Speaker 1hello and welcome back to the album years and uh well we've been away for a while haven't we tim we've been away since october or november when was the last episode we did it might have even
Speaker 2been october i'm not sure it's quite a long time i'm sure somebody will correct us i'm sure there is going to be a major error having been committed to
Speaker 1probably so whatever whatever the case it's been a while we are back uh due to incredible popular demand is that not right i think the
Speaker 2words you're looking for overwhelming love for
Speaker 1those of you who don't know this show basically myself and tim just talk bollocks about music we love in a very opinionated way and we should also point out uh in a very personal way so we're talking about the that mean a lot to us and i know there are sometimes there are people that are complaining about we don't talk about this artist we don't talk about that artist but it's nothing personal it's nothing personal although well in fact it is it's exactly that it is very personal isn't it it's very personal what i mean is it's not personal to the bands that we're not what we're saying is
Speaker 2we hate everything that everyone else likes i think that's what you're saying exactly
Speaker 1just to clarify obviously that we are you know we're white men that grew up in the 80s and that is going to kind of be reflected in the kind of music that we enthuse about and we talk and in fact today we are going to be focusing on 1981 tim and there's a logic for us choosing this
Speaker 2year isn't there there is yeah it's not only the 40th anniversary it's obviously a year after you know broadly speaking we started the album years and we started with 1980 so we're doing the year after that and we're sort of interested to know what happened really how different was it because you know during that period one of the things i remember is that music genres shifted constantly some new scene or some new sound or something pretty radical happening and and to a degree i'm sure these things are happening today but i think at that particular point in culture you and i were just the right age to be listening out for changes and not only that i think that music probably had a greater standing in the overall culture of the day i think it was perceived as more important
Speaker 1i mean for me i literally became a teenager uh in november 1980 so 1981 is the first full year when i would have been a teen you know and teenage years obviously is a very very special time for discovery isn't it discovery in all fields i was going to say i
Speaker 2think as well it was kind of an interesting time because what you've got in the late 70s early 80s as we probably discussed in the 1980 edition was a fantastic collision of new sounds and old sounds a lot of the older artists seem to be learning from the newer artists a lot of the newer artists were really broadening their scope in the late 70s early 80s so it was quite an exciting time of discovery for the musicians as well as the fans really
Speaker 1so we should probably crack on so 1981 and tim you've put this list together this time around so you've you've been quite specific here i must say uh northwest regional post-punk first of all maybe you should explain exactly what you mean by northwest regional post-punk well i think
Speaker 2in one of the last um albums i've written i've written a lot of songs in the late 70s and 80s and it was 74 i think and i described it as being the year of prog and by that i meant that prog had infiltrated everything and you know that could be a willie nelson concept album it could be you know a grand metal album it was everywhere and i think that with 1981 that post-punk had kind of infiltrated everything and in the northwest in liverpool and manchester there was a massive scene of particularly distinctive sounding post-punk bands and in the liverpool scene i think you had teardrop explodes up in the bunny man who had a slightly more 60s psychedelic influence to their sound and in the mancunian scene which kind of came out of magazine and joy division to an extent martin hannett the producer was a major part of it and there was a very distinct sound and a distinct gloominess in particular to the manchester sound so so
Speaker 1let's talk about some i mean some of my favorite albums in this category already uh for such a specific you know kind of subset if you like of music there's at least three or four records in here that i hold very dear um and two of them are a part of the factory actually three of them three of them are part of the factory family so factory being arguably the most famous label to ever come out of manchester and the association you mentioned also with martin hannett also the design of peter saville this was that very recognizable sort of element to all the record sleeves wasn't there first of all a certain ratios to each i'm not sure if we've talked about a certain ratio uh on the show before i mean this is my favorite album of theirs to each this was their first studio record and they're kind of strange aren't they because they're they're almost like what you might think of as a jazz funk band playing alternative post-punk music you can almost hear the bass pros kind of frustrated mark mark king fan or something but the but the production is obviously very being being martin is it martin hannett the producer it is martin hannett i think you did that one yeah oh yeah i think it's martin hannett i think it's martin hannett i think it's martin hannett yeah it has the same kind of signature production style as what joy division were doing at the time uh you know with or had been doing with with closer so it's a kind of straight they're kind of strange bedfellows in the in a way aren't they that kind of funk element with that kind of alternative post-punk aesthetic but they weren't the only ones whether there was a kind of element of funk in in quite a few of the post-punk bands i think
Speaker 2so yeah i mean i think there's another mancunian band he came a bit later in terms of recordings anyway dislocation dance sort of field as well and it's sort of interesting to contrast it with the new york post-punk sound because obviously talking heads blended funk jazz elements because of course they had john hassell on remaining light um with a kind of grittier new york post-punk narrative style but it sounds nothing like a certain ratio and nothing like those mancunian bands in that style as you say i think part of it is martin had its signature production which sort of follows on from what he did the year previously with jurty column i think it has that very kind of icy almost like shards of glass in your face at times the the amount of sort of echo delay and quite toppy processing um but it's it's an amazing record because i think what you're hearing this is you say on one level it's almost like chic or marking to come this kind of good time funk but with extremely bad time feelings as glum as closer if not more so in some ways and and the vocals have got a certain ian curtis quality as well well i think that i was
Speaker 1just going to say that there's that kind of miserablism isn't there about this record and also kind of deadness to the vocal delivery a very kind of arch deadness almost underachieving voice which makes it sound very cold and very remote i mean when you listen to talking heads it's this kind of sense of joy isn't there so maybe it's the manchester thing that kind of sense of miserablism because you've already pointed out all bands didn't have that did they there was more of a sense of of sort of paisley inflected flamboyance about those bands that the manchester bands didn't have that and you have that in jurity column as well which is the other album actually there are two other albums that are from factory at this this time uh from this year jurity columns lc the follow-up to the record that we talked about on our original episode uh called the return of the jurity column which was ironically their first album but the other album from this year that came out of factory was the first album by a band that was to become incredible influential and arguably made the greatest single of the whole 80s new order and this is this is obviously pre pre blue monday they're still very much in that kind of miserablist post joy division pocket aren't they on this album but there are elements of electronic music beginning to come in too isn't there that obviously will pan out much further as they go on through the decade
