Speaker 1I didn't think the pain from the shingles rash would affect simple, everyday tasks like bathing, getting dressed, or even walking around. I was wrong. Though not everyone at risk will develop it, 99% of people over the age of 50 already have the virus that causes shingles, and it could reactivate at any time. I developed it, and the blistering rash lasted for weeks. Don't learn the hard way, like I did. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist today. Sponsored by GSK. Hello, and welcome to the Album Years.
Speaker 2We're back again after another delay. We have another fantastic year to do. Again, Tim, you've chosen this year, 1983. I have, yeah. And looking down the list, I mean, it is, again, another pretty phenomenal year, which kind of, again, gives credence to that idea that the 80s, in many ways, was partly, I guess, because we were growing up in this. We were kind of discovering music in this decade. It's another golden decade, isn't it? I know it gets, sometimes it gets a bad rap, sometimes from people who think the 70s was, you know, and nothing was ever as good after the 70s. And I think we've kind of proved on the show already that nothing could be further from the truth. And this year is another great example of that, isn't it?
Speaker 3I think it is. And I think it's an interesting year, this one, because it's, for me, the first post-post-punk year that, you know, we've had from sort of 77, 82, the influence of punk and post-punk. And I think in 83, things shift quite dramatically. Things change, as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2Yeah, they get a bit more lush and a bit more produced and a bit more sort of luxurious in their sound, don't they? It was almost like shedding of the kind of post-punk DIY aesthetic. Seems to be going on. And, you know, there's a few records that kind of support that theory, as we'll come on to. And also, just to say up front, this is going to be another two-parter because we have a very, very long list of albums on this list here. So this is part one of 1983. Before we do this, Tim, do we have any readers' letters this week? It's been a while, but.
Speaker 3I had a meal out with Archie. Chum, Peter Hamill. The Ham? The Ham. He listened to the show. And what he said was this. He said, Vandegraaff Generator Vital, the album year's assessment. He said, Capital! Spot on. Did we get it spot on with that one? It was a brilliant assessment, he thought, of.
Speaker 2Does he like it? Does he like that album?
Speaker 3Oh, he loves it, yeah. He thinks it's a fantastic testament to that band. And we agree, obviously. And anyway, he said that we captured that album and the circumstances surrounding the album. Beautifully. Then, we get to the future now. And he said, Oh dear, we got that one wrong, did we? He thought we got that completely wrong. Yeah. He thought we got the DIY aspect right. He thought we got elements of the originality, how he was interacting with the post-punk scene right. But he said it certainly wasn't him feeling older. It was actually him accessing his. Inner punk, his inner Nadir, and never feeling more at home.
Speaker 2Well, to be fair to us, Pushing 30, the opening track, does kind of lend a bit of weight to our theory, doesn't it? I mean. He said,
Speaker 3I still can be Nadir. And that was the key line.
Speaker 2Do it in the voice, Tim. Do it in the voice. No, don't do it in the voice, no. Overload the microphone. Well, it would be lovely to get Peter on, wouldn't it? To maybe do an album years with us sometime. It would, yeah.
Speaker 3He also liked our Kevin Coyne assessment. And he added to that that he thought that part of Kevin's problem was that he was very envious of other's success and always felt that he hadn't quite got his due. And that sort of impacted on his music and his personality, though. He did say that he was a warm, gifted and unique person.
Speaker 2Well, should we start there then? Because actually, you know, as always, you've created the sort of shortlist here. And one of your categories is. Mad as a Hatter. And you've got a couple of favourites on here, but you've mentioned an album I don't know, which is a Kevin Coyne album, Legless in Manila. So seamlessly using that as a link, because you've already mentioned Kevin, what can we say about this album that I personally don't know?
Speaker 3This is a very different Kevin Coyne album because he'd been with Virgin. He'd been with Cherry Red. And although there were often experimental detours, there were. obvious patterns to the albums. So, for example, Politics, one of my favourite Kevin Coyne albums, is bizarre. This is 1982, the one preceded it. Half of it is electro-pop on a halfpenny budget with him screaming over it. And half of it is a beautiful singer-songwriter album. And obviously something happened in between because in 83, he'd been working with a number of jazz fusion musicians. I mean, something you wouldn't associate with Kevin Coyne. People like Steve Lange. The bass player. And obviously Brian Godding, who was the guitarist on some of the previous recordings as well. And this album, Legness and Manila, it's kind of improvised, but he's with a crack team of musicians. So what you have are these very elastic fusion players and Kevin Coyne ranting over the top of it. So on one level, it's more musical, but because these guys are incredibly gifted, it goes to places that a lot of Coyne's music doesn't go. And it really is telling that he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown because this is the last album he did for about three or four years. And he had a breakdown, ended up in Nuremberg in Germany and then working with a much more conventional pickup band in Germany who played a kind of blues pop rock and really reigned Kevin's madness in. So in some ways, this is one of the last great statements of his golden period.
