Comments on: Street Sounds Electro

By: B

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:56:04 +0000

Oddly enough, the StreetSound mag was started by my family in the 80’s out of Toronto sold mostly in North America, UK, Germany & Japan.

I’ve been thinking about scanning all the issues I have.

By: John

John — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:51:07 +0000

Hi Skroez. That doesn't ring a bell with me at all although a mag doesn't seem surprising since Morgan Khan was eager to expand his product lines. There were a few minor music/culture mags around at that time which flourished for a while then vanished. Nothing on Flickr, unfortunately, which has another otherwise decent selection of Street Sounds album and cassette graphics.

By: skroez

skroez — Mon, 18 May 2009 12:40:36 +0000

Can you Remember Street sounds Magazine? I was only young at the time, But I’m sure there was a magazine out called Street sounds, One cover I remember was Mantronix with a aerosol paint mask, Behind him a rocking piece, with a can of buntlac grasped with both hands.
I remember the mag had features on the London Graffiti scene, to a young kid living in Cardiff, long before the internet, this was dope, quality mag anyway from what I remember..

Nice one..

By: John

John — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:00:02 +0000

Thanks for the info, John, that’s good to know since none of this appears to be documented online.

Regarding Brody and The Face, I should have said the sleeves were “perhaps” influenced by his magazine design. Brody changed the The Face logo by extending the letters then flipping them to vertical for issue 30 in October 1982, a very radical move at the time and one that was widely imitated in other areas. The logo remained like that for the whole of 1983. By the time he came to pastiche the Electro cover style himself, he’d switched the title back to the horizontal.

By: john carver

john carver — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:44:22 +0000

Hello.CARVER’S art directed all the early StreetSounds sleeves,made the TV commercials and radio ads and bought the airtime and media space for all the campaigns.In fact CARVER’S was the biggest buyer of radio airtime in the Music Industry…and it was me at a desk in Great Titchfield St,W1.I used to work with 2 very talented designers who called themselves Red Ranch…then Ranch Associates.Morgan heard some tunes being played in the studio I used to share with a film production company called Standard Pictures.One of the producers used to share a flat in W11 with DJ Noel Watson.They were some of the first people to learn about Electro,buying import 12″ singles from the USA at £5 each.Morgan put out an album with 12 tracks on it for £5!Electro 1 entered the UK Pop chart (not dance chart) at 18 going on to sell 60,000 units.The album featured tracks no-one had heard of.Neville Brody was inspired by our design to create a cover for The Face…not the other way round.I invented the line ELECTRO IS AURAL SEX that you see on all the sleeves.We created a boxed set which is hugely collectable.I lent mine to Banksy’d mate Paul Insect when he worked for me many years later and haven’t seen it since.For the record Morgan had the idea for a series called Street Music and I suggested it was called Street Sounds.The rest is history…

By: John

John — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 20:53:50 +0000

Don’t mind my griping, much of it is familiarity breeding contempt, I think. The obverse of that is foreign stuff seeming more exotic which is how those NYC records seemed to me. I spent that decade being resolutely unfashionable in black leather jacket, black jeans and Doc Martens. My wardrobe hasn’t changed much, come to think of it!

Robert Elms has been on TV here for years so he’s over-familiar (again!), seems to be hauled out whenever there’s an Eighties’ retrospective happening.

By: Thombeau

Thombeau — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 18:20:57 +0000

As you can imagine, The Face was rather difficult to find in Chicago in the 80s. So I was pretty snooty about getting it! (Also Melody Maker and NME) I lost interest in it as I got deeper into things, and now I couldn’t care less, of course!

The documentary about the Blitz Kids that I posted (probably not of interest to you, but to someone who only read about it—in The Face!—and lived a watered-down American version of it, it fills in a lot of blanks) has interview footage with Robert Elms, who I had totally forgotten about until I saw him again. I always thought he was cute, with a bit too much attitude, and now…he looks like just another bloke whose best years are behind him!

By: Elsewhere #5 « Jahsonic

Elsewhere #5 « Jahsonic — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 15:01:58 +0000

[...] there is { feuilleton } with an extended profile on Street Sounds Electro and lots of audio via Youtube, praising the music [...]

By: John

John — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 02:16:29 +0000

I’ve still got my copy of the Cabs record. And the 7-inch and the album of the same name! Was a big CV fan at that time. The other track was Just Fascination which was also a better mix on the 12 than on the album.

I liked Brody’s design more than the magazine itself although they had some decent writers such as John Savage. I was rather snooty towards it at the time since it was also the bible of a certain kind of posy student type. But it was certainly one of the defining works of the period. And using a cross symbol on the covers to indicate “plus”–something NB invented–is now a feature you see in magazines all the time.

By: Thombeau

Thombeau — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 01:41:57 +0000

Wow. I totally had that issue of The Face (that magazine was my bible in the early eighties!) and also that Cabaret Voltaire 12-inch. It had “Crackdown” on one side and, I believe, “This Fascination” on the other. You really took me back to a time and place, bro!