WAS's Awesome New Wave Song of the Week #16: The Polecats - Make A Circuit With Me

Ah, the 80s … such a glorious time to be alive… Especially if you were a science nerd in engineering school !

Home computers were popping up everywhere….. Apple and Microsoft were starting to soar … Blade Runner was in the cinema… and music was shifting from disco and arena rock to … new wave!

We were trading in morons like Tony Manero and his Saturday Night Fever muscle-head nonsense for new & wondrous more cerebral sounds ….

Kraftwerk tapping on their Pocket Calculator

Thomas Dolby getting Blinded by Science

OMD singing of the virtues of Electricity and Tesla Girls

Oingo Boingo getting their Weird Science on

and a little-known band called the Polecats inviting you to … “Make A Circuit With Me” !

The Polecats were a punky - new wavey - rockabilly band out of London, kind of a cooler more glam version of the Stray Cats (who would come along with a very similar routine in the US slightly later).  The Polecats released a fistful of singles, EPs, and an album before a series of breakups & reunions.  Their best song came in 1982 towards the end of their initial run - a twangy, rocking gem that we used to call the ‘national anthem’ of our engineering college…. “Make A Circuit With Me”.  The lyrics are a what’s what of serious electrical componentry!  The video features the P-Cats running around in some kind of Orwellian dystopian future to sneak in a band practice and bring a blow-up doll to life, all Weird-Sciencey-like.  

They didn’t last long after this but what a great tune it was for nerds everywhere in 1982!

-WAS