vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 9, 2012 18:35:45 GMT 1
1976
The Sex Pistols - Anarchy In The UK
OK, this is the most obvious pick since 1955, I reckon. It had been coming for a while, MC5 led the way and the likes of Iggy and New York Dolls had been getting there, but eventually it all coalesced in a fetish shop at World's End.
Forget the Malcolm McLaren mythologizing. The Pistols, as you can see, were musically really, really tight; Matlock grew up listening to reggae and ska, Jones was a demon axeman, Cook with a timing gift. They had played together in bands but needed a frontman. Jones and Cook used to shop at Vivienne Westwood's Sex, the shop she had previously called Let It Rock and Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die catering to a teddy boy and rocker retro audience, and Matlock worked there, so it was easy enough for them to wait for someone like-minded to show up. It was a scrawny erbert in a defaced Pink Floyd t-shirt who, when asked if he could sing, sneered "no, but I caaaaan play the violin, very badly"; one 'audition' later and he was in.
The rest of the story is simple enough. Cash from chaos. Bill Grundy, swear for me, foot through telly. EMI, big golden hello, even bigger golden goodbye. A&M, Rick Wakeman critique, bye. Virgin, desperate to shed hippiedom, there you go. Matlock, who co-wrote with Rotten, eased out. One album of eight scintillating tracks. Secret tours under anonymous names. Groupie Vicious brought in for the look, the music really ends. Rotten is bored and breaks it up to form PiL; Vicious lives the myth and dies.
But in their wake, WHAT a legacy. 1976 was Year Zero. They all re-started then. The Damned beat The Pistols to the first punk release, deliberately so; but it was The Pistols that had the impact. It was at a Pistols concert that Buzzcocks got together; it was seeing the Pistols that caused Adam Ant to ditch Bazooka Joe and take on the world. The DIY ethos - three chords, form a band - had the same effect as skiffle in the fifties and before long there were thousands of acts, as well as nascent media types getting their start in journalism via the fanzine scene (from Danny Baker down to Julie Burchill).
Most brought nothing to the table, other than unwanted aggression and a lunatic fringe. They took McLaren's proclamations of talentlessness too seriously to realize that the original Pistols were 75% the product of hard work and talent; and as for the remaining 25%, nobody had the swagger and sharp intelligence of Mr Lydon. As was proved post-break up - it was Lydon who moved everything on with Public Image Ltd, Matlock never achieved greatness again and Cook and Jones were too content to be led by McLaren into ever stupider ideas.
But for a brief moment The Pistols supernovaed like nothing ever had before.
In sum: your future
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Post by raliverpool on Oct 9, 2012 20:27:29 GMT 1
The equivalent 10 songs in my list feature 4 identical choices: 1971 Al Green - Let's Stay Together www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVzYxqG9N1c (this brilliant mellow R'n'B soulful record by the Reverend preceded the Philly Soul sound that dominated music of black origin until the Disco era) 1971 The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again1972 David Bowie - Starman www.youtube.com/watch?v=v342TST9tFw (Unquestionably the greatest British male artist of popular music, and arguably the most influential person in British pop culture. This TOTP performance was the proper (re)start of a legend which influenced so many artists as he "subverted the whole notion of what it was to be a rock star". Vas how could you omit it). 1972 Stevie Wonder - Superstition www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDZFf0pm0SE (The Motown Child prodigy spectacularly grew up to release 4 self penned stunning classic albums and be far more successful than he was before) 1973 Iggy & The Stooges - Search & Destroy www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDNzQ3CXspU (Post Garage (not the Craig David type), Proto-Punk template from the Godfather of Punk) 1974 Big Star - September Gurls www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNKSs1J38EA (the best Power-Pop record ever. Lyrically Alex Chilton & co added dark, nihilistic themes, and produced a style that foreshadowed the alternative rock of the 1980s and 1990s) 1975 Kraftwerk - Autobahn1975 Bob Marley & The Wailers - No Woman No Cry1976 Abba - Dancing Queen www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFrGuyw1V8s (The band who defined Euro-Pop and provided a large amount to the soundtrack of the 1970s including their most successful single which was surely influenced by the early disco classic George McCrae's Rock Your Baby) 1976 Sex Pistols - Anarchy In The UKIf 1971 was not such a vintage year then I could have easily selected Marvin Gaye - What's Going On; T-Rex - Get It On; Rod Stewart - Maggie May; Isaac Hayes - Theme From Shaft ..... and if 1975 did not have two such obvious choices then Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run would have been a cert in most other years.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 10, 2012 22:38:55 GMT 1
ABBA - Dancing Queen
There's a great episode of Red Dwarf (actually there are loads) that features Ace Rimmer. An interdimensional traveller trying to find the alternative Rimmers in different universes. Of course he chances upon the hapless Arnold. From what a guy to not a guy.
