I remember hearing this on the John Peel show in my rented room upstairs at Conduit Road. If that memory is to be believed, then it must have been 1987. But it was released in 1986, so maybe I was still in the bedsit at Agden Road. I know, who cares? The point is that hip-hop (if hip-hop is what this is? it's on Fourth and Broadway) still felt fresh, and its future was still open. This record was exciting because it was… lets face it, postmodern. (And postmodernism still felt fresh; it's future still open.) In what way postmodern? It had that critique of advertising and consumerism, expressed as pastiche and parody, just as you would get in a Laurie Anderson sketch or a Talking Heads video.
And also exciting because this was the early days of sampling technology. It seemed that the technology held the promise to be genuinely subversive, to bring William Burroughs' cut-up techniques within easy reach. So what We'll be Right Back does is splice the extraordinary claims of advertising ("you can't get fresher than this!", "10% real fruit juices" — 10%! — "this offer may never be repeated") with the weasel disclaimers ("batteries not included", "please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery"). When you cut-up language the truth bleeds through the ruptures. The ultimate po-mo irony being that Steinski had a career in advertising, and that "Music and video of this advertising satire were licensed to Ovaltine UK for television advertising for 6 months. Go figure."
Nice to see that there's a Steinski compilation
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