I'm a fan of synth acts that are big on melody but short on critical acclaim (eg Erasure, Men Without Hats) so I'll give them a shot.

It's funny but the reason why I didn't listen to artists like Devo and Numan was that they weren't electronic enough. To my teenage mind, it seemed they couldn't quite fully embrace their synths and it rubbed me the wrong way. I fully understood why a lot of the early synth poppers thought Numan was a poser of sorts.…

It's been said that the British press effectively killed his career. He was absolutely loathed for being the forebearer of this new electronic sound - which wasn't "real" music - and the press hated the fact that he became big despite getting no help from them.

I personally think Telekon and Dance are his two best - two very different albums released a year apart. I'm afraid he'd lost me after that although there are strong moments on all his albums through Berserker. His more recent gothy stuff is too NIN for my taste, but I'm glad it's brought him back to relevance.

I think Dance is Gary's best although it threw me for a loop when it first heard it. I was expecting more of the futuristic synth rock he had on his previous releases and this was more like ambient funk. Songs like 'Slowcar to China' and 'Cry the Clock Said' seemed to drone on forever. It's definitely a grower. The…

I knew I shouldn't have read the comments.

They never had much success here in the States (although their single "Vienna" was a staple on new wave stations at the time), but Ultravox deserves a mention. The had 4 different singers: John Foxx, Midge Ure and two other guys I won't bother looking up on Wikipedia. The Foxx era tends to be favored by the more arty…

I wonder if that criticism played any part in Numan adopting a far different sound in 1981. He basically ditched the futurism and went for a more funky, organic sound which helped bring a halt to his commercial success.

Numan himself took a shot at some of the New Romantics he helped paved the way for on his song Moral from the highly underrated, and imo his best album, Dance in 1981.

Sparks and Morrissey would be a dream collaboration. The former actually just announced a team up with Franz Ferdinand in which they'll release an album under the title FFS. I'm really hoping this project will give some much needed exposure to this criminally overlooked band.

Perhaps the best and most original of the synthpop bands that came out of the late 70's/early 80's. I like a lot of the work that Marc Almond and Dave Ball did after the breakup, but they were never better than when they were together as Soft Cell. The Art of Falling Apart is the great 80's album no one talks about.

As a relatively new spud, let me just say it's been a real pleasure reading these comments (although of course I wish the circumstances that dictated them were different). They remind me a lot of Sparks with their ability to easily shift from guitar rock to electronic pop and their ability to write quirky, intelligent…

Sorry, I'm from New York and I fucking hate Billy Joel. Mainly because it seems like he appeals primarily to yuppie Long Islanders whose entire music collection consists of "Born in the USA", Journey's Greatest Hits and a random hair band cd. Plus, there's the fact that he shagged Christie Brinkley and I never will.

Yeah the art was a bit subpar aside from David Lapham's work on Plasm. Still, I liked the fact that Defiant had a very traditional anti-Image look to it.

I always felt a lot of sympathy for Shooter as well. Maybe he was a major asshole, but it's hard not to feel bad for someone that is being ganged up on even if they deserve it. Ironically I later felt the same way about John Byrne when it seemed like everyone at Image was ganging up on him.