There was one tiny difference in their lives that sent them on varying career paths. An exam failure, Rimmer being kept down a year and humiliated. Only it was not Arnold that suffered that, but Ace. The knock-back made him more determined to be a success.
In 1973 a group named after their initials - good job they weren't called Charles, Ursula, Norman and Tracey, otherwise they'd've been "TUNC" - tried out for the Swedish entry for a Song for Europe. They came third.
If at first you don't succeed, try again. Annifrid, Bjorn, Benny and Agnetha were back for 1974 with a Napoleonic-inspired ditty and romped to victory by a near-record margin. In an instance of the quality of mind behind the British record industry at the time, the UK jury awarded "Waterloo" nul points. Then again, we had Olivia Newton-John entering. Oh God.
Nevertheless, "Waterloo" was a success, and ABBA tried - and failed - to follow it up with similar success. Just another one of those Johnny Foreigner Eurosongers who would vanish into the pop aether, like Dana or Vicky Leandros. Only they came back with a top ten via "SOS and then, mirabile dictu, a number one via "Fernando". Hang on a sec. This was a bit different. And the hits kept coming.
They reached their peak with "Dancing Queen", which topped the US as well as the UK charts. And ended up with nine UK number one hits, and the most successful album in chart history - number one over a double decade. (I've therefore taken an Executive Decision to cheat slightly; by rights I should have a 1977 single now, but given that I would have had "Knowing Me Knowing You", I slipped this one in a year early. It is their most iconic song, after all.)
So what was happening? Well, nothing much. Anyone who has seen the 1976 TOTP repeats will see just how barrel-scrapingly atrocious the programming was; the TOTP Orchestra trying to play disco for Boney M, desperately pushing - oh God - Olivia Newton-John et al in a doomed and futile attempt to chart them, and number one hits by people like Manhattan Bloody Transfer. What ABBA did right was simple enough to describe, nightmarishly difficult in practice. Just pop songs with killer tunes, baited hooks and sophisticated lyrics. To a backdrop of purest gash, ABBA come across like a spring of purest sweetwater.
In essence, they were the first pop group. We have gone through rock & roll, r&b, soul, beat, bubblegum and so on, but ABBA took the ordinary and made it extraordinary. And their influence? Well, the Stiff tours featured the likes of Dury and Costello, yet what was on the tour bus' cassette player? ABBA.
The rainbow of music had come together into the white light of ABBA. And, indeed, it's pretty much killed off quantum leaps in this thread. There will be some rather large steps, but to a great extent a lot of modern music is tinkering with everything from 1976 and before. And given the honing of promotional tactics, it is more difficult for someone to come right out of nowhere...
In sum: winners taking it all
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Post by TheThorne on Oct 11, 2012 7:51:16 GMT 1
As a 5 year old at the time, I still have nightmares about 'Chanson D'Amour' lol thought I was the only one
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Post by Shireblogger on Oct 11, 2012 10:36:10 GMT 1
Vas, your selections remain excellent, almost.
But....
...we've got to 1976 and three of the five most important and influential British artists ever, have not featured. Where are David Bowie, the Kinks and Led Zeppelin ?
I know it's tough to know what to omit. The Ohio Express, obviously - your only absurd choice so far. Perhaps there has been too much emphasis on the precursors to punk, which turned out, in the long run, to be less important than electro. But we're beginning to split hairs.
Looking forward to seeing how you deal with the more recent decades, which you so frequently deride.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 11, 2012 13:04:46 GMT 1
Led Zep won't make it because they did not release singles in Britain at all. Their influence is not on the singles market. The Kinks suffer because of the competitveness of their era - and I will defend the inclusion of Ohio Express by what they meant for music at the time; its commoditisation and the PR machine, plus an underrated influence (you can draw a line from them to Guns & Roses for example).
There are some very big names that won't make the list at all...
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Post by raliverpool on Oct 11, 2012 19:20:39 GMT 1
Vas, your selections remain excellent, almost. But.... ...we've got to 1976 and three of the five most important and influential British artists ever, have not featured. Where are David Bowie, the Kinks and Led Zeppelin ? I know it's tough to know what to omit. The Ohio Express, obviously - your only absurd choice so far. Perhaps there has been too much emphasis on the precursors to punk, which turned out, in the long run, to be less important than electro. But we're beginning to split hairs. Looking forward to seeing how you deal with the more recent decades, which you so frequently deride. To be honest the beauty of this concept (Maximum 2 singles per year and no more than 5 singles per 3 year period, and an artist can only appear once, hence if you include The Beatles then you can't have any of them later as a separate solo act) is that it is very restrictive, and in some years it is ridiculously so. I have my equivalent list completed, and there are a number of big acts absent from my list, either because they are unlucky clashing with more iconic singles, or are the sort of act who have continuously been around over a lengthy period without ever really being a musical innovator or made a Zeitgeist record which this thread requires.
