Speaker 1Hello and welcome back to The Album Years with myself and my colleague Mr. Timothy Bowness. Hello. Hello. So once again, it's been a long time since we did the last episode, January this year. I couldn't believe it's been so long. It was the middle of winter when we did the last episode and now it's verging on summer in England. And it's even worse this time because essentially we stopped halfway through talking about a particular year, 1978, even though we'd split the first half into two episodes because we talked so much. We talked so much already about 1978. So we've got more to talk about with 1978. We could end up with a six part series.
Speaker 2I was thinking of a series based on 1978. What a year, even though it's a fantastic year for singles, as we discussed. But I think one of the things is that, yeah, five months since we did the last one. And I've almost forgotten where we were at, what we covered. So we might actually repeat some of the same conversations, which could be interesting because our opinions might change. Because I don't know about you. I've moved. I've moved on. I'm in the future now.
Speaker 1I'm in 1982. You're quite right. But I mean, it's true to say that we have the same conversations in every episode anyway, don't we? In effect, yeah. Which is why we've ended up with the drinking game for some of the listeners who have the drinking game. Whenever we mentioned certain artistes, such as The Ham, Eno, is he one of them? Oh, yeah, of course. Mark Hollis, Sylvian. Oh, Fripp. Yeah.
Speaker 2Fripp. I mean, but you've got to get Fripp in 1978 because he did so much. You've got to get Eno because he did even more. You've got to get Gabriel. You've got to get The Sill in, which I think we did last time. We can't really shoehorn Mark Hollis in because he hadn't even produced his first work at this stage.
Speaker 1He wasn't even born at this time. Well, we'll try. Yes. OK. So we probably will cover some of the same ground here because we haven't. Obviously, we don't listen to our own podcast, God forbid. So we may find that you may find that we're repeating ourselves here. But, well, that's just par for the course, isn't it, with this podcast? So let's move ahead, Tim. I think we got as far as talking about mainstream artists. And I think the last thing we talked about was The Suite or Sweet and their attempt to go with the times by being five years behind the times, by making their prog rock album Levelheaded in 1978. I think that is the last conversation we had, which means next up, it's disco and R&B.
Speaker 2Good grief. We like a bit.
Speaker 1A bit of disco and R&B, don't we?
Speaker 2Don't we? We do. I mean, Love You to Bits is testament to that fact.
Speaker 1And it was a cracking year, wasn't it? 1978. You could say it's kind of the peak of disco in a way, couldn't you? But we have Say Chic. The second Chic album comes out this year, which chock-a-block with classics. Fantastic album. So maybe let's talk about that. I mean, Chic, you know, Nile Rodgers still ubiquitous as ever. I think along with Elton John. He's going to be about the most ubiquitous sort of 70s icon that there is right now because he just pops up everywhere, doesn't he? He's still playing on top chart albums. And, you know, he even worked with me. That's how ubiquitous he is. That is how ubiquitous he is.
Speaker 2I mean, I've still not got him to actually mix one of my tracks, but he is ubiquitous.
Speaker 1So Chic, what is it about Chic that makes. I mean, because I listened to this album the other day. It still sounds so fresh. I mean, it's beautifully recorded. I noticed, actually, it was. It was mixed. It was one of the very first albums probably engineered and mixed by Bob Claremountain, who, of course, got on to become a legend in terms of making beautiful-sounding records. So it was obviously beautifully recorded at the time. I think it was recorded at the Power Station in New York. It sounds absolutely amazing. It sounds lush. But there's something about Chic, isn't there, that it's not. It's obviously crossed over in a way that Prince. We're going to talk about Prince, too. The way that Prince kind of crossed over to a much broader demographic, didn't he? And it's the same with Chic. They kind of appeal to pop and rock fans as well as R&B and disco fans, don't they?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think there's a kind of sophistication in their chord voicings and the production. As you said, it does sound incredibly beautiful. And they managed to go from a sort of pummeling funk dance floor sensation to really poignant. And they make that transition incredibly well. And another band at the time who sort of did that, Rose Royce.
Speaker 1I remember Rose Royce, but I just remember that hit, Love Don't. Live Here Anymore, was that the name?
Speaker 2Yeah, and Wishing on a Star as well.
Speaker 1But I think Chic. Firstly, they've got Niall. And Niall is actually a bit of a guitar hero, isn't he? I mean, there's a track on this album, Savoir Faire, which is basically just a shred fest. Just a beautiful extended guitar solo over a gorgeous orchestral arrangement. But then the other secret weapon, of course, is Bernard Edwards and those bass lines. I mean, they're just phenomenal, aren't they? I mean, in many ways, they're kind of the hooks of the songs, aren't they, those bass lines? You kind of remember the bass lines even before you remember the top line. Melodies a lot of the time. Yeah. On songs like Le Freak and We Are Family, which is a Sister Sledge song, but it's essentially Chic, the Chic production team. There's those fantastic bass lines. And of course, one of the big songs on this record was covered by the none more white Robert Wyatt, wasn't it? At Last I Am Free. It's just a gorgeous ballad.
Speaker 2Oh, it is. It's an absolutely gorgeous ballad. And his version is wonderful because he just does it in. definitively Robert Wyatt style. You know, he absolutely, as he did with Elvis Costello's Shipbuilding, he makes it his own. But I think the original is absolutely gorgeous. And I was thinking, again, maybe that guitar element is perhaps why they've lasted more, that they had a certain kind of quality that crossed over into rock. You know, obviously, Nile Rodgers produced David Bowie in the early 80s. And there's something of that chic production line sound that they had. They had on their own albums and on the Sister Sedge albums that you can kind of hear in Trevor Horn's productions on Dead CT as well. There's an attention to detail in the orchestration.
Speaker 1Yeah. It's meticulously produced, isn't it? But there is definitely a strong crossover into rock. And we're going to talk about the ultimate kind of, you know, poster child for that kind of phenomenon really here, because the first album this year by Prince came out. And it's all there pretty much straight away from the off. Here is this wonder kid playing. All the instruments himself. But Prince, I mean, we've talked about Prince before. I mean, there's not there's perhaps not much we can say more about Prince. I really like the first two albums. Dirty Mind is really the breakthrough, the third album. But the first two albums, you know, already there's a precocious talent there, isn't there? I think that's it.
Speaker 2I think these albums don't stand out in the way that the later ones do, maybe because they haven't got signature songs. You know, there's no Purple Rain on this. But I think they're a fantastic showcase for a talented artist. Again, in my. Sort of Academy of the underrated theory that is if an artist like Prince only made this album or any made his first two albums, I still think this would be a cult artist, you know, that he went on to greatness is not surprising given this. And, you know, there are lots of other artists like that, you know, even David Bowie's 1967 debut. It clearly isn't his best work. Yet there is a talent and an intelligence there. And I think the same goes for even, you know, Thin Lizzy's first two albums that often aren't celebrated. Similar thing. If they'd have left it there, they'd be seen as this great crossover of Celtic rock and Van Morrison folk influences. And that's it with Prince. You know, there's a there's a lot there. And I guess it's been overshadowed by the genius that followed.
Speaker 1He's obviously not as confident as he's going to be here. He's still hiding behind that sort of rather quiet falsetto delivery on everything. He hasn't sort of discovered his big rock voice. Yet, has he? No. But still, still great. As you say, just judge these records purely on their own merits. They are terrific R&B disco records. What about this one then? One more, one more to talk about in this category. This is a mad one, isn't it? Marvin Gaye, Hear My Dear.
Speaker 2Hear My Dear is one of those albums that I think the album years was made for, really. If people don't know.
Speaker 1Is this the tales from topographic oceans of R&B? I don't know.
Speaker 2Because I think. I think The Secret Life of Plants, Stevie Wonder might be that.
Speaker 1Okay. So what is this? What would be the analogy? What would this one be? Would it be the Troutmast replica? No, not really.
Speaker 2It wouldn't be that either. I mean, if people don't know this album, it's a double album. It's quite excessive. It has some very beautiful tracks. And it was made because Marvin had got divorced. And he got divorced, I believe, from Barry Gordy's daughter. And Barry Gordy was the person who ran Motown. And basically. All of his money on this album was going to his wife. And so he called it Hear My Dear. Because it was his entire income. Everything was going to his wife.
Speaker 1But it goes beyond that, doesn't it? Because every single song on the record is about her. And about the fact he's giving her all the proceeds. All his income. So it's mad, isn't it? I mean, who would do this? Who would do. Basically, you know, talk about airing your dirty washing in public.