Speaker 2well yeah i think it is a real in-between album i mean for me it's actually possibly my favorite new order album because i think what they managed to do is um take a look at the album and see what they've done with it and see what they've done with it and see what they've done with it and see what they've done with it and see what they've done with it and you know ian curtis was a massive loss but in some weird way musically and even vocally this carries his spirit completely and it is where you feel joy division would have gone so i think half of the album is a very logical slightly more expansive follow-on from what they've done on closer and the singles such as atmosphere and the album is a very logical slightly more expansive follow-on from what they've done on closer and the singles such as atmosphere and half of it is that kind of electronic even almost funk electronica that hints at what new order are going to do but of course the the vocals on this are as with the a certain ratio quite dead quite curtis it is that manchester sound of the day and we talked about
Speaker 1this before i think with with relation to a few albums it's that idea that there's a certain album which catches a band between two worlds yeah and it and it somehow has the best of both yeah and it and it somehow has the best of both and i think that's what i love about about new orders uh movement record is you're right it's it does have it still has the sort of signature sounds of joy division but it's in it's in that transitional phase where they haven't quite become the electronic band they're going to with power corruption and lies and obviously blue monday the classic electronic singles but they're starting to work a lot more with electronic instruments and synthesizers and for me that's the balance that i personally love the most i mean much as i love blue monday i don't love power corruption and lies as much as i love movement because there's still still so much of what i love about what before as well as what is about to come and so for me it's just capturing them on that in that perfect sort of just little six month window where they had the best of both worlds and we've you know we've definitely talked about albums with relation and i think we're going to talk about another one later on that has exactly the same without wishing to preempt we're going to talk about rush's moving pictures which to me is exactly the same thing it has the best of what came before and the best of what's to come and to me it's the perfect point to listen to that band and that record well new order
Speaker 2is still very much a band on this as well i think one of the things that distinguishes it is that very almost ice cold tribal drumming which you could hear on bits of closer and certainly on atmosphere as well there's a lot of that on this album i was always very drawn to that style and i guess it's probably the last album where that's prominent really i think the electronics in terms of percussion take over from this point onwards and and hannah of course produced the magazine album from this year magic murder and the weather which um was the sound of a band falling apart and i love it because i think you've got to hear about it a lot and i think it's i think you've got to explode to wilder and magazines magic murder in the weather and they're clearly the sound of bands that are falling apart they're not getting on well it reminds me a bit of the smiths last album in some ways strange ways here we come where you can tell it's an unhappy band but because they're pulling apart it's very eclectic a lot more influences are coming through and in some ways a lot more desperation and expression is coming through so on the church explodes album for example you know they flirt with the band and they're pulling apart and they're anything from epic acoustic ballads to electronic ambient pieces to talking head style funk it's all over the place but it's really exciting and the magazine album is sort of similar really it's magazine in pop mode it's magazine in experimental mode it's magazine at times in jazz funk mode and the hannah production kind of enhances the weirdness of magazines final album as it was for that lineup anyway and also
Speaker 1we should mention echo in the bunnyman second album heaven up here which i think is my favorite that notion rain and my favorite echo in the bunny yeah i mean we've mentioned talking heads a few times that you've also got a category here called new york and you've got four records in this three of them are basically talking heads records uh tom tom tom club uh self-titled david burns uh catherine will album and for me the best of the bunch the david burn brian eno album my life in the bush of ghosts which has been a lot of people have been talking hotly debated over the years as a kind of uh forerunner of of sampling culture uh which is essentially what it is it's a record of instrumental tracks where the the vocal quote unquote is taken from snatches of found sound and speech and uh i think there's even a track with a recording of an exorcism on it but it's it's it's a fascinating i mean i listened i did listen to it again in preparation uh for this this i don't know if it stood the test of time fantastically well certainly in light has and i think part of the reason why for me personally anyway it hasn't quite stood the test of time is because i think a lot of the the tropes are so over familiar to us now almost using sample voices as a kind of hook instead of a instead of a melodic vocal hook those things are obviously you know they are the very bedrock of modern pop music aren't they so but it's extraordinary that a record like this was made in you know 1979 1980 not released till 81 but i think they started on it even in the late 70s and and in that sense it was it was definitely ahead of its time and what's your take on it
Speaker 2yeah i agree with you i think in one on one level it's very now in the sense that it dispenses completely with melody as you said it's using samples as hooks and there is very little melody this is pure sound design and rhythm really and i love it though like you i prefer remaining light partly because i prefer you know burn in that role as kind of vocalist narrator and some of the more expected elements that happen with remaining light i think remaining light kind of hits my sweet spot because it manages to be both experimental but also incredibly accessible and memorable you know this is very much a research and development album and it's great and when we're talking about the new york thing again it comes into this northwest regional post-punk doesn't it that you had a very distinct liverpudlian sound during the post-punk era very distinct mancunian sound and there's that very distinct new york melting pot sound as well and you know obviously remaining light has a very distinct melting pot sound and you know obviously remaining light has a very distinct has it um david burns the catherine wheel which is brilliant has it this has it but also i think that people like king crimson gang of four john hassle all of this kind of comes out of that melting pot you know when king crimson re-emerged in 1981 with discipline it's weirdly quite closely linked with that kind of new york experimentation and gang of four though on one level quite a british political post-punk band to me a lot of their rhythms and their approach seem to be more talking heads than it did joy division or xtc or wire
Speaker 1so maybe because i've just mentioned it we should move on to um the category progressive and progressive related because i mentioned the rush album being another example of an album that is catching a band kind of a perfect point between two worlds between traveling from one world to another and there's a there are many rush albums i don't know to be fair i just say that in complete transparency but i think this is a band that's going to be a big hit and i think it's going to be a big hit of the ones i do know this is the best in the sense that it has the best of the pop sensibility that is to come the more kind of keyboard orientated sound that is to come and their roots as a classic progressive hard rock band just great songs on this record i think i think some of these songs are you know have become real evergreens haven't they songs like limelight and and tom sawyer you know they're kind of staples of classic rock radio aren't they because they are essentially great pop songs i think they're kind of staples of classic rock radio aren't they
Speaker 2you're right i think that permanent waves kind of hints very strongly at this i mean permanent waves is also in between worlds because you can hear hemispheres in permanent waves but then you can hear moving pictures and the more concise more pop oriented direction to come but you know for a pop album it's really uncompromising you know you talked about limelight and you know it's a very natural sounding great rock pop piece but it's in several times signatures it constantly shifts and what's great about this album in a way is there's no sense of compromise i mean it's really quite accessible it's very contemporary as well i mean whatever we say this is coming from a progressive and a hard rock background but actually in terms of the sort of the razor edge guitar production in terms of that toppiness and some of the the drum sounds it's very 1981 you know this is a band completely in control of the era they're in while being completely true to where they came from you can definitely
