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While I don’t love this album as much as their debut The Overload, it’s still ultra-original and very, very fun (except when it’s depressing but not in a bad way); it went to #4 in the UK and has been included in many Best of ’24 lists, including those complied by Rolling Stone UK, Rough Trade and Allmusic. Yard Act played a bunch tracks from Where’s My Utopia when we caught them at the quite small X-Ray Arcade this past October (such a fantastic show). Two of my top picks (and ones that made me dance up a frenzy at the show) are the singles “We Make Hits” and “Dream Job,” both high energy punk-disco ass-shakers. Also performed and released as singles were “Petroleum” (which has a darker and more subtle groove) and the upbeat-yet-depressing “When the Laughter Stops” (I have no idea if any of these singles charted), plus the non-singles “Fizzy Fish,” “Down by the Stream,” and “A Vineyard for the North.” There’s a bit too much spoken-word on the record for my tastes (ie “Blackpool Illumination“), but in their spirit of anything goes, that fits Yard Act’s non-classification.

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The Joshua Tree marked U2′s ascension from “heroes to superstars” (Rolling Stone), generated their only #1 singles in the US (“With or Without You” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”) and became one of the world’s best-selling albums of all-time, earning placement in the National Recording Registry by the US Library of Congress. It was their 5th LP and went to #1 virtually everywhere, including the US and the UK. It’s also tangled up in a lot of teenage angst, heartbreak and joy for me as being 15 almost 16 is super-complicated. Thirty-five years later, I still really love it – every single soaring, over-the-top jangled note. Besides the two #1 singles, I particularly love “Where the Streets Have No Name” (#4 UK, #13 US), “Running to Stand Still,” “In God’s Country” (#44 US) and “One Tree Hill.” “Mothers of the Disappeared” is also beautiful but so devastatingly sad that it’s difficult to listen to, especially knowing that it’s about the the Madres de Plaza de Mayo whose children were “forcibly disappeared” at the hands of the Argentine and Chilean dictatorships. (Wiki)

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“Welcome to the Pleasuredome” was FGTH’s fourth and final single from their debut smash album Welcome to the Pleasure Dome, released in fall of ‘84. The title track wen to #2 in the UK, the only single from the record which didn’t hit #1 (stymied by Phil Collins’, that f*ckr, and Phillip Bailey’s duet “Easy Lover”) in the UK; it went to #48 in the US. There’s a whole slew of versions of this track, the single and album versions differ and even the 7″ single had variations and it was impossible to know which one you got based on the cover and catalogue numbers which were identical, though I guess the paper sleeves varied in thickness. Weird. Because it’s a test pressing, this copy has different tracks than the commercial release (though it’s not that dissimilar from the US and UK 12″ – those included the track “Get It On” (T. Rex) and “Happy Hi!”). Side A has “Welcome to the Pleasuredome (Trevor Horn Remix)” which was the standard remix for the commercial versions. Side B has a remix I’ve never heard before and doesn’t seem to be available on any other releases (though I’m sure someone out there will correct me if I’m wrong): “Welcome to the Pleasuredome (Vocal/KZAP Edit)” and it’s super-cool with extended instrumentals, acoustic-ish guitar jams and extra Holly Johnson sing-snarls. Also on Side B is “Relax (Vocal/Live Version).”

I saw Frankie Goes to Hollywood perform a few months after the release of this single in July, 1985 in Irvine, CA. My dad and I traveled to Los Angeles that summer for a family reunion and he somehow got us hooked up with really great seats for this concert. FGTH were massively popular in ‘85 and at the time were my second-favorite band (behind Duran Duran of course). It was a wild show and I’m sure my dad was massively uncomfortable the entire time. I was pretty clueless as to the context of all of their songs so I just danced and screamed the entire time (I was like 13 years old so of course I did).

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The song was highly controversial due to its overt sexual references, even though the band initially claimed the lyrics were not meant to be suggestive. However, after the release of Welcome to the Pleasuredome in 1985, upon which the single was included, the (obvious) truth came out: the liner notes state “Like, when people ask you what ‘Relax’ was about, when it first came out we used to pretend it was about motivation, and really it was about shagging.” Shocking! I thought the line “Relax, don’t do it/When you want to suck it, do it/Relax, don’t do it/ When you want to come” was meant to be spiritually uplifting!

The b-side, “One September Monday” is not really a song, it’s more of a kinda interview over vague beats between music journalist Paul Morley and FGTH’s Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford, where among other disjointed discussions, they reveal the source of the band’s name. You can read the transcript here.

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“The Joshua Tree” is a true classic: most of the songs are still musically relevant and fresh after almost 30 years so it’s no surprise that it is one of the world’s best-selling albums of all time. Tinged with longing and sadness, it is perfect for road trips and/or wallowing in the depths of any kind of personal loss. “With Or Without You” was always a go-to song during adolescent heartbreak, as was “Running to Stand Still,” which still gives me literal chills. “Where the Streets Have No Name” evokes the expanse of the American west perfectly, while “Bullet the Blue Sky” punches that west in the gut. But with “In God’s Country” and “One Tree Hill” the love for our wild open spaces comes back with a feeling of hope and optimism and I want drive fast through mountains and deserts, windows down and the sun shining.

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