Speaker 2Well, I mean, to be fair. It's that, isn't it? It is one of his maddest albums. But I think he does get even madder. because there's that album that was released posthumously, which is "Dream of a Lifetime," time i think and it has lots of off cuts from earlier albums which are quite sensible and then it's got some very prince inspired tracks and there's one of them i always remember because i think it's called something like masochistic lady and he sings it in a cockney accent so it's like some kind of really lascivious prince electro funk piece but with marvin gaye singing in a cockney accent i love you my masochistic lady yeah is that when he
Speaker 1was living in bel he went off to live in this sort of little town in belgium didn't he i mean he completely lost his mind uh during this period he went off yeah
Speaker 2live in a town in belgium which i've been to that town as well and it's by the sea and allegedly just used to go and play darts with the local fishermen at
Speaker 1night and would you like to pop down to your local pub and find marvin gaye
Speaker 2i would love to have a game of arrows with you it's a terrific folly isn't it because i
Speaker 1mean the basically the whole thing runs it's it's 80 minutes long and it basically runs pretty much continuously doesn't it the tracks are all seven eight minutes long they ramble on and on and on with these kind of monologues but it's one of those records it's just a beautiful place to visit isn't it i mean there's nothing particularly memorable on this record but it's just you sort of immerse yourself in this mad kind of folly and you can only kind of step back and admire it and it's just a beautiful place to visit
Speaker 2yeah maybe one track when did you stop loving me when did i stop loving you that one which i think is quite a poignant account of the death of a relationship and that has a lovely melody and his singing's gorgeous on it and it's amazing there are some great harmonies this is what he does his really nice um dual you know his double track vocals fantastic on this um yeah i mean you're right it doesn't really have particularly any breakthrough melody as there were on obviously you know the fantastic
Speaker 1let's face it it's a massive a massive sprawling tuneless folly exactly the kind of record that you and i will hold up as the very purpose of this podcast and the very
Speaker 2pinnacle of r&b and the pinnacle of marvin gaye's artistic statements yeah and the sort
Speaker 1of record we would encourage anyone with even a modicum of curiosity about what's out there to go and investigate it's brilliant so let's let's move on to the next record on to to rock and metal so let's i'm just having a quick shifty down this list here lots of live albums this year isn't it oh
Speaker 2god it's the era of the live album obviously live and dangerous is one of the big ones um i thought obsession by ufo that was one of their best albums quite a sophisticated record with um nice use of dynamics well only you can rock me for a start cherry a few metal bangers yeah it's boss rock it's kind of it's if springsteen were in a hard rock band it would be ufo i think there's an aspect of that
Speaker 1what can you say about never say die by black sabbath
Speaker 2now that is a really interesting folly because i don't think it's that bad i think the title track is is a great aussie osborne pop tune well worthy of being heard and the album is one of their most formless and eclectic and i sort of like it for that because it's even got a miniature jazz rock instrumental you know this is a band that is in search of a direction it has the short sharp shock of never say die great single it has a funny jazz rock instrumental it has attempts at blues i sort of like it so you can't be talking
Speaker 1about black sabbath and describing them as funny it just it doesn't you know this is this you can't say that about sabs funny a funny track you can't have a funny black sabbath track they're not a funny band they're disciples of the devil they're disciples of the devil ah but
Speaker 2are they i mean you know i think this is their true spirit this is you know this is their tomato spirit this is true spirit they're a comedy band basically i mean it reminds me a bit of tomato by yes in that at least this is an album being made by the band members in the studio honestly and they honestly haven't got much of a clue of what they're doing in some respects because they're all over the show producing some great music some producing some mediocre music producing some questionable music and that's exactly what tomato is as well but i sort of prefer these albums to what immediately follows you know the heaven and hell with dio or drama with trevor horn as much as i love horn because i think those albums they're very sure of themselves they're almost like producer-led albums they're almost like they know their place in the marketplace if you like and this album sure as hell doesn't yes and i
Speaker 1think this is a theme that we've come back to time and time again isn't it on the show that sometimes you know when a band has kind of lost its way sometimes they come up with interesting music despite themselves because it's that kind of flailing and searching that becomes interesting to the sort of music to the music nerd whereas as you say a lot of the other bands on this list are kind of doing their thing aren't they maybe we can move on to to ground where i feel a little bit more sure of myself one-offs one-offs now what i mean what do we mean by one-offs we mean the people that don't kind of fit into any sort of other category really don't we um and there's you've got people like k bush frank zappa beef heart big star the residents magma the ham is on the list let's talk about the ham the ham what a year for the ham so the future now yeah um something a bit different about this record isn't it the the it's the ham sort of confronting the punk ethos in a way in a different way to they did on nadir's big nadir's big chance he was almost ahead of the curve and the future now it's almost like he's worrying that he's behind the curve
Speaker 2yes yeah well there's a lot of tracks about aging on this as
Speaker 1well pushing 30 uh is the is that opening i think it's the opening track on the record isn't it pushing 30 how extraordinary to think that somebody pushing 30 would feel like you know the rest of the industry might be looking at them as as a kind of old fart you know as washed up as old you know long in the
Speaker 2tooth yeah but i think that's probably how punk and new wave made a lot of people feel although the irony is as we've pointed out on the show before that bands like the stranglers and the police were actually older in some cases than many of the progressive rock and classic rock artists and um and we're obviously fans of them as well um i mean future has possibly my favorite piece of ham on album because i think again it's one of those albums that a little like never say day i is very instinctive is quite experimental is him just flexing his muscles in the studio but this one is quite focused quite intense and uh as you say he's gone from being ahead of the curve to being frightened about not being ahead of the curve and i think he once more has pushed himself forward you know this is an album that perhaps has got more in common with experimental post-punk artists like ilas and gaza you know his home studio experiments and um i remember him saying that phil collins was very impressed with it because he'd i think taken some of his advanced money from charisma and bought a fairly primitive home studio and so you can hear things like refrigerator buzzes on tracks and this inspired phil collins to do the same and that produced face value and i think i mentioned at the time that i thought face value in some ways as much as being a kind of a shop window for collins eclecticism there was something about it that tied it into peter hamill or as i said someone like alice and gaza this diy post-punk mentality that was in the air at the time and i think it's a tremendously strong album very experimental use of sounds you know effects units and so on and it does go from the tender to the brutal and bruising really
Speaker 1but it's funny isn't it because even the cover is like charting a transition from old to new isn't it it's this kind of very special fold-out cover where he's got his big old hippie beard on one half yeah and then he shaved it all off on the other half so it's almost charting like this process of reinvention even in the visual side of you know of the album yeah very much so the same time he's also this year he's made what i think might be my favorite vandergrift generator album which very unusually for me because i'm not usually a big fan of live albums but this is an exceptional live album this is vandergrift generator vital live which is one of the most brutal if not the most brutal and abrasive record surely ever made by someone associated with the progressive rock movement would you not agree yeah
Speaker 2i mean it's savage and the thing is that it doesn't flinch in terms of its time signature escapades in terms of its epic pieces and yet it's a very strong record and i think it's a very strong record and i think it's a very strong it's completely at one with punk
Speaker 1because as you say this there's no compromise in terms of the complexity of the music but the actual delivery of it is so visceral and so aggressive isn't it i mean it's surely it's surely a response to to punk it's surely again another manifestation of the ham kind of responding to to punk rock right it's impossible
Speaker 2to know isn't it you know what they were thinking because there was so little compromise and it effortlessly fits and you can see you can see that it's a very strong record and it's a very strong record and it's a very strong you know in the same way that a band like the cardiacs i suppose you can see how punk fans are going to get a great deal out of this and how progressive rock fan are going to get a great deal out of it so these two completely opposing areas in a way merge effortlessly and um yeah i agree with you it's sort of difficult to think of anything quite comparable and you know hamill in a sense doesn't even alter his vocal his vog you know this hendrix of the voice approach that he has is maybe dialed up a bit but it's 100 piece of hamill you know you can see how somebody like john lyden was absolutely thrilled by it and it would have been you know as an experienced live i can imagine absolutely devastating he
Speaker 1sounds absolutely possessed on some of the songs things like ship of falls or door or even the the uh the reinvention of um pioneers overseas absolutely possessed the whole band sound possessed and you know
Speaker 2it was kind of recorded with no overdubs you know whereas you know we're talking about other live albums this year live and dangerous which i think is a good album but as the band and tony visconti have admitted only about 15 to 20 percent of that album at most is actually live it's overdubs in the studio corrections this is live because they didn't have any alternative and i wonder if part of the tension is that they knew this was going to be the last gig by vandergrift because i think it was pretty hastily organized the sound check was hasty they couldn't record it as well as they wanted and for various reasons because they didn't have enough money to carry on this was going to be vandergrift's last statement and as you say even the classical musicians charles dickie the cellist they're all going for it well
Speaker 1firstly just to say the thin lizzy overdub thing is disputed by various members of the band so uh we should probably say allegedly allegedly there's a lot of overdubbing on that record so let's move on so other one-offs this year well we've got cape kate is coming onto the scene kate bush is coming onto the scene with two remarkable album i mean what a remarkable debut um the arrival of a new talent the age of 19 completely would you say fully formed i mean obviously she's going to develop a lot over the next few albums but she's kind of there straight away isn't she with this masterpiece uh one of the greatest singles of all time of course to lead off lead off your career well wow what a what an arrival uh with wuthering wuthering heights as your debut single but the album and lionheart later this year too and i think she may probably think um these in fact i'm pretty i'm pretty much sure i know that she thinks these albums are a little bit too produced a little bit gauche in a way lyrically and musically but i i absolutely adore them um i i think i think she's already got a sound completely of her own it's very hard to hear influences and as you were saying you were making the point earlier if she'd just been judged on these first two albums if she'd suddenly disappeared from the audience she'd be like oh my god i don't know what to do with this as quickly as she came and she just left the kick inside and lionheart behind i mean she'd still be seen as one of the greats wouldn't
Speaker 2she i think you're right yeah i mean there aren't really many precedents i mean people used to say joni mitchell laura nero to an extent but she's got her own very eccentric very british voice and yeah i mean she's one of the artists where i have bought all of her recordings from the beginning you know i bought wuthering heights loved it and then absolutely fell in love with the man with the child in his eyes i thought that was exquisite um the album i adored out of the two strangely i know it's regarded as the lesser but i've always preferred lionheart because i know she felt it was rushed i think it's a it's a more coherent album and there's something quite magical about this and i think you know i've said this on many occasions that this was an album that i fell in love with during a really difficult time i hated school and my family life was appalling and this provided a sense of beauty harmony mystery strangeness that i used to lose myself in and particularly you know the man with the child in his eyes and lionheart i'd play endlessly into the night yeah lionheart i
Speaker 1agree with you i love this album i prefer it to kick inside it's got my favorite kate bush song on it well one of my favorite kate bush songs on it wow um you know lyrically brilliant obviously the cover of this album is also fantastic as well it's just everything is just like fully formed it seems and of course when you kind of find out a little bit more about her history her history she'd spent two years kind of developing herself before emi kind of let her record her first album and in fact i think man with a child in in his eyes is recorded two or three years before the rest of yeah i mean she's something
Speaker 2like 15 or 16 on that i think it's one of the dave gilmore recordings
Speaker 1yeah yeah and she'd been studying with with uh lindsey camp i think mime for a couple of years and she's been studying with her for a couple of years and i think a lot of that was also her set you know herself kind of putting the brakes on her career and saying no i want to i want to develop my art i want to develop my talent i want to develop my craft more before i'm launched into the public eye and it kind of pays off massively doesn't it i mean what a what a year she has i mean she by the end of the year she's a superstar and
Speaker 2deservedly so yeah ironically it's
Speaker 1probably the point at which she realizes she doesn't want to be uh a superstar you know um is it is it the following year she does her one and only tour i think isn't it it is
Speaker 2yeah i mean i remember her she was everywhere at the time there was a music show presented by pisa cook that she was on she was on ask aspel if you ever remember that i do yeah playing the title track um from lionheart you know um so there was a massive amount of coverage i think the music papers were slightly more skeptical about her at the time there was a sense that in some ways a hippie had been beamed into 1978 and perhaps didn't deserve the success but um luckily i think the massive talent overcame any prejudice that was in the music papers and of course by 85 the music papers love her you know she
Speaker 1was so unique i think it's hard to it's hard to dismiss her um as anything in particular she's just created almost from the very beginning the very opening moments of her career she's created a completely unique world and a completely unique universe the sort of world where she can you know she can get percy thrower on her album and you know i mean crazy crazy things like that you know anyway um don't mention rolf
Speaker 2harris whatever you do don't mention rolf harris
Speaker 1you've just mentioned him so let's moving swiftly on then so other one-offs this year a couple of a couple of albums from from frank zapper this year the live album zapper in new york and studio tan which i think was recorded two or three years earlier actually but uh but anyway yes um and then his old compadre captain beefheart uh put out shiny beast uh bat chain puller which um i'm not familiar with that record i really like that yeah i am actually it's one of his most
Speaker 2successful it's a really odd album in that it's that album that falls between his quite accessible virgin albums in the mid 70s which i never thought were bad you know the blue jeans and moonbeams i thought there's some gorgeous stuff on that you know tracks like observatory crest are amongst his best for me um so even bad beefheart is is quite enjoyable and it's somewhere between that accessible tuneful beefheart and trap mask replica um so it kind of hits quite a sweet spot for me this album and he's got a new band and it has slightly new wave edge which of course is going to become more pronounced on dock at the radar station and ice cream for crow where it almost becomes full-on sort of new wave post-punk beefheart but yeah i think it's a really underrated album
Speaker 1and then we've got big stars third album at least a couple of bona fide classics on there isn't there holocaust and uh well
Speaker 2that's an album that is a complete and utter diabolical mess in terms of recording direction but it does have some moments of exquisite magic you know painful pieces and i think that was constructed over a period of three years wasn't it i'm
Speaker 1not i'm not sure it's definitely a patchy album it doesn't have the cohesion of the first couple of records but as you say it's got some real highlights what else do we have one off this year we have magma making uh the album attack uh we have annette peacock's extremes the art bears hopes and fears which is a kind of henry cow continuation in a way of henry cow isn't it um yeah it's it's chris cutler fred frith and dagma crowds from henry cow basically carrying the torch forward then we've got uh now this is a mad one isn't it this is the beginning of scott walker kind of the the sort of the renaissance years of scott walker this is the beginning of scott coming back after his painting and decorating years because this is but it's a funny album isn't it because there's basically three three guys in the band and they kind of split the album three ways so they all get like a third of the record and the other two guys are doing pretty much pedestrian mor aren't they and then scott has his four songs in this on this record now the last anybody heard of scott at the time was he was doing country and western records and covers from cheesy movies except they're good
Speaker 2albums if we ever get onto those some of those are gorgeous even at his worst he can sing beautifully and the arrangements are very good they are middle of the road and i guess that they seem like a retreat after those spectacular scott's wonderful let's
Speaker 1be honest let's be honest tim it feels like scott's given up on those records doesn't it it feels like he's just doing what's of him. The cabaret, the bow tie, the chicken in a basket, the nice arrangements. Can't fault the voice, of course. It feels like he's just doing what's expected.
Speaker 2But he does chicken in a basket better than anybody. I'm not disputing that.
Speaker 1I'm not disputing. He's top quality chicken.
Speaker 2Top quality chicken. And when he played the chicken in a basket circuit, he was often booed, I think. He did not go down well. So although I think it's top quality chicken, clearly the customers in Doncaster actually preferred the chicken that was in the basket rather than the top quality chicken on the stage.
Speaker 1Imagine how that made Scott feel. He's compromised everything. He's sold out. He's gone for the big chicken market and people still don't like it. No wonder Scott ended up doing painting and decorating for the next three years. Anyway, cut to the chase. Here he's come back. He's gone back to his old bunch of buddies, the Walker brothers. And they've made this record called Night Flights. Now, what can you say about Scott's tracks except this is anything but middle of the road, isn't it? This is the beginning of Scott the visionary, Scott the I don't give a shit what people want from me. How to describe the four songs on the. Well, let's start. I mean, I'm a big fan of the first couple of tracks, Shut Up and Fat Mama Kick. But I think the track we have to talk about is The Electrician. Because The Electrician is really the future of Scott, isn't it? That's the song that points to the future of Scott Walker.
Speaker 2I think they all do. Because if you think of Shut Up and so on and Fat Mama Kick, they've got that beat that you hear on Climate of Hunter. So I think if nothing else, it predicts Climate of Hunter, the other three tracks. Yeah. The Electrician is no doubt the atmospheric standout. And of course, preceding this Walker Brothers. So Scott, he's done his chicken in a basket. It's failed. He reforms the Walker Brothers. And on the cover of that album, if you remember, it's on No Regrets. They're actually there. So you've got these three elegant former sex symbol Americans, and they've got Newcastle brown ale cans on the cover of No Regrets. Which was the previous record. Which is, yeah. And I think that does okay. And they actually do have a hit. So it kind of brings him back to Top of the Pops. Despite the Newcastle brown ale being crushed in his hand. And I think this was their last attempt. Again, it's a bit like Vital. They kind of knew they weren't going to get the funding for another album. So I think they all decided they write the material themselves this time. And Scott sort of had executive producer role on it. And yeah, his four tracks, which were released in an amazingly stupid move by the label. They were released as the Shut Out EP. Shut Out EP. All four tracks. That's all you need. Yeah, at the time.
Speaker 1That's all I. Okay, I'm going to go find that and then get rid of my album. Exactly. That's all you need. That is all you need.