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 11, 2012 19:46:52 GMT 1
1977Donna Summer - I Feel LoveThis is why I hate disco. I had measles when I was at infant school and was confined to bed for a fortnight in one of the hottest summers we've had. My mum left me a transistor radio to keep me company (this is way before the days of television saturation, let alone tinternet). And this record was being played one heck of a lot. I had no concept of the charts then, all I knew was that this was a bit different to the usual sort of childish nonsense we sang at play school. Just absolutely exhilarating; it was like the music of outer space, all velvet darkness with neon flashes. And I had no idea what Donna Summer looked like. In my mind she was tall, thin, had very long blonde hair and was never seen without her shades. But it was probably the first pop song that really caught my imagination and even at this 35 year remove it remains a highlight of musical history. And is a prime example of how different styles can learn from each other. Donna had made her name as a disco singer, in part thanks to her unwittingly sultry and sexual interpretations; the mesmeric backing was the output of Giorgio Moroder, a synth pioneer (he had produced the first synth UK number 1, the soon-to-be-football-chant "Son Of My Father" by Chicory Tip). There's no logical reason why they should go together, any more than disco and folk, but it worked. What's more, it brought electronic music into the mainstream, and within five years electro was swamping the charts. Others had led the way; Moroder and Summer blew it wide open. And that's why I hate disco. It could have been dynamic and innovative, as it was early on. It could have pushed the boundaries, it could have sparked a million thoughts and ideas; instead, it faded into a morass of hideous, over-lush, over-produced cash-ins (think Floaters, Three Degrees, Jacksons) that took talented artists into a directionless direction. I suppose that's the fate of all movements, eventually, they start as shocking and end as mundane (q.v. the Zandra Rhodes Punk Collection), but disco left fewer monoliths of excellence in its wake. Most of the best disco records - Amii Stewart's explosive cover of "Knock On Wood", or Eruption's "I Can't Stand The Rain" for example (even, dare I say it, some moments of Blondie?) - were more electro than disco. And when disco collapsed, in a way few movements have ever done, it did so in spectacular style. Never mind. At least we have Donna. In sum: fusion
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 12, 2012 21:14:34 GMT 1
1978
The Undertones - Teenage Kicks
An example of how the punk influence had spread so quickly. Derry's finest caught on in the first wave, and understood the ethos perfectly. It was about what you did, not who you were; how you played, not what you looked like. Punk was not a fashion, it was an opening.
I needed something to show how punk permeated into other forms and interpretations; could have had Buzzcocks or The Clash at this point. This is certainly as good a record as any as a representative. But there's a factor that helps to give it an edge. John Peel.
It is famously the favourite record of Mr Ravenscroft and lyrics from the song are inscribed as his epitaph. He played it to death and perhaps thanks to that it made the top 40; a rare achievement for an act from the one part of the UK that had no chart return shops. And this was the ethos of John Peel. From the Perfumed Garden back in the day, all the way through his Radio 1 career, Peel played the forgotten, the overlooked, the hopeless, the hapless; also the brilliant, the coruscating, the provocative, the essence of emotion.
Indeed he played what Radio 1 was meant to play. Music that's challenging, new, unlikely to be heard elsewhere. You could send in a demo and he might give it a spin. It might get you a deal, or he might invite you along for a quick sesh (Altered Images had a day off school to do their first Peel Session and were back up the motorway the same night for their next day classes). And whatever his personal tastes were, he would play it. Peel was not the typical Radio 1 Roadshow DJ, where the show is all about the player and not the played; he only ever did TOTP with fellow muso mate David Jensen and was notable for the occasional acerbic remarks about some of the less musical acts. There was one occasion however where he did let his own views intrude; that will become evident...
It is typical of how Radio 1 has descended in recent years that he was marginalized more and more as time went on, shoved into later and later hours. Since his sad death Radio 1 has not even bothered to replace him. It did appoint Moyles as a breakfast DJ for a seeming eternity though.
Nevertheless, many acts in the list to come got their breakthrough thanks to Peel; he was a formative influence in many teenage musical educations. The least that I can do in tribute to his untold influence on music in Britain is include his personal chart number 1 in this list.
