"You know I hate to ask
But, are friends electric?
Only, mine’s broke down
And now I’ve no one to love."
Those lyrics by Tubeway Army nearly thirty years ago have proven strangely prophetic... my main online "hangout" has been unavailable all day today (and pretty iffy for several weeks, actually) and although I don't actually spend that much time there during the day, its amazing how much I miss it if I can't connect at all. Makes it seem like there's something important that I've forgotten to do.
Weird. Now I need to get out and talk to some real people tonight to shake off the funky feeling that I'm actually living in some kind of cyberpunk nightmare. Although I know intellectually that that's not true, of course (I actually have about as active a social life as I can stand at the moment; any more going on and I'd be overloaded and need some time to myself.)
The post title is a "famous" line from the John Foxx "hit single" "Underpass." I put famous and hit in quotes, because actually it wasn't all that commercially successful, but in a fair world John Foxx would be better known today that Gary Numan. Gary Numan himself repeatedly said he was imitating Foxx, particularly from his swan song album with Ultravox Systems of Romance which is also often called the "first synthpop album." If you hear songs like "Dislocation" and "Quiet Men" it's easy to see where Numan is coming from with that claim. Sadly, when John Foxx went solo and produced his landmark album Metamatic it was overshadowed by Numan's own success. Foxx's work is much more polished, and while I'm a big Numan fan, and I think some at least of his songs are truly brilliant, I think Foxx is a better musicial and composer both.
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