Speaker 2And those four tracks are stunning. It kind of comes from nowhere. So you basically, you've done the Chicken in a Basket. You've done the Country and Western albums. You've done the No Regrets rather nice but MOR hit single. And then you come in with these pieces that, you know, once more, it's a bit like David Bowie of that period. You know, this idea of this new wave, no wave. There's Bowie. This idea that Bowie transcends all genres. And suddenly, Walker transcends genres. And you could argue if there's any influence on them, it might be Bowie's Heroes and Low that he could have influenced. So in other words, somebody who was influenced by Walker is now influencing Walker. There's an aspect of that, but they go way beyond in some respects. And I think, of course, Bowie and Eno then heard these tracks and were influenced by them. So yeah, they're astonishing. And the other tracks are bizarre. Aren't they? Because you've got two tracks by one of them, four tracks by another. I think it might be Gary Leeds has the two tracks and John Walker has the four.
Speaker 1But it's interesting, isn't it, that Scott's tracks are the first four tracks on the album. Yeah. So it's for four tracks. It's one of the most incredible records you've ever heard. And then, of course, it just falls off a cliff, doesn't it? Which is why I like the idea of the four track EP. I'm going to see if I can find a copy of that. I mean, OK, Scott, he's burnt his chicken. Yeah. Right. Badly burnt. He's been roasting his chicken. It's got badly burned in the Northern Working Men's Clubs. They've had their MOR crossover hit, right, OK, with No Regrets. Now, what would the sane pop star do at that point? He would say, oh, I'm back. I've had a hit with this No Regrets. Now let's consolidate that. Let's make an album full of those kind of songs. But he doesn't.
Speaker 2They did. They did another album, Lines, I think, came afterwards.
Speaker 1OK. I'll have to scrub this bit then. Made a terrible, terrible error.
Speaker 2Well, you can keep it in. Keep the errors in. People need to know that you're fallible.
Speaker 1No. No. Edit out my errors. OK. Anyway, but you're right. I mean, the first four tracks, the Scott tracks, they are kind of like the prototype for what he's going to do on Climate of Hunter. Six years later. What does he do for the next six years is what I want to know. Paint and decorating. He's gone back to painting and decorating. But isn't that strange that he kind of creates the template for Climate of Hunter and then disappears for six years? Before actually coming back and.
Speaker 2Yeah. It's incredible. I mean, you know, his entire career is utterly bizarre, but it is filled with these magical moments and these, you know, he's genuinely an artist who you can say does floor a listener, does surprise the listener. You know, imagine the Walker Brothers fan of the mid-60s hearing Scott III and Scott IV. Imagine that Walker Brothers fan then hearing The Electrician. And lyrically as well, he manages to. Completely reinvent himself. These are very odd, poetic, fragmented, quite enigmatic pieces.
Speaker 1It's one of the most amazing artistic breakthroughs I can possibly think of, you know, possibly only rivaled by, and here we go, drinks on standby, drinks on standby, the transition from Colour of Spring to Spirit of Eden in terms of how to shock your record company. I'm going to give another one. You're going to raise me.
Speaker 2Yeah. For the drinking game. I'm going to give you two for the drinking game here. Go on then. Peter Gabriel III did the same in a way, completely reinvented his musical vocabulary, and the American record company hated it so much, they dropped him. And Japan's tin drum to an extent as well.
Speaker 1They're great records. I think the transition from Peter Gabriel II to III is not that big, quite honestly. I think it's enormous. It's not. It's an enormous category. Oh, have we ever talked about Kevin Coyne on the podcast before?
Speaker 2We might have mentioned him. I mean, again, he's another eccentric.
Speaker 1We love him, don't we? We love him. Who doesn't? Well, probably most people, actually. He's quite an acquired taste, isn't he, Kevin? I mean, I remember hearing records early on, and I remember buying Marjorie Razorblade, you know, a very, very early record in his career, first one he recorded for Virgin. And I was expecting something. I think I was expecting something a little bit closer to the hand. Or something, some sort of tortured singer-songwriter. And of course, it's not that, is it? Because he's very, very influenced by blues music, for a start, rhythm and blues music. But I think when you finally buy into his personality, and you kind of understand just how strange and how he kind of twists this idea of rhythm and blues and blues music, that it kind of falls into place, doesn't it? And here we've got a couple of records. The two records this year, which are kind of, again, a bit like The Ham, they're kind of flirting with a slightly more new wave aesthetic, aren't they? Slightly more DIY sounding aesthetic. He's got rid of his sort of band of session musicians. Andy Summers was in his band until the previous record, funnily enough. And he's going for a little bit more of a stripped down, experimental kind of new wave approach, certainly on Millionaires and Teddy Bears anyway. How would you, how do you describe Kevin Coyne to someone that's never, you know, kind of never heard him before? Is Kevin Coyne one of the closest sort of comparisons?
Speaker 2I'm not sure, although they knew one another. I mean, I remember Peter once told me, you know, because they got the Derby connection. They were both from Derby. And Peter said that he was doing one gig and Kevin Coyne was there and completely drunk and shouting at him throughout the gig. And this was not very helpful, but they were, they were friends. And another friend of mine saw a Kevin Coyne gig, I think it was in the early 80s. And he said, you know, I'm good when I'm depressed and I'll tell you. I'll tell you, I'm fucking depressed. And this is the beginning of the gig.
Speaker 1Well, I mean, that's the thing. I think that's why it works for me. It's so dark, isn't it? When you start reading the lyrics and the delivery also is unhinged, isn't it? And of course, his, I think his history came from his, his kind of lyrical sort of, you know, subject matter. A lot of time came from his history and his knowledge of mental illness because he worked in a mental hospital. So a lot of his characters were these kind of mentally disabled people and he's kind of channeling these people. And of course, he obviously had his own demons too. So it all kind of comes out.
Speaker 2You're entirely right. But what, of course, that misses out is that he was nearly a mainstream hit in a way that I don't think someone like Peter Hamill could have been. Because even on his first, in his first band, Siren, who were slightly more conventional blues rock band, they still had mad moments or unusual ballads. And the material they recorded. And the material they recorded outside of the albums is very strange, which has kind of been released in subsequent years. His first album, Case History, is where he does what you're saying. speaking from the perspective of the mentally ill people that he was working with but what he does is sometimes very tender conventional ballads sometimes really rollicking blues rock moments and one of the stories about him which isn't apocryphal is that the doors wanted him to replace Jim Morrison when Jim Morrison had died and he said that he turned it down because he didn't want to wear the leather pants you know was his reason for it but you can understand it when you listen to the Siren albums and his early solo albums there are tracks where actually he's doing the Chicken Shack he's doing the Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac and he's doing it really well so he can be a conventional blues rocker and a conventional balladeer like Van Morrison but then as you say it goes into these demented little miniatures and one of the best albums for that is Beautiful Extremes which contained a lot of his John Peel sessions and B-sides very interesting he's he's a great actor
Speaker 1isn't he because he it seems like he's always taking on a character he plays characters in his songs doesn't he a lot yeah at least it feels like that way to me but it's also what I think what's wonderful about it and I've always been attracted to these kind of artists where superficially it sounds like what they're doing is quite generic but actually when you look beneath the surface something is wrong something is twisted something is perverted and it kind of draws you in I'm just trying to think of another good example of something like that that do you know what I'm saying superficially you could listen to Kevin Coyne it just sounds like a sort of you know sort of blues singer songwriter but if you allow yourself to be drawn in and you engage with the characters you engage with the lyrics and of course there are these wonderfully strange musical moments too aren't they particularly on these albums from this era aren't they he ended up working with Robert Wyatt
Speaker 2yeah he gets stranger and stranger The Ruts were his backing band I mean there's one album that he does it's a double album Sanity Stomp yeah one album has got The Ruts as his backing band the other has got Robert Wyatt and Brian Godding as his backing and that's where the strangeness really comes into the music and there are a few albums from the early 80s in particular where there's one which is a demented electro but remember there's one album Politics and the first side is him doing an acoustic singer-songwriter which is pretty intense and the second side is him doing a demented electro pop album on the cheap it sounds like if Soft Cell had two pence studio budget with Kevin Coyne ranting over it and I like
Speaker 1it yeah I like it he he's he's truly unique isn't he I mean there's nobody else before or since that sounds quite like him it's true yeah I mean I I don't I don't know how how else to describe what he does I think just go and check out check out Kevin Coyne and and don't give up easily I think one of those artists you do have to kind of work a little bit and also get
Speaker 2you know get the wrong album and it's too experimental in the way that track mass replica is for people get the wrong album and it's way too conventional a bit like yeah jeans and moonbeams and you'll be wondering what the hell we're talking about but it is a career path and his later albums are fantastic he did he sort of went off because he had a nervous breakdown in the early 80s and then went to live in um Nuremberg I think in Germany and got a German pickup band and produced a couple of very conventional albums but to what extent was it a very conventional album or was it a very traditional one but towards the latest part of his career he made some albums with his son Robert Coyne and they are as good as his late 70s early 80s output fantastic records and I saw him live in the early 90s a couple of times and he was a driven performer you know this was somebody who had demons and you were lost in his world of demons when he sang it was stunning really
