An Ear For An Era: 1985

I feel like I should have more to say about 1985 music. There were some all-time classics released, mostly ones that I don't have as much personal experience as would be required to do any justice to these albums. But aside from a handful, lots of it was forgettable. So this one's kind of short.

The first album that came up for 1985 was the classic Weird Al piece known as Dare to Be Stupid. One of my favorites by him, for reasons such as the Devo-inspired title track and the Kinks-and-Star-Wars-inspired "Yoda." Yesterday I was skiing in the trees and my dad once said "watch out for that tree," so for the rest of the day I had "George of the Jungle" stuck in my head. But the most memorable track on here was an early favorite for sure. Keep an eye on those background singers/dancers.

"Weird Al" Yankovic "One More Minute"

Talking Heads' Little Creatures is the first albums of theirs that I got once I got cool enough to seek them out. Opener "And She Was" might still be my favorite song of theirs. But I dig the whole thing, from "Creatures of Love" to "Stay Up Late" to "Road to Nowhere." Good travel music and such.

Minor Threat released their last music, the Salad Days EP. These three songs are pretty mellow relative to their earlier output, which I guess suggests the directions Ian MacKaye would head in his post-Minor Threat days. Speaking of stuff Iam MacKaye would go on to do, his future bandmate Guy Picciotto was making waves with Rites of Spring and thanks to him we now have lots of crappy emo music in this world. But in 1985, emo meant something very different. Not to go into a history lesson, but it's much less embarrassing to refer to this music as post hardcore or whatever than emo. End On End has nothing in common whatsoever with whatever '00s emo you have in mind when I use that word (over and over I admit). It's kind of mathy, kind of post rock, and it's very heavy. It's just the wail Guy Picciotto used here, it's otherworldly, it's coming from somewhere so deep and dark and pained.

Rites of Spring "Persistent Vision"

The Cure was also obviously a big influence on what would become fake "emo" or whatever stuff with all the mopin' around. The Head On The Door is one of their better albums in my opinion (I prefer their pop music). "Close To Me" is a top tier Cure pop single. And this album was full of pop with a darkness. I don't know. I like this song though.

The Cure "Screw"

I was a late adapter of The Jesus And Mary Chain's Psychocandy but when Stephin Merritt made all those great comments on it describing its production I knew I had to hear it. It is a huge influence on the indie pop to come. Not only Magnetic Fields, but Best Coast and Animal Collective and everyone in between. All the noise and distortion serving just to obscure the pop melodies just beneath. 

Tom Waits. Rain Dogs. The follow-up to Swordfishtrombones. More experimental jazz sorrow coolness. I can't come up with the right adjectives to describe this album. But duh. It's amazing.

Something completely different again: Remember a couple years ago when that hip hop track came out starring all sorts of giants of the genre? That was cool. And a very similar thing happened in 1985 when Fat Boys, Run-DMC, Sheila E, and Kurtis Blow got together for "Krush Groovin'." That is the jam right there.

Fishbone is red hot!! One of my favorite live shows ever is any time I ever saw Fishbone. They'll get the party going. Strangely I used to not like this song when it was played on the ska show on the college radio station KCSU when I was in high school.  But that has changed. I oddly don't have this full album but this song is worth showing a video for anyway. I need to go more obscure I think. Whatever, Fishbone is red hot!

Fishbone "Party At Ground Zero"

Other things.

• The Smiths. Have I mentioned them yet? I have the "Louder Than Bombs" (their quotation marks, not mine) collection and quite enjoy the song "Asleep." And obvious hit "How Soon Is Now" was also from 1985.
• Dead Kennedys got all serious and long songy in 1985 with Frankenchrist. No more short songs, they were now focused on creating creepy atmosphere.
• They Might Be Giants demo!
• If Kurtis Blow ruled the world...
• Prince just kept being awesome with Around The World In A Day. "Raspberry Beret" was the big hit but the whole album is catchy as hell.
• Brian Ferry's Boys and Girls is pretty awesome.
• Mekons were quite good.
• The Descendents' second album took a turn for the pop. I don't mind that at all, but some of the magic of the first album is gone. They're still good at the pop stuff though.
• Tears For Fears accomplished some strange feat of sounding so dated and 80s yet aging so well. "Everybody Wants to Rule The World," "Head Over Heels," "Mothers Talk," Songs From The Big Chair is just so inspiring to listen to.

Next Time...

I'll do better. Ha! I know I phoned it in this time. Sorry. At least I picked good clips to show you. But I'll have plenty to say about 1986 because The Beastie Boys! And Big Black! And my TWO FAVORITE Elvis Costello albums. And the actual debut of They Might Be Giants. And another classic from "Weird Al" Yankovic.

An Ear For An Era: 1983

All right, here it is. I'm going to see how this music of my birth year defines me as a person. From the timeless to the cheesy to the timelessly cheesy. Okay.

I was born in April of 1983. One album listed on Wikipedia as being released in "April 1983" was Minor Threat's only actual album Out of Step. I have a lot of love for this album. It exemplifies the greatness of Ian MacKaye's lyrics from the clarification of the title track (insisting that he doesn't care if you drink/smoke/etc he just doesn't happen to care for it) to the satire of the closing track "Cashing In." There's a bit more complexity to the music on this album, they started turning into something more. But still with the energy level that I love about them.

Minutemen sure doubled down on Double Nickels On The Dime. (DAMNIT I just saw it was released in 1984, not 1983. Someone needs to go through my music and correct all the dates! I'll still write about it here though because I listened to it in a slightly-incorrect context). This is all I have from them at the moment but I'd like to hear more. I kind of liken this album to a more stripped-down version of Gang of Four. The same rhythm attack is there in the bass and drums, but they were not trying to make you dance. It's thinking music. And it's 43 tracks long, so it's a commitment. It's got punk rock rage without being dumbed down and it's not afraid to slow it down. There's way too much going on for someone like me without more time to devote to it to give it justice, but just listen to "West Germany." I think it covers what I've said here. Unfortunately, people that put stuff on youtube are strange so I can't find just this track. Here's apparently the full album in youtube format. "West Germany" is probably around the 45 minute mark (or just listen to the whole thing, why not??).

Minutemen Double Nickels on the Dime

Latter era Ramones are a strange beast. Oddly enough, Subterranean Jungle is the first Ramones album I got because I gave vague instructions one year that I wanted Ramones albums for Christmas and this is what I got. Of course I knew the classic early hits so this wasn't my first exposure to them as a whole, but this album wasn't exactly what I was looking for. I listened to it quite a bit anyway though, and then didn't, so this album still takes me back to those days. It's more of a classic rock/pop album, not really trying to be punk amongst an era of great artists running with what they had kickstarted only 7 or so years earlier. But it really just feels out of touch, like a band of grandpas trying to fit in. Or dads I guess. At least on tracks like "Time Bomb" about how "I'm gonna break every rule" and "I'm not gonna stay in school." Fake rebellion that is not sold by the music or the vocal delivery. But I do enjoy the songs that play to their pop strengths, like this one.

Ramones, "My-My Kind of a Girl"

Kind of a timeless song on an otherwise cheesy/dated album. Now let's flip it.

Tom Waits' Swordfishtrombones is crazy. And timeless. And one of the greatest albums ever recorded, really. It starts off with Waits screaming over a circus, includes allusions to everything he's done in the past (some spoken word content, some beautiful ballads, etc), but it's all so different. The music particularly. This is where he turns "unclassifiable" in my genre labels. Because what is this, aside from amazing? It's heartbreaking all over the place, but it's a rough-and-tumble ride through rage and such a high level of "cool" that only a few people in music have ever accomplished. Basically he could have farted into the microphone and it would have been amazing. This was ten years into an already incredible career, in the midst of an incredible string of albums, in a way that just makes everything he would do from now on "credible." And he ran with it, producing it himself, throwing everything at the wall, and all of it managed to stick.

Tom Waits "16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six"

The only full Daniel Johnston album I have is Yip/Jump Music. Super lo-fi bedroom recordings, simple songs with outrageously simple arrangements, but it's all just straight from the heart and it hits you in the heart in the most direct way that music can. He is such a great writer in the way he manages to distill it down to a few simple words.

Now we'll begin our drift from the timeless back to the dated, but this one is still timeless in a way that it doesn't matter that it sounds exactly like it's from the early 80s. I'm speaking of course about Talking Heads' Speaking in Tongues. Past their original era, past their work with Eno, they were now well-seasoned veterans of great composition. And I guess this is their most popular album because of "Burning Down The House." Which is a great house-burning track for sure. But I think "Girlfriend is Better" is a better single.

David Bowie also was getting very popular with Let's Dance, the title track of which was the #1 song in the UK on the day I was born. I used to like that track, but it's been overplayed which makes me realize that there's just not that much to the song. There are a couple other good songs on the album, but it's just not up there. And looking through what I have coming up, there's barely any Bowie I have from 1983 to 2001. I'm sure there's some good stuff I'm missing, but I think this marked the end of his great era of art rock dominance before some great comeback material he would later come back with.