Speaker 1hear they've been listening to the example you know on a song like vital signs there's obviously that you know that sort of regatta de blanc white reggae aspect to that sort of and i think in a lot of alex's guitar tones on this record you can hear he's been listening to andy summers yeah and i'm not so familiar with permanent waves i mean i do know it but but it seems to me and i might be wrong about this he seems to me this is also the album where geddy leaves behind completely the kind of shrill shrieking aspects of his vocal delivery it's it's like you use the word relaxed and i think that's a very good way of putting it his vocal delivery on this record seems more relaxed more natural less the kind of vocal that's likely to turn off somebody as much as turn them on because the you know however much you love early rush it's a very much an acquired taste because usually because of the vocal approach i think
Speaker 2you're right i think there are elements on it on early tracks i mean certainly with permanent waves it's not particularly shrill there are a couple of tracks where it is so it's almost as if that's the last vestiges of the shrillness um that's kind of what i mean but on on this yes you're right it's completely gone yeah there's less of the pavlov's dog about it i think you know and i think it's a very good way of putting it on the record
Speaker 1you could argue the the transition from hemispheres through to moving pitches there was only one album in between it is fantastic really uh you know and a complete reinvention at the time i would say i knew people who
Speaker 2loved new wave punk progressive rock metal and they all loved rush but that's
Speaker 1interesting because that's the other thing i suppose i i hadn't mentioned before is the transition in the lyrical approach yeah from say two albums before hemisphere is still this kind of sci-fi hangover from kind of you know intellectual sci-fi uh to something much more worldly you know much more about storytelling in the real world rather than this kind of fantasy world and that's even reflected in the artwork too isn't it the change of art yeah from from say hemispheres to to moving pitches so i mean that's that's an extraordinary period of only two years when the band have really you know reinvented themselves and paid off for them commercially didn't it massively
Speaker 2it did and to their credit i think they continue to change throughout their career and if you listen to the next album signals which is synth oriented again you know quite sophisticated musically but it has a lot more in common with ultravox than it does with um 2112 and you know i think by power windows they're kind of experimenting in a kind of ztt fashion in fact i think they're using some as one of their studios at that point and um you know they were clearly listening and clearly sort of evolving the sound and somebody who we're going to discuss later i think produced them in the late 80s early 90s rupert hein so they were very well aware of the sound and they were very well aware of the sound and they were very well aware of the sound and apparently rush got rupert hein because they loved immunity so much
Speaker 1that's interesting well we should talk about immunity in a minute because there is an argument to say that the reason you've chosen 1981 tim is just so you could talk about immunity and i of course readily agreed for exactly the same reason but we're going to come on to that let's let's finish in this category of the sort of progressive and progressive sort of related so also this year we have frank zappa released three albums this year shut up and play your guitar a three album Rebellion, a live album, You Are What You Is, and another double studio record. as ever. Camel's Nude, which you've made a note here, one of the last traditional progressive releases by a traditional progressive band. And I think you're right. There's something about that that's almost like a throwback, isn't it, to this sort of great era of conceptual rock music of the mid-70s. And interestingly, their next record, they would go in a completely different direction. In fact, they made a record called A Single Factor, which was, you know, the title was ironic in the sense that it was deliberately almost trying to write pop songs and hit singles. But Nude, the previous album, was the complete antithesis of that. It's almost like an old school conceptual rock record.
Speaker 2Yes, you know, everything about it is traditional. It's a sort of great languorous mid-70s conceptual work with a good theme as well. And, you know, this was a time when a lot of the other bands had shifted dramatically. So the Camel album was quite an anomaly, really.
Speaker 1The album I actually want to focus on is actually, it's another anomaly, really. It's not a progressive rock album in any way. It just happens to be made by someone who is associated with that genre. And this is Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports album. Now, it's interesting because this is one of those albums that I think is an absolute masterpiece, but you'll see plenty of terrible reviews of it all over the internet, partly because it just doesn't belong to the world that I think Nick Mason fans are expecting music, you know, the music he makes to belong to. This is essentially a sort of very playful experimental jazz record, isn't it?
Speaker 2A Carla Bley album produced by Nick Mason is kind of how I see it. And he's given it the Nick Mason name to boost her because he rated her very strongly as a composer. And she is an extraordinary composer, you know, in terms of her use of harmony and in terms of her extraordinarily sort of withering and sarcastic lyrics. You know, she's a real talent. And like you, I kind of bought it at the time. And I really liked it. But mainly, I liked it because I was a huge Robert Wyatt fan at that time. And anything with Robert Wyatt on would get me to part with my money, really, and probably still will, you know. And there's a couple of pieces on that, which are hilarious while also being sad. There's one piece, which is a kind of pastiche of minimalism, as well, which goes through every single minimalist cliche. And what's kind of interesting is that you think of 1981, by that stage, people like Steve Reich and Philip Glass hadn't really become household names in the way that they would. You know, Philip Glass.
Speaker 1I think that joke would certainly have been lost on most of the people that bought this record, including myself at the time. The joke was completely lost. But I think you're right. I mean, that's interesting. I was going to say something similar to what you said, which is that there's this mixture of tenderness and this incredibly biting sarcasm, sometimes within the same track. It's a fun record, isn't it?
Speaker 2Yeah, well, there's also that really beautiful, the one track out of a thought that Pink Floyd fans would like, is the Pink Floyd pastiche on it. I think it closes side one. Hot River. Yeah, which is brilliant. And it is Robert Wyatt singing The Dark Side of the Moon. It's a gorgeous piece of music. Though, of course, you do feel as if it's ripping into Pink Floyd's legacy while producing this gorgeous piece of music. And I think there's another one, I've forgotten the title, but it's the track where he's basically talking about his own depression. And it's done in a way that is hilarious while also. Also being almost tear-jerking.
Speaker 1But an incredible record and really still sounds like nothing else to me, apart from perhaps the rest of the Carla Bley, Michael Mantler catalogue. But they definitely create, or she certainly created a very, very unique musical world of her own, didn't she? And this is probably the most famous record she made by virtue of the fact that it had a member of Pink Floyd's name on the front cover. And, you know, and I'm very happy about that, because that's why I bought it at the time. And that's why I fell in love with it. And I gave it a chance.
Speaker 2So, yeah. I was going to say, it's almost like a sort of Carla Bley greatest hits album. Because I agree with you that basically it is my favourite Carla Bley related release. And it's almost as if she's giving everything. It's like every aspect of her style is on the album in some respects. It's a great calling card for her talent.
