THE VAPORS - New Clear Days 1980

Last today and it's the nice PowerPop debut by the Vapors on United Artists Records which I already posted in my old unforgotten blog. Info: The Vapors (David Fenton (vox/guitar); Steve Smith (bass); Edward Bazalgette (guitar); Howard Smith (drums) were a relatively short-lived (1979-1981) new-wave rock band from Guildford, one of the more interesting one-hit-wonders that flourished and then vaporized during the dawn of MTV. The band rose solely on the success of their single "Turning Japanese," a disturbing pop ditty that strangely connects madness and masturbation. However, the band's debut, which includes "Turning Japanese", boasts many other worthwhile moments. Underneath the band's English pop sound lurk strange references to and connections between Japan, war, adolescence, and insanity, all of which course through the album like phantom mental patients. The loneliness and isolation are palpable undercurrents a sharp edge to the deceptively peppy pop framework.

New Clear Days contains the UK hit single "Turning Japanese", which reached #3 in the chart in February 1980. A remix of "News @ Ten" (named after the well known ITV news programme), went to #45 in July of that year. A third single, a re-recording of "Waiting For The Weekend" which included a horn section, failed to chart. The title is a pun on Nuclear - nuclear weapons and power stations being major issues at that time. The album cover shows a rather grimy television screen displaying a BBC TV weather forecast. Among the symbols for clouds is one centred over London which is, upon closer examination, a mushroom cloud. In addition, one of the temperature symbols has been replaced with one warning of radiation and the weatherman glows. "News @ Ten", a cynical examination of the generation gap and the fear of ending up as complacent as the parent he despises for his conformism, was expected to be a hit on the back of the success of "Turning Japanese"; its poorer performance was blamed in part by the long-running strike at the BBC's Top Of The Pops which meant it received very little media exposure. There was also a marked reluctance by BBC Radio 1 - then the nation's premier radio station - to play a song named after an ITV programme.

Apart from the three singles, the best known other track is "Sixty Second Interval". Its ambiguous lyrics have been interpreted alternately as concerning the short cease-fires agreed between armies during wars to allow each to attend to their wounded in the no-man's land between them. The song was the inspiration behind the long-running "Sixty Second Interview" feature of the UK's Metro (Associated Metro Limited) free newspaper given away at public transport stations. "Letter From Hiro", the album's lengthy melancholy finale, concerns the sense of powerlessness a boy feels as events push towards World War II, and towards the inevitable ending of his friendship with his more patriotic Japanese penpal ("And when the sun was rising somewhere in the East, and when a flag meant more to Hiro than to me"). The song concludes with the playing of a traditional Japanese tune on a cymbalum. (source: unknown)

here