a scan of an old flyer I have for an Anti-Nazi League rally in Fulham in 1981. If I remember correctly the National Front were going to march through the Broadway so the ANL were staging a counter-protest. I didn’t go to the rally because, for one, I thought it might get a bit violent (it did) and, secondly, it was on my birthday and getting a brick in the head from a skinhead wasn’t my idea of a good way to spend it.

The main reason I kept the flyer was because I loved the style of the ANL’s graphics. Their very bold and direct posters were the work of the great David King who in his time also designed The Sunday Times magazine, the covers of City Limits, and the sleeve of Electric Ladyland.

On the back is a polemical description of what the NF and British Movement are really all about and what life in England would be like with them in power, written in very simple language (“Don’t be conned, they’re all supporters of Hitler! And look what Hitler did!”) and obviously designed to appeal to the kids — the same ones the NF were also trying to recruit — especially bits like this:

Not sure if the musical part of that message would have worked though, I knew people (friends, even) who supported the NF and every single one of them loved reggae and soul music. Go figure. But I suppose you shouldn’t expect logic from a racist.

Download: (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thing – Heaven 17 (mp3)

Oh 1980s, how I miss you sometimes. You were so silly and pretentious it’s a shame we had to part.

On the Wikipedia page for “Vienna” I read that it is “often performed live by Midge Ure in solo performances, most recently at Butlins in Skegness on Sat 8th May 2011″ which is, you know, both funny and sad.