Speaker 1Anyway, let's move on. I, you know, I think 1981, my favourite category for 1981, this is the music that was really arguably the most exciting of all in 1981, was the world of electronic pop music. And there's a long list of records that came out this year that are all, in many ways, all seminal records. Human League's Dare, you know, one of the most influential pop records made, certainly in England anyway. Soft Cells, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, Ultravox's Rage Neat, Duran Duran's first album, Spandau Ballet's first album, Heaven 17's Penthouse and Pavement. We could do a whole episode on just on that record, I think alone, if we wanted to. Yeah, brilliant record. Amazing. Depeche Mode, Speak and Spell, their first album, you know, one of the most important, if not the most important electronic pop acts of all time. Associates' fourth drawdown, Gary Newman's Dance. But I think there's a couple that you and I particularly feel strongly about. Now, I can't remember if we talked about Simple Minds. I can't remember if Empires in Dance hit the cutting floor or not, but the follow-up album, Sons of Fascination, which was a double album, in fact, it was two separate albums packaged as one, to me is certainly one of the greatest albums post-punk, electro. I mean, we've got it in the electro pop category, but it's kind of spanning the world of post-punk and electro pop, isn't it? Because there's still real drums, real bass on this record. Lots of Charlie Burchill's sort of very angular post-Bowie Berlin era guitar. That's still very much to the forefront, isn't it? But they're certainly taking on a lot of the affectations of what will become new romantic music, electronic pop. But it's Arden also in the sense it's produced by Steve Hillage, which is obviously someone that's associated very much with the previous decade. And Steve was always very interested in electronic music and kraut rock music. So a lot of these songs are six, seven minutes long, very repetitive. They don't have conventional pop structures. They're very much into that kind of hypno groove aspect of kraut rock. So you can hear elements of can and noi and craft work as well, can't you? I mean, I think maybe we talked about this when we did talk about Empires in Dance. A lot of people write off Simple Minds because I think they think of them as the band they became rather than the band they were. And that's not to say that what they became wasn't good, too.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I think part of the thing as well was exciting. As you say, one of this, one of the great qualities in this album is its relentlessness, its pursuit of ideas for ideas sake. And it does sit between those worlds of post-punk and the burgeoning electro pop scene. And what is also apparent in Simple Minds at this stage, and maybe they carried this on for a couple of years afterwards, but this is the last album where it's very much part of their identity. There's something about this album that I think is quite esoteric about them. Lyrically, it never gives anything away. Visually, it never gives anything away. There's something about it, which is abstract, but still quite affecting and exciting. And I think that obviously, by the time they become that second rate U2, as people perceive them, lyrically, it had become incredibly obvious, incredibly politicized. You could comprehend what they were about within two or three bars. And of course, there's something about them that I think is extremely interesting. And of course, you know, you do that well, that's an art in itself. But it's sort of interesting that a band that were almost a complete enigma, in a sense, became so open by the end of the decade.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think that's right. Just look at the titles on this record, and they're very, very kind of obtuse, aren't they? And you're not quite sure what they're talking about, but it's kind of drawing you in and it's fascinating anyway. Which kind of leads us on, I think, to Tin Drum, doesn't it? Because that's exactly the same as what I would say about Tin Drum. I mean, he's talking bollocks, isn't he, basically? Utter, utter bollocks. But wow, I love it. I love it. It's amazing. But anyway, musically, this album is just on another planet, isn't it? Just on another planet.
Speaker 2Well, it's amazing. I mean, obviously, we talked about Rush earlier. And one of the things that Rush in Japan had is that with each album, they were shifting dramatically into something else. By Tin Drum, this is a band that is suddenly completely out on its own. And even if there are elements of YMO, they've completely personalised them. You know, this is an incredibly exciting, innovative, very distinctive sounding album, partly because of the use of keyboards, which are extraordinary. The harmonies are very atypical of anyone at any time, you know, maybe Stockhausen, perhaps you can bring into the mix here. But it sounds very different. So we were talking about Hannett's production or the psychedelic production. I mean, I think it's very interesting. I think it's very interesting. I mean, I can't necessarily relate it to, you know, Talking Heads, Simple Minds, any of the other albums we're discussing.
Speaker 1I mean, Richard will tell you that all the keyboard sounds that sound like Yellow Magic Orchestra are all David's. I mean, I think, but you know, what's also interesting, you mentioned the keyboards, but like you say, it's not only that, is it? Because it's one of the last times you can listen to a band. And you can listen to 10 seconds of that band and you can immediately identify every single member of the band. Mick Khan, obviously, arguably the most distinctive bass player to ever stalk the earth. I mean, and Steve Jansen on drums as well. There's an argument to say that Sylvan is probably the weak link in the band. And maybe David even would concede it himself. I think he went on to become a much better artist as a solo artist than he was necessarily within the context of Japan. To me, the brilliance of Japan is the instrumentalists, the instrumental quality of an album like Tindrum, that almost painterly-like quality. the music is put together that doesn't seem to obey any rules at all yeah
Speaker 2i think you're right and i think to a certain extent whereas david sylvan i think really finds his voice on brilliant trees gone to earth and particularly for me secrets of the beehive which i think is a beautiful album on this there's still perhaps a hangover of the ferry influence or even some of the bowie influence so in some ways you know there's some great songs there and obviously he was responsible for the song so he's not exactly a weak link you know he's written some great material but obviously it is what the band are doing with that material they're almost ripping apart you know because i've heard versions of ghosts where it's almost a straightforward acoustic singer-songwriter piece and it's a great straightforward acoustic singer-songwriter piece but in the hands of japan the band it's an innovative masterwork you know it's gone somewhere else so you know there's there's no doubt it's um a collision of the two because perhaps without sylvan songwriting and even with his more recognizable ferry-esque influence you wouldn't have had the hooks that could have grabbed people it still
Speaker 1sounds like something that didn't have a precedent and has never really been emulated uh i think it's probably too hard to me i mean who could play bass like mick khan you know or drums like steve jansen and no one else has ever really sounded like richard you know as a keyboard player i mean they're so they're so distinct as musical personalities yeah yeah and it's
Speaker 2great that it kind of came from almost a kind of untutored way of thinking you know it just grew up as musicians and evolved and pushed one another to greater heights well
Speaker 1that's fascinating too isn't it because japan started as a guitar band and richard will tell you that for the first few years he was kind of always worried he was about to get fired because he wasn't quite sure what his role was in the band and yet a couple of years later three albums later his keyboards are at the very very center uh and there's you know there's no guitar on this well there is a guitar on one track i think he's there or something but there's any guitar on the record at
Speaker 2all isn't it well i mean this is the album after robert dean um had left and you know robert dean was a really good guitarist and i think really contributed a great deal to the previous albums but i guess on this album the guitar in any form was considered too conventional an instrument so
Speaker 1there's one other album i wanted to just to give a brief you know minute or two too because i do think it's not the part of the problem with this year is there's so many great albums you'd want to spend a lot of time talking about uh like we mentioned the heaven 17 record of penthouse and pavement which again a phenomenal record but i think um orchestral maneuvers in the dark architecture and morality is another album i just want to uh just spend a moment talking about because they're a strange one too aren't they you can't imagine two guys on the on paper being less cool and any more nerdy than than andy mccluskey and paul humphries from omd and this record is full of sounds like you know melatrons there's melatrons on here in some respects it's got a lot of the sort of craftwork dna that you would expect from from most electro pop bands but it's very very northern again isn't it because these guys correct me if i'm wrong these guys were also from liverpool or the world yeah i think um so