Speaker 2Okay, well, in the madness, we have got an album which I think is almost like an archetype for our podcast in that it's a crazy record that is absolutely stunningly beautiful and very touching and very emotional, but most people won't be aware of it. And that is the album by the artist called Louis called L'Amour. This is, I mean, he's kind of become rediscovered. Obviously, somebody found one of his albums in the bargain bins once about 20 years ago. An album that at the time sold nothing, a private press, a vanity project, if you like. And this discovery led to a reissue of the album on the very, very fashionable hipster label Light in the Attic and was brought to a new generation of listeners, including us. And this is a very, very strange, beautiful record, isn't it? I mean, it's made by someone who's clearly delusional. And I think they think they're making very accessible pop, and it's one of those times when it goes horribly wrong, but in a fascinating way that produces something even more exquisite and even more interesting and even more unique. How would you describe the sound of Louis to somebody that had never heard it?
Speaker 3Well, I'd say it's like an ethereal, narcotic Avalon by Roxy Music. If Avalon by Roxy Music had been loaded with drugs, because it's got that. It's got a sort of conventional pop structure. It has that Ferry obsession with almost classic 1940s love song lyrics and, as you say, glamour. But. And the voice, the voice, in a sense, is as if Ferry were on Mogadons for me.
Speaker 2Well, yeah, I mean, it's almost like a parody of John Martin at his most kind of, like, undecipherable. A bit of Brian Ferry and a sort of mumble and deliberate. I mean, you can't. I can't say I've ever been able to pick out more than a couple of words, you know, from the actual lyrics, just from listening. It's that deliberate thing, which John Martin obviously did himself, where he's just using the words for the sound, you know, the rhythms of, you know, the sound of vowels and consonants without necessarily making any attempt to make the words decipherable or audible. And it's definitely got that, hasn't it? It's almost. But as you say, it's. The production, it's almost going for that kind of sweet. There's a little bit of Marvin Gaye sort of 80s work, too, isn't there, as well? Sort of soulful, sweet, synthesised pop. But without anything you could describe as a chorus or a hook. But it's strangely affecting, isn't it? And strangely emotional in its own kind of unhinged way.
Speaker 3There's a vulnerable quality to it. And as with John Martin, there's a repetition. So Martin often had that, it's love, it's love, it's love falling, it's love. Very clichéd words that he'd made fresh with that delivery. And Lewis certainly has that quality. Yeah, I mean, it is, as you say, maybe that kind of 80s Marvin Gaye sophistication. There's the Avalon suave textures. But it isn't as direct or accessible as the artist that he clearly thinks. thinks he's influenced by and obviously You know, the story behind it is that he got lots of people involved from top photographers to top recording studios in Los Angeles, presented himself as having a white Learjet, always dressed in white, glamorous suits. And of course, he didn't have the money to pay anybody. So he produced these albums, manufactured them, and the people who were part of this process didn't get paid, if I'm correct. And he did it again two years later, from what I can gather. You know, it's an extraordinary story.
Speaker 2And the albums, obviously, the very few albums he did press ended up in cutout bins, bargain bins, and people just happened upon them randomly over the next 10, 20, 30 years until they were rediscovered. I mean, I love stories like that. You know, there are a few stories like that over the years, aren't there? And, you know, Linda Pearhacks being another great example. You know, I think what's funny about this album, fun. Funny, fascinating about this album is it's obviously trying to be in the way that Marvin Gaye or Roxy Music's Avalon is sexy, seductive, and romantic. But it's also, you also can't help thinking that if you did put this on for a girl on a first date, you know, she'd run screaming for the door and never want to see you again. This is what went wrong with our first dates. And probably early No Man as well, you know. So, you know, it's one of those noble fables. I mean, it's one of those failures that tries to be something and ends up being something else altogether, but it's still absolutely an A-list record. I mean, it's not in the shadow of anything else in a way, is it? For all the things that we've kind of compared it to, it is completely outside on its own. It is outside of music in that respect. Completely unique. You'll never hear anything else quite like it.
