Rational Youth is a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 New Wave

New Wave music

New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...

 band, originally formed in 1981 in Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

, by synthesizer wizards Tracy Howe, former singer and drummer for Montreal punk band "The Normals", and Bill Vorn, both of whom idolized the German synthpop

Synthpop

Synthpop is a genre of popular music that first became prominent in the 1980s, in which the synthesizer is the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic art rock, disco and particularly the "Kraut rock" of...

 pioneers Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...

.

Among the band's notable singles were "City of Night", "Saturdays in Silesia" and "Dancing on the Berlin Wall," from their debut album, Cold War Night Life (1982); and "No More and No Less" from Heredity (1985).

In 1999, Rational Youth, with a new lineup of original frontman Howe and new keyboard players Jean-Claude Cutz and Dave Rout, released its first album after fourteen years, To the Goddess Electricity.

Rational Youth toured throughout Scandinavia over the next two years, playing its final concert on November 3, 2001, at the Tinitus Festival in Stockholm, Sweden.

Original members Tracy Howe and Bill Vorn came together again in 2009, recording a new version of their 1982 hit "Dancing On The Berlin Wall" in honour of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall.

Personnel

• Tracy Howe – vocals, synthesizers, guitar
• Bill Vorn – synthesizers, vocoder
• Kevin Komoda

Singles

• "I Want to See the Light/Coboloid Race" (12", 1981)
• "Cite Phosphore" (7", 1982)
• "City of Night" (12", 1982)
• "Saturdays in Silesia" (7"/12", 1982)
• "In Your Eyes" (7"/12", 1983)
• "Dancing on the Berlin Wall" (Dutch 12", 1984; unauthorised extended edit)
• "No More and No Less" (7"/12", 1985) - hit #88 on the RPM Canadian charts
• "Call Me" (7"/12", 1985)
• "Bang On" (7"/12", 1985) - hit #91 in the RPM Canadian charts
• "Malade" (7", 1985)
• 3 Remixes For The New Cold War (EP, 1998)
• "Everything Is Vapour/Money And Blood" (CD single, 1999)

Studio albums

• Cold War Night Life
  Cold War Night Life
  Cold War Night Life is the debut album by Rational Youth, containing their greatest hit "Saturdays in Silesia". Long out of print, it was re-released on CD in 1997 after an e-mail campaign by fans...
  
  (album, 1982; CD release 1997)
• Rational Youth
  Rational Youth (EP)
  Rational Youth was the eponymous EP by Rational Youth, and the band's first release under their Capitol contract. It was released on CD in 2000 as part of the Early Singles box.-Track listing:#"In Your Eyes" - 2:53#"Just A Sound in the Night" - 3:48...
  
  (mini-album, 1983)
• Heredity
  Heredity (album)
  Heredity is a 1985 album by Rational Youth, now down to singer Tracy Howe with numerous studio musicians. In retrospect, Howe was less than happy with the album, especially with the fact that it looked like he was using the Rational Youth name as a flag of convenience for a solo album...
  
  (album, 1985; never released on CD)
• To the Goddess Electricity
  To the Goddess Electricity
  -Track listing:#"Ludwigshafen" - 4:34#"Pink Pills, Orange Pills" - 4:52#"Money And Blood" - 5:04#"Energie" - 3:36#"Back From Madrapour" - 4:13#"Talk To Me " - 3:48#"In My Imagination" - 3:36#"To The Goddess Electricity" - 2:35...
  
  (album, 1999)

Compilations

• Total Rational! (unauthorised Dutch compilation CD, 1994)
• All Our Saturdays (1981-1986)
  All Our Saturdays (1981-1986)
  All Our Saturdays is a retrospective CD compilation of Rational Youth songs. The CD booklet contains a discography, a band biography written by vocalist and band mastermind Tracy Howe, and Howe's comments to each track...
  
  (compilation CD, 1999)
• Early Singles
  Early Singles
  Early Singles is a CD box with re-issues of Rational Youth's pre-Heredity singles and the eponymous EP...
  
  (CD box, 2000)
• The 20th Anniversary Collection
  The 20th Anniversary Collection
  The 20th Anniversary Collection is a 2001 compilation CD from Rational Youth, released, as suggested by the title, to commemorate the band's twentieth anniversary...
  
  (compilation CD, 2001)

External links

• Official Website
• YUL Records Rational Youth's label website