In sum: spreading the gospel
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 13, 2012 9:48:36 GMT 1
Parliament - Flash LightGeorge Clinton had been around for a while, originally as part of the doo-wop group The Parliaments, who under his songwriting morphed into the deep-Stax-sounding Parliaments, and then just kept moving in that direction. By the end of the sixties The Parliaments' backing band, Funkadelic, were having hits of their own, the name giving away their ethos - a mix of funk and psychedelia - and with Clinton behind both of them they had parallel industry careers; however, success did not follow. Not dancey enough, not played enough. So Clinton ramped up the live shows; ever more spectacular, ever more expensive. A claimed UFO encounter in 1974 gave him the idea for the Afronaut Mothership. Casablanca Records, who had signed up the similarly theatrical KISS, gave them a shot and by the mid-seventies the Parliafunkadelicment Thang they were in the R&B top ten - for the first time since 1967. The audiences were opening up a little more, James Brown and Sly Stone had accustomed listeners to a deeper funkier style, and Clinton had crucially signed up Bootsy Collins, a bassist who had been recruited into Brown's backing band as a seventeen year old for a year, and Brown's horn section. And gradually P-Funk came together sufficiently coherently to break through into the mainstream. The one that broke them through onto the national stage was "Give Up The Funk", in 1976, which was the first top 20 hit Stateside for Clinton since the one-off "Testify" in 1967; it was not such a huge R&B success and he had to wait until 1978 for his first chart-topper there with "Flash Light", from the album Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome, a tale of how Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk tries to challenge Dr Funkenstein's Starchild to end the funk because Sir Nose is too cool to dance. I cannot believe I have just typed that. Anyhoo, its funkiness is one reason for including it, representative of the sound that had obliterated disco from the R&B listings (this was replaced atop the R&B charts in the States by Bootsy - and the Funkadelic follow-up "One Nation Under A Groove" would be the biggest-selling R&B cut of 1978). Another reason however is that it is one of the most sampled tracks of all time. It's used to best-selling effect on C+C Music Factory's "Things That Make You Go Hmm", but also by Ice Cube, Ice T, Run DMC, Snoop, 2pac, Salt 'n' Pepa and The Digital Underground, inter alia. A veritable oligarchy of hip-hop. And that's the primary reason. Before long we're going to encounter a little more of this genre. Where the instrument is music itself. One of the best sources for hip-hop and rap was George Clinton. His almost jazzy concepts and improvisations provided a tapestry of complex instrumentation that were ripe for adaptation over the top; in many ways Clinton is the soundtrack for rap. In sum: the bass that launched a thousand hits
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 14, 2012 9:43:37 GMT 1
1979Siouxsie & The Banshees - Playground TwistOf the bands that emerged in the punk explosion, surely the least promising were Siouxsie & The Banshees. Their debut was at the infmaous 100 Club Sex Pistols performance, featuring Siouxsie Sioux yelling out something approximating to the Lord's Prayer, Marco Pirroni accompanying on guitar and Sid Vicious destroying a drum kit. It was the ethos of punk as incompetence. In the wake of the Pistols anything punkish got signed up. Including The Banshees. Yet their debut single was startling; choppy guitars, high-line bass and sirenesque vocals. Not bad for a bunch of Pistols hangers-on. And they went further. As punk seeped into all sorts of musical nooks and crannies, Siouxsie and the gang eschewed overt politics to tell sinister fairy tales suffused in an atmosphere of unease, with flanged guitars smearing everything with a tinge of horror. Whether by accident or design they had invented a new form of music: goth. Many others took it on pretty quickly. PiL had moved in that direction musically albeit without the same sort of graveyard black outlook. Bauhaus, in their first recording session, came up with " Bela Lugosi's Dead", a tongue-in-cheek horrorfilm soundtrack attempt that hung around the indie charts seemingly forever. A little later acts like The Cure - who of course had strong Banshee links - added a bit more rock to it before adding more art; (Southern Death) Cult and Sisters Of Mercy took it more purely in the rocky direction. Whereas All About Eve took it away from rock and more towards folk. And there would be other directions as well... The best of them all, though, were Susan Ballion, Steve "Severin" Bailey and a changing supporting cast. Somehow they always sounded fresh and interesting, but always with a (playground) twist. Perhaps never better than on the surrealist cut-up of " Peek A Boo" a few years later, more extremely sampled than people dare to try today. In sum: with goth on their side
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 15, 2012 17:34:29 GMT 1
