365 Days of Song Recommendations: Dec 11

Dancesparc (Every Day It’s Tomorrow) — Martha and the Muffins

If you know Martha and the Muffins, you know “Echo Beach,” which, if I’m not entirely misremembering was really the only song from this Toronto-based new wave outfit that really charted in the States. You’ll often find their name lumped into the “one-hit wonder” lists of the 80s.

Sidenote: Fuck those lists sideways.

And that’s a shame. That 1980 debut, Metro Music, remains a standout album, but they had more to offer. They electrified that Metro Music new wave and post-punk sound over the next three records by experimenting with bouncier beats and background layers of synthesizer and effusive horns (sax and trombone).

1981’s This is the Ice Age produced some minor hits in Canada, but also caused Virgin to drop them from the label. Before their fourth album, the band shuffled its lineup. Martha and the Muffins became a quartet featuring Martha Johnson, Mark Gane, Jocelyne Lanois (sister of producer Daniel Lanois), and Nick Kent signed a new deal with Canadian label Current Records. They even tried an aborted rebranding to M+M (as in Martha and Mark) before 1983’s Dancesparc. The record didn’t have an “Echo Beach,” but the band’s sound finally stood out among the other solid, but forgettable new wave acts of the era.

“Obedience,” the opener on Dancesparc, assaults the listener from note one with a jangly (and wicked funky) guitar and a breakneck pace. Martha Johnson’s vocals had never been so confidently forward. The title track became another Top 40 hit in Canada, but apparently didn’t receive much airplay across the border.

Instead of jangly guitar, “Dancesparc” drops a driving, haunting bassline and Martha channels her repressed Siouxsie Sioux. It’s a song that encourages frantic, awkward dancing in the dark during a wailing saxophone solo.

There’s not much to the lyrics; Martha gives them all the sauce that they need to play for the cheap seats.

In a park, in a city I call your name
Will the way that we dance always be the same?
Hold me fast, draw me near, don’t let love disappear
Come to life, come together, steal me from my sleep

For their next album, 1984’s Mystery Walk, Martha and Mark alienated the remaining fans who think bands shouldn’t change or evolve. M+M embraced the low-lying danceable quality of their original new wave act by hooking it up to an amplifier. “Black Stations/White Stations” served as a coming out block party. This one received some play in the U.S., reaching #2 on the dance charts, which is like a weird, forgotten cousin of the Billboard Top 40, but still notable for a band whose success had largely been relegated to the great white north.

But the song was also banned by many radio stations.

Why?

I’m so glad you asked.

A voice inside my car told me today
There was a song of love they would not play
She was black, he was white
A voice inside my car told me today

Black stations, white stations break down the doors
Stand up and face the music, this is 1984
Black stations, white stations feet on the floor
Dance on the ceiling with us, this is 1984, ha!

This anti-racist anthem accused radio stations of not playing a popular song about a mixed-race romance. The same radio stations turned around and refused to play Martha and the Muffins’ popular song about radio stations not playing a popular song about a mixed-race romance. Hmm.

This #365Songs Recommendation is as much a recommendation of a single track as it is the excellent new wave/post-punk/dance band that everyone outside Canada mostly forgot. And a reminder that when someone accuses you of being racist, don’t double down on being a racist. It’s just a good life lesson.

“Danceparc” is the 345th song on the #365Songs playlist: