#1 (1980) Van Morrison, Paul McCartney, The Durutti Column & more

[Music] Hello and welcome. This is a new podcast that we're calling the album Years. I am Steven Wilson and my co-host of these podcasts is going to be Mr Timothy Boness, my long-term partner in the pop sensation that is no man. Occasionally we make some music of our own, but generally speaking we talk about other people's music, don't we? That's what kind of, I think it's fair to say that we, you know, it's the thing that we love to talk about more than anything else, is as music nerds, if you like, is the history of music and we're also nerds in the sense we love the context, so we love to know exactly when something was released and where it came in that particular career, trajectory of an artist and all that stuff, the only nerds are interested in. So this is basically a show for nerds and we've called it the album Years because what we're going to do is we're going to focus on one year per episode and we're going to talk about albums that were released during that year. Not necessarily recorded that year but they must have been released between January 1st and December 31st of that year and I think the other reason why we thought it was quite a nice title Tim and you kind of suggested this is that there's a kind of period I suppose in time that you can refer to as being the classic years of the album. I mean I think it's fair to say that ended some time ago. So when would you say that would be? For me the rock album years, although they're worth fantastic albums before this, I kind of see it historically there's a nice thing if you take 1967. So I don't pep as even that's not my favourite Beatles album there's something about the package of it, the theme of it that kind of ushers in the album as a serious art form for rock and pop. And of course most importantly it was the year I was born. Well exactly I think you were born yeah probably on the day that the album was released. And I don't think that's really fully realised. And I don't think that's uncorinced entry let's face it. So yes no you're right you're right I mean the first Hendrix album, the first Floyd album, there are so many landmarks that year. I mean I would maybe say I would be more general I would say mid 60s because you've got albums like you know Simon and Garfunkel's you know early albums 65, 66 you've got Pets now which I think is 66. I think it's 66 isn't it so yeah so you've got and you've obviously got the classic deal on our albums. So I would say mid 60s and I would probably say up to the end of the basic up to the end of the 20th century that for me is that that period I don't know if you agree with me a lot that period of 35 years or so is like the classic years when the album really became the premier means of a musician to express themselves. I think the reason I use such in Pepas is partly because it was one of the first albums where the package was all important obviously you've got the velvety ground with Andy Warhol which was sort of late 66 as well. So you know I know it's arguable and you know Zapper in 66 you know Verve records on the Zapper and Verve Underground were clearly thinking in more conceptual terms but I suppose in the public imagination the album years began on your birthday. Actually on my birthday yeah that was that was the year the the idea of the album as an art as a kind of higher art form kind of really came into zone. I would I would agree with that yeah and interestingly you mentioned the Beatles there and another thing I want to say before we actually start to talk about the year that we've chosen for this first episode you mentioned the Beatles. Now we're not going to be talking much about the Beatles in terms of their albums themselves and just to explain why we've kind of discussed this and we decided oh actually be fair this is this is what I suggested and Tim just kind of gone along with it begrudgingly but I personally didn't I personally don't particularly want to talk about the established canon of classic albums so you know there are there are many albums that that have been discussed and discussed adding for an item Sergeant Pepper is one of them and I personally don't feel like there's any need to talk about these albums anymore there's nothing more to say about Sergeant Pepper or the the classic Beatles albums unless it's in the unless it's in context of how it affected some of the other musicians that around at the time and of course the Beatles did influence almost everyone so we will by necessity be talking about the Beatles but we're going to try and pick albums that perhaps you may not know. I mean obscure albums like Simply Red Stars that kind of thing yeah you just of course but you know who knows they but but I think another thing we are going to do is perhaps bring in some of those albums that are not very fashionable and maybe make a case for them perhaps being used to again you know I've been taken more seriously so that's something we're going to do but we're also going to talk about very obscure albums or maybe sort of you know albums that are not obscure that will hit the time but maybe have not for whatever reason become elevated to that kind of the higher echelons of the classic album canon. Well I think it's I think isn't it you know when you're reading music books in a sense the music book that works is the one that kind of gives you a new insight into something and makes you want to listen to that music again and I guess that's what I want to do here that to a certain extent one translate our enthusiasm in some way and another hope that that translates to other people you know that maybe they're going to listen to an album differently or an album for the first time. So that said I think we can maybe we can maybe move on and actually talk about our first year now just one more thing I want to say before we do is that we're not allowed to play any clips from any of the albums we talk about so you won't hear clips so you'll have to go and search them out yourself. Okay our first year we have selected what year Tim? Well I think we're going to go with 1980 because it's kind of an important year for both of us in some ways and we were both teenagers discovering music and I kind of realized when I was actually doing one of my rare mini tours last year I was kind of listening to albums year by year and the years I had most albums it was weird 1979, 1980, 1981 I had like a hundred plus albums from each of those years and I think that they were kind of exciting because what you had is a whole host of new bands making very fresh sounds partly based on the punk revolution and then you had a lot of the major artists who were still making significant statements so you know it wasn't all public image limited it was as much pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac all making quite creative, quite edgy, quite searching music and so for for me it's one of the most exciting periods because you get old and new artists somehow kind of refreshed. Yeah I agree and as you kind of pointed out the 80s is when we you know most of the music has become special to us we discovered during that period and time and for me that was between the ages and literally it