Some Rob Sheffield-related links

The title track, OMD's "Enola Gay" (As the video's title info clarifies, OMD=Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark)

Haircut 100's "Favourite Shirt (Boy Meets Girl)". Great song, classic goofy 80's video from the very early days of MTV, when only new wave bands seemed to be actually making videos.

New Order's "Temptation" (alluded to on p. 70 of Sheffield's piece, "Up! Down! Turn around! Please don't let me hit the ground")

The Smiths "Ask" (alluded to on p. 72, "Spending warm summer days indoors")

The band Sheffield discovers in Spain, Mecano, and their hit, "Me cole en una fiesta" (The title translates as "I crashed a party").

Later in the piece, Sheffield mentions the Smiths' lead singer Morrissey's song from his long (and ongoing) solo career, "The National Front Disco" (a song that illustrates that 80's music culture was intimately connected with politics in England as well as Spain).

Sheffield refers to Depeche Mode and Soft Cell in passing, so here's Depeche Mode's "People are People" and Soft Cell's one hit, the classic goth-love torch song "Tainted Love" (which, it turns out, is a synthed-out but fairly faithful cover of a 1964 song recorded by Gloria Jones). He refers to the German band Trio's improbable hit "Da Da Da" (which was a minor hit in the US several years after Sheffield hears it in Spain.) He mentions a number of other non-techo-pop/new-wave bands, but to keep this post from getting too much longer, I'll just link one "See-MOAN y Gar-FOON-kel" song.

If you've never seen Airplane!, here's the classic "don't call me Shirley" joke that Sheffield alludes to:

And, with regard to the title of Sheffield's book, and just in case you've forgotten about (or were not aware of) the infectious appeal of Duran Duran, here's "Rio" (Content warning: Simon LeBon in a really small Speedo)