Jeff catches up with A Flock of Seagulls singer Mike Score

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Thanks for checking out my eighties showpodcast. I'm Jeff Stevens on the anniversary
of MTV August first, nineteen eightyone, Thrilled to talk to singer Mike's
score of a Flock of Seagulls.How are you, Mike? Good?
How are you, Jeff? I'mdoing great. Thank you very much.
I had a chance to meet youand do some things with you guys over
the years, and it's nice totalk to you again. How you been

(00:20):
all right? Right? Pretty good? Tired, you know, touring is
tiring. But we've just got acouple of days off now and I'm actually
at my own house, which isquite a change from a hotel, you
know, to have your stuff aroundyou and just kind of relax for a
day or two. Yeah, thereyou go. Well, it's it's nice
to be able to do that,especially in the summertime. I believe the

(00:40):
last time I talked to you,you were in Florida. Are you still
in Florida? Yeah, I'm stillhere. Well, I'm not going to
ask for your address or anything,but party of Mike's house. Yeah,
it wouldn't be much of a party. Well, I would imagine that anytime
you're touring. It's great to getout there with the people, but then
it's also nice to you know,kind of retreat and have a couple of

(01:03):
days to chill out too. Youknow, touring is brilliant, but the
traveling is tiring. And I usedto hear, you know, bands say
that when I was a kid,and I would I used to go,
how can it be? You know, it's it's it's all magic. But
to tell you the truth, gettingon planes and driving for twelve hours is

(01:23):
not as magic as it's supposed tobe. Walking on stage, Walking on
stage and playing to fans is stillthe magic. Yeah, but you know
sometimes getting there is not the magic. Yeah, that that really makes sense.
I was met Bill Champlett of Chicagolast summer and he said the exact
same thing. He said, I, he goes, I get paid.

(01:45):
You know, I get paid totravel. He said, I. You
don't have to pay me to playshows. He said, I love playing
shows. He goes, I justget paid yea for the travel. So
I've got a slightly different thing.I do need to get paid for doing
the show. Yeah, there's nothingwrong with the check. I mean,
you're out there working hard, soyou deserve that that's for sure exactly.
So you're doing some shows of theLost Eighties Lost in the Eighties Live Tour.

(02:08):
Who are some of the other folksthat you're playing with this summer Wang
Chung and Dave Wakling Transas. Itkind of changes around a little bit,
so I can't really say this isthe set, but I know that the
top three is us, Wang Chung, Dave Wakeling, and then it gets

(02:28):
down to I'm just more interested inwhat we're doing right right well, Mike
score flock of seagulls talking to you. I ironically on the anniversary of the
birth of MTV here on August first, nineteen eighty one. MTV played such
a big part in helping you guysget your early exposure with the video for
Iran. Can you believe it's beenforty two years. It can't be.

(02:52):
I'm only twenty one myself. Thatmath doesn't work, yeas something wrong there,
But yeah, MTV, you know, totally unexpected, you know.
All I remember was the head ofthe record company Jive in England said we
need to make this little video forthis new thing that's starting in America called

(03:13):
MTV, and we were like,yeah, okay, whatever, because we
weren't really doing that much in England, you know. And then I think
like a week later they said,oh yeah, they played it, and
now they're going to play it everyhour on the hour. And that went
on for I guess months, I'mnot sure, but but what it did
was it put us in the publiceye. And of course then we started

(03:35):
to get you know, clubs andstuff and can can they come over and
play live? So we ended upcoming over there and basically not going home.
You know. So MTV wasn't likehaving a great set of parents,
you know, get you, getyou where you're going and helped you out.
Loved it well, and I bettoo was probably especially you Guys being

(03:58):
one of the first bands to reallyto really explode off of MTV, it
probably made it hard for you toto go places because as I talked to
artists you know that were part ofthat MTV era in the early to mid
eighties, you know, they said, hey, before we would tour and
you know, and then I couldwalk down the street and it was no
big deal. You know, somepeople would occasionally notice, but MTV all

(04:19):
of a sudden put put you Guyson the screen hourly in front of everyone.
Yea, all the time. Yeah, it was. It was actually
very maddening because I remember being inNew York and I wanted to go and
to a music store and check outsome of the latest gear, you know.
And I walked in the music storeand they almost had to close it

(04:41):
so I could look around, andI'm like, what are you doing?
No, you don't have to dothis, and they're like, don't worry,
Mike. You can just wander aroundthe store for a couple of hours
and we'll tell everyone to stay atthe other end or something. And I'm
like, what have I done?So I ended up meeting a few people,
and then I suddenly realized that becauseof MTV, you know, we

(05:02):
weren't being seen by thousands of people. We were being seen by millions of
people. Yeah, and those millionsat that time, they all wanted to
talk to me, you know.So it became very quite frustrating that you'd
go to a club and instead ofbeing able to just get a drink at
the bar, you'd have to havesomebody put you in the v ida area

(05:24):
and look after you. You know. So it was great, It was
it was unexpected, It was greatand I don't know. It was just
part of rock and roll. Tous, it was like wow, you
know, it was like we're seeingstars, you know, that's really cool.
And I would think, did younotice that after you made I ran

(05:46):
that all of a sudden there wasa little bit more pressure with space Age
Love Song or with Wishing or didit become more of a production or did
you feel like they were all aboutthe same? I think they were all
about the same because when we werein the studio and stuff like that,
we didn't we never went, oh, this is going to be a great
single. We just recorded them asas we wanted to hear them, you

(06:11):
know, and then it was downto the record company to to to promote
it or to get it to theright places. We knew nothing about that
side of it. Yeah. Iknew though that when we did space Age,
I was always like, this isgoing to knock them flat, you
know. And the record company wentwith Iran first, and of course they

(06:33):
were right. But for me,space Age was always the one that I
would have released first, you know. And over the years people go,
yes, space Age is my favoritesong, so that you guys do,
and I'm like, I knew itWell, it's funny because a friend of
mine and I were just talking aboutyou guys over the weekend, and I

(06:55):
said, as iconic as Iran is, I think my favorite in order is
probably Wishing space Age, and thenI ran so far away. I think
Wishing is a brilliant song, anduh, and I love I love space
Age a whole bunch, but Ithink Wishing might be my favorite Flock of
Seagulls song. Yeah I can.I'll go with that too, you know.

