SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: VARIOUS ARTISTS – DIGGING YOUR SCENE – NEW POP & ALL THAT JAZZ 1982-1987

VARIOUS ARTISTS
DIGGING YOUR SCENE – NEW POP & ALL THAT JAZZ 1982-1987
CHERRY RED RECORDS

Hot on the heels of 2024’s Heaven Sent: The Rise Of New Pop 1979-1983, Cherry Red offers a rather lengthy but never boring four-CD set, Digging Your Scene – New Pop & All That Jazz 1982-1987. The 1980s was a fascinating decade for music. You could turn on your radio and hear everything from pop to rap to post-punk to electro beat to rock to jazz-infused rock. All of these genres seem to co-exist in peace and harmony and fans like me, would have something from every genre in their collection. Digging Your Scene – New Pop & All That Jazz 1982-1987 highlights and documents a brief rise in popularity of jazz in new wave and rock.

The four-CD set has some very interesting selections, some more jazz oriented than others, but again, it is never boring and it is a wonderful walk down memory lane for those of us of a certain vintage. Bands like ABC, Everything But The Girl, The Blow Monkeys (their song provided the title of the collection), Joe Jackson, and many more. The songs chosen certainly reflect the times and the style. Personally, I would have picked “You Can’t Get What Want (Till You Know What You Want) as an example of Jackson incorporating jazz, rather than the more pop oriented “Steppin’ Out”. But this is a small criticism, for Cherry Red has done an admirable job sifting through the music of the era. There are some lesser-known bands, such as The Weekend, Paul Haig, Blue Rondo À La Turk and The Higsons (with the song “Run Me Down”) and cult bands, such as Furniture (with their outstanding “Why Are We In Love”) who mix in with the bigger names (Style Council). But everything seems to fit together nicely.

There are some lost gems included here, especially one-offs by artists and bands, such as Alison Moyet’s cover of “That Ole Devil Called Love” or Brilliant’s interesting cover of James Brown’s “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World”, which is closer to jazz than R&B. But these songs tell the story of an era and time when pop music was experimenting, sometimes by looking backwards. But, at the time, it all seemed to make sense. Sting’s solo classic “Moon Over Bourbon Street” is often overlooked for his other excursions into jazz, but with this song he very successfully combined his jazz influences with post-punk/new wave/pop and came up with a song that is creepy and yet quite alluring.

Digging Your Scene – New Pop & All That Jazz 1982-1987 is an exhausting yet incredible four-CD set. It is another piece of the puzzle that was the 1980s pop scene, and it is well searched out if only for its historical importance mixed with fantastic music. Once again, Cherry Red has knocked it out of the park. The music plus the extensive CD book makes this an essential addition to your collection.

EMBED