New Order. "Blue Monday." One of the great house burners of the 80s and 80s revival nights and so 80s but so good. I've heard this song tons of times without getting sick of it. It comes from Power, Corruption & Lies, the only New Order album I actually own aside from their 2005 return. "Age of Consent" is a good opener, "Your Silent Face" is a good deep cut that you should listen to if you haven't, but "Blue Monday" is just one of those songs.

And now for the timelessly cheesy.

Whenever anyone tries to ask me my guilty pleasures, I have a hard time with that question. I don't think musical pleasures should be guilty. No matter what. But then I say something along the lines of "people might consider "Weird Al" Yankovic a guilty pleasure, but there's so much talent and intelligence there, and so many of my peers grew up on him that he's pretty universally loved." I don't know why that's in quotes, that's the first time I've expressed it exactly like that. But he's just great and his self-titled debut already has so much going on. It was my brother that had his self-titled tape on cassette, and the reason I got into Weird Al. We would listen to it a lot and laugh about the moaning/grunting guy that randomly popped up in "Another One Rides The Bus." And the wordplay of "Gotta Boogie." And playing "Happy Birthday" on people's birthdays. And thinking that "Stop Draggin' My Car Around" was an original and someone should reverse-parody it with "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" (turned out that already did exist as a song that was being parodied by Al, of course). And this music video, oh this music video:

"Weird Al" Yankovic "I Love Rocky Road"

Rocky Road is one of my favorite ice cream flavors and now I'm not sure if that is because of this song or not. I just can't remember if it was the reason I first tried it, if it's the reason I repeatedly asked for it afterwards, or what. I'm sure it had some influence though. But marshmallow in chocolate ice cream is a brilliant idea.

Now the guy that probably could be considered a guilty pleasure if I'm being honest. 80s Billy Joel holds a significant place in my heart even though in my heart I know his 70s output has to be better. I think my parents probably just listened to An Innocent Man a lot and because it's so catchy it caught on with me as well. Once I was talking to Neil of The Lawrence Arms about Billy Joel, insisting this was his great achievement, but now I'm kind of embarrassed for saying that because his 70s stuff probably was his great achievement. Even from the perspective of accepting that everything he did was cheesy. But An Innocent Man is all songs I know from my childhood, and I know it's silly but "Uptown Girl!" (particularly thanks to the hippie episode of The Simpsons) and the a capella "For The Longest Time!" Even in college this was one of the albums I would put on before going out, listening to this song to get me excited about hanging out with a girl I had a crush on (nothing ever happened because I didn't "Tell Her About It").

Billy Joel "This Night"

So let's see what defines me based on my birth year. Creative, punk rock, artistic but simple, and not afraid to be silly and downright cheesy. Sounds about right.

Other commentary:

• Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" came up. It's a good rocker.
• Madonna's first single "Holiday" is a pretty good one there.
• I quite enjoyed "Radio Lover" by George Jones. A good story, gets country sad of course.
• "Every Sperm is Sacred," of course. Monty Python and whatnot.
• I don't have Sports, a purportedly great Huey Lewis & The News album according to some media (American Psycho). But according to Bender on Futurama, it didn't age well. All I had was "I Want a New Drug" which is entertaining enough and reminds me of more incoming Weird Al.
• Just a couple Prince singles for 1983, but both are great jams. "Delirious" and a dance remix of "Little Red Corvette."
• Berlin is a very dated sounding band but since Alkaline Trio and others covered them I developed an interest. I have the full album on vinyl, but all I've bothered with obtaining digitally are "The Metro" and "Sex (I'm A)," the latter of which is a pretty good entry into that whole clever sexy dance thing that got so popular in the revival of the early 2000s.
• Into to Pulp! So weird that Pulp was already up and going way back in 1983. They had a ways to go before they got to some of their later era genius though.
• For the moment Elvis Costello & The Attractions are pushed to this category. Punch the Clock is one of his lesser albums in my opinion. It's mostly all bombastic horn driven stuff and some more of that dated 80s sound. Of course there are some absolute classic greats on there. I quite enjoy "Charm School" and "Shipbuilding" is still one of his greatest ballads.
• Rick James' "Cold Blooded," later to be covered by ODB, is a great jam.
• What? They Might Be Giants AND Weird Al got going in 1983? The year I was born? No wonder I'm such a nerd! I never got as much into TMBG as I would have liked to (and I still hope to even though I'm now in my 30s) but some demos here are pretty good...
• Violent Femmes had some singles, "Ugly" and the brilliant "Gimme the Car." Wikipedia says the album I gushed about for 1982 was also actually from 1983 (April even!). Oops. I wonder how many of my dates are inaccurate, screwing this whole project up?
• I only had one hip hop jam for 1983! But it's yet another classic: "Renegades of Funk" by Afrika Bambaataa & Soul Sonic Force.
• R.E.M. had their debut with Murmur. I need to give it more spins before I say much about it. But it probably signals some big step in alt rock that should be noted.

