by Mark Nobes, chief editor
"Prime Mover" is one of the forgotten songs from the 80s, so you can be forgiven if you can't even remember it - you are certainly not alone!
Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction (cool name by the way!) are a British rock band with a biker fashion style, and their humourous, tounge-in-cheek lyrics are not to
be taken at face value. You will note that I use the present tense, because they are still performing.
They have, so far, had just the one hit in the UK, which was in 1987 with "Prime Mover", which reached #18 in the singles chart. The song was inspired by Hawkwind's 1977 hit Quark, Strangeness and Charm.
However, as you will discover, they had more than one hit on the Indie chart.The band also achieved moderate success with their album Tattoed Beat Messiah which peaked at #20 (March 1988). Other 80s songs that didn't break the Top 40 included "Back Seat Education" (#49 - Nov 1987) and "Planet Girl" (#63 - April 1988). They managed to reach #1 in the UK Indie Chart with the their previous singles High Priest Of Love EP during 1986 and #9 on the same chart in '86 with the Wild Child EP.
Zodiac Mindwarp's most recent album was We Are Volsung in 2010.
The band was the idea of Mark Manning, who had previously been a graphic artist for a short while at the music magazine Metal Fury, using the alter ego Zodiac Mindwarp at Night. Manning left the magazine to form The Love Reaction during 1985 with Jimmy Cauty and Kid Chaos (Stephen Harris).
Before this, Manning had been a graphic designer and art editor at Flexipop magazine, which was published between 1980 and 1983, and featured a flexidisc with each issue.
Tattoed Beat Messiah (album)
Zodiac Mindwarp on stage at L'Amour in Brooklyn, New York in 1989.
Simplyeighties.com