Speaker 1he always said it older than his years to remember you know even on that first album for Virgin Marjorie Raisa he's writing songs about old ladies in Eastbourne kind of those kind of those kind of characters pop up in his songs time and time again don't they these are not these are not the hip these are not the sort of hip dudes he's singing
Speaker 2about no not at all and and as well he was one of the first people to kind of sing about old rock and rollers who are adrift in the modern world he wrote a series of short stories a few short story collections and they're very funny and very funny and they're very funny and very good and it's a bit like a more acidic Alan Bennett and they are exactly the characters of his songs brought to life in short stories
Speaker 1yeah so we're big Kevin coin fans here on this podcast and I'm not sure we've ever talked to any length about him uh before let's move on to another category um you've got you've you've created a category here the old embrace the new so we're talking about artists here really that have kind of gone with the new wave Zeitgeist now we've we've discussed a few already that we could say that about Peter Hamill Kevin coin but there are others and um a couple of here I don't know maybe you want to give a quick mention to these records to him what what Lou Reed is doing with street hassle and Nick Lowe is doing on Jesus of cool that makes you come to that conclusion what is it about these records well
Speaker 2I think Lou Reed always had it in him and I think he knew he was hugely influential on the new music scene in New York and America in general and it's a strong album the title track is is an epic I mean that's something a bit like vital it's unflinching it's arguably poetic intense epic and a bit like Patti Smith it just manages to tap into that New York scene of the moment while not really um flinching and its ambition and uh Bruce Springsteen who's pretty ubiquitous this year he appears on the album as well um the Nick Lowe album is just great fun it's almost like a compilation album this is him playing with many many styles of music and it has the the hit single um I love the sound of breaking glass which you will remember um and it's it's really inventive type structures I was talking earlier about you know Kevin coins having a soft sell on a 2p budget and Nick Lowe always used to kind of knock out albums and be proud of how quickly he recorded but there's a there's a really attractive roughness about his production but he's clearly quite a talented songwriter and a couple of the tracks do um that Paul McCartney thing which of course Paul McCartney does this year on London Town he still has tracks that do this where he will start a song and two minutes in it becomes an entirely different song I think Uncle Albert Albert Admiral Halsey is one of the best examples of that but um Lowe is clearly really sort of he's aware of songwriting traditions and songwriting innovation so it's a nice combination of the rough roar and contemporary and and the quite
Speaker 1classic okay so we've also got um Hawkwind as Hawk Lords 25 years on uh this year which is a good record um another of the series of records were Bob Calvert but again a slightly more new wave edge to it I think on this very strongly I
Speaker 2think they do it brilliantly and they have that slightly dissonant frit Bowie's you know frip Bowie Heroes approach on their albums of this period period and I think uh they really pull it off actually I mean really pared down production quite punchy rhythm section dissonant uh guitar I I thought it was quite an effective reinvention for Hawkwind during this time
Speaker 1it's a good record but it's part of a continuum of records with this yeah there's about three or four of them so Quark Strangers and charm which was the previous year we've got pxr5 coming up next year yeah it's it's a series of records that definitely as you say um have reinvented their sound in that context and
Speaker 2Calvert sounds the part doesn't he you know I think that's the way he yes I think
Speaker 1that's the main thing is the Cal that's got that kind of slightly Arch new wave delivery down hasn't he um slightly camp too um drastic plastic by bebop Deluxe uh Bill Nelson another artist that's never content to rest on his laurels and he's always looking to evolve and to change it up now the interesting about this record he knew it was going to be the last record it was the the quote-unquote contractual obligation record before he moved on to the Masterpiece I think that came out the following year red noise um sound on sound um but drastic plastic is kind of a step towards that isn't it with his old band um it's sort of incorporating slightly more of a new way but also interestingly kind of that prefiguring in a way that kind of Gary Newman OMD Ultravox John Fox um sort of synth synth pop element too is he's kind of ahead of the curve here a bit isn't he really
Speaker 2I I think he is and he always said that he'd written a lot of this material in 77 and couldn't get it out early enough um it's one of my favorite bebop Deluxe albums if not my favorite and in some ways I prefer it to red noise it's not quite as frantic as red noise and um it's coming out of again Bowie's Heroes the um certainly an element of that influencing it but it's a very strong album in its own right and and the band sound good you know although it's not as radical a shift as red noise I think with the the drum processing John lecky's drum processing on it is really inventive and as you say it kind of predates a lot of electro pop from 82 and you know there's you know OMD John Fox aspects of that and um it's to do with the compositions but it's also to do with the use of synths and the use particularly of uh drum processing
Speaker 1absolutely I think he'd clearly been listening to the Bowie Berlin records and some craft work but he's as everything that Bill does it you know it just comes out sounding like him which is great it's a wonderful thing the whole thing the whole notion of nineteen 1878 as the year that things like progressive rock and AOR were swept away by a tidal wave of young men with safety pins and a sneer. You know, we've discussed that that's obviously a complete fallacy and many of the biggest records of the era were still things like Bat Out of Hell, Breakfast in America, Out of the Blue by ELO. War of the Worlds. War of the Worlds. And looking down this list of progressive rock artists, what they were doing this year, now there's no question that things were changing, but not very fast because there is still some, you know, classic progressive rock being made here, isn't there? There are other bands like Genesis and Camel who are kind of in transition towards a more pop-based style, but we've also got things like the first UK album. We've got Heavy Horses by Jethro Tull. We've got Hemispheres by Rush. We've got Incantations by Mike Oldfield, a double album with four 20-minute long tracks on it. So in another sense, progressive rock is as alive and well as ever. And these records are doing well as well, aren't they? I mean, it's not like they're coming out to, you know, to indifference. They're still selling. They're still doing well. So, you know, this is a pretty good year, isn't it, for progressive rock? When you. You really, you know, common wisdom should say that 1978 should be a bad year for progressive rock. But it's a great year for. I mean, OK, we talked about Tomato and Love Beach, maybe often held up as reasons why progressive rock, you know, was in its death throes in 1978. But here we have evidence for the defence, don't we, in this sense?
Speaker 2We do, and some of those albums are really quite alive. I mean, you could argue that the Incantations album is progressive in the old sense and the new sense because he's drawing in. He's drawing in influence from what was then pretty unknown, the New York classical minimalism of Steve Reich and Philip Glass. He's also drawing in disco influences on this album. So he's clearly listening, and I think he's just incorporating influences around him that he's comfortable with. You know, it's a really strong Oldfield album, I think one of my favourites. And the Jethro Tull album, Heavy Horses, they really sound quite gritty on this. You know, this is. This is as hard-hitting and reminiscent of the dark days of the late 1970s as any kind of new wave album from that period. They do not sound as if they're going into that goodnight gently, you know?
Speaker 1To me, when I listen to Heavy Horses, and I'm intimately familiar with the album because I remixed it, there's nothing on that album that tells me they've listened to new wave music at all.
Speaker 2What do you know about that album? What do you know about it? I mean, you've mixed it, you've done it in 5.1, you've lived with it for months.
Speaker 1I think that time will come in Jethro Tull's career, and I think it will come a couple of years later with the album A. I think right now.
Speaker 2No, I don't think it's got a new wave. I don't think it's a new wave. To what I think, I think it's gritty in the sense that Songs From The Wood is full of keyboard textures and intricate vocal harmonies. This is a guitar album. It reminds me a bit of Led Zeppelin Presence. So I don't think it's a new wave album in any sense, but I think it's got a tremendous sense of energy and quite a stripped-down sound in the way that, I think, of Achilles' last stand on Presence.
Speaker 1OK, I think you should go and listen to it again, Tim.
Speaker 2I've listened to it. OK. The Mouse Police Never Sleeps. By God, Joe Strummer didn't sleep when he heard that. He was frightened.
Speaker 1The title track, Heavy Horses, Moths, they're as flowery and as bucolic as ever, I would say, on this record. Joe Strummer couldn't sleep. He'd heard The Future. Anyway, but I think the point is still valid. You know, A Song For All Seasons, Renaissance's album, this year, it's as bombastic and epic and uncompromisingly old-fashioned and symphonic as anything they've been doing through, you know, through the decades to this point.
Speaker 2And all the better for it, because Gentle Giant, you know, did compromise around this time. I think there are two albums where they sound like they're caving into company pressure, making more commercial albums, and it doesn't really suit them, in my opinion.