Speaker 2part of the liverpool post-punk scene used to rehearse in the same place as echo and the bunny man turtle explodes and so on and so they've got that haven't they yeah
Speaker 1they've got they've got that kind of northern miserablism but also what i love about this record i've not seen anyone else do this i don't think is they wrote a song called joan of arc which they weren't happy with uh at least the record company didn't think it was a single so they wrote another song called joan of arc and put both of them on the same record both called joan of arc both were released as singles and both were massive hits yes what are the chances of that very conceptual no
Speaker 2i mean i think that omd were always kind of smarter and more experimental than people think because of their hits i mean they
Speaker 1did look like their mums knitted their jumpers on top of the pops didn't they i think so and i quite like
Speaker 2that about them
Speaker 1okay tim let's talk about roops rupert hein the late greats he just passed away in the last six months or so rupert hein's media it's funny when we started talking about doing this show and the whole concept behind it i think one of the reasons we wanted to do it is because we wanted to not only this record but we wanted there were certain records we we felt we wanted to evangelize about because they're so underrated and unknown and and to us they're very very very special records like for example we talked about van morrison's common one on the very first episode uh we talked about virginia rassley's uh from gardens where we feel secure we talked about john g perry's sunset wading this is another of those records isn't it rupert hein immunity how do you how do you how do you talk about this record tim how do you explain kind of what musical world this is from for a start i think it's um
Speaker 2it's a fantastic album i mean what it is it's in that category where there are very very few albums and we seem to like all of them i'd say you're talking about gabriel three gabriel four kate bush the dreaming where every sound is processed to the nth degree really kind of inventive art pop yeah there's a
Speaker 1definite there's a definite strong emphasis on sound design in all the songs i mean they're they all feel like little short stories don't they the songs obviously you'd expect that from a producer but obviously you know the the other thing is i just love his voice he's not got perhaps the same you know soul element to his voice like gabriel but his voice is very rich and very engaging despite that so i kind of think of him certainly in the same same territory as the artist you're mentioning but i also think of him very much as being contemporaries of uh this record being a contemporary of say what godly and cream were doing yeah on a record like freeze frame i mean a song like i pity inanimate objects i could totally see rupert also doing something along those lines on one of these records too and lest we also forget this is that this is the beginning this is the first in a run of three albums which i very much think of as a trilogy in the sense that they're all just as good as each other because i mean for anybody that's interested in production as of course i am and sound design uh allied to sort of great imaginative ambitious pop writing partly because
Speaker 2of where he came from he was doing something very different you know he'd um produce people like kevin ayers and caravan camel they produced camel anthony phillips so he'd come very much from a kind of art rock progressive rock background but what was really exciting about this album was it sounded like nothing he'd ever done before you know this was a scorched earth policy and i think this is kind of interesting isn't it that you know we're talking about a few bands here like you know japan with syndrome rush with moving pictures rupert heim with immunity it's almost like in 1981 they make these albums that seem to come from nowhere it's like they've completely reinvented themselves and it's like they've completely reinvented themselves and it's like they've is some kind of scorched earth policy and that as we both know is incredibly difficult to achieve you know you can progress as an artist you can evolve you can subtly shift your sound but it's difficult to escape yourself and become something entirely different anyway
Speaker 1that's definitely one of our tips for the the most underrated under the radar records rupert heim's immunity particularly if you like any of the references we've we've kind of talked about so other solo mavericks this peter hamill's sitting targets one of our favorites on the show we always talk about peter bill nelson's quit dreaming and get on the beam ditto really another of our favorites uh todd rungren's healing uh ricky lee jones pirates but the other solo maverick record we want to talk about is is phil collins face value um his first solo record which again is an album that kind of defied all the odds uh isn't it both in in terms of musical approach and the phenomenal international success and not only also not only those who've defied the odds in that sense defied the odds in the sense that the biggest hit single off it uh in the air tonight should never have been a hit single it doesn't sound like a hit single it's it does everything wrong it does everything that a hit single is not supposed to do it's this kind of brooding drum i mean this this song would never in a million years get on the radio now would it it would never on the million years get playlisted by anyone now but somehow in 1981 songs like this would never get songs like japan's ghosts and yes phil collins in the air tonight could get on the radio playlisted on the radio and become massive yeah become top five i
Speaker 2mean laurie anderson's oh superman i think was this year as well
Speaker 1laurie anderson's oh superman yeah how did this happen and you know it's sad in a way this could never happen now but but here's a great example phil collins even though he was already an established successful musician he was the balding drummer of a band that were considered in 1981 to be dinosaurs sure right
Speaker 2he got on the cover of melody maker he was treated quite seriously by enemy we forget this because by the mid part of the decade he's persona non grata and i can tell you that you know when we have burning shed zoom meetings i can put anything as a backdrop nothing will generate more ire and mockery than when i put phil collins face value behind me the cover it's a great record
Speaker 1brilliant record i mean the interesting thing is i always think of face value as being the other side of the coin of of john martin's grace and danger yeah uh because they're both essentially albums that are very melancholic in tone about their breakups with their long-term partners and lest we forget they were hanging out together and phil i think is the drummer on grace and danger isn't he um and and i think he maybe produced the following record um which is really
Speaker 2good yeah he did yeah so they're kind of hanging out
Speaker 1together and they're kind of hanging out together they're kind of drinking buddies i think there's a lot of sort of crying into their beer sort of or crying into their brandies or whatever it is they're drinking going on here about the fact their wives had uh essentially left them and that tangible sense of despair which goes right through grace and danger is absolutely present on face value too isn't it and i think that's one of the things i really you know love about it um it's kind of wallowing in its own sadness in a way but for whatever reason it also has the kind of accessibility and sheen about it that grace danger apparently doesn't have i think maybe just his voice is just it's just a great pop voice
Speaker 2isn't it he's just got that great it is an amazing voice and the thing is in some ways again he's being very true to himself there is an aspect of scorched earth on this because i think in the air tonight although you could argue it comes out of his work with gabriel on gabriel 3 there aren't very many precedents and as you've said it's an extraordinary single you know this lasts for minutes with very simple synthesizer tones you know it's not that far off ghosts in terms of it , it's structurelessness if you like um and it's a very affecting lyric and vocal but i think what's kind of forgotten in retrospect is that although that you know by the mid-80s i think he'd become associated with susudio and and a certain kind of commercial definitively 1980s sheen i think at that point people were oddly still open to it and i was very surprised at the time that given that genesis were perceived as dinosaurs he got very sympathetic interviews and reviews in the enemy and melody maker at that time so he was getting they realized that this was a complete shift in direction and of course names like um john martin were being brought up so people were saying you know god this is amazing it has the kind of experimentalism of gabriel 3 but he's fusing that with the emotional heartfelt qualities of grace and danger and i think grace and danger had been a very well regarded and well reviewed album at the time and so maybe people were sort of seeing it in the light of that album rather than genesis duke i suppose um and this was him stepping out of the genesis role and um again a bit like carla blay it's a bit like a greatest hits album in the sense that you have him at his most experimental him uh with big band jazz influences him with fusion influences even that kind of really affecting country banjo ballad um the roof is leaking you know this quite a lot of diverse material but you know the most affecting material is the most obviously um r&b ballad i think you know if leaving me as easy as one
