Messengers - Complete Singles

Messengers should have had it all. They had the gear, the talent, and the songs. They were a synth pop duo at the very height of the music-buying public's fascination with guys in buttoned-up shirts and monophonic synthesizers. And they had the unstinting support of the prime mover of all things New Romantic, Midge Ure. Ure signed them to his label, produced their records, and even invited them to tour the world with Ultravox. But not everything works out as it should.

Messengers were formed out of the ashes of Modern Man, a Glaswegian post-punk outfit that Ure discovered playing in a bar on Sauchiehall Street. Ure took an instant liking to the band, and offered to produce their first and only lp, Concrete Scheme (1980). Though it featured some strong songs (Ure would later cover "Wastelands" on his solo debut), the band broke up soon after its release. Drummer Colin King and guitarist Danny Mitchell decided to carry on as a duo, with King taking on the lead vocal duties and Mitchell turning his attention to the synthesizer. Calling themselves The Furious Monkeys, they recorded some demos on a four track tape deck and sent them to their former mentor.

More than a year passed when, out of the blue, Ure asked them if they'd like to support Ultravox on their upcoming Monument tour. Ure also suggested that they should have something to hock while they were getting the chance to play in front of such large audiences. Mitchell and King happily agreed: they signed with Ure's Musicfest label, a subsidiary of Chrysalis, and set about recording their first single. The Furious Monkeys had suddenly become Messengers.

"I Turn In (To You)" (1982) has the full and lush sound that Ure and his compatriots had been developing on albums such as Quartet (1981), and on Ure's own solo single from the period, "No Regrets" (1982). In a recent interview, Mitchell suggests that the similarity was the result of circumstances rather than any effort to consciously emulate Ure:

"I think the similarity of the sounds would be down to sound engineer extraordinaire John Hudson who was Midge’s first choice in those days and Warren Cann’s Linndrum and, of course, Midge’s guiding hand. The other ingredients were a heavily compressed vintage Steinway, a trusty Yamaha string machine and my duophonic Yamaha synth. As for the vocals, they were painstakingly put together almost word by word, much to Colin’s frustration, in a technique that Midge favoured."

"I Turn In (To You)" may indeed sound rather like paint-by-numbers Ultravox, but, to its credit, it is a much more successful attempt to recreate that sound than many bands were able to manage during this period. The vocals, in particular, have that Olympian quality of yearning that few singers can achieve convincingly. And it has a positively sublime middle eight.

Messengers toured the world with Ultravox, taking their place on a towering gantry to the left of the impressive, monochromatic stage set each night. Mitchell added additional keyboard parts, while both he and King sang backing vocals, allowing the band to reproduce the increasingly dense wall of sound that Ultravox had become known for on their albums. On one occasion, while playing in France, King accidentally toppled from their crow's nest and broke his arm. Mitchell picks up the story:

"At the end of the show Midge called out, whilst turning to face our perch, ‘Our special guests Messengers’. With a combined look of confusion, puzzlement and anger he mouthed to me, ‘Where the f**k is Colin?’ Meanwhile, Colin was having his wedding ring surgically removed by bemused French medical staff, who, due to language difficulties, had concluded that he had fallen from a trapeze."

The duo's contribution to Ultravox's live sound during this period is abundantly evident on Monument (1982), the audio record of this tour, and one which has been recently remastered and expanded.

Messengers went on to release two more singles, both produced by Ure. "Great Institutions" (1983) featured a gorgeous Bronzino nude on its Peter Saville-designed cover, and a pair of impressive b sides, including a live track, "Strawboy." "Frontiers" (1984) added a wash of feedback guitar as texture and showed the duo continuing to grow as song writers and arrangers. The b sides offered a tip of the hat to Bowie's influence with a cover of "Andy Warhol."

And that was that. Though the band had enough material for an album, and Ure continued to stand by his Glaswegian mates, Chrysalis wasn't willing to put the money up to record a long player and the duo went their separate ways. Mitchell continued his collaboration with Ure, co-writing one of his best-known singles, "If I Was," but there was little else to be said of Messengers until 2004 when King and Mitchell reunited to record the songs that they had imagined forming their first long player all those years ago, and then releasing it directly through Extreme Voice, the Ultravox fan site. You can purchase a copy here.

Messengers have been unfairly overlooked, even in this remaster and reissue age of ours. Despite their close association with one of the best-known bands of the eighties, there's no Wikipedia page, and the entries at All Music Guide and Discogs are threadbare at best. Listened back to back, however, the three singles and the accompanying b sides gathered here make a persuasive case for the duo's claim to being something more than a footnote in the Ultravox story.