was my teenage years I became 13 in 1980 so it's as you say it's kind of a watershed kind of era for both of us and we've come up with a list of well way too many but I just see how many we can get through I guess so the first I have on on the list is a Van Morrison album you talked about artists that were still kind of a creative peak even though they'd been around in his case for getting on for 15 years you know at that point in his career starting out in the mid 60s with them of course and and moving through the late 60s in the classic works last or weeks of Moon Dots and he'd arrived in 1980 at a point where he released this album we're going to talk about which is an album called Common One so do you want to tell us about this album Tim well I guess Common One is an album that's been very special to both of us really and for me along with Veden Flees and Astral Weeks it's my favourite Van Morrison album because I think it's Van Morrison that is most timeless spiritual and bizarre and I think one of the reasons why both of us have really sung its praises over the years is because it is so good it's so fearless I mean in some ways it's one of the albums where an artist is at the peak of his abilities and he's completely ignoring the zeitgeist he's absolutely losing himself in his own magical world and and I don't think that happened again until maybe you talk talk at the end of the 80s when spirit of Eden laughing stock you know early 90s where they're completely ignoring what's around them and making this wonderful timeless expressive music and so Common One fits into that and secondly I think why we love it is because it was so criticised at the time you know this was a kind of enemy one out of ten album that this man was not remotely listening to what was happening around him it was an indulgent middle aged middle class well it's I think you know it's pretentious isn't it but it's pretentious in the best possible sense of the word and you know I always say to people pretentiousness to me is a very positive thing if we weren't pretentious if we weren't reaching for the stars then nothing would ever move on would it so you need these artists sometimes that are completely thinking outside of the box you're interesting you mentioned talk talk because I see a strong connection between you know this I mean you use the word spiritual there's actually a track on Common One probably the least interesting track on it ironically but there's track on the album called Spirit and you know there is that sense of almost a kind of himnal quality to the music that you do hear very much again in that word again spirit of Eden the talk talk albums from from the late later in the decade the other connection I think both albums have got is there's a link in that Mars Davis and a silent way you can hear that they've both listened to that kind of suspended beauty spiritual way yeah spiritual jazz and developed from there because on one level you've got this kind of slightly earthy jazzy [BLANK_AUDIO] bluesy chord vocabulary, but then you also have this almost classical European hymnal quality in both albums that it's like a fusion of two elements of spirituality. If you're like gospel and the church of England, but there's something in both of those albums. Yeah, obviously the one thing that the van doesn't have that talk talk did have was that avant-garde sensibility. I mean, this is very melodic music, isn't it? It's very harmonic music. But I think the one another thing they do have in common is that the idea of duration completely goes out the window. Like the idea that the you know the conventional pop song needs to be in the three to five minute range completely goes out the window here on this album. You have two tracks that are over a quarter of an hour each long in summertime in England and when heart is open. So that idea that if you get into an atmosphere or a space that just feels good, you just let it run its course and you don't cut it off of the sake of it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, obviously I think the one thing that separates them and you're right. I think that both of them are taking their ideas as far as they can go naturally. The difference maybe is that Hollis was considerably more of a sonic perfectionist. So it might have taken him two years to make that A note sound right on the piano where obviously the Morrison at that period was knocking things out. And that's actually that gives him much closer connection to the world of jazz than Hollis would have to the world of jazz. Because jazz records were made in an afternoon, weren't they? I mean, that's the beautiful thing. You look at now I'm like kind of blue. It was made in a couple of three hour sessions or in a silent way, cut in a day. I mean, editing maybe took a bit longer than that. But it was, bait the sessions, took a day and I think that's true of something like common one. It was recorded. I think it was recording like a week or something whereas Hollis would take like a year to produce 30 minutes of music. But a wonderful record. And I think this is a theme we'll come back to time and time again, is that when people, they seem to be completely unaware of A, what the rest of the pop world is doing around them and B, what their fanbase wants or expects. Or it's maybe that they're not aware, they just don't care. They just don't care. And I think Van Marose and I think it's that word integrity, isn't it? That's when you get a great art, I think. I've always believed that. Absolutely. Okay, great. So let's move on. So the next, the next album on the list is a band that was still relatively new at the time. This is their fourth album. And of course we're talking about Talking Heads Remaining Light, which I believe is Tom York from Radio Had to Favor album of all time, which kind of makes a little bit of sense. So I think this album, most people will know because of the single once in a lifetime. But of course it's much more than that, isn't it? Do you want to talk about this album a bit? It's one of your favourites, I know, isn't it? It is. It's not actually my favourite Talking Heads album, bizarrely. It's one of these things that, what is your favourite out of interest? Weirdly enough, it's speaking in tongues. It's the one that comes after this because Remaining Light is an era defining album, whereas in some ways speaking in tongues is an era defined album. You know, it sounds a lot more like what's surrounding it. It's a lot more electronic, has the 80s production. But there's something very human and very tender about Speaking in tongues, which Remaining Light only really hints at with certain pieces. There are certain moments in houses and motion or once in a lifetime where it does become profoundly moving. But generally it's quite a sort of brittle experience. It fits into that post-punk landscape beautifully, while also sort of name-checking, fellow-cooty, Afro-B, and a lot of things like even Parliament and Funkadelic. The guitar solos are just extraordinary, aren't they? It's Adrian Ballou. Amazing. Yeah. And I think a lot of people think when they hear those guitar solos, they think it's synthesiser or it's E-no doing something. And it's not. It's Adrian Ballou