A Flock of Seagulls "Space Age Love Song" - An appreciation of, with 15 interpretations.

Here we go again, with yet another exercise in redundancy.  Previously on these pages I've featured self-curated compilations of every cover version I could find of a couple of my all-time favorite songs, specifically Eddie and the Hot Rods's "Do Anything You Wanna Do" and Brian Eno's "Needles in the Camel's Eye."  I find "Space Age Love Song" to be equally worthy and enduring, and in many respects more sonically dazzling than the aforementioned tunes, although I hardly set this series up as a competition.  Everybody is familiar with A Flock of Seagulls signature hit, "I Ran (So Far Away)," but fewer people have encountered the 1982 follow-up single, "Space Age Love Song."  Chart-wise, it only peaked at #30 in the States, thus relegating the Seagulls to one-hit-wonder purgatory, yet if you've actually listened to the tune you know just as well as I do that it's superior to "I Ran."

It's been noted that the lyrical content of many AFoS compositions don't elaborate much further than the sum total of the song title.  Technically that's not applicable here, as the phrase "space age love song" or any variation thereof, isn't once uttered by the cleverly coiffed Michael Score.  In fact, between it's merged verse/chorus, "SALS" only offers about six different lines total - but therein lies the beauty.  As underwritten as the piece is, it isn't particularly noticeable thanks to a sublime and alluring instrumental feast of swarming synths and even more prominent echo-laden guitar.  This amalgam is nothing short of heady, and words hardly do justice in describing it, so with that, I'm presenting fifteen separate readings of "Space Age..." served up by the likes of such fairly unknown quantities as Brief Candles, Tennis System, Teeel, Dark Distant Spaces, The Bomb, Lazlo Bane, Electric Blankets, No Motiv, and The Molly Ringwalds.  For good measure, I'm tossing in a KMFDM remix, and a live rendering of the song in question by a notable Oklahoma based combo.  To top it off is a re-recording of "Space Age..." by the originators themselves.

As for Mike Score's "waterfall" hairdo that unintentionally immortalized A Flock of Seagulls (not to mention the very connotation of "new wave" itself) our man's scalp no longer contains the adequate number of follicles to replicate it, sad to say...though I do think he's still touring.  The band's '80s catalog has recently been reissued by Cherry Red.  

My apologies, but at this time it's been requested that the d/l link be removed.  Any follow up comments regarding this post will be found in the comments section itself.