Pete Shelley “Telephone Operator”

Pete Shelley “Telephone Operator” 1983. 12″ single on Genetic Records. Heavily electronic, 80’s new wave synthpop with just a whisper of punk attitude (that Buzzcocks snot). The track was a single from Shelley’s second solo LP XL1 and hit #66 on the UK singles chart. I’m not too familiar with the album but Wiki tells me the original pressing was “packaged with a computer program for the ZX Spectrum which displayed lyrics and graphics in time with the music The computer program was written in a mixture of BASIC and Assembly and is widely considered to be one of the first multimedia albums ever released.” While “Telephone Operator” – a hard driving, industrial-edged dance track – is clearly the feature/single of this 12″, it’s the non-single Devo-esque track (also on XL1) “Many a Time” — with its hook that almost exactly mirrors his controversial single “Homosapien” single from 1981 — that gets the most attention. Side One has the extended mix which, I believe, appears on the UK release (the US version has a shorter version) and Side Two has the Dub Mix of “Many a Time” which isn’t much different from the Extended Mix other than it’s even longer and has a harder-edged beat; I’m not sure it is included on any other releases.