Running on Screen (12): China Crisis 'Wishful Thinking' video

'Wishful Thinking' by China Crisis was the biggest hit for the Merseyside band, reaching number nine in the UK charts in 1984. It's a lovely song, quite understated in an era when many songs were ruined by instrusive production. With its lyric 'I see the likeness in his smile and the way he stands makes it all worthwhile' I assume it's about a man seeing his son but not being part of his life. I'm not quite sure where running comes into it, but the video (as my friend Paul Crompton noted on twitter) featuers a lone cross country runner - or perhaps more properly a fell runner, as he seems to be heading into the hills somewhere in the north of England.

The runner - wearing what seems to be a Ron Hill vest - is seen heading across the moor, running through a field full of sheep and falling into water. Does anyone recognise the location, the vest or even the runner?

Previously in the Running on Screen series:

Running to David Bowie - Frances Ha/Mauvais Sang

Stick Man's Christmas Running Adventure

Run Lola Run and running Berlin

Walford Half Marathon (Eastenders)

Race Strategy in The (US) Office

Top of the Lake and The Fall
The Running Man (1987)
Muybridge's Runner, 1887

The Casual Vacancy

From Darkness

London Spy

Songs about Running (3): The Jogger by Bobby Bare

'The Jogger' by Bobby Bare was a novelty country hit in the US top thirty in 1983. It's an odd song to say the least - starting off with a homophobic trucker bemoaning having to share the road with a guy: 

'dressed like they do in baby blue, 

With shortie shorts and a headband too,

I yelled Sweetie I bet that you are the hit of the men's room locker... 

But I'm a runnin' late with an overload, 

So get your Adidas off a this road'.

But as the trucker accelerates the jogger gets faster and faster and leaves him behind. Well maybe that's because the jogger is apparently Jesus Christ himself:

'Then I see him joggin' up into the sky

And he yells hey thanks for the exercise

I hope that losin' this race was not too shockin'

Ya see my dad says heaven's no place to run

and I try to be an obedient son

So I have to come down to earth to do my joggin'

(lyrics by S. Silverstein)

Bizarre, but then this is the man who also sang the born again football anthem 'Drop Kick Me Jesus (Through The Goalposts Of Life)"

More Songs About Running:

Running Up That Hill - Kate Bush
Fugazi's Long Distance Runner
Stars of Track and Field are Beautiful People - Belle & Sebastian

Record Sleeve Athletics:

Musique - Keep on Jumpin'

4-Play - Olympic Rap

Sergio Mendes - Olympia

Giorgo Moroder - Reach Out

Skids - Days in Europa
Three Degrees - The Runner

Blackbyrds - Action

The Associates - Affectionate Punch

Santana - Marathon

Joan Armatrading - Track Record & Roxy Music - Flesh and Blood

Carl Lewis

BBC Sporting Sounds Effects

Record Sleeve Athletics (11): Carl Lewis

In our ongoing series of record sleeves featuring athletics, these really stand out - a series of records that not only feature one of the greatest ever runners on their covers, but were actually recorded by him.

Carl Lewis won 9 Olympic gold medals for USA in sprinting and long jump between 1984 and 1996. In the mid-1980s he also released two albums, 'Idaten' as Carl Lewis & Electric Storm (1985) and 'Modern Man' (1987), as well as a series of singles including 'Goin' for the Gold' (1984) and 'Break it up' (1987) - see full discography.

Musically, it seems to be mainly an electro-funk/hi-NRG/euro-disco sound - producers included the Belgian Fred Bekky.

Goin' for the Gold is the only track that explicitly references athletics, presumably released in the lead up to the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics when he did indeed get golds in the 100m, 200m, 4 x 100m relay and long jump.

Previously in this series:

Musique - Keep on Jumpin'

4-Play - Olympic Rap

Sergio Mendes - Olympia

Giorgo Moroder - Reach Out

Skids - Days in Europa
Three Degrees - The Runner

Blackbyrds - Action

The Associates - Affectionate Punch

Santana - Marathon

Joan Armatrading - Track Record & Roxy Music - Flesh and Blood

Record Sleeve Athletics (8): Sergio Mendes - Olympia

Previously here I have discussed Giorgio Moroder's 1984 Olympics Track Theme 'Reach Out'. Also recorded for the '84 Los Angeles games was Olympia by Brazilian musician Sergio Mendes. The sleeve for the American single shows athletes engaged in various sports.

