Paranomia — The Art of Noise

The path to this song in my musical brain forest is a long one. There was, well, let’s just call him an icon in the 1980s. With computers slowing gaining mainstream popularity, the world was ready for a new kind of spokesman, a new type of hero. The computer-generated kind. Now I’m certainly not talking about the deep fake masterpieces that exist today. Nope, I’m talking about max headroom.

I probably saw max for the first time on his famous coke ads. They were everywhere on tv. You just couldn’t miss it. The ads had no effect on me because well, I was a kid, and my mom was the coke drinker in the house. Well, the Diet Coke drinker. So, I don’t remember having many cans of diet coke when I was young. Unless it was when we were at a restaurant. I seem to have odd memory flashes of snatching pop cans from under my mom’s bed. I think she hid them from me. Probably because the figured that I would drink them all up. I can’t really be sure of that memory, but the flashes seem authentic. Back to the ad, it wasn’t the product that captivated me it was Max himself. His personality seemed to encapsulate the 80s. Snarky, futuristic and odd. Everything I remember about pop culture back then.

Max Headroom next appeared in his own tv show. It was a grimy science fiction show that kind of predicted the future. They deal with large corporations taking advantage or committing crimes against average people. The series also stared a young actor names Matt Frewer. This show was the first thing I had seen him in. He has been extremely busy since Max Headroom first aired. He has been a regular cast member of various animated series. Shows Like Disney’s Gargoyles, Hercules, and the short-lived cartoon Dumb and Dumber. Mr. Frewer was in the Stephen King TV miniseries The Stand and was Moloch in Zach Synder’s Watchmen! Most recently he played Judge Fred Wright on the HBO series Perry Mason.

The Max Headroom show didn’t do all that well in the UK where it started. But someone in North America saw it and was about to get it played in the us. ABC aired the 14 episodes. No, the show didn’t last very long. In my opinion, it was trying to be a technology-based thriller attacking global corporations that were controlling to population. But the landscape was this dystopian future. Where people scavenged for food and barely scraped by. Technology back then was always portrayed as clean and pristine. Well, if it was based on earth “20 minutes into the future.” I agree the Alien movies always looked grimy and Bladerunner was really far into the future, back then, but remember Robocop looked clean and shiny and cool. That’s what I thought computers and their ilk were supposed to be like. It was supposed to be paving the way for the Star Trek future that we all wanted. But Max was stuck deep in the mud. So that probably turned the audience off a little.

But that wasn’t the end of Max’s claim to fame. The idea of max was so special and unique that advertisers wanted him to sell their products for them. The Coca Cola company was the first to get him, actually I think that they may have been the only ones to really use Max Headroom. He promoted New Coke. The Coca Cola company’s idea to change the classic drink. The ads were fine, but the product was not. In fact, it is largely considered the biggest corporate mistake that ever made it to the public. People hated it. And as a result, they also turned away from Max headroom.

But Max Headroom had a music career as well. Well at least to me. In 1986, while his show was on TV and commercials were running, hey was in a music video for the song Paranomia by an English band called The Art of Noise. I honestly believe that the name The Art of Noise is simply the best band name that I have ever heard.

The band was a pretty Avant Gard band, using electronic techniques to sample and create their music. They never really hit it big on the worldwide stage though. But my interest in technology, I was tinkering with commodore 64 and TSR-80 computers at the time, and the amazing Max Headroom really made me take notice of this little band.

After doing my customary musical research, I discovered that they had more than one really great song. The song Legs was on their record In Visible Silence. That album also game the world the Peter Gunn theme with guitar by Duanne Eddy. That was their big award winner early in their career. A little later on they got to create the theme song for the 1987 movie dragnet staring Dan Ackroyd and Tom Hanks. All of their music uses samples in interesting ways. I was enamored with their music because of the creative way they used technology to create music. As the years went by their music seemed to get a little more surreal. The Seduction of Claude Debussy album was a perfect example of that. It is kind a dream like record that has spoken word and instruments blending together. But in my opinion, all of their records had tracks on them that were kind of dreamy. Music you could drift away to.

Their song Paranomia was the one that has held my attention ever since the first time I heard it. Yes, I am sure that part of that reasoning was because of the Max Headroom vocals that are running throughout that song. I still consider it to be one of my favorite songs of all time. It’s an interesting combination of catchy beats and max’s quirky words that still keep it fresh today. Max Headroom is featured through the music video. His inclusion really helps take the viewers’ attention away from the primitive looking computer effects that also run rampant throughout the video. Well, back then it looked amazing, now, not so much. But Max’s inclusion in the video keeps the video very watchable today.

The art of noise is something everyone should listen to at least once. Especially Paranomia. Google them, Spotify them, find them in the innerwebs, just so you can experience their music. It’s pretty out there.

Now I don’t remember ever thinking that Max Headroom was anything but an entirely created computer manifestation. I thought that technology back in the 80s could actually do all the things that max did. He had the stutter that seemed possible even expected when someone was playing the computers back then. I honestly believed it! But of course, I was wrong. Oh, so wrong. Matt Frewer went through a lengthy makeup and prosthetics regiment when he would perform max headroom. Hours were spent making him with his plastic mask look artificial. The backgrounds, and almost everything else when it came to max was not really computer driven. Except for his trademark stutter. There were definitely computer edits to help with that part of his speech.

But that shattering of my dream hasn’t taken away any of the admiration I have when I listen to Paranomia. In fact, I guess it strengthens it. I mean if actor is willing to go through all that just to sit in a chair and read dialogue, it must have meant that something special was created that first day. Right?

The TV show has really faded from the public consciousness in the decades since its first appearance. The show isn’t streamed anywhere. The DVDs are completely out of print. So, I suppose that strange odd show will be only able to live on in my memory. Which is ok. Because when I think of the song Paranomia I always think of Max and his odd little TV show.

Deadline reported earlier this year that there was a max headroom reboot in the works. Apparently Mr. Matt Frewer will be in it! sounds like it could be something interesting.

One last thing that I discovered while researching this story. Paranomia is an actual word! I honestly thought that it was simply something the band had made up for the title of their song. Nope. I was wrong again. It actually means “an aphasia characterized by the incorrect naming of objects.” Geez, even reading that now I kind of have a hard time understanding what that actually means. But it doesn’t sound all that good.

But then maybe Max had it coming, after all, he did try to sell me the worse cola ever created

Thanks for reading a story that fell out of my head. Were you aware of Max Headroom? Let me know your stories of drinking new coke. Did you throw up too? As always, please like, comment and subscribe. Until next time.