Vas how could you omit it Cos I was saving it for something special. 1980David Bowie - Ashes To AshesHe should have been called David Jones but a Monkee stole in before him. So he adopted a surname reminiscent of knives and thereupon made cutting-edge music for the next couple of decades. Bowie was always surfing the zeitgeist, an uncanny ability to adapt to whatever was about to catch on with the population - or make it popular. He had been in at the start with psych-folk with one alter ego, ushered in the glam rock era with an even more overt persona, then back to basics with a bluesy soul sound on Diamond Dogs, then the funk stylings of "Fame", and then krautrock and the Berlin cabaret scene in his Thin White Duke persona - which extended to a lengthy sojourn in the German city. And at the end of that he came up with something else. The krautrock and synthpop emergent in the UK had created its own scene surrounding it; in the same way as glam coloured in grey days of the early seventies, in the greyer late seventies these futurists adopted even brighter, more decadent colours. They were definitely not glorying in the poverty of punk; they were the aristocrats. And were eventually given the epithet New Romantics. The centre of this movement was Blitz, a Berlin-influenced nightclub night run by Steve Strange, with an almost dictatorial hand; if you weren't dressed gaudily enough, you weren't coming in (and that included Mick Jagger). The music of Blitz was glam rock mixed with synth so it was natural that Bowie, a key influence, would visit, whereupon fell in love with the scene and adopted it for his next Scary Monsters image. Bowie recruited Strange and other Blitz regulars to appear in the video for this song, which, although not the first New Romantic single, blew the scene onto the nation with a startling impact. Only once in 11 years of hitmaking had Bowie had a top ten new entry, only twice since 1975 had he had a top ten single; "Ashes To Ashes" entered at 4 and became Bowie's first regularly released chart-topper. Before long the UK charts were dominated by New Romantics. Duran Duran, Soft Cell, even Strange himself via his Visage project, and of course Adam & The Ants - who mixed New Romanticism with a punk attitude and sound - monstered the UK charts in a period of flux. The influence has never really gone away; it still permeates through a number of current acts. And one reason why this happened was because of something else that ATA had done. It had re-invented the pop video. Until 1980 most promo clips were fairly basic; just a band lip-syncing or a literal runthrough of lyrics. ATA was one of the first where the pop video was a work of art in itself. If you didn't like the single, you could at least watch the visuals. And although it all looks rather serious and po-faced - fitting with such an introspective song - apparently everyone involved was having a whale of a time. So a double influence. And, taken together, one of the proudest artistic moments of our species, I reckon. It is just, just wonderful. Who in 1955 would have thought that people could come up with something so iconic within a generation? Incidentally, and one reason why, suddenly, we're having a comparative influx of British artists, given the relative populations of the UK and US, ATA was not a hit in the US. It merely bubbled under. The week it was just outside the Hot 100, the US number one was from Barbra Streisand, and the other US acts at the top of the chart were The Pointer Sisters, Diana Ross, Kennys Rogers and Loggins, The Doobie Brothers and Stephanie Mills, and there was also a top ten hit for Aussies Air Supply. The States were firmly, staunchly, stubbornly looking very far backwards. In sum: music from chameleon
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 16, 2012 18:36:44 GMT 1
Joy Division - AtmosphereAnd where punk met electro you got Joy Division. Never really punks, but ancillary to the scene, the Mancunian group moved quickly away from Nazi-suffused shock-for-the-sake-of-shock (their name recalling a legion of prostitutes recruited for a sex-starved Wehrmacht) into a more thoughtful, introspective take on electronica. The sad story of Joy Division is too well known to be rehearsed here, but suffice it to say that they had a huge impact on the independent music scene. Debut album Unknown Pleasures was at 2 in the first indie album chart, and was the first produced on Tony Wilson's Factory label (and they had appeared on the first actual Factory release, a sampler alongside Durutti Column and Cabaret Voltaire, who also proved influential, and John Dowie, who didn't); the first post-Curtis single release, "Love Will Tear Us Apart", remained on the indie chart for nearly three years. Post-Joy Division, New Order and Wilson would usher in a new era of sound - the Hacienda, Madchester, and massive bankruptcy...as well as a number of contemporary bands like Editors and The xx who sound uncannily like them. Could have gone for a number of iconic releases, but I went for this one. Not only because, as single of the millennium in the 2000 Festive Fifty countdown, it has perhaps had the most impact on indie fans, but because it's a beautiful, tender song. In sum: blue Mondays (last one for a couple of days - working offline for the week)
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 19, 2012 20:08:25 GMT 1
1981
The Specials - Ghost Town
The Midlands never really had a proper punk scene. There was the odd worthy act like Robert Lloyd's Prefects, and Duran Duran arose out of it, but most aggression in music had already been expressed via metal.
Instead the Midlands looked towards a different direction. Political protest emanating from forms of music eminently suited to it. And with a decent proportion of immigrant families settling down acts like Steel Pulse made moves with their politically conscious funk and reggae.
And of course out of this came ska. A rediscovery. Similar outlook to punk and football hooliganism, with the bovver boots and dungarees and so on, but with a more inclusive message; the menace was in what was said, not what was done.
One of the foremost acts in this was also a rather ironic one. Britain had been declining throughout the seventies, reaching a nadir with the Winter of Discontent as hospital mortuaries overflowed with stiffs and the white stuff on the streets was litter rather than snow. The country needed a new direction. The one it chose was that of Thatcherism - a fairly brutal medicine of self-reliance which was emphatically not a quick fix.
