Silicon Teens: Daniel Miller’s synth-pop virtual band
At the dawn of UK synth-pop‘s imminent explosion, a little-known electronic quartet called Silicon Teens dropped an audacious cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘Memphis Tennessee’. Swapping the original’s rock ‘n’ roll guitars for ARP 2600s and KORG 700s, Darryl, Jacki, Paul and Diane, under the production guidance of Larry Least, playfully thrust the American songbook into a synth fringe, earnestly eschewing pop nostalgia or stale rock trends.
“They’re all teenagers and childhood friends in Liverpool,” the press release stated, adding, “Inspired by the punk movement and subsequent post-punk bands like The Normal and Throbbing Gristle, they used a synthesiser owned by Jacki’s older brother Kevin to create their songs…”
Silicon Teens was the brainchild of Mute Records founder Daniel Miller. Only counting The Normal’s ‘TVOD/Warm Leatherette’ and Fad Gadget’s ‘Back to Nature’ as singles released with the fledgling indie label, Miller conceived of a virtual band to wryly subvert the rock standards of the 1950s and ’60s with the new innovations in keyboard technology. Miller, in fact, played all of the ‘four members’ positions, and the Larry Least production moniker was a riff on British hitmaker Mickie Most.
As ever, it took BBC Radio 1 DJ and alternative music champion John Peel to push the single to relative mainstream attention. “I remember I’d given it to him and I was listening to the radio with a couple of friends,” Miller revealed on 2009’s Synth Britannia. “He said, ‘We’ve got three versions of ‘Memphis, Tennessee’ tonight. One is the original; there are two cover versions. One is really terrible and the other one is really great’. I thought, ‘Oh god!’ And fortunately, he really liked mine. He played it twice. That was one of the biggest moments in my entire career in music.”
Miller kept the ruse up for a decent stretch. In all press images and videos, Silicon Teens were portrayed by actors and Fad Gadget’s Frank Tovey as the ‘frontman’, despite all vocals being handled by Miller. Two more singles would follow, a chip ‘n’ roll take on John Fred & His Playboy Band’s ‘Judy in Disguise’, and Heinz’s ‘Just Like Eddie’ given the DIY synth treatment—Heinz himself pioneering electronic music 20 years prior as bassist for The Tornadoes’ sci-fi surf instrumental ‘Telstar’.
An album would eventually follow in September 1980, Music for Parties, Silicon Teens’ second LP after DAF’s Die Kleinen und die Bösen, and pull in fun covers across The Kinks, The Contours, and Johnny and The Hurricanes.
Notable are the original compositions penned by ‘Least’ which stand as some of the outfit’s best early cuts, the fizzy ‘TV Party’ a buoyant and jerky number charged with Devo energy, and ‘Just Like Eddie’s’ glorious B-side ‘Sun Flight’ possessed with far too much transportive energy to languish as a novelty band’s studio offcut.
The music press would quickly realise who was behind Silicon Teens, and Miller would develop Mute to one of the 1980s’ key independent labels, bringing Yazoo, Erasure, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and Depeche Mode to global stardom. Yet, along with The Normal’s homespun dystopia, Silicon Teens still shines with a chromatic hue over 45 years later, infectiously charged with the excitement of synthpop’s new creative hinterlands.
