Who remembers the Hothouse Flowers? Not many people would be my guess. But if you were to play this song to them, they’d be singing along like crazy. The flowers hail from Ireland, and have influence throughout folk, rock, blues and gospel. Their first album, which was actually a Bono sponsored outing, was propelled to International fame across Europe in the most unusual way… Eurovision (duh duh durrr). How many people make it out of that alive?
“Don’t Go”, the song featured here, was played in between entries, and during the voting of Eurovision 1988. The public saw sense, realised they were watching complete rubbish, but the breaks were complete quality. This propelled “Don’t Go” to number 11 in the UK chart. The highest they position they would ever achieve. Following this success, and in the ten years that followed the band would drift apart, releasing records sporadically and collaborating on recordings only rarely. Whilst they achieved huge success in the Irish charts during several comeback albums and best of releases–the band would never have the world singing like they did for “Don’t Go”.
On March 4th 1980 a chap called Robert Mugabe was elected to power in Zimbabwe, a decision we still live with (although only in part) to this day. Later, the US severed relations with Iran, and begun imposing economic sanctions on the nation. The Iranian embassy siege takes place in London, and the SAS are propelled to worldwide notoriety. Pro-democracy demonstrations take place in South Korea, with clashes between demonstrators and government military forces leading to the loss of 2,000 lives.
Some mistakes…
Musically, Call Me by Blondie pipped the mammoth Pink Floyds Another Brick in the Wall to the top selling record of the year. Michael Jackson had released his 5th album (Off the Wall), and began to dominate the charts with 3 of the top 100 coming from that album.
And the award for crappest cover of the year goes to Mickey Gilley. Shame on you.
For a number of reasons my song for 1980 is Cars, by Gary Numan. It’s waaay ahead of it’s time, and in my opinion was a brave release given the other bands of the time. Numan himself actually stated it was a genuine attempt at chart success, “This was the first time I had written a song with the intention of ‘maybe it could be a hit single’; I was writing this before “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” happened“. Many people still revere the song as a classic, of real edge and stand out difference. I am one of these people.
There’s more whispering in the advert world about Cadburys adverts. Following massive success of the Gorilla playing the drums, they’ve gone for an equally (if not more) edgy advert of children with “dancing” eyebrows. It’s strange, yet fascinating, and even a little disturbing. I think that’s the way they like it… so everyone talks about it!
More from The Gorilla
Everyone remembers the Gorilla playing Phil Collins, and how much people loved that advert. How in the world people came up with the vision for that advert I’ll never know, perhaps they were getting freebies and suffered chocolate overdose. Since that advert had such a huge following, a young man decided he’d remix the video, to a new song. Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Heart.
That young chap (Javier Malagon) now finds his advert, as an OFFICIAL Cadbury advert. Taken on by the corporation after they spotted it on YouTube, and loved it. It’s a neat and tidy effort, that was either complete luck, or took hours and hours to sync to the video.
Barclaycard have quickly clocked on to the popularity of the waterslide advert we featured here. No opening a “Barclaycard create” competition where people are encouraged to make their own slides, film them, and submit them.
Along with this campaign they’ve released an extended version of the wonderful original advert, which is just short of 2 minutes long. It’s got a load more little cuts and funny stuff, so check it out below.
The Barclaycard spoof of the video is available here. Not even a scratch on the original imo.