Others wanted a left-wing alternative. As one start-up business - the Thatcherite dream - pushed. Jerry Dammers, keyboardist with ska outfit The Coventry Automatics, who became The Special AKA and The Specials in quick order, wanted to ensure that worthy new acts got a quick start, and so he started the 2 Tone record label, based around a simple black-and-white motif that would inform The Specials' outfits and outlook. 2 Tone would give acts one-shot record deals to establish themselves. One act that succeeded was Madness, the London sevenpiece who top twentied with their on 2 Tone single and were snapped up by Stiff; you will see Special spin-off Fun Boy Three in Madness videos and vice versa.
But the real stars were The Specials themselves. Energetic live shows and a fervid footballesque following saw their early singles all go top ten, despite being on their own label; thanks to some odd chart runs, "Stereotype" going 25-6-23, which looks erroneous. But their second single was perfectly timed. An EP, so it would attract people who would normally only buy albums, and released for the post-Christmas blues, "The Special AKA Live!" topped the chart as they were touring the States.
Their finest moment came with what turned out to be their valedictory single, before they split into FB3 and back into Special AKA (under which latter name they teamed up with Rhoda Dakar for one of the more harrowing singles of all time, "The Boiler", a graphic tale of rape that was banned everywhere). "Ghost Town", a slow, sinister skasterpiece that needed no gimmickry to top the chart. With fellow ska superstars Bad Manners - the biggest group in Britain in 1980, and certainly the biggest singer - in the top five simultaneously, and Madness nine singles into a run of twenty top 20 singles, the 2 Tone sound was at its peak.
I suppose in retrospect it was better to go out with this bang rather than fade away, but I can't help think what might have been.
In sum: inner city skas
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 20, 2012 20:34:04 GMT 1
1982Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five - The MessageSlightly surprising to me that I only had 1 record for 1981, given that that year had perhaps the highest series of quality singles releases in my lifetime (Altered Images, OMD, Human League/Heaven 17, Adam & The Ants, Madness, Specials, New Order, ABC, Japan, Toyah, Kim Wilde, Squeeze, Stewart & Gaskin, Soft Cell, Teardrop Explodes, Jam, UB40, Hazel O'Connor, U-Vox, Roxy, Talking Heads, XTC, Landscape, Linx, Haircut 100, Depeche Mode, Visage, Numan, Kraftwerk, Echo & The Bunnymen &c - and that's just from artists that made the top ten in their careers), but this isn't about my personal faves per year, but the most influential. 1981 was a bit of a transition year, finally breaking the dead hand of AOR disco and thrusting the New Romantic movement to the forefront. And clearing the decks for a different sound to emerge from the streets. A decade in the gestation, rap took its time to break through; only in 1979 did past hitmaker Sylvia Robertson's Sugar Hill label manage to break a single into the mass market. " Rapper's Delight" (which borrowed, not sampled, the rhythm track from Chic's "Good Times" - the whole thing was played over a straight 15 minutes in the studio by session musicians) made the top five in the UK and was the first rap record to chart in the States. But its aftermath took a while to catch fire. The immediate rap follow-up successes were novelties from Blondie, Adam & The Ants and, er, Kenny Everett. It took until 1982 to show that there was more substance and that rap could gain commercial success without relying on the novelty. Grandmaster Flash had been the first DJ to introduce scratching to vinyl (via the Wheels of Steel cut) and he gradually assembled a rap quintet under the name of The Furious Five. Obviously not all five could rap at all times, so it was a collectivist idea, each one taking turns where and when appropriate. As it is, on "The Message", the only Five who appears is Melle Mel, as the second rapper is co-writer and co-producer Duke Bootee, who was not part of the ensemble (and is replaced by the FF's Rahiem for the videoclip) but who, influenced by such unlikely sources as Tom Tom Club, had the idea for a different sort of rap backing by making it less upbeat and more sparse, and put the emphasis on the rap, er, message. Showcasing a more philosophical approach. Instead of being about how great the rapper is and how many hos he can score, or about the bling-obsessed culture of later, this is a kitchen sink drama of a single; slower and more bitter, real life rather than the playa fantasy. And as such it still stands out somewhat. But it went top ten in the UK, top five in the US R&B charts and paved the way for more success for rap itself. Not so much for the Grandmaster - he ended up quitting Sugar Hill over a royalty dispute, which meant that the most successful follow-up, "White Lines", largely a Melle Mel creation, was credited to Grandmaster & Melle Mel to induce people into believing GMF was still involved. So this might be the most influential R&B song on the list. It is to rap what "Rock Around The Clock" is to pop music; not the first, not even the first successful one, but the first to show that there was a new artform. Rap was not merely a call to party - it was also a call to action. In sum: word on the street
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 21, 2012 13:34:55 GMT 1