--Crash the Driver

"I Turn In (To You)"

01 I Turn In (To You)
02 The Semi-Professionals (Theme One)

UK 7" Chrysalis [CHS 2663] 1982

"Great Institutions"

03 Great Institutions (MF Mix)
04 Here Come The Heroes
05 Strawboys (Live)

UK 12" Chrysalis [MUST X1] 1983

"Frontiers"

06 Frontiers (Extended Version)
07 The Plains of Siberia
08 Andy Warhol

UK 12" Chrysalis [MUST X2] 1984

Trevor Herion - Beauty Life

The pop charts of the mid-eighties were crowded with electro crooners, their unabashedly romantic yearning standing in stark contrast to the icy and distant synthesizers and white boy funk grooves that filled out the sound. David Sylvian hoped for visions of China. Peter Godwin wished for images of heaven. And Midge Ure longed for Vienna. But no electro crooner could touch the heart strings better than Trevor Herion.

Born in Cork, Ireland, Herion moved to London in the late seventies, and was living in a squat with members of The Psychedelic Furs when he hooked up with drummer Paul Simon, brother of Robin Simon, the guitar player who would would later have notable stints with both Ultravox and Magazine. Together with Mark Scholfield on guitar and Michael French on bass, Herion and Simon formed The Civilians, and released a single for Arista entitled "Made For Television" (1980). The singer and his drummer friend left the band before its sophomore single had appeared, and joined with Matthew Seligman and Thomas Dolby to form The Fallout Club. Here Herion's powerful voice, every note seemingly touched with some irrepressible sadness, came most fully to the fore, offering a powerful embellishment to Dolby's rapidly maturing song writing and arranging abilities. The analogue joys of "Pedestrian Walkway" have been recently rediscovered by a generation of Dolby fans thanks to its inclusion on the remastered, 2 cd version of The Golden Age of Wireless, while its majestically over-the-top follow up, "Wanderlust," has graced several minimal synth compilations in recent years.

Herion's solitary solo album has been less well remembered, however. Released in 1983 on Interdisc Records, Beauty Life is a highly polished slice of electro pop. Graced with a Peter Saville cover, it featured a stellar cast of backing musicians, including another Dolby alum, Kevin Armstrong, and Martin Young of Colourbox. Moreover, the label brought in one of the most in-demand pop producers of the day, Steve Levine, who had previously worked with Culture Club and China Crisis among others. But the album is still very much Herion's, his powerful voice surging up as from some unknown depths of world weary despair, gliding effortlessly over the thick slab of eighties beats, and ascending to its own lonely orbit.

Among its many highlights, the album included "Kiss of No Return," a pre-album single released by Imperial Recordings and distributed by Island in 1982. Arranged by Thomas Dolby (the drum program has a distinct resemblance to some of the beats heard on "Europa and the Pirate Twins"), and produced by Mike Howlett (who also lent his talents to Martha Ladly's sublime solo debut), the song somehow manages to transcend its faux Parisian instrumentation (accordians and violins), and become something almost otherworldly, a loving lament to a more elegant age.

Three further singles were released from the album: "Dreamtime" and "Love Chains" are cast very much in the ABC - Heaven 17 mould, replete with gated snare drums, funky guitars, and towering backing vocals, while the dreamy chord progressions and slap bass of "Love Chains" are strikingly reminiscent of Levine's work with China Crisis. Gathered as the first three tracks on side one, these singles make a muscular statement of purpose, but in some ways it's the album tracks on the second side, full of European longueur and jazzy interludes, that more fully capture the essence of Herion's sound. "Big City," "Betrayed," "The Jazz Age," the titles alone evoke the elongated shadows and dimly lit alleys in which Herion's imagination preferred to walk.

Amid the welter of electro crooners, however, Beauty Life seems to have gone unnoticed, its failure to dent the charts not helped by a feud with Levine that resulted in his name being removed from the album's credits. In the aftermath of its failure, Herion slipped into a prolonged period of depression. He took his own life on October 1, 1988. A retrospective anthology of his best work, including both his solo recordings and contributions to The Civilians and The Fallout Club, is long overdue.

-- Crash The Driver

Trevor Herion - Beauty Life

01 Dreamtime
02 Love Chains
03 Fallen Angel
04 Success, and the Decline of the Western Man
05 Big City
06 Betrayed
07 The Jazz Age
08 Legends
09 Kiss of No Return

UK LP: Interdisc [INTO 3] 1983

The Charmed Life of Martha Ladly

Closer, now closer the shore
Tarry, now tarry no more
Away from the one that I love
Away from the one that I love

Was there anyone in the post-punk era who led a more charmed life than Martha Ladly? From playing small clubs in Toronto, Canada, to a world wide top ten single, from aspiring art student to graphic designer for some of the most recognized names in music, hers is surely one of the most remarkable careers of the period. That she also left us with just two solo singles, now largely forgotten but no less wonderful for being so, seems only to add to the charm.