with his box of tricks and his pedals doing the most extraordinary twisted guitar. And I think that's been a very big hearing that record at the time. It's been a very big influence on me that a solo doesn't have to be a solo. It can be a sound design moment. It can be something that just captures your ears. It's very hard out to understand exactly how they'd arrived at this point, isn't it? Yeah. But I think that's why it works basically because what you have is you say, you know, you have the Afro grays, these extraordinary solos and tying it all together burns quite surreal but worldly lyrics and occasionally very beautiful affecting melodies, you know, that point where E-no joins in on the backing voice for once in a lifetime, it's devastating. And it's interesting you mentioned Ballou because when I was doing my sort of tour bus listening to the Albus of 1980, I was drawing up my list as you all do of your favourites of what you actually liked as much and what you disliked. And the other album, the one actually was possibly top of my list, which we're not discussing, was Scary Monsters by David Bowie. And of course, that was Frip, who becomes Ballou's partner in Crimson the next year. And I would say that Frip soloing on Scary Monsters and Ballou's soloing on Speaking in Tongues were amongst the most astonishing things I'd heard up to that time. And again, you listen to a track like Fashion, which runs along on a groove, has a great melody, but Frip is tearing apart at the fabric of the song. It's no game as another. So in very different ways, Frip and Ballou were doing quite similar things on Scary Monsters and Speaking in Tongues. Unless we forget Frip is the guitar player on the previous Talking Heads record, isn't it? Fear of music. And Ballou is the guitar player on the previous Bowie album, right? Oh, right. Of course he is. Yeah. And I think the connection between all of those albums, of course, is E-no, isn't it? So now, I know this is a record. Now, when we both drew up our lists, of course, the first thing we did was we both drew up our lists independently of each other. And it was very interesting to see when we kind of conferred which albums were common to both lists. And of course, there were a few. But this album definitely, I think, was one of the first that both of us thought of. Still to me, one of the most magical and beautiful records ever made, which is the first Juriti Column album, The Return of the Juriti Column. This is a reissue. I'm holding it in my hands. You can't see it, listen, but I'm holding a reissue, my hand. Because the reason I'm holding it up is because it came in a novelty sleeve that was made of sandpaper, one of Peter Savile's great ideas that when you put this album in your collection, it would destroy the other albums that it sat next to in your collection. I'm not sure how that worked when it came to The Second Juriti Column album. And that was the one that went alongside this one. But anyway, kind of back fired at that point. But you know, a great concept. But anyway, leaving aside the cover artwork, it's an album that almost seems to be completely outside of the zeitgeist of whatever is going on musically at this time. This is an album that almost harps back to the sort of early 70s pastoral or something like Penguin Cafe Orchestra. So it's got more income with the band, except it hasn't, because it also sounds completely like it's in the same universe as joy division or the cure. And of course, part of that is down to the Martin Hanuk production. But not only. And of course, Vinnie Riley, who was the sole member of The Juriti Column, Juriti Column being a collective name for an individual in this case, had been in punk rock groups in Manchester, hadn't he? The nose bleeds famously. He'd kind of rebelled against that. That kind of like three chords. You don't need to be a proper musician, sort of ethic of the punk era. And he'd gone back to be a quite proper musician. And to me, again, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, I hear my cold field in this. But I also hear joy division and the cure and magazine and wire. It's weird, because on one level, it does almost connect with the instrumental side of somebody like Anthony Phillips or Michael Field or Ralph Towner or Ralph Town. Oh, yeah. But in a way, it couldn't be further away from that at the same time. It has a kind of bedroom DIY quality that makes it even more affecting in a way. But why it fits in? You write, part of it is the Martin Hannick production. And part of it, I think, is the use of that very simple drum machine. And of course, what Vinnie Riley does and what Orhanne, whoever on that album, it's musically quite beautiful, musically quite complex, but it doesn't shout at you. We'll tell you that. Yeah, this is not showing music. And I think that's where he would be very different to a Ralph Towner or a Mike Oldfield. There's no, there's no kind of pirate techniques here at all in the playing, even though he's a very sensitive, very gifted player. It's, for me, the word is understatement. It's very understated. So I mean, Tim, did he ever make an album that's good as this album again? I mean, we both love Vinnie Riley. I know we've both got most of his albums. Did he ever, is, I mean, in many ways, this for me is the awesome well syndrome where first movie can never be bettered as Citizen Kane, never. And I think in a sense, with the juridity column, it's the same. King Crimson, you could say the same. There's something about the way that that first album is so definitive that in a sense, it's the, you spend the rest of your career almost trying to recapture that in a way. Yes, I mean, I don't think that any of them were quite as defining, you know, if you talk to anybody about doing a juridity column sound, it's that first album. Yeah. In some ways that people always draw from. Yeah. Okay, we better move on. This is one of my choices. I don't know if you knew this record before or maybe you did. It's the, it's the second re-reue which is Sakamoto Solar Record, which is called B2 Unit. And for me, this is a masterpiece. In a very similar way, the, the Vinny album is a masterpiece of redefining the language of guitar, the musical vocabulary of the guitar at this period of time. This guy was redefining the, the musical language of the synthesizer. Now the synthesizer, of course, in the 70s had been, you know, primarily made famous by people who, you know, played with pyrotechnics and people like Rick white men in Keith MSc. and playing these incredibly tricky solos, usually with quite tasteless sounds, in my opinion. But then suddenly you get this influence from coming over from Japan, and also the ban Japan, the British ban Japan, of course. And I know this is one of Richard Barbieri's favourite albums of all time. I think partly because I think, I might be wrong, but I think it's almost entirely made using a Prophet V keyboard, which is Richard's favourite keyboard as well at the time, and actually still is. I don't know, did you listen to it? What did you think about it? Funny enough it's one of those albums, because you have quite liked Sakamoto and I've really liked Barbieri, and I'd never actually heard this album. And I