Prince - 1999I'm not a Prince maniac. Curate's egg. But there is no doubting his talent. By the time he was 18 he was able to play 27 instruments. I can just about play the fool. And his multi-instrumental capability got him his start. A local producer needed someone to blitz an advertising jingle, and offered Prince Nelson some recording time in exchange for his expertise. Off the back of that Nelson produced a demo tape, which found its way to Warners, who decided to sign him up. It looked like it was a rash move. Prince's prodigious appetite for music (he had written hundreds of songs ready for this) meant that he demanded, and got, the right to produce his debut album, which managed to generate one R&B chart-topper - "I Wanna Be Your Lover" - but it was a poor return for such investment; the music was straightforward and unchallegengly anodyne, and not particularly mainstream successful. But Prince was modifying his sound. On his follow-ups he brought the louche back into music. For all its portrayal as some sort of dancefloor seduction, and gay following, disco was curiously sexless; with a few honourable exceptions (like Chic) largely meaningless cliche and asexual trysts. Think of songs like "Three Times A Lady" or "If I Can't Have You", it's not exactly realistic sussuration. But Prince put the funk back into funky, the groove back into groovy. And with "1999" he launched himself once more onto the mainstream. It wasn't a gigantic hit originally, but after "Little Red Corvette" became playlisted on MTV it was re-pushed and ensured Prince would no longer be a sporadic hitmaker. For the next decade he was a constant top ten presence around the world, and the parent album sold four million in the States, quadrupling his preceding sales. Then he went completely fruitloop. Shame. Nevertheless, when he was on fire, he was on FIRE. A prodigious output that no-one in modern music can match. An appreciation of musical sound that is close to unparallelled. A polymath of instrumentation that enables him to take control of an entire orchestra's worth of contribution. He could create a record store with his own side projects alone. Quite apart from The Revolution and The NPG, there is also The Time, Camille, Vanity 6, Wendy & Lisa, The Bangles and dozens of others that are either him or dependent on him. And Quincy Jones is reported to have demanded to the musicians on Thriller that they had to sound like 1999. It's quite a record. And so is "1999". In sum: sexyback
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Post by Earl Purple on Oct 21, 2012 15:01:48 GMT 1
Whenever I see these "histories" and what was "significant", it doesn't seem to reflect to me what was significant at the time.
vastariner at least included The Sweet as a representative for Glam Rock, although I'd have gone for T-Rex. raliverpool missed out glam altogether like it didn't exist, and vastariner is snubbing all the new romantics.
Ashes To Ashes was a great song and so is Ghost Town, but I would have preferred David Bowie somewhere in the 70s, some mod-revival stuff either the Specials or Madness around 1980 and new-wave has been completely snubbed too, where are Blondie in this??? Human League with Don't You Want Me or Love Action or whatever in 1981...
Next thing I know you'll be ignoring The Smiths too - who were far far more signficant than Joy Division. Seems that music critics like to play up Joy Division to be much bigger than most people growing up at the time ever thought they were. And Siouxsie & The Banshees for that matter, although at least they had a few hits, although I think Xray Spex were better than them at doing that kind of music.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 22, 2012 14:25:43 GMT 1
Whenever I see these "histories" and what was "significant", it doesn't seem to reflect to me what was significant at the time. vastariner at least included The Sweet as a representative for Glam Rock, although I'd have gone for T-Rex. raliverpool missed out glam altogether like it didn't exist, and vastariner is snubbing all the new romantics. Ashes To Ashes was a great song and so is Ghost Town, but I would have preferred David Bowie somewhere in the 70s, some mod-revival stuff either the Specials or Madness around 1980 and new-wave has been completely snubbed too, where are Blondie in this??? Human League with Don't You Want Me or Love Action or whatever in 1981... Next thing I know you'll be ignoring The Smiths too - who were far far more signficant than Joy Division. Seems that music critics like to play up Joy Division to be much bigger than most people growing up at the time ever thought they were. And Siouxsie & The Banshees for that matter, although at least they had a few hits, although I think Xray Spex were better than them at doing that kind of music. Ashes to Ashes has been included here because of it's influence on music videos, not *just* because it is a great song. Many of the songs (so far) in this thread have been included because of their long-term influence. They may not have been the best song that the particular artist produced (e.g. God Save the Queen is a better song in my view than AITU) but the song chosen is the one that really kick-started a certain style, a type of mood, that kind of thing. As for New Romantics, they were really of their time and it's questionable whether they still have any influence nowadays. You mention The Specials around 1980. Ghost Town is on this list from 1981. Also you need to remember the criteria that was mentioned back on page 1 - there are only so many songs that can be chosen from any given year. Personally I'm finding this a tremendous thread.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 22, 2012 18:17:58 GMT 1
