The Situation - Fun/ I Don't Know What Day It Is

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Distinctly Brit-styled Electronic new wave pop from Florida

Label: President
Year of Release: 1984

I was listening to The Most Mysterious Song On The Internet the other day and marvelling at how much the elusive track had captured everyone's imagination. Once upon a time the decade whose obscure releases caused the most intrigue was the sixties, but there's no shortage of weird one-offs, demos, private pressings and general vanity projects from the eighties which are now starting to catch fire in the same way. Head over to YouTube and listen to the 80zforever channel if you don't believe me.

While this particular record isn't from an unlabelled cassette, and does have full credits and publishing details, it's still a one-off which has led me down a blind alley in my attempts to uncover further work from the people involved. Firstly, the band appear to be from Florida, with one of their members (F. Ehmen) having also been a member of the group The Numbers, who also only had one single out ("Working Girl" on Reel in 1982). Why, then, did this record only seem to pick up a release in the UK on President Records, with all the rights seemingly attributed to that label? Surely the group would have had more of a shot with their local audience back home?

Secondly, if President were keen on developing an American band, why on earth did they give up after this solitary release? Did the group spend some time in the UK promoting this, and if not, what was the actual point of the entire exercise?

There's a chance we're not likely to get any immediate answers, which is a shame. The single itself, however, is clearly very influenced by the Second British Invasion of the eighties, with the glossiest of Anglo New Romantic sounds gently rubbed into its grooves like balm. A quick look at the picture of The Situation on the sleeve also reveals a band who were obviously keen to be lipstick-wearing Blitz boys rather than suntanned Floridians (though the blonde-haired chap looks more like a member of Edwyn Collins' spoof Britpop band Expo 70). 

It's also a perfectly welcome addition to the ever-expanding list of decent yet lost eighties New Wave pop singles. "Fun" is a bouyant, bright three minutes which admittedly sounds closer to the kind of thing Ferris Bueller might have written if he'd formed a band, rather than gloomy nuclear warhead-obsessed Brits. Still, it's a bleachy blast of sunlight through the greasy windows of a Covid-19 lockdown world.

If anyone can shed any light on what the members of The Situation did next, I'd be interested to know.

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