Science-Fiction, Blade Runner, A Clockwork Orange, Star Wars, Red Dawn, Nuclear War, guns, rockets, bombs, Robots, Toys, Sex, fake ads between songs, crazy wild-haired cyber-punk dudes – this had everything a thirteen year old boy could want in 1987. I remember getting it on vinyl, and feeling like I was somehow cooler for having it. (I still have it.) The large-size art work and inner sleeve were amazing. There were photos of strange exotic people who looked like they’d walked right out of Mos Eisley spaceport. There were lyrics and symbols and assorted English and Kanji text. There were faint diagrams of assembly instructions for what looked like transformer robots printed beneath the words. And their words actually made sense to a thirteen year old. The first thing you hear is: ‘I wanna be a star!’ – which speaks to a teenager, instantly. And I made mad little mind-movie narratives for all their songs with lyrics like: ‘The US bombs cruising overhead/ There goes my love rocket red’, and ‘I’m a Custom Kar Kommando/ And she she she can she can’, and ‘Star Wars Western USA…Ultra Venus USA…Rockit Miss USA’, and ‘I’m a space cowboy/ I’m a 21st century whoopee boy!’. I totally understood that. I related to those guys as only a thirteen year old can – the magical age when the irrational becomes rational, when dreams and reality are inseparable. When truth and lies are both necessary. And so these guys became my band. It was like my own secret sci-fi world, where I knew all the characters, all the plots, all the tricks and all the action. And you don’t deconstruct anything at that age. You have no sense of history. You have no cultural reference points. You don’t really think about the fact their songs “Love Missile F1-11” and “Atari Baby” sound like Chuck Berry riffs and Doo-Wop played on keyboards. Like rockabilly techno. Like space-age Elvis. As a kid, you just dig it. In 1987, I had never heard Kraftwerk, or Suicide, or Tangerine Dream, or Eno. Looking back now, this album was incredibly important for me, I think it subconsciously primed me for the discovery of all that music later on in life. It prepared me for life as a 21st Century Boy.

~ DECOY SPOON
2009/04/20