(07:17):
But space Age for its simplicity,Wishing for its kind of new Age
atmospherics you might say, you know, and the fact, you know,
Wishing when it was when I firstwrote it was like thirteen minutes long.
It was. It was more ofa case of it's an instrumental with some
vocals, you know, whereas spaceAge was more about the vocals being simple.

(07:42):
I mean, when I did spaceAge, I want it's simple music,
simple vocals, just exactly saying exactlywhat happens. You know, you
look and someone dies, and youknow instantly you've got a connection, you
know, and if it doesn't workout, then you're gonna shed a few
tears, you know. Yeah,Well, so whose idea was it,

(08:03):
if and then we can then Iwant to talk to you about some new
music. Whose idea was it onspace age to basically repeat your lines like
that? Was that? Your ideawas that? The producer's idea? That
that stuff comes from a little bitof discussion. You know, you're in
there, maybe halfway through the song, and you start thinking of how can

(08:26):
we enhance this a little bit?What can we you know, what can
we do? Should should we addmore guitar? Don't want more guitar?
Because it's it's beautiful just as itis. So at that point when the
vocal repeats, it's kind of likecementing that idea. You know, yeah,
it's just natural. Things like thathappened naturally. It was a brilliant

(08:48):
idea. Because now every time yousing it, you sing it, you
sing the echo. You know,it's like it's yeah, yeah, you
know, it's like you don't justsing the first part, You're got to
sing the echo with it, andit's it's just it's so cool talking to
Mike Score from a Flock of Seagulls. Your new single is called some Dreams,
and we need to keep an eyeout at a flock of Seagulls dot
Org. Tell me about that,Mike. It's one of those songs I

(09:11):
wish i'd written it in about eightythree, eighty two, eighty four.
It's a typical seagulls sound with amore modern edge, you might say.
And I wrote it in Liverpool andit took about ten minutes for the idea
to develop, and within an hourI had the whole song, you know.

(09:33):
And it's one of those that youkind of go it's a gift.
It just came and I didn't reallythink about writing a song. It just
landed on me. And it takesme to that place where, you know,
I've heard songwriters say I didn't reallywrite it. It just sell on
me. You know. I justreached up and it was there. And
that's the kind of song it is, and it has It has carries some

(09:56):
emotion, it carries some some synthytech stuff. It's modern and yet it's
it's eighties at the same time.It's it's you know, as the writer
of the song. It's hard toexplain because it just happened to me.
People outside again and listen to itdifferently and add their own experience to it.

(10:18):
So yeah, but it's about it'sabout dreaming and about about about loss
and about gain. It's kind ofweird. All right, Well, you've
you certainly have me intrigued. Now. This is so Some Dreams is coming
out soon on your website, andthen the album is also coming soon.

(10:39):
And I understand that's that's not titledyet. Is that correct. It's got
several several titles, so until themoment we're ready to drop it, it
won't be titled, because you know, there's always like like I wake up
some mornings and go, oh,I really like the idea of this this
title, you know, and thenan hour later you go, that's not

(11:03):
going to work. I wanted tocall it this like anything. You know,
if you're going to call it aname, you want to get it
right. So I keep writing namesdown on a piece of paper, and
I think we've probably got about nineor ten now, and maybe the first
one would be the best one,you know. Yeah, that's yeah,
that's true. Well, that wethat's something for us to look forward to
as well. Obviously when the wholealbum comes. Are you predicting a time

(11:26):
frame? Maybe this fall, maybethis winter. I'm gonna say in January
or February, because our touring scheduleis so hard, so full right now
that it's it's a timing thing,you know, We've got to get into
the studio and finish it out.It's about ninety to ninety five percent finished,

(11:48):
but there's always I just want todo that. I just want to
do this. I want to extendthat intro. I want to cut the
you know, the end of Idon't like the base of that kind of
thing. The final, the finalfive percent is what makes the band happy.
You know, maybe an audience wouldn'tI wouldn't know. If we're not

(12:11):
happy with it, it's not goingout, So that is truly what matters.
Yeah, you definitely want to behappy and proud of your work that
you're putting out there. And weare excited to have new flock of Seagulls
coming our way soon and we'll lookfor you on tour and hopefully we'll get
to see if if not this year, will you expect to be back out
next summer as well? Yeah,we're already booking into next year. I

(12:37):
mean right up to Easter next year. We're already basically fully booked. And
the bigger part of the lost eightiestour starts next summer. I'm not quite
sure the dates yet. They're stillworking on some of that. Okay,
Yeah, we will be out allyear. Yeah, anytime there's a new
album, take a day off.Yeah, you gotta work out a couple

(13:01):
of days off in there so youcan get back to Florida. But we'll
look forward to seeing you either eithersometime this fall or hopefully in our area
next summer. For sure, andalways great to catch up with you again,
Mike, and congrats on the newmusic and thanks for sharing your MTV
thoughts here on the anniversary of thattoo great talking to you the Happy Birthday MTV