The continental Europe release goes for a more simple torch-bearer design.

Music, to my ears, is mediocre 1980s cheese with lead vocals by Joe Pizzulo. Lyrics too are on the epic side - hey dude, it's just some people running around and swimming - no-one died!

'From the corners of the world they come

The bravest and the best
To write their names in history
And to face the final test
And they gather as they've always done
With one purpose and one name
To give the souls and lives to
The challenge of the game

Olympia, Olympia
Light the flame and let it burn
Olympia, Olympia
You will teach and we will learn
We will learn in your name
We have come to honor courage
More than glory, more than fame
We will learn if we can
The triumph of the spirit
Is the victory of man

They have traveled lonely roads of pain
For the moment yet to be
Knowing in the journey each will find
Their own humanity
And they reach out to each other
To make us all aware
That we celebrate our brotherhood
In the struggles that we share...'

See previously in this series:

Giorgo Moroder - Reach Out

Skids - Days in Europa
Three Degrees - The Runner

Blackbyrds - Action

The Associates - Affectionate Punch

Santana - Marathon

Joan Armatrading - Track Record & Roxy Music - Flesh and Blood

Joe Strummer: Marathon Runner

As several other running bloggers have noted before (including Run Dangerously and Run and Jump), the late great Joe Strummer of The Clash apparently ran several marathons.

According to Chris Salewicz in 'Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer' (2006), in April 1981 'wearing a "Clash Take the Fifth" T-shirt, Joe Strummer, the man who as a boy had been his school's cross-country running champion, ran the London Marathon. He took Gaby [Salter, his then girlfriend] with him - she made it halfway before dropping out. "He hadn't even trained. He just bought some shorts and said, "let's run a marathon". Even in personal relations Joe played his cards close to his chest: he never mentioned to Gaby that he had been the top runner at his school'.

Salewicz also says that in May 1982 Strummer ran in the Paris Marathon (as did Gaby Salter) during a short period when he was hiding out in the city while 'missing' from the band.

Another blog has queried whether this is true, pointing out that there's no photographic evidence of Strummer running in Paris and that in the 1981 picture (above), he hasn't got a bib with his number on it. The picture looks like it was taken at the Marathon or a similar event though (note police and crowd barriers)- maybe he wasn't an official entrant and sneaked in to run all or part of the race in this first year of the event.

There can't be any doubt about the 1983 London Marathon though. 'Like Punk Never Happened' has recently scanned in the whole of 'Smash Hits' magazine from April 28th 1983, and it includes the following piece. This states that Strummer ran in aid of Leukemia research with runners from 'The Sun' newspaper team,  with a finish time of four hours and 13 minutes.

'Mohican beginning to wilt a bit'

Record Sleeve Athletics (7): Giorgio Moroder - Reach Out (1984 Olympics Track Theme)

Previously in this series we featured 'The Runner' by the Three Degrees, produced in 1979 by Giorgio Moroder. Moroder was responsible for another slice of athletics action in 1984, with 'Reach Out', the 'track theme' for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. It got to number one in the German charts.

The record sleeve for the 12" extended dance mix features an abstract design of athletes seemingly, well,  reaching out. The music is pure mid-1980s, cheesy synth sounds matched by power ballad lyrics (written by Moroder and sung by Paul Engemann): 'reach out for the medal...  reach out for the gold, Come play to win, never give in... You are standing on the edge of history,  So let the games begin,  may the best man win' etc etc.

Of course the track featured on the 'Official Music of the 1984 Games' album (thanks to 80s Soundtracks for details). There was also theme tracks for other events, such as swimming, gymnastics and the marathon.

01 Leo Arnaud - Bugler's Dream
02 Loverboy - Nothing's Gonna Stop You Now (Team Sports Theme)
03 Giorgio Moroder - Reach Out (Track Theme)
04 Bob James - Courtship (Basketball Theme)
05 Christopher Cross - A Chance For Heaven (Swimming Theme)
06 Toto - Moodido (Boxing Theme)
07 John Williams - Olympic Fanfare & Theme
08 Quincy Jones - Grace (Gymnastics Theme)
09 Bill Conti - Power (Power Sports Theme)
10 Foreigner - Street Thunder (Marathon Theme)
11 Herbie Hancock - Junku (Field Theme)
12 Philip Glass - The Olympian-Lighting of the Torch
13 Sergio Mendes - Olympia (bonus)

It was the fanfare commissioned from John Williams that was actually heard the most, his "Olympic Fanfare and Theme" being played at every medal ceremony in the 1984 Summer Olympics.