Speaker 1Is it just that some artists kind of closeted themselves away and kind of, you know, put their fingers in their ears and just went, nah, nah, nah, nah, I'm not listening to what was going on in terms of punk and new wave and the kind of changing of the guard, and other artists kind of almost felt obliged to take on board that and try and adapt with the times. And it's the ones that, in a sense, didn't try and adapt and just ignored it and just carried on doing what they were doing that made the more successful music around this time. I agree. Or is there a third? There's a third category of people that actually did, you know, go with the times and did manage to pull it off. And would that include, therefore, Genesis and what they did this year? And then there were three. The Genesis album I like. Hurrah. I really like this record. Now, partly because I'm very nostalgic for the time that I remember going into Rumbelows in Hemel Hempstead High Street and buying Follow You, Follow Me on 7-inch single, which is probably the first time I'd ever heard Genesis. And it's such a beautiful single. And I remember hearing the album shortly afterwards, and really, really, really enjoying it, not thinking of it necessarily as being anything to do with progressive rock. Is this the sound of a band going with the times, or is this the sound of the band completely ignoring the times? Because in a way, it couldn't be further away from punk and new wave, could it? But at the same time, it is, as we know, in retrospect, having now, certainly I know in retrospect, having heard the rest of the catalogue up until this point, this was a new, stripped-back, more direct approach to making pop music, for Genesis, wasn't it?
Speaker 2It was, although it's still pretty dense, the production, especially if you listen to the original vinyl version of it, where it's very heavy on the bass pedals and incredibly complicated drumming. And one of the things I think this album shows is that it's one of their more delicate ballad-heavy albums in a way, but when you listen to a track like Down and Out, you realise that they're really quite a powerful band as well. You know, there's a real energy in what they're doing. And that track, of course, is about the new wave artists out there, the new commercial point of view that could completely destroy Genesis. So there's some kind of acknowledgement. But yeah, you're right, it's the antithesis of the Squeeze album from this year or the Clash album from this year. But in some ways, all the better for it, because it's got these rich, exotic Tony Banks chords, these lovely melodies. And like you, buying the 7-Inch Follow You, Follow Me was what got me into them. And I was in love with the band, saw it on Top of the Pops, loved the song, bought it, loved the B-side, went to a friend's house where his brother had the album and was quite entranced at the time by the cover. I'm not quite sure where I would be now, but the cover even had a real sense of mystery about it in the way that Pink Floyd covers did. And of course, it was Hypnosis who were behind it. And Pink Floyd, I was very well aware of at the time. I don't think I knew that much about Genesis at this stage. But I just liked it. It was a great pop single, Follow You, Follow Me. And as you say, are there different ways? Some bands respond to the trends and manage to do it well. As we said, Bill Nelson, Peter Hamill, maybe even influencing the zeitgeist. And then other people fall behind, and other artists become a bit scared. As we've said, the Gentle Giant album where they're going in a more American, FM-friendly commercial direction, presumably influenced by their record. I don't know if you've heard of them.
Speaker 1It's very Gallic in that sense. It's very unique, a very, very powerful singer. I don't know what he's singing about most of the time, Christian Descombes, but this band are completely unique in a similar way to the other, of course, famous French band that sing in a language that no one can understand, Magma. They have a similar uniqueness to them, something I've never heard from any other so-called progressive rock band. And this record is their masterpiece, I think, and it's strange because it comes in a year. When a lot of the progressive rock bands are turning away from the more ambitious music and they make their most ambitious, epic, polished record, ending with a 15-minute long song, Captain Coeur de Miel, which I think means Captain Honeyheart, if you can believe it. Very dramatic, very, very theatrical indeed. So I want a big shout out. Are you even familiar with this album, Tim?
Speaker 2I probably have heard it. I mean, I've heard most of the. Yarned releases from the 70s. And I think they're more obviously symphonic rock. I totally get what you're saying about if Jacques Brel were in a prog band, this is the band. So they do have something that's quite unique, and it's that French chanson quality that they bring to progressive music. But they also have slightly more of a conventional symphonic prog element than Magma. I mean, Magma are real. Oh, well, Magma are completely out on their own.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2So in that sense, if you're a fan of symphonic progressive rock, you're going to find points of interest in Ange. But yes, they come at that with a big difference. And there's almost a kind of an edginess in it that reminds me slightly of Hamill at times as well, because they can be quite intense.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's very theatrical, very dramatic music. Lots of Mellotron for Mellotron lovers on this record as well. Yes, yeah. But very, very creative. And actually, the other album I want to just give a shout out to, because I think in many ways, along with the Ange record, it's the most creative of all the so-called progressive rock albums made this year, which is Steve Hackett's album, Please Don't Touch, which is a very, very strange, uncompromising, ambitious, epic record with one of my favourite songs of all time on it, sung strangely by Randy Crawford. And of course, the singers on this record, Randy Crawford, Richie Havens, the guy from Kansas who I can't remember his name now. These are not obvious, these are not obvious singers for a quote-unquote progressive rock artist to be employing, to be hiring on this record. So there's a lot of black music influences on this record too. Yeah, yeah. That song, Hoping Love Will Last with Randy Crawford, is one of my favourite songs of all time. Stunning vocal performance. But Steve's really going for something creative and stretching out and trying to do something very different here. Perhaps, you know, with sort of varying results, some tracks not so successful, the Carry On Up the Vicarage, a song kind of not so. But strange, a strain. If it's a failure, it's a very strange and uncompromising failure, I think is kind of what I'm saying. There's nothing about this record that smacks of compromise. No. You know, it's a. So that's what I mean when I say it's probably one of the most creative, if not the most creative record made by a progressive rock band or an artist.
Speaker 2I mean, Hoping Love Will Last is a great R&B ballad to the point that it could be a standard in that field. And I think Richie Havens, who has a wonderful voice, I mean, one of my favourite vocalists, actually, Richie Havens, it's great to hear him in that context. And I think what's nice about it is Steve Hackett's throwing quite exotic chord voicings and unusual arrangements at these singers. And these singers are bringing qualities that you don't normally hear in that type of music. So it's quite a fresh combination. And, of course, it goes off in some fairly unusual musicals, musical tangents as well. The instrumentals on this album, the voice of Nikam, all of this.
Speaker 1Well, the way Side 2 unfolds is just amazing. I mean, it's just one of the great sides of music for me, starting off with the Randy Crawford ballad, which, as you say, he throws some quite odd harmonies and chord voices at them, voicings at them. These are not conventional soul R&B, you know, chords that they're singing over. And then you have the very experimental ambient pieces and then you have the big, you know, very disturbing, scordant, full-on, very aggressive and dissonant instrumental, Please Don't, the title track in the middle of the side. And then you end with that multi-part sweet piece, Icarus Ascending, with that long, hey-dewed fade-out for the end of the record. I mean, to me, it's a beautifully paced sequence of music, Side 2, of that record.
Speaker 2In some ways, he's producing traditional progressive music, but he's incorporating very different influences into it. So it is both traditionally progressive while being progressive at the same time. But not having anything from the new wave, not really having anything from the disco or the electronic music that was, if you like, seen as the cutting edge at that point. But it's still quite a progressive album. You know, his guitar sounds on it are really interesting for a start. I think you've missed the UK album. The debut UK album is a great progressive rock album. But I think it's a very strong record for what it is, really.
Speaker 1I mentioned it in the context of it being an interesting time for a band like that to be launching them. You know, at a time when, you know, you're supposed to be forming punk rock groups. Here comes an unapologetically, you know, full-on old-fashioned progressive rock group. Yeah. Now, electro-pioneering. This is a fantastic year, as I think we've already touched on, for electronic music in transition. Now, if we start, there's a lot of great records coming out of Germany, electronic records coming out of Germany this year. We have Man Machine by Kraftwerk, which, of course, has their most famous songs, some of the most famous songs on it. The Model, Robots. This is kind of defining. This is the archetype of Kraftwerk albums in a way, isn't it? And in that sense, it is the archetype for electronic music to come. Because what are Kraftwerk, if not, along with the Beatles, arguably the most influential group in history? Because. Because. Because. Because. Because of all the electronic music that would follow in their wake.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think it's a funny album. I know it so well, really. And I think the difference between the Beatles and Kraftwerk for me is that whereas I can listen to Revolver or Magical Mystery Tour and I'll always find something fresh in it, something unexpected that I'd not heard the first time or the 30th time, I know through playing Man Machine a lot, almost every note on it, because it's so precise. There aren't any surprises with the album. And you've said this before about albums like Dark Side of the Moon and The Court of the Crimson King. And I kind of feel that with Man Machine, that I know it so well, in a sense, and it doesn't surprise me. But yeah, it's a great album, some magnificent moments. And in some ways, it's their definitive album. And what's interesting is at the time, it was slightly mocked. You know, I remember in NME, Melody Maker, Sounds, the promotional photographs were used often as kind of humorous bylines for the papers. You know, although it's now seen as this, and deservedly seen, as this innovative electro-pop statement that, in effect, creates the early 80s, at the time, it wasn't necessarily seen as that.
