party like it’s 199x

“And remember, my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future.” – Criswell, Plan 9 From Outer Space

“The twenty-first century’s yesterday” – Michael Hutchence, “Need You Tonight”

Few things rot on the popcult vine as fast as speculations regarding the future. Anticipating the world to come is easily enough done; extrapolate some current trends, toss in some improbable visual flourishes (flying cars, personal rocketships, boots with Saturnian ring systems), and presto! Instant futurism! The catch is that these space-casseroles are best eaten hot from the space-oven. Even the most meticulously considered projections appear positively quaint after the space of a decade, or even sooner.

John Brunner’s Shockwave Rider, a fascinating precursor to the cyberpunk genre written in the early 1970’s, features a protagonist who hacks into the government database via dialing on a rotary phone. In William Gibson’s Neuromancer, cyberhustlers deal in whopping kilobytes of “hot” RAM chips. (In the intro to Virtual Light, Gibson admitted that events had outpaced his initial vision, leading to a second trilogy of novels drawing upon revised speculative trends. These, too, feel more out of step with each tick of the second hand.) Blade Runner, the movie that visually defined “the future” for people of my generation, feels more nostalgic than visionary these days, speaking more about 1982 than 2019.

Not that I’m knocking that. Honestly, I’d prefer a neon lit futurescape populated with sculpted Nagel-esque femme fatales and mirrorshaded cyberpunks. Even Nehru jackets with black turtlenecks or shiny silver jumpsuits would be preferable to the shag haircuts, flared pants, and earth tones prevalent in the real 21st century. It won’t be long before I’m rushing through the streets like Chuck Heston in Soylent Green. “It's EVIL. Corduroy pants are made out of EVIL. They're making our clothes out of EVIL. Next thing they'll be making us wear plaid chinos. You've gotta tell them!”

Here are some tracks dealing with futures that never were:

Beck – Diamond Dogs (from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, 2001) – Beck’s music really doesn’t do anything for me, but I do like this cover of David Bowie’s post-apocalyptic classic from 1974. It’s a shame Beck left out my favorite part of the song: Bowie’s opening announcement that “This ain’t rock and roll! This is genocide!”

Hazel O’Connor – Eighth Day (from the Breaking Glass soundtrack, 1980) – Working in the same vein as idiosyncratic new wave divas like Lene Lovich or Toyah Wilcox, but with a more limited musical palette, O’Connor recorded some really great tracks alongside some embarrassingly awful ones. This track is one of her high points. She performs it at the end of the film in a stunning stage performance that visually anticipated Tron by a good two years.

Marcus – 1983 (from Green Crystal Ties, Vol. 5: Gems from Garage Band Vaults, 1998) – This track from the mid-sixties anticipates a future world ruled by an overlord named “Big Daddy”, which doesn’t evoke the same frisson of menace as Orwell’s fraternally-named creation. Instead it conjures visions of a southern-fried dystopia, a Billy-Joe-Bob-ocracy, overseen by a vat-grown hybrid of Boss Hogg and the patriarch from a Tennessee Williams play. “Don’t you know we’ve always been at war with Alabamia, cousin?” The Ministry of Truth would, of course, have its HQ in a Waffle House.

The Red Crayola – Born In Flames (from a 1981 single, collected on Singles 1968-2002) – Krayola? Crayola? I refuse to play their name-changing games. This track comes from the band’s brief period as a post-punk supergroup, with the Swell Maps’ Epic Soundtracks, the Raincoats’ Gina Birch, and Essential Logic’s Lora Logic onboard as members. Logic, also the original sax player for X-Ray Spex, provides her distinctive warbling vocals on this song, which deals with a future America transformed by a communist revolution. Yeah, I’m an unreformed Marxist and that idea made me laugh with disbelief.

The New Age – 2525 (from A Tribute to Flexipop, Vol. 10) – I know nothing about this band or track. It appeared on one of the unofficial “Flexipop” compilations of rare and obscure new wave, and it sounds like it was recorded in a port-o-john. The dismal production is a shame, because it’s an interesting bleepy-synth cover of Zager and Evans’ cheese-tacular “In the Year 2525”.