Speaker 1of the most i love that song yeah wonderful pieces of that era i mean that that's a track that could be on grace and danger isn't it i mean if you think of songs on grace and danger like baby please come home you know i mean if leaving me as easy is definitely uh you know a very close close relation to a song like that isn't it yeah yeah it's another anomaly in a year that seems to be full of them um we should probably just again remind people that you know we are middle-aged white men who grew up in the 80s so so a lot of what we're talking about on this show is is definitely a reflection of that but um let's move into different genres that take us slightly more out of our comfort zone metal so it was a pretty good time for metal wasn't it because we were kind of in the in the sort of halcyon days of new wave of british heavy metal lots of metal bands have got signed got big record deals off the back of of you know that movement um your maidens your your deaf leopards and that and the the kind of bands that are are destined to become the long term successes are beginning to establish themselves uh and perhaps some of the also rands are falling away so this year we have iron maiden second album killers now i'm i'm a big for the first two maiden albums i i think they're my two favorite uh maiden albums uh i i love the more punky edge of the paul diano albums yeah the the first album for me is is an absolute classic killers a little bit more of the same but that's not a bad thing necessarily there's something about those
Speaker 2first two iron maiden albums that is very gritty very grubby very london there's a kind of punk edge not new wave edge there's a kind of really grubby urban punk element to it and they managed to merge prog metal and punk pretty naturally i think on those first two albums we've also got
Speaker 1the mighty sabs uh with mob rules we've got saxons denim and leather we've got venoms welcome to hell which i think was the first venom out which a band that we're going to become very influential probably 10 to 15 years later with the scandinavian black metal scene venom was seen as you know sort of precursor to that whole scene michael schenker group msg deaf leopards high and dry their second album uh ozzy osbourne's diary of a madman so these are all really strong entries in the sort of canon of metal i suppose we're in an interesting period here aren't we because we're kind of before the era of of sort of so-called hair metal we're before the era of the motley crews and the guns and roses where metal became more glam it's still got that sort of sort of um urgency and down-to-earth quality deaf leopard have yet to have their big sort of breakout crossover records so there's still that kind of you know we mentioned it before that kind of punk edge to a lot of this music but also an edge that relates back to things like early judas priest early thin lizzy early black sabbath a more kind of dry parched production there isn't the big massed about walls of harmony vocals there isn't the big sort of you know gunshot snare sounds yet it's still got that aesthetic of being a relatively uh almost like a diy aesthetic which is personally what i like i like
Speaker 2it's kind of coming though because you can hear it you know deaf leopards high and dry they are going to evolve into that ufo's album of this year is quite fm compared to what they'd done previously and then you've got the american fm rock bands you sort of emerged in the mid to late 70s and i'd say kind of boston is almost like the progenitor of
Speaker 1that let's move on um jazz perhaps our vintage year for jazz i mean we've talked about this before how the mid 70s was kind of like a watershed time for jazz as it became more moved more towards the kind of smooth cti sound artists like deodato having big crossover hits and a lot of other jazz musicians kind of wanted a piece of the action so they were artists like weather report making albums like black market and heavy weather more kind of accessible commercial jazz so we get to 1981 ecm always keep the flame that's sort of uh almost a guarantee of some quality and we have some great records on ecm this year keith jarrett's invocations moth and the flame which is not a jazz record at all you know i mean keith jarrett's one of those artists that has just gone completely outside of the genre from which he's with which he's traditionally associated invocations is a record he made on a church organ and moth and the same time he's got a wonderful record uh wonderful records a very unpredictable artist you never knew what keith particularly in the 80s actually you never knew what keith jarrett was going to do next so very unpredictable artists right through the 80s i'm sure jazz you know jazz aficionados didn't really know what to make of him uh which is a great great thing as far as i'm concerned pat metheny and lyle mays as falls wichita so's falls wichita falls that's a bit of a mouthful isn't it uh tell us about this record tim
Speaker 2well i think it's possibly the best album really i mean you're talking about jarrett was continually shifting and making albums that really weren't jazz in any conventional sense and that was good because i think you know jazz obviously in the 60s and 70s went through a very experimental phase and unfortunately i think by the late 70s early 80s you know weather report was still making interesting albums overall it had become a lot more conventional and a lot more traditional i think people were looking back to the 50s the classic kind of post-bop um but ecm as you say were kind of keeping that flame alive for jazz musicians being able to do whatever they wanted so you were getting beautiful genreless albums by the likes of pat metheny ralph tyner oregon the pat metheny and lyle mays album has a side long textural suite you know it's as close to vangelis as it is to jazz but the harmonies they're using a kind of influence by brazilian folk music and a lot of the rhythms are coming from steve reich and of course he was signed to ecm at that stage as well so they were probably very familiar with what he was doing so it's an interesting kind of collision of electronics minimalism brazilian harmonies and that very fluid distinctive guitar tone of metheny's um just a really strong unexpected album that did extremely well and i think john sermon was also experimenting a lot with synthesizers around that time as well he said that
Speaker 1all these guys are john sermon too actually they're fascinating musicians in the sense that that like keith jarrett they're very unpredictable aren't them and i'm thinking of pat metheny and what he's done you know over the last 25 years he did a noise album called zero tolerance for silence you know which is awesome as mertzbau-esque he did now with derrick bailey free jazz album he's done his albums with the orchestrion which is this bizarre kind of like musical instrument invented i think or somebody invented for him i'm not too sure and a it's interesting to note i think it's worth pointing out that ecm although they're they're nominally known as a jazz label of course ecm stands for editions of contemporary music and i think manfred eicher the guy who set up the label also had always had visions that it would be much more than just a you know a simple quote-unquote jazz label and of course ecm became as much known for its neo-classical music as his jazz music starting around this time as you're right because they signed steve reich and they had arvo peart and then later on they had all these other sort of classical classical artists come into the label and it's interesting you see that That reflected in the so-called jazz artists, too. I mean, making almost kind of having pretensions at being one of the very early Keith Jarrett records on ECM was a record called In the Lights, which was his string quartets and a brass quintet and, you know, pieces he was writing in a serious classical mode. So I think that's the beautiful thing about this label. There is that sense always that the so-called jazz musicians always seem to be much more eclectic and diverse than you would ever expect a jazz musician to be. And Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays, of course, passed away quite recently.
Speaker 2Yes, another ECM artist around this time I really liked was Meredith Monk. Again, she was signed to ECM and releasing albums and producing some extraordinary albums of kind of vocal compositions.