could definitely see what Richard had taken from it in certain ways. Obviously he'd personalised it, and then it got me thinking about, again, the use of the synthesizers, you were saying in the late 70s, early 80s, and another album of that year that I actually rather liked, which is very underrated, was Van Gellis' "Ceulator", where he becomes a lot more influenced by. Yeah, yeah. That's a great letter of pop, but I thought, you know, quite extraordinary experimental parts. And also, what was interesting about Sakamoto is, it's personalising the impersonal, so he actually takes these cold electronic instruments, and either his interesting use of sound or harmony, it sounds like Sakamoto. And I was thinking, well, in terms of unique synth sounds, and it made me think of an album of mine, oh, no, I'm sorry, and I'll buy really liked in '79, which people considered a work of extraordinary excess, which is Stevie Wonder's "Secret Life of Plants", in which he's got a tremendous use of kind of, again, sometimes electronic rhythms, and very distinctive synths. I mean, is that the thing about the synthesizer use on the album that it's Stevie Wonder, it's nobody else? And I think that's it, that actually it's a damn difficult trick to pull off where you are Sakamoto, you ask Stevie Wonder, you are Barbieri, you know, it's even one note, and you can recognise that player. (upbeat music) So the next one on my list is Simple Minds, Empires and Dance of all the albums on this list that are what you would call post-punk new wave cross-over-arms. And we have a few on here, in fact, let's quickly go through some of the albums that I think kind of belong together in a way. "Magazines the Correct Use of Soap", "Ultravox Vienna" and "John Fox Metamatic". We don't have any Gary Newman albums on our list. I think, I think "Telecon" was that, was that you? - "Telecon" is good. - Yeah, which is a grail. I'm not sure why we haven't, but I guess in a way we're covering this whole scene of artists that have come out of the crucible of punk rock into something more futuristic. You could be very cynical and say, they've gone out and bought a craftwork album, overnight, they've kind of redefined themselves as, you know, "Tutonic Synthesizer Band". But there's also that sense of reaching for the future, isn't there? - Sure. - It can almost kind of like, trashing everything that's gone before with the possible exception of Bowie and Roxy Music. I think those two touchstones are kind of ever present, aren't they, in this kind of era of new wave band? You can definitely hear the impact that albums like "Low and Heroes" and "In the case of Roxy" for your pleasure have had on these bands. And also, you know, the way that Brian Enoch thinks about music has had a strong influence on this. But this album, to me, this album is just a genius album. And I say that because "Simple Mines" I think were a band that became, I don't think they've been re-evaluated in recent years, but they kind of became reviled for a while, didn't they? There's a kind of you two kind of all, also, rands in a way. And I think they had partly have themselves to blame for that. It almost seemed like they were kind of grasping for that arena rock acceptance and that kind of mainstream success. But there was a period, and it's almost like you have to remind people, there was a period in the late '70s, early '80s, when this band was cutting edge as anyone has been really before or since, in terms of creating inventive, experimental, intelligent pop music, both sonically, lyrically and musically. I mean, how do you feel about this record? I think it's a very good one. I mean, for me, there's a run. I think that's the first of their great album. Oh, no, real T'Ryoko Koffani. This is a great real T'Ryoko Koffani. Previous album is genius. But anyway, it's. Yeah, it's fair. Yeah, it starts the decade off with, as you said, this passion for almost discovering a future. And there was this. And one of the things I loved about that period of pop music is that a lot of it was accidental, a lot of it was very idealistic. You know, we're obviously now in an era where a pop song can be co-written by 10 people and a room of accountants. And I think at that point, you basically had four people in a room trying to find the future. It produced myriad possibilities. And simple minds definitely started the decade, I think, brilliantly. And for me, you know, this Steve Hillage produced albums after that, The Sister Feelings called. Sounds of fascination. And then obviously new gold dream. They feel beautifully crafted and they feel very heartfelt. Whereas I think your problem is, you know, when you're getting to the band from the mid 80s onwards, it does seem as if they're chasing a different goal. Yeah, I think so. It seems as if they're chasing the goal of success that perhaps they've seen bands like you two that admitted a love for simple minds, but were finding tremendous international acclaim. And of course, you know, it can eat into the psyche of certain musicians. We both know certain musicians who haven't been as successful as perhaps they should have been. And I think often great music is created by how you define yourself against your level of success or expectations success or indeed how you respond to fame. Bowie's scary monsters is quite fascinating because it's somebody in a way, almost fighting against his fame while wanting it. So there's a tremendous edge as well as accessibility. And I think that simple minds from mid 80s onwards, it just seemed as if they ruthlessly pursued that goal of success. Yeah, but they made some great music on the way. And interesting, you talked about people who have a very interesting relationship to success or not or unsuccessful the case. Maybe should we talk about one of these people? Because I think one thing we both found again when we started drawing up our list is that there was a couple of artists that just popped up on every list and no matter what year we talked about, there was an album by this artist on the list. And one of those artists also made a great record in 1980. As indeed he made great records in 1979, 1978, 1977, 1976, going right back to the early '70s, either with Fandagraph Generator or as a solo artist, and that is Peter Hamel. And I know he's one of the artists that's most dear to both of us. And he made, I think one of his masterpieces in 1980, which is now called a black box. But this comes back to what you were originally saying about the relationship the certain artists have to mainstream success. Is that Peter Hamel with the best role in the world is someone that has never, ever crossed over to the mainstream. And I think there are certain periods in his career where you could almost feel like maybe he was trying a little bit more, a bit later in the '80s with albums like Skin, but certainly right through the '70s and at this point still in 1980, you feel like he's completely out on his own. He's somehow in this bubble of Peter Hamelness where he just, if you buy into his world, you've got this incredible catalog to explore that sounds like no one else. And you kind of pay the price for being that kind of artist, don't you? But well, you do and you don't, because