Hughes was a new-music fan who would sprinkle the soundtracks to his movies with songs he discovered in the overflowing Wax Trax import bins. Those records filtered into America, thanks in part to adventurous record stores such as Wax Trax in Chicago, which was frequented by John Hughes, a young movie director and script writer from the suburbs. Combining cheap equipment with innovative lyrics and alluring melodies, OMD’s early singles, including “Electricity,” “Enola Gay” and “Joan of Arc,” became hits, and the duo’s first four albums created a template for electro-pop that was not only melodic and danceable, but cerebral and frequently disquieting.
Humphreys had some knowledge of electronics so he ended up building his own machines to make noise, and McCluskey ordered a cheap synthesizer from his mother’s mail-order catalog for the equivalent of about $10.
