Why next year? A couple of reasons – George is touring solo this year on his ‘Here and Now’ tour to promote his new album, and next year marks their 30 year anniversary as well as 10 years since their last reformation.

In 1981, Boy George occasionally sang with the group Bow Wow Wow under the stage name “Lieutenant Lush”. But after this formed his own band with ‘Kissing to be Clever’ their first album release.

Culture Club are probably best known for singles from their second album in 1983 (Colour by Numbers), namely ‘Church of the Poison Mind’ and ‘Karma Chameleon’.

New Wave dancing was different from Disco dancing because it was done individually instead of with partners and involved holding the torso rigid and thrashing about. This could be seen dangerous, especially if pogoers (if that’s a term) bounced into one another – accidentally or otherwise. The bouncers didn’t like pogoing so they would tell pogoers to stop or be kicked out of the club. Thus, the song is a protest and a call for freedom of expression.

Men without hats was a band from Montreal, Canada. But Safety Dance was actually filmed in England with only the band leader Ivan Doroschuk in the video. Enjoy it below:

The song was based on the Mighty Diamonds “Pass The Koutchie” (which was a song about cannabis), and the title was subtly altered to feature the patois “dutchie”, referring to a type of pot used for cooking. This idea is emphasised throughout the political and economic overtones throughout the song about extreme poverty and Musical Youth asking the question How does it feel when ya got no food after each verse line.

The band did release other singles, but none of them reached the heights of this one.

Enjoy the music video (and the lyrics):

I also found a live version of the song, and it’s great that live they sound the same – not sure the crowd really got into it though

Incoming search terms:

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These very simple games took the world by storm. The size and simplicity made these very addictive to all. It was always a challenge to beat the highest score – even if it was only by one point. There were normally ‘Game A’ and ‘Game B’ options on these units, with the latter being a much harder and quick paced game (nearly impossible to master in my opinion).

Although googling the history of these devices reveals a few titles I have never heard of or seen, I think Game and Watch’s first game to stardom was Parachute:

This game was released in 1981, and the aim is to move your rowboat left and right to catch the parachutists that are being dropped from the helicopter. You need to ensure that they are caught, otherwise the shark in the water eats them up. As time gos one, the parachutists become more regular and more of them are released.

Also released in 1981 was Octopus:

The aim of this game was to guide your diver down to the treasure chest and get the gold, and then bring it back into your boat. Sound easy? Oh, I forgot to add that there is Octopus with long tentacles trying to stop you

Many other titles were released, and Nintendo also then released multi screen games that were still simple but required keeping an eye on the action on both screens whilst playing. The most popular no doubt was Donkey Kong:

No need to explain what you need to do in this game, which came out in 1982.

Also in 1982, Oil Panic came out. Although not as popular as Donkey Kong, it wasn’t a bad game. I had one of these, and kick myself now for not keeping it all those years ago.

The idea behind this game was to catch the leaking oil from the pipes above with your bucket and drop them into your bosse’s oil drum. Missing oil or dropping onto motorists below caused you to lose a life.

If you wish to relive the fun of these games, some online versions can be found here.

Incoming search terms:

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