Speaker 3Yeah, the lack of focus in a sense becomes the focus. That it is almost all background. It is all delirium. It's all wash in the name, supposedly, of sensuous direct pop songs. And yeah, I think it fails so superbly at what it wants to be. It is a classic in its own right. And because there's a sort of Eno texture to it as well. And again, I'm not sure whether this is deliberate, whether it's in his vocabulary. I doubt it. And kind of Chet Baker as well. I sort of hear that intimacy as well. And Chet Baker, I think, was kind of accidental. You know, he was almost an accidental criminal. He was a crooner in a sense, as he wasn't the most natural singers, but had a beautiful voice. And again, he had that kind of narcotic, dreamy quality.
Speaker 2As did, could say the same thing of Eno, couldn't you? Not a natural singer. Yeah, yeah. But had a very unique and beautiful voice in its own way. The Robert Wyatt thing, I guess, in that respect. Yeah. Yeah. So here's an album that you have always raved to me about. And to my shame, I've never really listened to it until earlier today. And I have to say, I have to say, I admire it, but I don't like it very much. Which is the self-titled album by, and I believe the only album, by a group called Pictures from this year, 1983. Now, again, I don't know anything about this. It is mad. So you're absolutely right to put it in the mad as a hatter category. It isn't like anything else I've heard, except possibly I've picked up little bits of maybe artists like The Residents in there. Tell us about this album. This is one, am I right in saying this is actually one of your favourite Desert Island Disc albums, Pictures?
Speaker 3It isn't. I mean, like you, I admire it more than I love it. But I've been fascinated by it, really. And it's one of these albums I got. There was a record shop in Warrington, and it was above a carpet shop. And it had these racks of ECM and EG Editions records for about 50p. And so this is how I discovered a lot of ECM. You know, Ralph Towner, Steve Elliofsson, Jan Garbrak, etc. And a lot of the more obscure EG Editions artists. And this I was drawn to by its quite peculiar, almost kind of gothic Victorian cover. And the story relating to it is even more peculiar than the cover and the music in a way. But there was this band in the 80s, who I'm sure you remember, late 70s, early 80s, called Freeze, who then morphed into Southern Freeze. And they had a couple of enormous albums. And they had enormous global hits. It was kind of light jazz, dance, funk. It was good for what it was. I.O.U. was one of their big hits, as was Southern Freeze. And this album came about when Andy Stennett, the keyboard player, couldn't work the Oberheim in the studio. He was bamboozled by it. So he took it home and he wrote a suite of pieces. And his core influences, he said, were, I think it was Philip Glass, Keith Jarrett, and Yes, Close to the Edge. Which, again, is a great album. And I think it's a great album. And it isn't very Southern Freeze. He then presented these demos to John Rocker, the singer, who then wrote the album, which was a kind of concert album. It was a little like Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the James Joyce novel, in that it takes somebody from childhood to adulthood and how they've been programmed and abused by society. So it's an unusual concept for these guys to work on. And, yeah, I think it's almost impossible to sort. Of hear references. There might be the occasional, you know, texture or even a kind of tangerine dream sequence or repetition. There's a bizarre element of strangulated R&B vocals from Rocker occasionally. A lot of spoken word. And as you said, quite a number of experimental vocal offshoots which have a residence quality. So it's just an extraordinary. It's an extraordinary album for a very unlike from a very unlikely source.
Speaker 2It's fascinating. I mean, you know, again, I don't think I've ever heard anything like it, but I can see why it would have failed. I mean, I can't imagine anyone actually, you know, rushing out to buy such a peculiar little misfit of a record. And I think it came out on EG, didn't it? Is that right? Is it came out on?
Speaker 3So, I mean, that's part of the reason why I bought it. It was I was drawn to the sort of the almost grotesque cover, which was painted by John Rocker's. Brother was very evocative and also, you know, tremendously descriptive of the music. And I think they kind of felt the music was a bit like audio painting. That was what they had in mind. You know, on one level, it's such an art project. You almost feel as it could be a joke, but they were very, very serious and certainly put an awful lot of themselves into this. And occasionally you can hear how great an R&B vocalist John Rocker. But, you know, it's an extraordinary album that I think is is well worth hearing.
