Under the radar

Well now… I figure that I owe all good, gentle and most patient readers something like half of a story – and as I aim to be a man of my word…

No recaps! If you want to catch up click here to revisit the last post and thus glean all there is to know up to this point; I’m just going to plough straight on ahead.

So – ‘Go West’ were recording in Gary, Dave and Rod’s studio, with Gary producing and Dave doing the synth programming and keyboard work. This was the early 80s, the era of synth-pop, the which had come about because of the advent of such seminal keyboards as the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, the Roland Jupiter 8, the Yamaha DX7, the Korg M1 (of which I still have one which sits next to me as I write) and the ground-breaking Fairlight – so Dave’s particular talents were suddenly much in demand.

Gary and Dave worked on demo versions of two ‘Go West’ tracks – “Call Me” and “We Close Our Eyes” – which so impressed the record companies to which they were submitted that there was virtually a bidding war to sign the duo. ‘Go West’ became – for a while – pretty big in Europe (if not in North America) and toured there and as far afield as Japan. Needing augmentation for touring and recording they took on Gary and Dave as ‘permanent’ members. I remember Dave sending me a postcard from Japan when they were touring there.

As with many such genres synth-pop slowly faded from musical fashionability and ‘Go West’ faded with it – though the various constituent members are still working as far as I can tell (as would seem to be the case with many 80s bands).

Now – you may ask – why do I bring this all up right now? The answer is that – as mentioned before – the pandemic and associated lock-downs has led to a certain introspection and backward-looking – a certain affectionate wallowing in nostalgia, if you like. Long story, short – having lost touch with Dave at some point in the mid-80s I recently spent some time on the InterWebNet trying to find out what happened him. As is often the way in such circumstances I discovered some things that I had not previously known.

The band that Gary, Dave and Rob had formed back in the early 80s was called ‘Radar’. At the point at which they were swept up in the whole ‘Go West’ circus they were approaching the end of recording their own first album which was to have been titled “Lost in the Atlantic“. With everything else that was happening to them at the time that work was put on the back burner – and subsequently the album was never released…

…until now! This very year – just over a month ago – it finally came out in a limited release on a specialist label – Escape Music. You can read all about it here – and should you be an enthusiast for mid-80s synth-pop you might just care to give it a listen.

On a personal note it seems to me a somewhat strange synchronicity that – having lost touch with Dave at around the time this music was being created – I should next think to track him down (virtually!) at the point that it was finally released nearly four decades later.

Funny old world – ain’t it?