Speaker 1I mean, that's it, isn't it? This album creates, virtually creates a whole decade. I mean, I think along with I Feel Love by Donna Summer, this record and that. That single, almost irresponsible for the next 10 years of music. I mean, it's impossible to think of bands like New Order, OMD, Gary Newman, you know, even Detroit, you know, the whole genre of Detroit techno, which, of course, was the basis for so much electronic music that came after it too. All comes from this record and the Donna Summer record. I mean, I'm generalizing here, but there, there is a sense that that is the case. Could we imagine ZTT, the label existing without, you know, the whole Paul Morley thing existing without Kraftwerk? I can't, I can't imagine. I can't imagine that without Kraftwerk. And there are so many stories, you know, there's that story that's so oft told by artists seeing David Bowie, on Top of the Pops in 1972, doing Starman. And I think the other story that's almost a cliche because it's told so often, is young musicians seeing Kraftwerk, hearing Kraftwerk, around this time, and almost having their whole musical map redrawn in an instant by just hearing one record. And that, this is one of those records, isn't it? There aren't that many records like this, but this is one of those records, isn't it?
Speaker 2It is, yeah. Although it's funny with Kraftwerk, I guess. I really like some of their early experimental stuff. I love trans. This is Europa Express. I really like the album that followed this, 1981, Computer World.
Speaker 1It's great. I thought that was great.
Speaker 2And that might actually be my favourite Kraftwerk album. As I said, I think with this one, I'm slightly jaded because I've heard it so much, because actually my son got into it at one point. And I remember we were in the car and we were continually playing Man Machine, as it happens, The Laughing Gnome, and The Beatles. and And I never grew tired of The Laughing Gnome and The Beatles because there were bits and pieces in the arrangement, perhaps the organic production that just meant that I could find something fresh each time. But by the 50th time I'd heard Man Machine, I was almost hitting my head against the steering wheel.
Speaker 1OK, I mean, is it because it's so pared down? I mean, that's that's the beauty of this music, isn't it? It is it is minimalist. It is like a minimalist sculpture. It's like paring music down. It's like removing. I mean, actually, although I think the lack of humanity on the Kraftwerk albums from this period is kind of overstated because the voices are still very fragile and frail. And they're not singers, are they? They're very they're very underachieving voices. So they haven't completely eradicated the humanity from from the music. It is still quite frail and fragile.
Speaker 2And there are some pretty melodies on it as well. People forget that great pop melodies, but also pretty melodies. And I always quite like the idea that they had this idea of what was it? If the Beach Boys had been manufactured by machines, that was Kraftwerk. And I think that was part of their modus operandi. And they succeeded.
Speaker 1No, but I mean, it's not my favourite Kraftwerk album, but I think it is the one. It's the one. My favourite, my favourite. I probably prefer Radioactivity or, as you say, Pocket Calculator. But I sorry, Computer World. But I think this is the one that obviously is. The Sargent, the Sargent Pepper of electronic music, isn't it?
Speaker 2Except the difference is that when Sargent Pepper was released, it had that impact immediately. You know, you talk of everybody who the reviews for it were Stig Perlitter. The people spent time listening to it. You know, it was changing lives in real time. This, as I've said, you know, because I kind of just started dipping into the music papers at that point. I remember Kraftwerk for quite a number of years, almost being figure of figures of fun. And actually, that was also true. And I think that's what I'm trying to do. I think that's what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 1with the music of Popol Vuh. The title track of Brothers of Darkness, Sons of Light, which, if you remember, the title sequence of that movie is just these close ups of skulls, this kind of crypt and these skulls. And this music, which is got to be one of the most haunting pieces of music, Popova seem to come from, they seem to be anachronistic in a way, in the sense their music seems to belong to no time. No time period at all. It sounds somehow ancient, but modern. Do you know what I mean by that?
Speaker 2Yeah, I do. Because, you know, there is a crossover with Brian Eno in the sense that it has this timeless, haunting ambient quality. But Brian Eno doesn't have this kind of ritualistic, almost folk element. You know, there's a there's a drone folk element in some of Popova's music. And you're right. You know, it works brilliantly in the films. With the images. But equally, it's something you can listen to with headphones late at night and be lost in this sound world.
Speaker 1But it's got an almost atavistic quality. It's almost like music that cavemen could have made or druids could have made, you know, millennia ago. It seems to somehow exist in the ancient past. But it's also obviously using electronic music and there's the synthesizers involved, too, in some of this music. And then the combination of that with the Herzog film, for me, was one of the most profound musical epiphanies I've ever had in my life. And I went out straight away and bought, I think I bought a compilation of Popova and discovered this incredibly unique. Again, we use that word a lot. Unique. Florian Frick had just this incredibly unique approach to music that almost sounded like he wasn't aware of anything else that was happening in the world of music. At the time, it just exists in its own little bubble again, doesn't it? And again, we talk about that a lot, don't we? Artists that seem to exist in their own little bubble.
Speaker 2And I think he always did. I mean, whereas we can hear that Tangerine Dream in some ways, you know, come out of the psychedelic 60s and then they anticipate ambient and electronic and then they anticipate, you know, some of the electro pop. They're always responding to or inventing something. Popova just are. And other great electronic albums from
Speaker 1this year, Equinox by Jean-Michel Jarre, his second album, follow up to Oxygen, again, just as good as Oxygen, I think. Yeah. We also have Throbbing Gristle releasing their second album, confusingly titled DOA, the third and final report of Throbbing Gristle. It was actually their second album. Their first album had been called Second Annual Report. I think we talked about Second Annual Report, didn't I? Wax Lyrical. We did, yeah.
Speaker 2You made me listen. You made me listen to it.
Speaker 1And you hated it.
Speaker 2I quite liked it. Oh, did you? I didn't. I thought it was all right. Yeah, no, I was relatively favourable about it. All right. You thought it was all right?
Speaker 1It was all right. It was quite pretty. Pretty. This album is, to me, it's not the revelation that the first album is, but it does have one of the most unsettling pieces of music I have ever heard in Hamburger Lady. That is a song that will send a shiver up your spine and into your very body. More so than The Swans? Well, it's different to The Swans. The Swans is pure nihilism. Throbbing Gristle is just creepy. When they get it right, when they hit that sweet spot, as they did on tracks like Slugbait on the first album, and this album, Hamburger Lady, it will chill you to the bone. It's the creepiest shit I've ever heard in my life. And as you know me, you know I mean that as a guy. Great compliment. The creepiest shit. I think I told the story about when I got Michael Akerfeld over to my house and we were listening to records and he was trying to gross me out with all the sickest death metal he could. And I remember just putting on Slugbait and Hamburger Lady and playing it to him and he was just like, OK, I give up. You've won. That's the sickest shit I've ever heard in my life.
Speaker 2Anyway, I'm going to go for the Pictures album from 1983. That is pretty sick. That is pretty sick in parts as well.
Speaker 1Well, we'll have to. Did we cover that in the 1980s?
Speaker 2No, we've not done 1983. We've not done 1983.
Speaker 1I know you're a big fan of that record, but we'll have to do 1983 just so you can cover that record. But anyway, for now, we really need to wrap up on 1978. We've still got two categories, which I think we should just swiftly move through. Otherwise, this 1978 is going to turn into a whole season in its own right. Which you might say, what's wrong with that? Well, anyway, we're going to go through the last two categories. Jazz. I think it's fair to say jazz, probably not a great era for jazz. We've talked about jazz. We've talked about this before, how jazz, the second half of the 70s, was not the equal of the first half of the 70s, was it? Let's face it. Mr. Gone by Weather Report. Weather Report. Well, Mr. Gone. They've gone for me by this point, I'm afraid. They've gone off.
Speaker 2I mean, yeah, I love early Weather Report as well. You know, for me, my favorite, probably around the 74 period, Mysterious Traveller. This, I think, is quite interesting. I think it's very different for them. I don't think. It's like any Weather Report album before or after. And again, they sort of anticipate electronic pop. There are kind of more concise pieces, more pronounced use of synthesizers and electronic beats.
Speaker 1We've got Sun Ra hitting a peak for me, possibly my favorite Sun Ra album from this year, Languidity, which is a little bit like, which is a little bit out of time. It feels like an album that should have been made five years earlier because it's, it's got. It's not that classic scorched earth jazz fusion style, but it's Sun Ra doing his version of it. A very kind of luminous, experimental, atonal, dissonant jazz record.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, I think it's his most accessible album. I think there's a dreamy quality to it. To me, it's kind of, it's in a silent way, 10 years on. And there are almost aspects of disco and R&B and some of the guitar playing. But as you say, it has this dreamy. Woozy, narcotic quality, but it is a lot more dissonant than in a silent way or than the Weather Report debut. That's another album that has that kind of quite floating jazz quality. Yeah, I think it's quite a lovely album, actually.