Speaker 1I mean, she's not jazz at all, is she? She comes. She's almost from the performance art background, doesn't she? Yeah. Also, this year we have Miles releasing his big comeback record after the big hiatus of the 70s, at least in studio terms. I think there was a live album, wasn't there? Or maybe it was after this. I'm not sure. The Man with the Horn. Now, the thing I always think about The Man with the Horn is it's actually a good record, except I don't think Miles is playing that well on it. And I think the hiatus has kind of taken its toll on him. Two records that we both like very much. I love both. I think, Tim, you definitely love the Grace Jones record, at least. Grace Jones' Nightclubbing and Prince Controversy, which to me, being a massive Prince fan, only suffers because it came after Dirty Mind, which is such a landmark masterpiece for me. Controversy seems a little bit like more of the same for me, but that's not to say it's not a brilliant record, which it is. And Grace Jones' Nightclubbing, you know, part of a trilogy of records, I suppose, that she made around this time. They're all made in very quick succession in the Bahamas with Sly and I. And Robbie as her as a rhythm section. And there's again, there's a there's a kind of connection to the New York world of artists like Talking Heads. Yeah, it fits beautifully.
Speaker 2Sorry. Yeah, I was going to say, I think, again, I think her delivery, which is so detached, so ice cold, fits with the post-punk language of the day. I mean, so again, she's kind of got this funk aspect, this R&B aspect. There's also the kind of post-punk dance culture that's emerging in New York. So weirdly. She fits beautifully with so many scenes that are happening in, you know, it's true.
Speaker 1It's true. I hadn't thought that. Yeah, because, of course, she covers She's Lost Control from Joy Division. And she also covers Warm Leatherette by The Normal, which is great. So and her version, I think, is the definitive version.
Speaker 2It's a bit like the Prince controversy in this sense that Warm Leatherette was so good and such a statement that Nightclubbing, as strong an album as it is, seems very much like part two. It didn't quite have the shock value. The material's great. The title track is particularly stunning. But there is a sense of it repeating what Warm Leatherette has already set out, which is no bad thing because I love Warm Leatherette.
Speaker 1OK, so we're running out of time, Tim. So we should we should just quickly recap on some of the other things we haven't spoken about yet. Just general rock and pop records. ELO's Time. Love that record. ABBA's The Visitors, their final record, which is a masterpiece. We've talked about ABBA before on the show. So we won't. We won't talk about them again here. Squeeze, East Side Story, Elvis Costello and the Attractions Trust, Madness 7, Adam and the Ants, Prince Charming, Face Dances by The Who and the Rolling Stones, Tattoo You. And then in the world of where you've got the electronic category. Yes. Oh, yes. Well, there is one album here I did want to talk about a little bit just to recap on other records from this year. Craftworks, Computer World. Of course, we could wax lyrical about the album forevermore. But but I think Craftwork. Craftworks are almost part of the canon now these days, aren't they? And I've been disgusted and perhaps over. Computer World is just a phenomenal record that was so influential. It's ridiculous. But we won't talk about it here because I want to talk about the dark twin of Craftworks, Computer World, Deutsche Amerikanische Freundschaft, which is a bit of a mouthful. And there are actually made two albums this year. But the first album, Alice is Good, All is Good, is the is the breakthrough record. The band were originally a post-punk group. They had about five or six members and they made some very, very sort of interesting post-punk music. Suddenly they were down to a duo of a drummer and a singer. And they came out with this record called Alice is Good, which is basically drums, voice and sequencer. And that's pretty much all there is to it. It's a very, very small musical palette. But what they do with it is incredible. And it is very similar to the Craftwork. And you cannot you can almost you can almost can't imagine anything more Teutonic than the sound of DAF singing in German. But in a way that sounds the way that Rammstein sounds good to people who don't speak German. DAF sounds good to me, too. And they have a very infamous song on this record, which was a kind of almost hit called The Mussolini. Do the Mussolini, which is like this stomping dance track with just this propulsive sequencer, propulsive drum pattern. And then the singer. Gabby Delgado Lopez, basically singing, do the Mussolini, dance the Adolf Hitler over the top. Like the sound of that? I love this. As I say, this is like the evil twin of Craftwork. This is like the bastard offspring of the classic crack rock of the 70s. The repetition, the propulsiveness, the kind of detached archness of it, the irony. And I absolutely adore it. It's like electro punk. And it's basically all you need to know about this one band. All you need to know about this band is in this one song. Because basically everything on the next three records was the same. It would be a sequencer pattern that would start off. A fantastic sequencer, by the way. I don't know what keyboard they use, but I love the sound of the sequencer. This kind of demented, out-of-control sequencer would start up. And then the drums would sort of kick in in a very kind of repetitive way. No drum fills allowed. Just this kind of motonic pulse. And then this Spanish-born singer would start intoning in German over the top.
Speaker 2And there's also the dark wave to come. I mean, this sound defines a lot of German electronic music of the next 20, 30 years, really. It's very stripped down. It does. And as you say, in a way, it's kind of, you know, the only precedent I can hear is maybe suicide. There's an aspect of suicide in this sound. But in some ways, it is like punk music being played on synthesizers. But there's a kind of a sultry, you know, but there's a sultry understatement that punk doesn't necessarily have. Which is why I guess I prefer DAF to Sham-69. Yeah, as you say, it's an incredibly German sound. It could be none other.
Speaker 1So also this year from the world of electronic music, Vangelis, Chariots of Fire and John and Vangelis, the Friends of Mr. Cairo. Jean-Michel Jarre's Le Chant Magnétique. Yellow's Clara Kisei. C, sorry. YMO's Technodelic and Tangerine Dream's Exit. Also, what else have we got we haven't talked about? Oh, well, you've got a category here called Explore. It's called Experimental. I think this is where you've tended to put sort of outliers. Things like the Penguin Cafe Orchestra's second album. Now, I think I'm right in thinking that we talked about the first album, didn't we? When we did the, I guess it would have been the 1976 episode. Yeah. So a bit more of the same, but they're such a kind of, they inhabit such a wonderfully kind of unique world anyway of their own, don't they? That it's no sort of criticism to say that they're kind of doing more of the same here on this record.
Speaker 2No, it's another charming album. It's maybe not quite. It's not quite as interesting as the debut in some ways, but it's a great record.
Speaker 1So there's one final category that we should recap on. We did talk at the beginning of the episode about the Northwest regional post-punk, which is very specifically about the post-punk music that came out from Manchester and Liverpool. But of course, there was some other fantastic music from a scene that was still really, you know, very, very much at a peak at this time. Suzy and the Banshees' Juju. The Cues. The Cues, Faith, which, I mean, I just love that record, but we've talked about 17 Seconds and it's kind of more of the same, isn't it? In the best possible sense of the word. The Sound from the Lion's Mouth, very underrated post-punk group. They kind of almost sort of nodded towards the stadium, you know, sound of bands like U2 a little bit too, didn't they? Ditto Concert Angels.
Speaker 2Well, I think you're right. I think those bands, kind of Concert Angels, The Sound, they're in between Joy Division and U2. They've got something of both. They've got that kind of anthemic quality of U2, but they've still got that really quite stark, unique, parched post-punk production.