Thanks phil. Will be interesting though what you think as we go on - there are fewer truly groundbreaking singles... Ashes To Ashes was a great song and so is Ghost Town, but I would have preferred David Bowie somewhere in the 70s, some mod-revival stuff either the Specials or Madness around 1980 and new-wave has been completely snubbed too, where are Blondie in this??? Human League with Don't You Want Me or Love Action or whatever in 1981... Bowie could have gone in at a number of points but ATA is so peerless, and launched New Romanticism, that that seemed to be the most appropriate. Plus NewRo did not influence music as much as might be expected; anyone remember romo? Indeed I'd argue that it was thanks to Bowie - a celebrity endorsement, so to speak - that New Romanticism became successful; someone like Soft Cell would not begin to approach getting airplay nowadays. As indeed can be shown by various indie acts that are near-ignored despite making killer tunes with killer hooks (c.f. Stephen Merritt). Next thing I know you'll be ignoring The Smiths too - who were far far more signficant than Joy Division. The Smiths cannot possibly be overlooked. 1983The Smiths - This Charming ManA bundle of contradictions. The former president of the T Rex fan club whose war with the music media started via its letters pages before he even came close to vinyl. The militant vegetarian who thought meat was murder but seemed happier for political opponents to be abbatoired. The socialist who fought a legal battle to stop the rhythm section getting paid on a socialist basis. The anti-racist who toys with BNP imagery and Kraydom. The working-class Mancs whose following includes the toffs at Eton. And the most ardently independent of bands eschewing The Clash and The Pistols by writing a blatant hit single and jumping onto Top Of The Pops at the first time of asking. But what the hey. Music was about to be ruined. Perhaps a little earlier The Smiths would have had top fives coming out of their ears; in 1981 and 1982 such uncommercial fare as "O Superman", "Ghosts", "Musclebound" and "Kings Of The Wild Frontier" - not forgetting "Capstick Comes Home" - challenged the chart peak. As it was, their new, rather jangly take on rock and pop, was the kick into a new direction that would never gain the commercial success that its qualities merited. There is a punk ethic in there as well. Anti-New Ro, there is no extravagant dressing-up here; it's defiantly working class. No frills or fripperies, just a bunch of gladioli, reminiscent of androgyny, contempt, Dame Edna. Instead of the sci-fi future of the synth their cover sleeves were fifties icons, largely British, Mozza himself sometimes in NHS specs and hearing aids. Ironic? Who cares? Almost the ultimate punk attitude was they did not care what anyone thought. Even the name is the punk formula of The Somethings, there is no Situationist statement or overwrought pun, their name is, almost literally, that of Everyman. And that's without even going into the question of sexuality, which was also portrayed in a retro fashion; who today talks of polari? The homosexual songs were often hinted at, played with in the lyrics, going further in fact than most of the New Romantics ever did on record; even Marc Almond was never actually "out". Such were the fears of falling off the financial bandwagon on which The Smiths clambered despite themselves. Yet Morrissey never came out when it would have been shocking; he never came out when it would have been fashionable; he never came out when it would have been passe; he has never come out; he may never have been in. Who cares? It got people talking, they were paying attention, and they got to hear the music. One wonders if Morrissey was a fan of Adrian Streete on World Of Sport. Looked as gay as a kite - but he had a female assistant. It's back to the glam rock ambiguity. As it is, "This Charming Man" fits in with the Diana Dors and Yootha Joyce imagery, the whole James Dean in terraces ethos, dripping in Joe Orton, young cyclist is picked up by some toff, all disgust and hope, a drama on 45. No wonder they were on Rough Trade. Independently distributed, The Smiths were passed around the country like samizdat, under the radar. Previously though the underground had emerged into the overground, even prog rock had their hit singles. This time the underground would never properly cross over. The Smiths and bands like them had their own market. The US had the R&B charts that were an end in themselves; Britain had the indie. Far more varied and challenging and interesting; ironically, the sort of material that Radio 1 should have been playing, but was now ignoring for the brighter names with dimmer lights. Only Peel was faithful, and he helped The Smiths to become THE name of the independent scene. And perhaps more. From 1983 until their split, at least, was there any other British act who created as much controversy, needle, interest or challenge to the comfortable status quo? It was almost worth putting up with Phil bloody Collins when the undertow was The Smiths. At least it enabled one to determine fairly easily who was actually interested in music... In sum: they started something that hasn't finished
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 22, 2012 18:19:20 GMT 1
(Incidentally, my favourite Pistols song wasn't even a single - "Satellite".)
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