Speaker 1Yeah, definitely recommend Sun Ra, Languidity. If you want an entry point into Sun Ra, this is the one I would, I would suggest because it is quite formidable discography, isn't it? To be investigating. Very much. There is also some great, I'm a big fan of Anthony, I've discovered Anthony Braxton in the last couple of years, some fantastic Anthony Braxton albums from this year. He made about 10 albums in this year. We always give short shrift to ECM because there's so much quality in the ECM catalogue and so many records that are, I wouldn't say interchangeable, but they have the ECM aesthetic done. They have the ECM sound. There are some good ones this year. We have Eberhard Weber's Colours Making Silent Feet, Terry Ripdle's Waves, Keith Jarrett's Belonging from his European album. He and Quartet, not wishing to dismiss ECM because you can barely go wrong with ECM, can you, in the 70s. One final category before we wrap up, Tim, is just a brief mention to classical serious composition, because I know that you and I agree that this year produced one of our favourite pieces of music of all time. So I remember that you and I, Tim, both waxed lyrical about Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach in a previous episode as one of the kind of pinnacles of, of, of minimalist music. 70s minimalist music, which we, you know, we're massive fans of minimalist music, aren't we? And so many of the artists that we like, you know, from the rock genre have a lot of elements of minimalism in their music. Einstein on the Beach is one of the twin peaks of minimalism. Surely this is the other one. Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich. Just one of the most beautifully hypnotic, organic, inspiring, hypnotising pieces of music. I can listen to it endlessly and not get bored. I think I'm going to be bold here and say I'm pretty sure you agree with me, Tim, right?
Speaker 2Yeah, entirely. And I think I even listened to it this week and didn't get bored of it. That must have been my hundredth playing over the last 10 years. Yeah, probably this week. Yeah. I mean, Steve Reich is, when push comes to shove out of all of the minimalist, he's my favourite. I mean, this may not be my favourite piece of him. I really like the underrated To Hill Him from 1982. I think that is gorgeous. And I love electric counter. Point as well with Pete Matheny on guitar. But yeah, this
Speaker 1is utterly mesmeric. Well, it's also pivotal, isn't it? Because this is the piece that kind of defined him, I think. In a sense, so much of what came after was, you know, in much the same way as Einstein on the Beach, much of what Philip Glass did after Einstein on the Beach was kind of referencing that piece. Everything Steve Reich did after Music for 18 Musicians kind of goes back to this piece for me. There's a kind of curve up to this. Of course, he's, you know, working towards this piece, but then he creates this masterpiece. And in a sense, you know, it's in some senses, it's him finally breaking away from the influence of Terry Riley's In C. This is where he finds his voice.
Speaker 2And I think the thing is that despite the repetition, despite it being mesmeric, and we've talked about this before, it's not mechanical in any way. It's actually quite spiritual.
Speaker 1No, absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 2very uplifting and then often melancholic he manages to make shifts in the music that manipulate your moods as much as they manipulate tempos and musicians yeah absolutely
Speaker 1it's it's incredibly emotional music and of course this is one of the accusations that's so often thrown at minimalist music philip glass i think probably suffers from it more than steve reich because obviously so much of his music is made up of these kind of repeating arpeggiating patterns steve reich has a lot more harmony and melody in his music but i'm generalizing there but i think that's broadly true but it's of course nothing could be further from the truth i find a piece like music for 18 musicians incredibly emotionally engaging incredibly moving um which gives light to that kind of cliche and the accusation that it's just it's just you know it's mathematical equations played out also this year we have um the aforementioned john adams shaker loops beautiful piece of music also robert ashley's private parts which is a very strange if i remember rightly that's the one is it the one that's written for narrator and sitar or something yeah it's quite an odd lineup isn't
Speaker 2it it is because it's again it's sort of slightly pitched in that new york no wave new wave scene as much as it is the classical scene and it was a huge influence i think on laurie anderson i mean i i suspect that she must have known this intimately so it has these this quite dry american voice reciting quite eccentric stories over textures and repeated lines and so on it's it's really interesting stuff so tim we finally
Speaker 1got to the end of 1978 well testament to what an amazing year it was well
Speaker 2i think that you know we said that before this period i think especially 78 maybe to 82 83 is where you're still getting great statements by older musicians who are still producing superb work and then you're getting a tremendous number of fresh talents absolutely reinventing so you're getting the best of both worlds and of course some of the older um artists also um establishing new forms of music it's a very exciting period and of course it kind of coincides with um us maturing as listeners as well you know there might be an aspect of that but i still feel it was a a very special time in this year but also as we said it was an era of great singles you know in the first episode about 1978 that as much as it was a superb year for albums i remember buying single after single after single in so many different styles you know a band like blondie whose parallel lines came out this year it was such a brilliant year for pure pop music pure dance music um there was real fresh life breathed into it absolutely
Speaker 1yeah i mean obviously you and i were buying i was buying singles because it was all i could afford to buy at the time to be fair but uh but yeah i mean as you say some amazing singles yeah um okay tim this is the million dollar question no how on earth can you boil 1978 down to one album that you would take over all others and one album that you would consider more influential above all others is it possible
Speaker 2i think it's possible to come down to few for influential for sure because we can see that craftwork man machine there's no doubt that influences the decade to come we can see that music for airports influences the next few decades in classical electronic you name it so i'd put those as amongst the most influential for me i'm going for briny you know music for airports craftwork man machine it would be
Speaker 1very difficult for me to take issue with your choices there tim i think they are clearly uh the front runners in terms of most influential but they're also quite you know records that are influential perhaps a quieter way you know like the first dire straits album kind of is the beginning of a new strand uh of sort of you know dad music or whatever you want to call it sort of crossover music and i think that's a really good question i think that's a more kind of mainstream accessible music that might appeal to people that still like to hear people playing real instruments
Speaker 2yeah and as we said as well the chic album in terms of its production i think that was hugely influential over the next decade in terms of the album that i would take with me it's so difficult because you know the steve reich album is certainly one that i would never want to be far away from me on that desert island but in terms of albums that had an emotional impact on me at the time that i still kind of listened to i mean it's a weird trilogy actually patty smith's easter which has got a couple of heartbreaking ballads as well as some raucous rock and roll but the title track of that is superb and a track called we three i always found really engaging um the genesis album i've got really fond memories of discovering that and loving its lushness but i'm going to go with an album that was not particularly liked at the time and is now considered her worst but i think the album that had a massive impact on me in 1978 and i will still play and still get the occasional shiver from and i guess it's uh interesting because it is her moment because she's back in the top 10 in britain and america with a single that's 37 years old but i'm going to go for kate bush's lionheart as my personal favorite i love this
Speaker 1album that would definitely be a contender for me too the orange record i absolutely love this record uh is probably my favorite progressive rock album of the year i mean there are so you know so many post-punk records that i just think are amazing like white music xtc uh stranglers black and white magazine's first album the first police album the first public image album i mean what a year what a year generally speaking it's just phenomenal isn't it in all respects um anyway i think we'll have to quit while we're behind um and just say what an amazing year the the best album of 1978 is probably the album called the best of 1978 which and and i believe
Speaker 2it's a 78 disc a 78 disc box set exactly
Speaker 1yeah anyway okay tim well we finally managed to get to the end of 1978 i think job well done there and uh we'll uh we'll be back soon i always say that i know yeah
Speaker 2we'll be we'll be back in 2024 okay let me let
Speaker 1me just rephrase that we'll be back but for now uh we'll say goodbye thank you very much for listening if you've enjoyed the podcast please do leave us a review and also you know we need to revive the reader's letters page
Speaker 2don't we do well i did read them i did read them last time i mean a couple of complaints
Speaker 1well we need to hear more of those complaints we need to hear lots of praise lots of praise yeah and just maybe one or two complaints just to keep it interesting it was
Speaker 2more about bruce springsteen really that people felt we'd been a little unfair on the boss that he did come from you know he did come from you know he did come from you know he did come from a slightly worse background than we implied i've never been
Speaker 1a big fan of bruce it's so long ago i can't remember what i said about him i've never been horrible about him was i no i wasn't because i quite like a few i like i like nebraska and i like the ghost of tom joe and i like the stripped back albums philadelphia great track yeah yeah but i've just never loved him isn't that what i said last time i'm probably repeating myself why are we talking about this we're supposed to be wrapping up the episode you
Speaker 2were so horrible about him
Speaker 1let's lit on that bombshell on that bombshell we'll say goodbye oh i was gonna say sorry t-shirts oh for fuck's sake t-shirts if you haven't got one get one so what tell us about the t-shirts we've got two beautiful t-shirts
Speaker 2olive green graphite gray available from burningshed.com you heard
Speaker 1what tim said folks go and buy your album years t-shirts now for now it's goodbye from me
Speaker 2and it's goodbye from me you
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