Having recently been on the search for some more interesting pop music moments from the 80s, I came across another group that caught my attention, although again, they didn’t hit the big time, and there isn’t really a huge amount to say about them. Deluxe-A were a male/female duo who came from Shrewsbury. Their singer was Mandy, who definitely did have terrific 80s hair.
They came on to the scene with their debut single “Boys On TV” (I wonder if this is a play on Duran Duran’s “Girls On Film”), which was a rather nice piece of synthpop. The producer was Sal Solo, who was best-known around this time for being the frontman of Classix Nouveaux. Record Mirror said that this was “a basically simple, pleasant tune with booming syndrums and echoing electronics”.
And considering that their critics were usually rather harsh about songs, this was almost rather close to being a compliment. There was also a video made, which really captures the era, and it seems that this was only shown once on Saturday SuperStore or some such show, meaning that for them, their moment of fame really did last for just three minutes.
“Boys On TV” was released in January 1983 (how is this almost four decades ago now?), and there was some hope that Deluxe-A could be among the big new stars to keep an eye on during the year, there was even a picture of them in Sounds. But this didn’t make the Top 100 in the UK, and this turned out to be their only single. Along with the B-side, although this is rather unlikely, it seems that this might be yet another group who only ever recorded two songs.
Why did this flop? Well tastes in pop music change very quickly, and by the start of 1983 synthpop was beginning to be a little out of date, this really was the last gasp of this genre being successful, maybe they were just too little too late, it’s a disappointment because they deserved some success. Maybe there are still 50,000 copies of this that were unsold in the producer’s attic somewhere.
ADAM'S NOSTALGIC MEMORIES 