Next Time:

Big Brother is after you! Well I'm sure my 3-year-old big brother was super sweet on 1-year-old me, but watch out! 1984! Bruce Springsteen is back to being cheesy/bombastic, hip hop starts expanding with Fat Boys and Run-D.M.C., Husker Du is the classic punk rock band, a return of Leonard Cohen, The Pogues arrive, Purple Rain falls, Scratch Acid, The Smiths, and another Weird Al classic (I might have this at the end of every "Next Time" for a while since I look in alphabetical order and they were all classics in my eyes).

An Ear For An Era: 1981

Put in some grand statement here later. 1981 is the year my brother comes from. And more punk and other stuff that was decidedly not punk. Is that good enough? I think so...

In high school I was obsessed with Minor Threat. I even did the straight edge thing when it didn't matter (i.e. when I wasn't 21 yet). I judged people that drank underage. So when I was getting into punk rock and discovered Minor Threat they became my favorite hardcore band. They had two EPs in 1981, both very solid. There was a self titled one and In My Eyes. This coming up early on in the rotation was very energizing and brought me right back there. In My Eyes has two of their classic songs "In My Eyes" and "Out of Step (With the World)" but the self titled debut is front-to-back hardcore brilliance. I admit that it's weird for me to separate these out because I know it as the "Complete Discography" album and I always listened to the full thing, but the tracks that ran through as I listened to just the first release they ever had were full throttle, 8 songs in 9 minutes, and it all begins here:

Minor Threat "Filler"

So that was the DC scene. Let's go to the west coast. I finally got to catch up with Black Flag, who I know went back to punk's beginnings, but the earliest material I had available was Damaged. I hate that I keep saying classic but that's what this is (Kill yr idols!). More music to throw yourself around the room to. This video is one I saw back in those high school days on a show called Punk TV that aired late at night. It's so dated but it's so enjoyable...

Black Flag "TV Party"

The Cramps' second album already kind of had them slowing down. Psychedelic Jungle just kind of went by. There was stuff on the album I quite enjoyed but it was more in a slow, brooding way as opposed to the unhinged nature of their early stuff. Kind of like when The Stooges went slow. But someone else took over in most evil sounding group in punk. Or post punk or whatever. I'm talking about Nick Cave's early group The Birthday Party. Prayers on Fire shows the darkest side of Cave, before he developed his cool. Here is a song where he sounds like Zorak, the music sounds vaguely jazzy, but entirely straight from Hell. Maybe this was my favorite album of 1981?

The Birthday Party "Nick The Stripper"

Because I have no better place to put this, AC/DC! Is this my first actual metal I've covered here? Yes besides a couple mentions of Judas Priest and Ozzy. For Those About To Rock We Salute You is the only AC/DC album I own, so I'll just talk about what I like about them. The drums. The beat. It sounds classic. Like it's from another era in another dimension. It doesn't seem like typical metal drumming to me. The guitars are metal, the drums are some sort of alternate classic rock. The vocals bring them together.

And now new wave because why not. Depeche Mode's Speak & Spell is so much poppier than the Depeche Mode I typically associate with the name (and I like to call them The 'Peche). Did you know Violator came out way in 1989? We won't get to that for a bit. But this is when they were one of those new wave bands cashing in more on dance beats than darkness. I can't resist the catchiness of the popular "Just Can't Get Enough" and this one:

Depeche Mode "Boys Say Go!"

The poppy new wave group of choice for me for 1981 is definitely Soft Cell. In the early aughts when I was all into electroclash and dancing and such, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret was my go-to record for dance mixes and getting excited to go out and requests. Sure, the "Tainted Love" cover is popular enough to call them a one hit wonder, but there's so much great sleaze to this album, it's enticing and sexy and danceable in all the best ways. I've long wanted to create a mashup of Franz Ferdinand's "The Dark of the Matinee" and this song for a sexy jaunt in the cinema:

Soft Cell "Seedy Films"

How about hip hop? If the day comes that I have a child, and that child one day goes to school, I might have to play the Connecticut hip hop novelty gem for them "Get Up And Go To School" by Pookey Blow from that Third Unheard compilation I mentioned last time. Unfortunately that song is not on youtube. But Afrika Bambaataa & The Jazzy 5 kept reminding me of Jurassic 5 (I'm guessing Jurassic 5 was aimed partially at reminding people of The Jazzy 5) with this song. Fine, we'll do an actual great song!

