Spoons -- Tell No Lies

 

Well, we've reached the final day of June, and for us here in the Great White North, that also means the eve of Canada Day. Tomorrow on July 1st, the country will be celebrating 155 years of existence, and as such, I've decided to devote a couple of Reminiscings of Youth articles today and tomorrow to Canadiana.

First off, this will be the third ROY article dedicated to the Burlington, Ontario band Spoons which had its heyday in the 1980s. However, compared to the atmospheric synthpop of "Nova Heart" and the breeziness of "Romantic Traffic", their 1984 single "Tell No Lies" was a whole other animal. Even the Wikipedia article for Spoons remarked that this particular song was a bit unusual for the band. 

For one thing, it was fully dunked into some really upbeat pop with the addition of a horn section that seemed to burst out from Tito Puentes' band and merge with some of that Spoons synthiness (yes I know that the preceding isn't a real word). For another, I remember seeing the music video for "Tell No Lies" and thinking that Gordon Deppe, Sandy Horne and the rest of the guys must have hit the sauce really hard since these guys were just happily goofing around in this air vacation gone horribly wrong (and on a more serious note, Toronto's own Pearson Airport is going through some major logistical issues along with other airports around the world; do wonder about Narita and Haneda in the Tokyo area, too). But hey, they need to have fun as well.

And "Tell No Lies" is a fun song. In fact, I made it SOP for a while as a late teen to always listen to it whenever it came on the radio, and I did a search for the extended version. I did find it on one of the regular Saturday night dance remix shows, fortunately enough. Moreover, both "Tell No Lies" and "Romantic Traffic" shared the same September 1984 album "Listen to the City" which was actually the soundtrack for a cinematic drama of the same name that had bassist Horne as one of the cast. Both she and Deppe worked on the album which has been apparently discontinued according to the band's website but it does exist via that YouTube link above.

Now, what was also coming out in September 1984 from Japan?

Hiroshi Tachi -- Nakanaide (泣かないで)

Checkers -- Hoshikuzu no Stage （星屑のステージ）

Takashi Hosokawa -- Naniwa Bushi da yo, Jinsei wa （浪花節だよ人生は）(although J-Wiki says it was August)