obviously Gabe will have done the same thing. I think Peter Gabriel's still, even when he's experimenting. And he's pulling off that thing that Bowie was always pulling off. Even when he's experimenting, there's something about it that's still incredibly accessible and incredibly approachable. It's interesting, because you were saying to me, if we think of sort of influences around in the late '70s, early '80s, when I saw Adverts in Manchester and Liverpool, even with bands of a progressive bent or a new wave bent or a punk bent, three names repeatedly came up, even more so than talking heads and craft work at the time in the Northwest, Hamill Gabriel Bowie. And there were so many vocals of that era who credited Hamill, Gabriel and Bowie as being their major influence. But of course, there's a great disparity between the success levels of Bowie, Hamill and Gabriel. And what was interesting is that all three of them produced great work in 1980, which managed to, on one level, have the craft commitment intelligence of their careers, if you like, what they built up their pool of knowledge, while also perfectly colliding with the era that those albums were released in. And it's an interesting question as to why, you know, because I think Scary Monsters and Gabriel 3 are actually quite experimental albums. Are quite extraordinary albums. And yet they connect, whereas obviously Black Box was always much more the Efficient Ardose choice. And, you know, vocally, there isn't that much between all three of them in some ways. But there's obviously clearly enough that it. I think this is actually a very good moment to mention this record that you put on your list. And I want you to convince me Tim that this is a good record because of all the albums on the list, this is the one I would honestly say is just not a very good record. And. - What? It's um I'm just For the people listening at home, I've just held up, we are actually on Zoom here, so we can see each other. I've just held the album cover up. And we said we weren't gonna talk about the Beatles, but I think we're making exception in this case, because this is obviously an ex-member of the Beatles. This is Paul McCartney's McCartney 2 record. Now I have it in my collection, and I'll be the first to admit that McCartney's first solo album, which was made 10 years earlier than this, is a classic. I love McCartney 1. McCartney 2 is not a classic, is it? Let's face it, Tim. Right, convinced me this is a good record. Convince it, well, for me, and obviously I was a McCartney fan at the time, and a Beatles fan, and London Town, I think it was a beautiful record, and in some ways that was almost like a later-day psychedelic mass record. We're talking about this record, Tim. London Town. We're talking about McCartney 2. Not talking about London Town. What is it? I like about it. It's got a couple of lovely ballads on it. I'll be the first to admit. Or Waterfalls is a lovely ballad. Waterfalls is one of the most beautiful ballads he's ever written. I know, Tim. In some ways, I think it's his kind of DIY album that. It is a DIY album. Back to the egg was not the best wings album. You kind of felt that the wings experiment had maybe met its end on that. For me, what's interesting about wings is that band on the run, London Town, are two of the most focused. Now, let's stop talking about other albums. Talk about McCartney 2. You're just back. You're deflecting. Back to the egg was quite an excessive statement. And I think with McCartney 2, he was going back to the beginnings of his career. It was him with some instruments for knocking off songs. Yeah, I can see that. And I think that it then has the same novelty. I like the idea of it. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to have to look on Wikipedia here, just to refresh my knowledge. OK. Listen, I did listen to you. Are you saying Bogey Wobble isn't good? 10% Secretary. 10% Secretary is like square push, you're 15 years earlier. No, it's like your dad's. 10% Secretary is like your dad trying to be craftwork. Dark room is nine inch nails in their infancy. Great track. Now it is. I'm not saying it's. Look, to be fair, I'm not saying it's classic. What I'm saying is I think he was rediscovering his enthusiasm for making music on his own. And he was coming up with unusual things, you know, as we were saying earlier when people like Van Morrison were willful, you listen to a truck like Dark Room, you listen to a truck like 10% Secretary. You don't make those if you're actually aiming to make number one single. He's clearly experimenting with technology, making interesting sounds. And he can't help himself but produce beautiful melodies like waterfalls or. He's still writing great tunes, I'll give you that. And, you know, and I think you're right. And I'm playing Devil's advocate in a sense here, because as I say, one of the things I like about this period is that there are certain artists who very much embrace that DIY aesthetic and did something really fascinating as a consequence of that. So it was. It was almost a rebellion against the bombast of the 70s and the slickness of the 70s, which of course ironically was to come again as you move through the 80s, things get progressively more slick again, don't they? But there seems to be a period in the immediate aftermath of punk rock and new wave music, when even artists like. Who probably an artist like Paul McCartney would have been considered an old fart at the time. I mean, he'd been making records for almost 20 years by that time, although that's a blink of an eye in these days. But at the time, he would have been seen as a part of the old guard. And even he, and along with people like Gabriel and Hamill, are going back to the drawing board in a sense and thinking about what they should be doing with their gift, with their musical gift. And I think the closest companion, the albums we're talking about in 1980, probably as Hamill's a black box in that McCartney too and Hamill a black box, would just put together for the sake of putting together in their homes, yeah. In their homes. And so I think there's a certain comparison there. So I wouldn't make a claim for it being great, but I think that it's interesting and it's a great testament to an artist who still wants to make music and still getting a thrill from music. And you know, some people have made a claim that Dark Room predates drum and bass that it has accidentally aspects of what people like Goldie and others are going to be actually-- Yeah, that's a stretch in it. A stretch in it, but yeah. Some people, some people. OK. Yeah, I mean, no, you're right. I mean, I think it's a fascinating document from this era. The artist that arguably is the biggest male solo artist of all time should have made a record that is as nuts. I mean, it's nuts, isn't it? This record is nuts. Absolutely. And some of it is frankly shit, but some of it is also not. And I think-- but that-- I think there's a sense that it's more fascinating to go back and listen to an album like this than something that's much more corporate and sort of finely tuned and finely chiseled, you know, and made in big studios with very much mainstream market in mind. Those records sometimes are less