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Travelogue
by The Human League
(Virgin/ 1980)
Listening to this record now whilst trying to recall how I might have
responded to it when I first bought it as a schoolboy, the most immediate
thing that strikes me is that the obvious lyrical humour of a track such
as "The Black Hit of Space" would have been completely lost
on me. Sure, now I’m able to recognise it as a preposterous cod
sci-fi tale about a "futuristic" record that sucks everything
around it into a cosmic vortex: a situation which, according to the narrator,
might require the timely intervention of Tomorrow’s World presenter
James Burke.
However, as an increasingly pretentious 16-year-old hooked on the arty
cold war Euro-existentialist conceits of bands such as The Cure, Magazine,
OMD, Joy Division and (early) Simple Minds, I feel I’d have followed
the printed lyrics on the inside sleeve with a sense of deep seriousness,
drinking in their perceived profundity whilst revelling in the icy synthesised
sounds which served to hint at a world of possibilities beyond the bounds
of my humdrum town. Which is perhaps not surprising given that I was about
to leave school that coming summer.
Ultimately though, that was the problem with the original incarnation
of the Human League — you couldn’t always tell whether they
were being deadly serious or just having a good old postmodern laugh.
Certainly, with typical lyrical concerns being human sacrifice —
both physically ("Being Boiled") and spiritually ("Life
Kills") — or totalitarianism ("Circus of Death",
"Dreams of Leaving") as well as obscure references to things
such as sericulture (silk farming), these electronic boffins were often
accused of pretentiousness. As a result of this, the tongue-in-cheek humour
which now seems so overt (not to mention pop-cultural references to the
likes of Dr Who and Hawaii 5-0), tended to get overlooked.
In fact, the League’s struggle to reconcile both glam rock and avant
garde electronica influences resulted in a particularly schizophrenic
release schedule which encompassed both a commercially successful cover
of Gary Glitter’s "Rock ’n’ Roll Pt 2" and
the distinctly non-commercial but wonderfully oblique, instrumental, "Dignity
of Labour" EP (complete with grey militaristic/ totalitarian-themed
picture cover). Hardly surprising then that
The Human League manage to confused both critics and teenage boys alike.
Thinking about it, perhaps the strain of encompassing such seemingly opposite
musical poles – along with an apparent lack of record company support
– may have helped precipitate the split. A split which saw Phil
Oakey go on to enjoy massive – and at the time, unexpected –
success under the Human League name (smart cookies Martyn Ware and Ian
Craig Marsh, who were subsequently successful as BEF/ Heaven 17, allowed
Oakey to continue with the Human League name for a percentage of royalties
on future releases), augmented by the shop-girl-on-the-town glamour of
Susan Sulley and Joanne Catherall.
Like thousands of others I subsequently bought those first ‘new
incarnation’ Human League singles from Woolies and even danced to
them in a blur of burgundy (the designated colour of 1981) at our local
nightclub where the DJ would regularly play the whole of the Dare album.
But of course, a year earlier, one wouldn’t necessarily have expected
to find a record such as Travelogue in the racks of Woolies.
Instead, you had to go to a proper record shop to buy most everything
you may have read about in the NME or Melody Maker.
And at the time we had the dubious honour of having just such a thing
in our town. Dubious because earlier that year the record shop in question
had been exposed in a TV documentary on the far right, as a fundraising
front for the British Movement. This was a revelation which threw new
light on a puzzling experience I’d had in the store about three
years earlier.
On pocket-money day I’d often pop down to the shop to buy ex-jukebox
singles which you could buy for about 25p and which came without a plastic
middle. And it was while I was flipping through the selection that I became
aware of the bloke behind the counter talking in hushed tones to another
man whilst glancing nervously in my direction. It struck me as being distinctly
odd and I began to get the clear impression they saw me as an inconvenient
presence. But not being overly skilled in social nuance and determined
to get my single for the week, I carried on regardless, eventually walking
away with "Telephone Line" by ELO.
Subsequently, I learned that various schoolfriends had also had slightly
unsettling experiences in the shop. Though bizarrely, just prior to its
TV exposé, it had become a Saturday afternoon hangout for our town’s
anarcho punk band and its boot-boy following.
Somewhat shamefully though, I have to admit that in spite of having been
made fully aware of the shop’s far right affiliations, I continued
to buy from there.
It wasn’t as if I was devoid of a political consciousness. On the
contrary, I was increasingly beginning to define myself as a socialist
and certainly considered myself to be anti-racist. But the truth was that
the need for new vinyl would occasionally override my political consciousness
and, feeling momentarily filled with self-loathing, I’d visit the
shop, hand over the cash and walk away with something concealed in a bag
which I could only enjoy once I’d hurried back to my bedroom and
closed the door. It became a distinctly guilty pleasure, like the musical
equivalent of buying porn.
In my defence I have to say that the whole question of race — so
loaded at the end of the Seventies and the beginning of the Eighties —
was very much a theoretical concept. After all, there were only about
five non-white families in my town, and in spite of the fact that casual
racism was common currency, race was never quite the inflamed issue it
had become in the inner cities.
That said, when a member of one of those non-white families — who
also happened to be a friend from school — was refused service in
the shop, I and many of my contemporaries finally boycotted the place
for good. Indeed, the shop struggled on for two or three years in the
face of such boycotts as well as protest marches and the occasional brick
through the window, before closing for good.
Of course, I’ve long forgiven myself the fact that I knowingly bought
my copy of Travelogue from a racist establishment. Nevertheless,
in part at least, the clean, futuristic pop of the original Human League
as realised on this album will always carry with it the slight taint of
the distinctly hairy and reactionary nationalism that was still prevalent
at the time. Shame that…
Photograph by Jill Furmanovsky. Originally published in Smash Hits magazine.