5/17/25 @ 6pm SLT S16E5: Katt's Retro Arcade

OMG they're letting us doing it again! Clench yourself for another mix of 80s music Kimmie probably doesn't know :)
Fun starts at 5:45pm SLT.  

1980s: HIDDEN GEMS

The '80s weren’t just all shoulder pads and synthpop chart-toppers, you know. Beneath the glossy Top of the Pops veneer lurked a shadowy underworld of sonic oddities and unsung masterpieces — the sort of tracks you’d stumble across at 2am on a dodgy cassette, or buried halfway through Side B of an album your older sister forgot she owned.

Take Japan’s “A Foreign Place” — a shimmering, melancholic instrumental tucked away on early editions of Quiet Life, evoking smoky clubs and unanswered phone calls. Or how about Talk Talk’s “It’s So Serious”? Before they went full-on post-rock mystics, they smuggled this jittery gem onto their debut, The Party’s Over. No chart intentions, just pure, anxious brilliance.

Then there’s the b-side revolution — Soft Cell’s “Insecure Me” is arguably darker and more affecting than “Tainted Love”, with Marc Almond whispering paranoia over creeping electronics. Even Madonna had her secrets: the 12" version of “Physical Attraction” stretches into hypnotic territory, long before she’d get serious about voguing.

Record shop rats and bedroom DJs know the truth — those were the tracks that made your mates stop and go, what is this?. You didn’t find them on Radio 1, you found them tucked behind the sofa in a warped gatefold sleeve, or bootlegged onto a cassette with “???” scrawled in ballpoint.

So here’s to the unsung – the album fillers, the flip-sides, the extended cuts – forgotten by most but burned into the hearts of those who looked beyond the hits. Dig out that vinyl. There’s gold in the grooves. And who knows, Kimmie might know a few of them too!