See previously in this series:

Skids - Days in Europa
Three Degrees - The Runner

Blackbyrds - Action

The Associates - Affectionate Punch

Santana - Marathon

Joan Armatrading - Track Record & Roxy Music - Flesh and Blood

Record Sleeves Athletics (3): The Associates

Some more record sleeve Athletics - this one suggested to me by the excellent Run Don't Run blog. The Associates' first album The Affectionate Punch (1980) features the Scottish post-punk-pop duo - Alan Rankine and Billy Mackenzie - on the starting line.

 MacKenzie had been a short distance runner, and frequently returned to Athletics imagery in interviews. In a 1982 NME interview, MacKenzie told Adrian Thrills:  "The better shape I'm in physically, the better I feel I am musically... As I've said before, I relate music and emotion to athleticism. Athleticism is really important. The cover of our first LP 'The Affectionate Punch' was a way of saying that, with the two of us hunched together at the start of a running track'.

In an interview with Paul Morley in the same year, he drew an analogy between inspiring people with his singing and relay running: 'It makes me feel real good. Cos you feel as if someone's along beside you, sharing things. You could do everything for yourself. but ultimately that's no good. Going back to the athletics thing, which I can relate strongly to: you could do the 100 metres like I used to do and then run wi' the relay team, and you could get even more pleasure from that. Cos you helped and elated four people instead of one'.

The combination of MacKenzie's gorgeous soaring voice and Rankine's musical arrangements gave the band some unforgettable hits in the early 1980s, notably Party Fears Two and Club Country. Legend has it that The Smiths 'William it was really nothing' arouse from an encounter between Stephen Patrick Morrissey and MacKenzie - certainly MacKenzie later wrote a song 'Stephen, you're really something' (see 'The Smiths: Songs that Saved Your Life' by Simon Goddard, 2006).

MacKenzie had a history of mental health problems, and committed suicide in 1997. As a tragic footnote to Billy's sad story I note that his sister died earlier this year after falling from a block of flats in Dundee.

Billy MacKenzie, 1957-1997

Running on Screen (2): The Running Man

Running Man (1987) is a film based on the Stephen King novel of the same name (actually written under the pen name Richard Bachman). The film, directed by Paul Michael Glaser, is set in the unimaginably distant science fiction future of 2017 - only a few more years to wait now to see if it comes true!

The plot is helpfully spelt out in the film's opening titles which tell us: 'By 2017 the world economy has collapsed, food, natural resources and oil are in short supply. A police state, divided into paramilitary zones, rules with an iron hand. Television is controlled by the state and a sadistic game show called "The Running Man" has become the most popular program in history. All art, music and communications are censored. No dissent is tolerated and yet a small resistance movement has managed to survive underground. When High-Tech Gladiators are not enough to suppress the people's yearning for freedom... more direct methods become necessary'.

In other words it's a similar plot to Rollerball (1975) and The Hunger Games (2012) - a future police state where the the masses are kept in line with a mixture of brutal repression and the spectacle of deadly televised games. In this instance, the premise of The Running Man show is that prisoners and other enemies of the state are let loose to run for their lives and hunted down.

Ben Richards (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) is an ex-cop jailed for refusing to open fire on civilians during a food riot. After a prison breakout he is head hunted by the TV programme's producers who think that his biceps will boost ratings.

Arnie and the other spandex clad runners have to run through the city chased by the murderous Stalkers aiming to catch and kill them on live TV. Arnie has other plans, outrunning and outfighting his pursuers before joining with the rebels to storm the TV studio. Oh and - spoiler alert - he gets the girl. To be honest there's more fighting than actual running - Arnie/Ben's not a running away kind of guy - but of course he manages to run faster than any pursuing vehicles can manage.

Strangely despite being set in the future, the music, computers, hair and dance routines are pure 1980s!