Speaker 1Yeah. And ditto Psychedelic Furs, I think, with their album from this year, Talk, Talk, Talk. And then we've got the so-called beginnings of the sort of goth scene, you know, along with The Cure, The Birthday Party, Prez on Fire, one of Nick Cave's earliest works, of course, in the context of that band. Bauhaus Mask, their second album. Au Pairs, playing with a different set. The Stranglers, La Folie, came out this year. Matt Johnson, who later became, started working under the name of The The, released his first album this year, Burning Blue Soul. So another, another icon to come, starting out on his musical path this year. And Eyeless in Gaza, Photographs as Memories, their first album. A favourite of ours, Tim, over the years, hasn't it? Eyeless in Gaza, Martin Bates and Eyeless in Gaza. We've been very curious about them over the years, haven't we?
Speaker 2Well, I think the thing about Eyeless in Gaza is that they fitted in with that post-punk vocabulary but they always had something that little bit more fragile, human and earthy. You know, there was kind of a traditional folk element that was even in the early 90s. the earliest albums by that band. And I think that as the band evolve, you know, and they evolve in experimental ways with electronics and a lot of drum experiments in particular, but there's something, maybe it's in Martin Bates' voice that I always think has a kind of an ancient folk, almost shamanic quality.
Speaker 1Did we not talk about the murder ballads? We did, yeah. Didn't we? We talked about the Martin Bates, Mick Harris murder ballads album, yeah. But Eyeless in Gaza, the thing I love about Eyeless in Gaza is that they never seem to get out of the bedroom. Do you know what I mean by that? Yeah, yeah. Even five or six years, five or six albums into their career, they still sounded like there was just a couple of guys having, you know, fun on their sort of porter studio in their bedroom. Yeah. It's a very DIY aesthetic. It didn't seem to have aspirations to be anything bigger than it was. And it's very charming and very intimate. And again, it has a sort of lo-fi thing right through their career. Yeah.
Speaker 2I suppose the thing I liked about Eyeless in Gaza, as you say, I think on one level, this is music made purely for themselves. They're not writing it for an audience. They're not writing it for success. And I guess what kind of distinguishes them from a lot of the post-punk bands is that there's no archness in Martin Bates' voice. He doesn't have that clipped quality that was very fashionable. And you can even hear in Grace Jones, as we were talking about, his voice is from a different place altogether.
Speaker 1Great. Shall we leave it there? Yeah, Tim. That's a lot of records we've covered in a very short space of time. And so basically, if we haven't mentioned your favourite band or your favourite artist, it is because we hate them. It's nothing to do with ignorance and us not knowing it at all. Right, Tim? It's actually because we know it all. We just hate it and we don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 2We know everything. I think it's one of the facts the album years has established beyond any other.
Speaker 1It's also worth pointing out that if you are interested in hearing any of the music we talk about, we do put together a playlist on Spotify. Based on each episode we've done. So there will be, within 24 hours of this episode going up, there should be an episode dedicated to 1981 where myself and Tim choose choice cuts from some of the albums we've talked about. So, Tim, the last thing that remains to be done, as we do always, as is customary at the end of the show, is we choose our, if push comes to shove, our favourite or favourites, if we can't come down on one in particular, and the album that we feel is the most influential. So you go first.
Speaker 2I mean, I find it almost impossible because, I mean, the one thing I remember from this year is that I love.
Speaker 1You say that every time. Ah! Oh, I find it almost impossible.
Speaker 2Oh, not. Come on. When we did 1973, I said Dark Side of the Moon without any hesitation, whereas you were going.
Speaker 1Well, I've heard it so often I can't listen to it anymore. There isn't even music to my ears. I wasn't quite saying that, yeah.
Speaker 2I think you said that in that exact voice, if I remember correctly. I mean, there were a lot of. There were a lot of albums that I played quite a lot during this year. And actually, you know, again, even Squeezy Side Story, I thought that was one of their best albums with some fantastic singles. There were great singles this year, you know, Oh, Superman, I'm in Love with a German Film Star, Under Your Thumb, Godly and Cream. There were so many. In terms of album, I guess, you know, I played so many of these an awful lot. You know, looking through this list, it can be anything from, you know, The Catherine Wheel to Immunity to Face Value to Tindrum to even Gary Newman's Dance. And New Order's Movement. These are albums that I've played an awful lot.
Speaker 1Are you just going to list all the albums we've talked about again, Tim? Or are you actually going to choose one?
Speaker 2From magazines Magic Merger and The Weather to. Yeah, I'm going to list every album that we've listened to on this. Even The Strangler's La Follie is a great album.
Speaker 1Oh, for goodness sake.
Speaker 2Papatheni. Oh, God. I'm going to go with Japan Tindrum for both my. Favourite and the most innovative. I'm going to just cut it down to that one release.
Speaker 1I think that's a very, very good choice. I definitely would choose Tindrum as one of my favourite albums of the year, if not my favourite album of the year. I'm just looking through the list quickly to see if there's anything else that would compete with it. And there are. The Nick Mason album, actually, I love. Yeah, great album. Also, Simple Minds, Sons and Fascination. I'm not going to do what I've just accused you of doing and list every album again. Most influential. Is Tindrum. Because we kind of talked about that. It didn't really begat much, did it, in the way of music that was influenced by it or at least audibly influenced by it. This is a very hard album to sort of copy, wasn't it, in that respect?
Speaker 2Yeah, I suppose you're right. I mean, I'm thinking more in terms of production.
Speaker 1I think for most influential album, I'm going to go for the Kraftwerk Computer World, which has just been ridiculously influential. It's cast a shadow, really, over the whole sort of, you know, world of electronic music and pop in general ever since. And as its evil twin, the DAF album, Alice is Good, which, as you kind of pointed out earlier, is kind of the godfather of a lot of dark wave music, of which there is a lot in the world, it has to be said. So there we go. I think we'll leave it there. We'll try and edit this episode down to a manageable length. Although we are getting more self-indulgent as we move into our conceptual progressive rock phase. Tim and myself, we started off making succinct 40-minute, long statements. We're now into the worlds of sort of double and triple album, you know, sprawling concept records where people would say that would have made a great single episode, right?
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, you know, again, looking through, there are so many of these albums that still mean an awful lot to me. This is why I almost recited the list in its entirety for my favourite album.
Speaker 1Can we, on that subject, for our next episode, can we pick a year where we hate almost everything so that we can keep it down to about 40 minutes?
Speaker 2Well, obviously in 1992, I think we found about two albums we actually liked. So that was.
Speaker 1Well, exactly, exactly. Yeah, you want that. So let's try and pick a year where we hate most of the music made and then we can, you know, make it easy for ourselves, basically, by doing that, you know. Anyway, we'll leave it there. Thank you very much for listening. And I hope you enjoyed this first episode of our second run at this absurdist, opinionated, factually incorrect show. And there will be plenty more to come. And goodbye. Goodbye and goodbye from Tim. Goodbye.
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