Gary Numan - Cars

Cars was released in 1979 as the follow up to Are 'Friends' Electric, which came under the band name of Tubeway Army. Gary Numan had wanted to release 'Friends' under his real name but Beggars Banquet (his label) wanted it under the band name. After the huge success of 'Friends' Gary persuaded the label to let him release under his name, so Cars is the first official Gary Numan single. The song, based about a confrontation in his car and locking all the doors to keep himself in safe, reached number 1 in September 1979, hit the top 10 in America and number 1 in Canada as well as doing well all over the world.

Over the years Cars has been remixed and has managed to get back into the UK top 20 on several occasions in 1987 and 1995, it has been covered by Fear Factory and always manages to get onto 80's electronic compilations (although it was released in 1979). The song also has been sampled in Armand Van Helden single Koochy. Cars is a track that is a classic piece of early electronic music that has influenced a generation of electronic bands and has a good video that still gets airplay today. Here's the single

The Doll - Desire Me

The charts in 1979 were an exciting time, lots of new bands with new fresh sounds were hitting the charts and appearing on Top Of The Pops. This was where I saw this band perform this fantastic single. I remember the band fronted by Marion Valentine playing the track and she was wearing a leopard skin suit to match her guitar and got all the boys talking about her. The single only reached number 28 in the charts during it's 8 week spell in the top 40. It got released as a double single (a new format in those days) 12'' & normal 7'' singles but couldn't push it any higher, but classic songs don't always have to sell huge amounts.

The band split shortly after the single, but a newly reformed band recorded the follow up single and an album but neither hit the charts again and the band split for good in 1980.

Tubeway Army - Are 'Friends' Electric?

Released in the summer of 1979, this cold dark single that ran for over five minutes appeared out of nowhere after one appearance on Top Of The Pops and pushed the single to number 1. First described as "Machine Music" this electronic single paved the way for all the other bands like OMD, The Human League & Depeche Mode to get airplay who before had struggled with the punk/new wave scene that was still around.

Gary Numan had formed Tubeway Army in 1978, released one album and was in the recording studio recording the follow up album which was to be Replicas, when he came across a synth in the studio. Everyone had thought what a great idea it was of his to make an electronic single, but as he admitted later on, all he did was replace lead guitar parts with the keyboard parts instead. After appearing on TOTP and a gimmick release of a limited editon 7'' picture disc, it climbed the charts and stayed at number 1 for 4 weeks and a classic was made!

Here are the images of the single, the original picture cover plus both sides of the limited edition picture disc