Music Friday: 'You're Indestructible' in Spandau Ballet's 1983 Pop Anthem, 'Gold'

Welcome to Music Friday when we often bring you throwback songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the lyrics or title. Today, we return to the early days of cable TV and celebrate the 40th anniversary of Spandau Ballet's James Bond-tinged pop anthem, "Gold."

In the song, the protagonist's former love interest embodies the properties of a precious metal that is not only rare and beautiful, but virtually indestructible.

Lead vocalist Tony Hadley sings, "Gold (Gold) / Always believe in your soul / You've got the power to know / You're indestructible / Always believe in, 'cos you are / Gold (Gold).

Songwriter and lead guitarist Gary Kemp had always been inspired by the soaring theme songs composed by John Barry for the Agent 007 series and was determined to compose one of his own. Kemp headed to his bedroom and knocked out "Gold."

"I used to get my brother Martin to come in when I was writing songs to give an opinion, muck about on his bass to see if I was going in the right direction," Kemp told The Mail in 2011. "He loved 'Gold' from the start so I knew that I was on to something."

It was 1983 when Spandau Ballet earned a coveted spot on the MTV playlist with a lavishly produced music video for "Gold," a 3:51 journey of international intrigue that paid homage to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Goldfinger (1964).

In the music video, shot in Andalusia, Spain, Hadley plays an adventurer who searches an exotic town for the missing pieces of a gold puzzle.

"Gold" was released as the fourth single from Spandau Ballet's third album, True. With support from the fledgling MTV network, "Gold" became an international hit, charting in nine countries.

The song caught the attention of the BBC, which made "Gold" the theme song for its coverage of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. In 1988, the band was invited to perform the song at the ceremony that saw Seoul pass the Olympic torch to the next host city, Barcelona. Even today, "Gold" continues to be a song associated with Olympic glory.

Formed in North London in 1979 by brothers Gary and Martin Kemp, Tony Hadley, Steve Norman, and John Keeble, Spandau Ballet enjoyed a run of new wave hits in the '80s and then a resurgence in 2009.

Please check out Spandau Ballet's official music video for "Gold." The lyrics are below if you'd like to sing along…

"Gold"
Written by Gary Kemp. Performed by Spandau Ballet.

Thank you for coming home
I'm sorry that the chairs are all worn
I left them here I could have sworn

These are my salad days
Slowly being eaten away
Just another play for today
Oh but I'm proud of you, but I'm proud of you

Nothing left to make me feel small
Luck has left me standing so tall

Gold (Gold)
Always believe in your soul
You've got the power to know
You're indestructible
Always believe in, 'cos you are
Gold (Gold)
Glad that you're bound to return
There's something I could have learned
You're indestructible, always believing

After the rush has gone
I hope you find a little more time
Remember we were partners in crime

It's only two years ago
The man with the suit and the face
You knew that he was there on the case
Now he's in love with you, he's in love with you
My love is like a high prison wall
But you could leave me standing so tall

Gold (Gold)
Always believe in your soul
You've got the power to know
You're indestructible
Always believe in, 'cos you are
Gold (Gold)
I'm glad that you're bound to return
Something I could have learned
You're indestructible, always believing

My love is like a high prison wall
But you could leave me standing so tall

Gold (Gold)
Always believe in your soul
You've got the power to know
You're indestructible
Always believe in, 'cos you are
Gold (Gold)
I'm glad that you're bound to return
Something I could have learned
You're indestructible, always believing

Credit: Photo by Peter.Wetter, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Archaeologists Unearth UAE's Oldest Pearling Village; Site Dates Back 1,300 Years

An international team of archaeologists announced last week that they unearthed the UAE’s oldest pearling village on Al Sinniyah Island, about 40 miles northeast of Dubai. The site dates back 1,300 years.

Timothy Power, an archaeologist at the United Arab Emirates University, told the AP that the ancient settlement is the oldest known example of a Khaleeji pearling town, the type of settlement that sourced and traded rare and valuable natural pearls in the Persian Gulf for thousands of years. "Khaleeji" is the Arabic word for "Gulf."

Among the items discovered at the site were pearls, pots, a diving weight and a many, many discarded oyster shells.

The diving weight is an apparatus worn by free divers to quickly descend to the seabed, where they would search for oysters while holding their breath. The diving weight recovered at the site is the oldest ever documented in the UAE.

