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November 12, 2008

Retrohump: OMD! OMG!!

In pondering the riddle of Dazzle Ships initial flop and subsequent obscurity yesterday, I failed to factor in what these dudes actually looked like. It's all becoming clearer...

OMD - "Genetic Engineering"

By early MTV standards this video for single "Genetic Engineering" isn't so bad, I guess. It's a bit too literal (hey, he just said "little children," and here they are!), a bit too serious (we are making deals with nefarious agents of a shadow authority!), but it still falls well short of rife for parody bullshit like Tears for Fears. The main drawback is that is makes zero sense. Plot outline: McCluskey and Humphries are textbook writers with a serious transaction to make regarding, uh, genetics. Upstairs from their office, there is a couple of married 10 year olds, possibly the ones from the Love is... comicstrip, but clothed. As the boys slip out, these pint sized goons see their opportunity to wreck the place. OMD gets their filthy grant money from a couple of M16 types, but they are easily intimidated, and when those kids so much as rip a single textbook, they immediately cave in to their thuggery and cough up the dough. Also, those kids are secretly double agents, working for, let's say, the KGB.

OMD - "Genetic Engineering"
(Live on The Tube, 1983)

As much as I don't think this is the right word to use, this is likely the band at their "coolest." The prominent reel-to-reel player, the stand up gong, the extraneous band member rocking the typewriter, it's all wonderfully weird. And you have to give credit to ol' Andy McCluskey for passionately singing out from his diaphragm in the midst of a brainy music concrete-inspired single. Aloof reserve would have been the obvious choice, and it would have made for a much less memorable track. But in the end, he looks like an extra homely mash up of Luke Wilson and Rick Santorum, and that sure doesn't help.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - "Genetic Engineering"

OMD - "Telegraph"

OMD - "Telegraph"
(Live in Sheffield, 1985)

I truly love "Telegraph," the album's second, more insistent single. You know, I even think that in its low-rent hyper 80s way the official video is kind of cool. The flag squad waving Saville's interior record sleeve, the light-up megaphones, I'm ready to buy in. But in viewing both it and the live clip below it for the first time, all I can say is: For the love of God McCluskey, YOU STOP THAT DANCING RIGHT NOW!!! If you were the brainy 80s hipster Dazzle Ships was intended for, how badly would you want to write the guy off on dance moves alone? After reading one misguided review in a hip mag, you wouldn't cross the street to kick him in the back. David Byrne went for a hyper-stiff avant-nerd approximation in his video dancing. This friends, is honest, unfiltered, natural dorkery. Recurring sitcom joke, meet your maker.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - "Telegraph"

Posted by Jeff Klingman at November 12, 2008 03:40 PM

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