interesting, even if they're probably arguably musically superior. They're less interesting than these kind of noble failures. So I absolutely-- Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's move on. I think I want to talk about another thing that was going on at this time, which I think you were only very, very peripherally into. But I was into it in a big way, because I was 12 at the time, which is, 1980 was the year of the new wave of British heavy metal, which in a way couldn't be further away from all of the other music we've talked about. But what it does have in common with some of the records we talked about is that it's very much come out of the crucible, again, of punk rock, hasn't it? It has a roughness and an edge to it that separates it from the heavy rock music of the early to mid-70s. And the record I've picked to talk about, which I still think-- well, actually, I would have maybe picked the first iron made an out, but on the basis that we wanted to avoid as much as possible, the classic artist that have been discussed and discussed at infinitum, I've instead gone for diamond heads. And their demo album, Lightning to the Nations, which was an album-- I don't know if you remember this, but they essentially made it at home, pressed it up on white label. They didn't even have a cover, which just came in a plain white sleeve, and they sold it through taking out advertising in what at the time was the newly launched Kareng magazine. It ended up with them getting a major record deal with the MCA records. But actually, they never really reached artistically. They never reached the heights of that first demo album, which I think it ended up-- every single song on that record was covered by Metallica in their early days. It was a massive, massive record for Metallica. But again, a band that didn't achieve any mainstream success of their own, but have become increasingly influential on a new generation or the Metallicas and the bands that followed them. Sorry, what were you going to say? Well, it's going to say, for me, I was never really a great fan of the New York British Heavy Metal, but I saw a lot of the bands because when I was sort of 14, 15, 16, they'd be playing in the local bar. On that kind of pub circuit, they were excellent. It wasn't necessarily my music, but they were utterly fantastic, and the audience was fully with them. And especially the track, "Am I Evil?" You'd have 300 northerners going when it said, "Am I Evil?" And they'd go, "Yes, I am." In that voice. Oh, yes, yes, I am, sir. Yes, I do believe, sir. I am rather evil. Yes, and I think it was-- but people would, call a response. And there were fantastic band in that context. And strangely, your friend made me see them when they were playing at Mount Strapolo a couple of years later. And it was an interesting example of a band who suddenly seemed out of their context. I mean, it wasn't helped by the fact that it was kind of half full. Whereas in that pub environment, that kind of sweaty, clamped environment, it worked amazingly. In the larger environment, it just didn't communicate. Yeah, felt like brick layers in Spandex, as we sometimes call it. Yeah. Sometimes-- I mean, obviously, Maiden managed to sort of make that transition very well, didn't they? But a lot of other bands didn't. They just looked ridiculous when they put on the posh clothes and were up on the big stage. They looked slightly ridiculous and out of their depth, whereas they were perfectly at home in the sort of small working man's clubs. And I think, you're maybe all right, Diamond Head, but one of those bands, yeah. And Maiden, again, in that context, very strong. And I think their first album, I think, what they did right, their first album probably is the only new way of a heavy metal album, where I think that it competes with the heavy metal grates, and partly because what it-- it's doing. It's what you said earlier. It's combining the raw energy of punk a new wave with their enthusiasm for classic rock, classic metal, and classic prog. Because you can hear aspects of Jethro Tull, certainly, in that first Iron Maiden album. But they also had a great visual identity. I think they had better material, a great visual identity, and there's something about it where it almost seems built to love. But there's something about the music. I mean, I was 12 years out at the time. It definitely appealed to me. It's interesting that you could also-- you probably remember, because everyone watched top of the pops at that time. You remember that you remember, like me, that you could actually have on the same episode of top of the pops. You could have wheels of sacks and coming on, doing wheels of steel in their spandex, with Peter Gabriel doing games without frontiers, with Boey doing ashes to ashes. And then at the same time, whatever the real mainstream, Candy Floss pop was of the time, whatever-- The Wombles or whatever it was. Absolutely. I think it's one of the fascinating things, isn't it, about music television from that time, that even top of the pops that was actually dictated by charts and by sales was phenomenally eclectic. And you get that even more so with all globalist or test and the tube and so on, that I often find that within half an hour of "Oh, Grogasal Test or Tube" or "Top of the Pops" from say 1980. There's more diversity than on 24 hours of music television now. Absolutely. It wasn't stripped and streamed. It was accidental in some ways and it's enthusiastic. I loved that being exposed to different types of music. I've never felt particularly embarrassed that I'm well aware of American mainstream soul or British new wave of heavy metal. All of this stuff is. There's no such thing as a guilty pleasure. I really believe that. Absolutely. I think maybe when you're a teenager you know you can argue there are certain things that you shouldn't be seen to be listening to or whatever. But listen, we should grow out of that. Really, we should grow out of that. And I really believe at this time in my life that there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure. I will very happily enthuse to you and I probably have about old, old, old, Rubetz songs. Rubetz appearing on top of the Pops in 1974. Some of those songs are amazing. The production, the quality of the songwriting. And yes it's cheesy and yes it's kitchen. Yes it's very much the candy floss end of mainstream pop music. But there is an art to it that I just don't hear in contemporary pop. It's all far too cookie cutter, chisel that has no personality. It sounds like it was written by a computer mainly because it was written by a computer algorithm. But that's the great thing. Again, one band we've not discussed actually, who were the commercial pump in 1980 and I think producing great music, Adam and the Ants. Yeah. Why? You know, once more. We should have Kingston Wild Frontier on the list really, shouldn't we? It's not. Yeah. You know, phenomenally inventive production, music that kind of blended the sort of the beginnings of rock and roll with Afro beat, with a fantastic futuristic 1980s pop scene. And the thing is that, you know, that was again, it was the vision of a band or a vision of a person as opposed to a vision of a committee. Okay, so the next record, I think we should talk about Tim is one that again was on both of our lists. Simply one of the greatest records of all time and the best cure record, 17 seconds. The second cure record. Just has a sound to it that to me sounds like it's beaming in from some other dimension. