Wednesday, January 31, 2018

WAS's Awesome New Wave Song Of The Week #14: Ad Infinitum - Telstar



This weeks’ Awesome Song is a first on Marc’s Blog...  That’s right, after 200+ songs we have not yet seen … an instrumental !   The honor of the first vocal-free track was a real toss-up.  I was going to go with “DNA" by Flock of Seagulls, which is fantastic but the Flock is already well-represented and well positioned.  Another favorite is of course the B-52s' extended instrumental mix of “Party Out of Bounds” which was used as backing music by new wave radio stations everywhere.   But I wanted a song that was not just a voiceless mix but an original instrumental … and being first, it also had to have some gravitas.  

So we go back to 1984 when a band very briefly known as Ad Infinitum put out their one and only release called “Telstar”.  That’s right, they were not a one-hit wonder … they were a one-song wonder!  Released by New Order’s production firm Factory Records, and with Peter Hook on bass, Ad Infinitum made just a single song (the B-side being a piano version of the same).  It was named after the Telstar 1 communications satellite launched in 1962 and popularized the same year by a group called The Tornadoes.  The Tornadoes released it at the height of the ‘space race’ of the time and it rocketed to #1 on the charts.  I especially like that the 1962 original includes some very nice synth-work (on a prehistoric doohickey known as a “keyboard”) while some of the remake’s actual synths almost sound like french horns.  Ad Infinitum never did anything else but their 1984 version of ‘Telstar’ was a great one-and-done release.  And it was also the first record ever released with a holographic cover… now that’s gravitas!   Telstar 1 the satellite is non-functional but still orbits the earth today.  And like new wave, the brand is timeless … Telstar 18V will launch later this year.

Here's the original from 1962!

-WAS


2 comments:

  1. Great stuff! Had not heard this before, believe it or not. btw, "Ad Infinitum" is also the name of an excellent video game shooter on the Commodore 64! Useless fact of the day.

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  2. Science ... history... video games ... Marc's Top 200 has it all !

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