Afrika Bambaataa & The Jazzy 5 "Jazzy Sensation"

I don't have a lot of ska from 1981, but I have one of my favorite 2-Tone era songs, which was released only as a single. It's been in some movies (Shaun of the Dead used it quite well) and can put me in certain movie moods, but it's still such a great stand-alone song that I have to share.

The Specials "Ghost Town"

And now we have to talk about Elvis Costello. He put out two albums in 1981. First was Trust, a favorite of many but one of my less favored in his overall library. Something about the cover with the sunglasses, the beats used, it seems like he's just trying to be cool in 1981. It feels more dated than the rest of his material. It still has some great songs and I feel like I need to give it more spins to fully appreciate it. I always love the ballads. Particularly "Different Finger." But there was another album: "WARNING: this album contains country & western music and may cause offence to narrow minded listeners." Almost Blue was his country covers album. And kind of like My Aim Is True, I kind of preferred the bonus disc. This bonus disc had 27 tracks. Apparently he recorded a lot of country covers (ok some of these are live performances, some are countrified versions of songs he would later release in a different style, and some tracks appear multiple times in different versions). One of my favorite Costello songs is "Stranger In The House," an original country tune that has appeared on several bonus discs of his tracks from earlier in his career and never on a proper LP. But what I tend to like about cover albums and/or genre-concept albums like this is what it opens up in future released by the artist. This is the predecessor for my favorite Elvis Costello album King of America (coming in 1986!), and it also paves the way quite heavily to his next album of original material Imperial Bedroom (which is another favorite). I think I just like him doing ballads, and covering all these sad country songs sparked the same piece of the songwriter that had originally written "Stranger In The House" in the mid 70s. So...good ballads coming up thanks to Almost Blue (which is also the name of one of my favorite ballads by him, coming up on Imperial Bedroom).

Elvis Costello "A Good Year For The Roses"

Some other great country was coming out. I'm not sure what the deal was with country around this time. But the outlaws were chuggin' away makin' great tunes. George Jones had "If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)" and Emmylou had this heartbreaking (big surprise!) "Colors of Your Heart," which does not seem to be on youtube.

Also to Say...

• Bob & Doug McKenzie's album The Great White North was from this year. I just have a couple tracks from it. But those dudes're funny.
• The first stuff I have from Daniel Johnston from the Welcome to My World compilation popped up. "Living Life" is a great track but I know even better is on its way.
• Yep, cheesy pop was a very big thing. This year brings us "Endless Love" by Diana Ross & Lionel Richie, such Hall & Oates gems as "You Make My Dreams Come True" and "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)," Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'," Phil Collins' great "In The Air Tonight," 
• Just the year after Lennon passed, George Harrison released "All Those Years Ago." Ah, memories...soon I will reach a time in this of where I had memories.
• One of my favorite 80s pop/new wave/whatever songs is "Don't You Want Me" by The Human League. Good show.
• Joan Jett & The Blackhearts' I Love Rock & Roll means we are close to Weird Al's infiltration of this blog. I for one welcome it. Also this album is quite enjoyable.
• The great Freddie Mercury-David Bowie duet "Under Pressure" by Queen was released as a single. I might talk about it more when I get to the album next year, but for now...remember how great this song is???
• The Ramones kept doing what they'd been doing. I don't have the album Pleasant Dreams but I have the track "The KKK Took My Baby Away," a classic despite coming out all the way in the 80s.
• "Super Freak."
• "Start Me Up."
• Rush! Classic year for Rush. "Tom Sawyer" and "Limelight." If I felt like looking up what album this was from I'm sure it's one I'd enjoy quite a bit.

Next Time...

More great Afrikaa Bambaataa! More great punk (Bad Brains are introduced! So are The Descendents The Best Pop Punk Band Of All Time! And Flipper and The Misfits and The Vandals and More great Clash for maybe the last time with Combat Rock! )! Some more ska (Bad Manners! Madness has their biggest hit!), 80s goodness from Billy Idol, Bruce Springsteen (Nebraska, his best album??), another early favorite Elvis Costello Album, MAIDEN, Art from Laurie Anderson and a certain young band calling itself Sonic Youth, a belated farewell to Lou Reed (thanks to his classic The Blue Mask), and holy crap indie rock is a thing because The Violent Femmes are now a thing with an album.

And pop classics 1999 and...Thriller. 

The last year before I existed.

But before all that I'm going to take a break here for December. I'm going to attempt to make sense of 2013 and come up with a list of what was good and stuff so December 2013 is dedicated to 2013. I'll make a post about that but AEFAE will see you in 2014 for 1982 if that makes sense. 1982 looks enticing though.