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, archety, it's the archetypal cure record in the sense that it was the first record where they kind of found their sound. It has a kind of empty, parched ghostly quality to it, partly because of, obviously, his voice, but also because of the sparseness of the production, the way the drums, I've got that very kind of dry, arid quality. There's no reverb on this album. So it has this very spectral quality to it and the songs are just so good. I mean, a forest, obviously a lot of people will know of forest as one of the cures, you know, sort of most famous songs, which is on this record. But everything, play for today in your house is one of my first ever bands. I was in a band where I was 12 called Ambedorn and we used to do a cover of in your house. Can you believe it? So anyway, what do you feel about this record to? It sounds of its time and out of its time and the cover beautifully evokes that kind of hazy sense of mystery that envelops it and there is a real sense of kind of loneliness, isolation. And as you say, I'd bought the previous cure album and it had a couple of good songs, but it was a band finding its identity. It was a band still. In some ways, they were, they were curious band because you could hear that they were coming out of that quite burnished late 1970s post punk. There's a certain aspect of wire to their early sound. There's a certain aspect of conventional punk, but also that more spectral element is being introduced on certain tracks. I think it's 1015 or Saturday night, it's from the first album, which hints at where 17 seconds is going to go completely. And a forest was, you know, it was a very daunting single that certainly a certain time of my life, I played a lot. And the album was almost a beautiful album length investigation into that emotional and sonic state. It's got a consistency of sound, hasn't it? It's a short record and it's a 35, 40 minutes long. It maintains that atmosphere from beginning to end. Now I know because we talked about this before, we sometimes like albums like that. I love albums that are diverse, I love albums that are all over the place. I mean, one of the things you could say about the, whatever I said about it, one of the, you can say about the McCartney two album is that no track is like any other track on that record. I mean, it's just complete. It's all over the shop. But this album is an example of an album that is completely consistent from beginning to end in tone and atmosphere. One of the things is that, you know, I've still got some of these old melody makers and enemies and sounds is that the cure for one of those bands, there were a few artists, late 70s, early 80s, that the press didn't quite trust because they felt that they were reconfigured prog rock bands or reconfigured classic rock bands. You know, so they would quite often be, because you may not have bought the press at that point. There were quite a lot of quite negative articles with connotations that actually they were older frauds trying to get in on the new scene. And an interesting thing with, again, one of the albums that you put on your list, I wouldn't have put on mine, yes drama came out in the same week as Ultravox Vienna. And certainly, I think it's the melody maker they had on one side, yes drama. It was the idea of yes, you know, embracing the spirit of the age and new wave and the electro pop. And it's Ultravox, embracing the spirit of progressive. And they had this kind of, well, it is, sorry to interrupt you, it's fascinating to me how time has in a way revealed a lot more of those connections. I mean, I've always said that when you listen now to another album from, is it closer, joy divisions, closer, 1980s? I think it is, I think it is, I didn't put it in the list because I think joy division or another band that have been almost overanalyzed and overdiscous. So I think one of the things that's fascinating to me is now when you listen to an album like closer, or you listen to an album like 17 seconds, it sounds much more of a part with something like dark side of the moon than it does never mind the bollocks. The sort of existential lyrics, this of angsty lyrics, very kind of almost, you know, reaching for those kind of high ideals with the music. And the space and the atmosphere in the sound, this slightly ponderous rhythms from time to time that you, in the best possible sense of the word, it's very much a fluidian trope. I think the cure of definitely got that and joy division absolutely have got that too. Let's, two more albums I think we should definitely talk about. We have to talk about the specials. And I've got a 1980 issue, correctly pointed out. I thought it was '81. What a terrible, terrible era to have made. It was actually 1980. More specials, the second specials album. Now this is my childhood. This band is my childhood because when I went to secondary school in 1978, all of the kids in my class, 11, 12 years old, were listening to the two-tone bands. It was all about madness, specials, the beats, selector. And specials of course were the, you know, the sort of the leaders of that scene, if you like, in the sense that two-tone was the label that Jerry Dameron had set up. And I love the first album from 1979. It's an amazing record. But there's something sonically about the second album that is really special. And it's interesting when we talked about this, I kind of went on Wikipedia and I read up about the album, things I, you know, I've forgotten about the record. And people talk about it being an influence on Trip Hop. And I was like, really? And it never, never occurred to me that there would be a connection between what the specials were doing and what bands up Massive Attack and Portis Head were doing, you know, much later on in the 90s. And then I listened to the record and I thought, my god, absolutely, I hear it now. It's the use of, I think it's mainly in the use of those kind of dub techniques. A kind of eery quality that I very much associate particularly with Portis Head and Massive Attack. And I definitely hear it in songs, particularly songs like International Jetsets and the Man at CNA. What sort of, I think, relates it to Portis Head and Massive Attack beyond that kind of dub? Is the fact that they use easy listening elements. Easy listening in quite a twist. It's, it's queasy listening, isn't it? This was very much Jerry Dameron's vision that, you know, from what I can gather, he had been to America, he heard a lot of music in Airport lounges and in lifts. And he wanted to recreate this music that he was hearing on the American tour and the rest of the band thought it was diabolically bad from what I can gather. And so you've got these kind of things pulling and pushing and tearing apart. And that's what makes it interesting perhaps that, you know, at the core of it, you have actually quite a banal reference point. Of course, the