Living In a Box was one of those bands/songs that didn't make a splash at all amongst my crowd of Midwestern 80s hipsters. Decades later, when New Wave nostalgia package shows became a thing, my friends and I were mystified as to who the hell Living In a Box were when they started turning up on the bills of those shows. They were completely unknown to us, as the back half of the 80s was when almost complete indifference to whatever the heck was going on in the top 40 really began to set in.
When I finally heard the song "Living In a Box," it was definitely a late-80s "There are still New Wave bands?" song. Superior to others of their ilk like Johnny Hates Jazz or Animotion, for sure, but nothing I would've paid much attention to at the time even if I had heard it, being a full-fledged convert to College Rock by that point.
But discovering it at an advanced age when "That's not the kind of thing a man such as I would listen to" was much less of a factor than "Let's see what I might have missed back when I was an insufferable shithead", I have to admit that I thought "Living In a Box" was...okay-ish. I probably liked it a lot more in the 2010s than I would've in 1987, but I don't really regret ignoring it in favor of
Pleased To Meet Me or
Monkey On a Chain Gang, etc., at the time.
Anyhow, R.I.P. Richard Darbyshire. Sorry I was late to your party, but you seemed like a decent enough guy.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2025 03:45PM by breno.
