"How I Fell In Love With:" The Thompson Twins

It is with no small amount of restraint that I attempt to tell this tale without going completely overboard and writing a full-fledged novel. It was, after all, The Thompson Twins who became my first "favorite" band. Although I had dabbled in collecting beginning with Tiffany (I collected all her cassingles and kept them in their own separate carrying case), the Thompson Twins are what started a lifetime of hunting and gathering pop music relics.
My earliest, haziest recollection of the Thompson Twins takes place back when my cousin Travis and his family moved out to a very large ranch house and I was helping him unpack, or more likely just obsessively snooping through his belongings. I remember being particularly interested in his "Dynamite" magazine collection. "Dynamite" was one of those full color pop-culture/eductational rags that cool grade schoolers ordered from one of those Weekly Reader type book club pamphlets. Although the magazine was still around during my time at Natoma Grade School, Travis' copies were a few years older and, as I was beginning to realize, I had just missed everything really cool by a few years. I remember seeing an iconic photo of The Thompson Twins from the “Into the Gap” era, and also in another issue, a photo of The Human League.
So, as a fifth- or sixth- grader in the late eighties, I began to ignore the current top 40 and instead focus on the new wave and synth-pop of the early to mid eighties.
My first Thompson Twins purchase was one of two options: I either ordered "Best Of The Thompson Twins: The Greatest Mixes" from the BMG music club, or purchased "Close To The Bone" on vinyl at this record store in Hays that unfortunately I can't remember the name of anymore. (Note to Brandon: It was on Vine Street across and south of Centennial Lanes and it later housed a coin shop, a baseball card shop, and then a cigarette shop.) I think it was called Future Sound or something like that. Anyway I don't remember which came first. I do remember spending the night at Denton George's house and staying up to watch "Night-Flight" or one of those programs that showed music videos on TBS or USA or some cable station. They played the new '88 version of "In The Name Of Love" and it was between the time I had ordered the greatest hits tape from BMG and the time I actually received it in the mail (back then it seemed to take forever).
From there, it just got ridiculous. I collected all the albums on cassette, largely through Christmas gifts one year. Then, I discovered "Goldmine" magazine, which was basically a catalog of advertisement from various record sellers throughout the world. I started saving my allowance to order 12" singles, imports, buttons and the like. Oddly enough, I do remember that I found the first album, "A Product Of" in the used record bin at GB Records for a mere dollar. I didn't know at the time how rare this album was, and being an import, how bizarre it was that I found it in Hays Kansas and for just one dollar!
At the apex of my obsession, I proudly sported a jean jacket adorned with over 30 Thomspon Twins buttons and a photo patch of the trio centered on the back. I caught no small amount of flack for wearing this in the Midwest at the end of the 80's, but I didn't care. The Thompson Twins were my heroes, and my fondest daydreams involved them moving into the house across the street from my school and becoming my surrogate parents.
I heard "Sugar Daddy" on the radio half-way through the song and stopped and though to myself "this could almost be the Thompson Twins." Imagine my shock when the song ended and the DJ announced that it was the new single from The Thompson Twins... this was the first new Thompson Twins material to come out since I had become a fan, and since I had thought they were no longer a band, it was like the second coming to me!
Sadly, the resurrection only lasted so long and my disappointment with "Big Trash" not becoming a massive chart success (so I could really stick it to everyone who had been making fun of me) put a damper on things for awhile.
My freshman year in high school, I absent mindedly scanned the "T" section at my local Wal-Mart and what should I find but "Queer" which would be the last album by the band. I felt bad that I hadn't even known about the album until after it had already been released and went ahead and bought it out of a reluctant sense of loyalty. To my surprise, it ended up being one of my favorite albums of their career and one that I listened to many, many times throughout my first couple years of high school.
Looking back, The Thompson Twins were a hugely influential part of my developmental years and their aesthetics and sound have had a creative influence on my own musical ideas despite the fact that I look at them more nostalgically than anything else these days.