same for Music for Airports, Brian Eno, where it's that, wants more taking the banality of music and transforming it into something quite human. And I think that, although it's a very different album from Music for Airports, there's a similar motivation of humanising something that is completely inhuman and plastic. And so the album has got a very strange sound. And a lot of those two-tone bands. You know madness were a. wonderful singles band. But this is an album, you know, this is very much an album, whereas I think the first special album is a great collection of songs, it's a great collection of singles, it's not necessarily an album experience, this fits the album years. I think, I think, yeah, I mean you mentioned madness and obviously at the time madness and the specials were almost synonymous for a while, they were the two leading lights from the two town, two town stable, but they could not be more different in a way, could they? I mean, although madness had a couple of songs with more social conscience to them songs like Grey Day and cardiac arrest, they always seemed like they had this very zany fun aspect, whereas the specials seemed like this sort of very, you wouldn't want to meet them in a dark night, on a dark night and an alleyway on your own, would you? They said quite dangerous. Quite, yeah. Something for bidding, yeah. We built like the stranglers, there was something quite for bidding about their image, the photographs. Yeah, quite. How they came across in interviews. Yeah, and they all seemed to hate each other as well, which kind of seemed to seem to be like early no man in that respect, I think. So talking about hate, and this brings me nicely to the final record I want to talk about, because this is another thing that was happening in 1980 that we haven't touched on in any way, really, until now. And I know it's not seen particularly into, but she know I am. And it's the scene, the industrial music scene. Now industrial music, just to give listeners who maybe don't know, give them a very quick history lesson about it. Industrial music was started really with a band called Throbbing Grizzly in 1976. They termed the phrase industrial music. And their music was all about, let's just say, an obsession with everything that was negative and everything that was dark, and a way to kind of channel that through music. And it's one of those counterintuitive things where you think, well, something that's got so much dark energy and so much hate in it, how can that be enjoyable? I could have picked any number of albums from this year. I've picked one by a group called White House, called Total Sex, and it's the second album. And I think I characterized it to you as basically Tim Deneiser, man screaming from the bottom of a well over some sort of primitive synthesizer improvisations. Add a pneumatic drill to that and you kind of got it. And that's kind of it. That is what it sounds like. I absolutely love it. I found it very hard over the years to articulate to people why I love noise, music, and industrial music. It's the only way I can really intellectualize, explain it is that there's something about industrial music that connects to me with ambient music. Now it's interesting you were talking about the briney and our album and the specials having a connection. I think there's a connection between briney and noise music and industrial music as well in the sense that this is music that just fills the room with a single feeling. Why would anyone want to listen to the sound of a pneumatic drill? It's good. Someone scream me over and I'm struggling to explain to you why. Yeah, it's a difficult thing for me. It's just something I cannot connect to emotionally really. I think generally speaking we kind of share maybe 75% of taste. This is one of the things that I've never really got. I mean, I'm not averse to extreme noise, extreme hate, extreme expression of violence and music, but I've always quite liked it when it's contrasted. And for me, the closest comparison to this is how I feel about free jazz that I cannot bear free jazz. But then actually I love free jazz in context. So you know certain artists, whether it be soft machine or even David Silvian have used aspects of atonality and free jazz, but it's been in some ways mitigated with beauty, with melody. And so with industrial, I've kind of liked that level of aggression and violence and sheer noise when there's a sense of relief. And you get that maybe in the music of Scott Walker, to you know later Scott Walker, it's almost industrial drilling in your head, but then it's broken up with the most amazing beams of light and beauty. And so I kind of love these things in context. And obviously, you know, I've really quite liked the idea that you know with the two of us, I think that we liked anything from avant-garde to pure pop, you know obviously on the same show to discuss the roubets and white house is the sort of thing I like. Okay Tim, so I think we'll call it a day there because we've talked about a lot of albums and I'm going to have to edit this down from the 17 hours of footage that we now have. So let's conclude by both picking one album that we feel is, well maybe we can pick one album that is our personal favourite and then album that we feel in many ways captures the zeitgeist of that year more than any other. So in that sense what would be what would be your favourite and what would be your most significant album from that year? Well I don't have to go for three. My favourite album of the year is Scary Monsters. I just think it's a brilliant fusion of what Bowie does best. In terms of the most influential or important, it would be to really remain in light and Gabriel 3. I think remaining light captures that zeitgeist, whereas Gabriel 3 I think perhaps more so than any album of 1980 anticipates what's going to happen in terms of sonic processing. You listen to the way in which the drums are gated, you listen to the way in which the voices are processed, the electronics and the background. You can hear the beginnings of so much production of that era, you know by 1986. One of the things that's interesting about 1980 is as we've said there is such a variety of sound processes, such a variety of genres. And I think what was interesting about say 1985-86 is whether it's the the the water boys, Peter Gabriel or the cars or even Christopher Berg, there was a remarkably similar approach to production, a remarkably similar use of the same instruments, whereas what's great about 1980 is that anything goes to this. I'm going to go for, I think my favourite record from this year, the ones we've talked about, she's hard for me to pick between the juridical and the cure and the Prince album. I'll pick for you the cure. Well yeah, it's a great record, I absolutely love it, I love it. There are albums that I can never get tired of, I keep coming back to. Great, well thank you very much for listening to this, our first attempt at a podcast of the album years. And I hope if you enjoyed it, you'll share it with some other people and we'll be back next time with another year. I think we're going to do one from the 70s. Anyway thank you very much for listening and say goodbye Tim. Bye bye. [Music]