Mark A. Mitchell

“How Can I?” b/w “All Your Love”

scum stats: repress, whatever, it’s the original I’m desirous of

For all you punk kids who think that ominous cascading synthesizer measures started with “Stranger Things” get a taste of how dark wave and cutting edge it was thirty years prior.

Was hipped to this via a post on the People’s Records instagram. Mind blown. Engineered by Rick Davis (I’d bet he did the synth programming as well from the sound of it), this forgotten single has spark.

Both songs are just odd enough, just the right amount of weird, from left field, to stick out from any number of second-rate Prince rip-offs that were a dime a dozen at this time.

While the a-side is all kinds of attitude, the flip boogies with a bouncy joie de vivre. Oh to have been even the slightest bit more conscious in Detroit in 1983.

If anyone is holding an original…I will happily open the vaults for a trade. Side note: it is quite possible I have an original copy of this buried in a box somewhere. Yes, I have a problem.