Image by Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

1979 – Gary Numan’s Cars

Cars, with its iconic synth sound was the one song that made me aware there was more to rock music than drums, bass and guitar.  The track,  from Gary Numan’s Pleasure Principle, was released as a single in August 1979. It became a number one hit in the UK and a Top Ten hit in the US,  rising to number 9 there.

Years later, I was the proud owner of a Korg DW-8000 synth which I learnt to programme, though my main instrument was always bass.  When I placed an advert in a local music magazine to start a band, I came face to face with musicians who wanted nothing to do with synthesisers.  Their opinion that synths were not ‘real’ instruments always puzzled me.

As an artist, you must keep an open mind and learn to evolve with the times, if not, you will become stagnant, and how can you create if you’re stuck?

Most of you should be familiar with this song, if you’re not, have a listen. I wanted to use the original video, but YouTube isn’t allowing embedding for it…

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This is the first of a series of posts discussing music, year by year. I bet you cannot figure out what year comes next…