A significant portion of the pottery found at the site was made in India, which proves the local residents were trading pearls for Indian goods.

The large mound of discarded shells is a testament to the number of oysters collected during the 200 years of production at the site.

“You only find one pearl in every 10,000 oyster shells. You have to find and discard thousands and thousands of oyster shells to find one,” Power told the AP. “The waste, the industrial waste of the pearling industry, was colossal. You’re dealing with millions, millions of oyster shells discarded.”

While pearling has been a fundamental component of this region's heritage and livelihood for more than 7,000 years, unearthing settlements like the one on Al Sinniyah Island has been an elusive challenge for archaeologists. The recent find is unique because it hadn't been resettled since pearling activity ended in the 8th century and was left virtually undisturbed.

The pearling village, which included one-room homes in close proximity to more lavish multi-level homes with courtyards, reflected the fact that poor divers and wealthy merchants were living side by side.

Spread across 12 hectares (about 30 acres), the structures were made from beach rocks, lime mortar and palms trunks that were brought over from the mainland. Powers told CNN that this was a year-round settlement, "a proper town."

The pearling community, which included hundreds of homes and thousands of people, shared the island at the time with a Sinniyah Christian Monastery. The archaeologists are still trying to noodle out why the monastery was built on a the pearling island, but surmised that the pearl divers and merchants were likely Christians. The town predates the rise of Islam across the Arabian Peninsula.

Taking part in the excavation of the pearling village were the Umm al-Quwain’s Department of Tourism and Archaeology, UAE University, the Italian Archaeological Mission in the emirate and the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University.

According to CNN, at the height of the Persian Gulf pearling industry in the 19th century, nearly two in three men living in Abu Dhabi were connected to that industry.

Credits: Photos top and middle courtesy of Umm al Quwain Tourism and Archaeology Department. Photo at bottom by Alexandermcnabb, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Bahrain Gem Lab and MIT to Explore New Methods of Classifying Natural Pearls

The Bahrain Institute for Pearls and Gemstones (DANAT) is teaming up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to explore advanced methods to establish a natural pearl’s area of origin and method of growth.

MIT.nano, MIT’s open-access center for nanoscience and nanoengineering, will be the organizational home for the project, where MIT associate profession Admir Mašić and his team will utilize the facility’s state-of-the-art tools to study a pearl's morphological, micro-structural, optical and chemical properties.

DANAT is a gemological laboratory specializing in the testing and study of natural pearls as a reflection of Bahrain’s pearling history and desire to protect and advance Bahrain’s pearling heritage, which dates back to the 5th millennium BC.

"Pearls are extremely complex and fascinating hierarchically ordered biological materials that are formed by a wide range of different species,” said MIT associate professor Admir Masic. “Working with DANAT provides us a unique opportunity to apply our lab’s multi-scale materials characterization tools to identify potentially species-specific pearl fingerprints…"

Petroleum production and refining currently accounts for 60% of Bahrain's exports, but until the early 1930s, this island kingdom just off the Arabian Peninsula drew its wealth from the natural pearls that propagated the abundant oyster beds that hug the nation's coast. Bahrainis would free dive to collect oysters from the sea floor.

On June 2, 1932, oil was discovered in Bahrain, and that new natural resource — combined with competition from Japan's lower-priced cultured pearls — sent Bahrain's natural pearl industry into a tailspin.

Now, more than 90 years later, Bahrain is looking to reinvigorate its natural pearl industry. Its pearl beds are said to be larger than Manhattan.

Natural pearls are exceedingly rare because they are created by mollusks randomly, without human intervention. When a grain of sand or similar irritant gets between the mollusk’s shell and its mantle tissue, the process begins. To protect itself, the mollusk instinctually secretes multiple layers of nacre, an iridescent material that eventually becomes a pearl.

It is estimated that a pearl will naturally form in only one in 10,000 oysters.

Cultured pearls, by contrast, are created with human intervention — when a bead is embedded inside the body of the mollusk to stimulate nacre secretion.

"Today the world knows natural pearls and cultured pearls. However, there are also pearls that fall in between these two categories," said DANAT's chief executive officer Noora Jamsheer. "DANAT has the responsibility, as the leading gemological laboratory for pearl testing, to take the initiative necessary to ensure that testing methods keep pace with advances in the science of pearl cultivation.”

Credit: Image by Angela Manthorpe, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.