Like many young art students enrolled at the Ontario College of Art in the late seventies, Ladly found herself swept up by the mad excitement of the punk-new wave scene on the Queen Street Strip. Just a block south of their lecture halls, OCA’s best put aside their charcoal and oil paints, poured themselves into skinny jeans, and thrashed away at guitars and drums in clubs like The Beverley and The Rivoli. Martha and the Muffins were an established band on the scene when they approached Ladly, who played guitar, with the idea that she join them. They in fact already had a guitar player, the prodigiously talented Mark Gane. And they already had a Martha, in lead vocalist Martha Johnson, but it scarcely seemed to matter. Ladly simply switched to keyboards, weaving curlicued melodies around the band’s angular, Talking Heads influenced dance numbers, and when she joined in on vocals, too, it just all seemed to work.

In 1979, a demo tape was dispatched to Glenn O’Brien, record reviewer for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, who in turn passed it onto an A&R rep for Virgin Records, and before anyone on The Strip could believe it, the Muffins were jetting off to England to record their debut album at the Manor Studios. Metro Music is the very essence of New Wave: irresistible bass grooves, chiming guitars, sudden bursts of saxophone, and instantly memorable tunes about life in the city and its suburbs. On "Echo Beach" Martha Johnson sang about the loneliness of the cubicle worker, of a clerk dreaming of escape to a lakeside park, and the whole world got it. This was 1980, caught like lightning in the jar of a three and a half minute pop song.

No doubt as surprised as the band was by their sudden success, the record label sent the Muffins on tour across the UK and North America to support the album, and then booked them back into the Manor to whip up a sequel, Trance And Dance. Ladly penned one of the album's singles, "Was Ezo," and co-wrote a couple of the other tracks, but it seems that it was her work on the album's cover art that captured her attention most. It not only allowed her to return to her art school roots, but put her in touch with Peter Saville, the visionary designer whose work set the Factory label apart from all others. She soon left the Muffins, won a scholarship, and returned to the UK to study. There she renewed her relationship with Saville, contributing the Futurist-inspired painting that graced the cover of New Order’s Factus 8 1981-82 EP, and suggesting the titles for Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's Architecture and Morality album, and subsequent hit single, "Tesla Girls."

Martha Ladly did not entirely abandon her performing career, however. She sang backing vocals and played keyboards on The Associates' Sulk (appearing with them on Top of The Pops) in 1982. She even joined Robert Palmer for a tour of Japan in 1986. But it is the pair of singles released under variations of her own name that most deserve notice.

Attributed to Martha Ladly and The Scenery Club, and produced by Mike Howlett, "Finlandia" is a glorious slice of post-punk pop. Ladly’s high, delicate voice is born up on a surging wave of sound, held aloft by rolling drums, ascending piano figures, and a rousing chorus that positively aches for the Nordic homeland. It has some of the yearning, Romantic quality that OMD achieved on singles like "Joan of Arc" and "Maid Of Orleans," paired with a wistfulness and winsomeness that were purely her own. It's these same qualities that helped make her subsequent single so memorable.

Released under the name of "Martha," and co-written with another ex-pat Canuck (and Peter Saville collaborator), Brett Wickens, "Light Years From Love" appeared on Island Records in 1983. It boasted a string arrangement by Simon Jeffes of The Penguin Cafe Orchestra, and New Order’s Peter Hook provided one of his signature bass lines. For those who only saw the video, with Ladly emerging from a swimming pool in slow motion, it may well have seemed a purely commercial endeavour, the kind of producer-led project where the singer is just there to add some glamour. But "Light Years From Love" is very much a Martha Ladly song, its brightly sparkling sequencers off set by her melancholic tale of sidereal love. With its stellar cast of players, and glossy Steve Nye production, the single attracted some attention, but not enough, apparently, to warrant a full album.

Martha Ladly eventually devoted her energies to her graphic design work, heading up Real World Design, the multi-media arm of Peter Gabriel's Real World Records. Today she is an Associate Professor of Design at the school where she began, now known as the Ontario College of Art and Design. From her office window I imagine she can just see the intersection of Queen and Beverley where once she played.

"Finlandia" is included here in its original 7" format, as are both the 12" and 7" mixes of "Light Years From Love" and its flip. As a bonus, we’ve included a track from Stephen Emmer’s 1982 album, Vogue Estate, featuring Martha Ladly on vocals. The Associates material is readily available on Sulk, which we are sure you already own.

--Crash The Driver

Martha Ladly And The Scenery Club
"Finlandia"
01 Finlandia
02 Tasmania
UK 7" Dindisc [DIN 32] 1981

Martha
"Light Years From Love"
04 Light Years From Love (Long Version)
05 Dramas of the Human Heart (Long Version)
UK 12" Island [12 IS 125] 1983

05 Light Years From Love
06 Dramas of the Human Heart
UK 7" Island [IS 125] 1983

Stephen Emmer
Vogue Estate
07 Never Share
Holland LP Idiot Records [WEA 28.407] 1982