Speaker 2Yeah, I was fascinated by I didn't like it very much, but but I was I was definitely appreciating the, you know, the uniqueness of it. OK, let's move on. Let's move on to Ambience. You've shoehorned him into two of these discussions already, Tim. So let's get him out the way. He did make arguably one of his greatest records this year. Brian Eno with his brother and Daniel Noir. Apollo atmospheres and soundtracks. Possibly the Eno. Eno album I come back to more than any other along and maybe along with Ambient One. It's just sublime ambient music, isn't it? From from a guy that that obviously has become, you know, so synonymous with the whole concept of ambient music and indeed almost created the the, you know, kind of coined the phrase ambient music in the first place. But I think one thing that's always forgotten with Eno, and I'm sure you'll concur with this, is this idea that ambient music, partly through his own conceptualizing of the whole idea, is that it's background music, partly through his own conceptualizing of the whole idea, is that it's background music.
Speaker 3So it's a soundtrack to a film about Apollo landings. And I think he described it at the time as being a kind of ambient country. So it does have this kind of atmospheric country and Western flavor.
Speaker 2Pedal, steel, guitar.
Speaker 3Exactly. So it's immediately distinguished from a lot of his albums. And yeah, as you say, it's an all enveloping experience. This isn't something you necessarily put in the background.
Speaker 2Great melodies, too. Great. And there's some beautiful melodies on this. And I'm always returning, you know. Yeah, I was about to say, always returning is possibly one of my favorite pieces of all time. Gorgeous melodies, which again, belie this idea that ambient music is just texture. And to be fair, I'm not even sure he himself places this in his ambient canon. I mean, it's not, it hasn't got the ambient subtitle or prefix as far as I remember. So maybe he's not necessarily saying this is ambient music himself, but I think a lot of people think of it as part of Eno's ambient work. And it's certainly focused on texture, but it's also got what you might call great songs. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. Great. It's not just about the local songs, but just in terms of its melodic content, there are great hooks. And, you know, no coincidence, it's one of the albums of his that's been used time and time and time again in TV shows and movies.
Speaker 3Absolutely. And weirdly enough, I remember this because thinking once more about record shops and where you could buy music and come across it accidentally. And I remember buying this in the M6 Cash and Carry, which was off a motorway in the Northwest. And bizarrely, the M6 Cash and Carry, which mainly sold cheap food for shops, had this and a Psychic TV album. And I remember buying. both of them you know partly because what the hell are they doing the m6 cash and carry and that's how i came across
Speaker 2it so let's move on then now this is another of our absolute favorites no no no surprise because we're both big fans of the whole you know kind of notion of ambient music and textual music but this is another album that kind of only very loosely fits into that definition and you introduced me to this album very soon after we met and it very quickly became one of my all-time favorites to virginia astley from gardens where we feel secure the definitive school piano album but what an evocative record i mean such a so simple in concept just to try and chart the cycle of a day but not just any day a kind of idyllic dreamlike summer days it feels very british as well doesn't it all the sound effects of you know church bells and the creek of swings and the birds and i've never heard an album that so perfectly captures that dreamy idyllic feeling of summers that seem like they're going to go on forever when you're when you're a kid you know and she perfectly captures that and it's quite low fine away as i say i mentioned the school piano and you and i have always had this sort of love of not not the sort of beautifully recorded grand piano steinway but that very intimate sound of an upright piano recorded on a single mono microphone what's your take on this album
Speaker 3so so yeah so for me it's kind of it's a very intimate album as you say it's a very british album it sort of evokes betjeman and the title comes from an orden poem i believe and i sort of always saw it as being the the daydreams the reveries if you like almost of a primary school teacher who's just at the piano and the piano is reflecting the thoughts and the dreams of that teacher and that day that's going by very very gently and occasionally you've got as well as the school piano you've got voices her creating again a sort of school choir effect and also there are little bits of flute that she'll play as well but it has this incredible fragile innocence there's no sort of jazz extempore you know this is all very tentative
Speaker 2yeah it's it's it's the least funky album you could possibly imagine isn't it yeah i mean i think also that you know the sound design is such a strong part of it and everything seems to be happening slightly in the distance you know doesn't it so the church bells children playing all of these things they're almost kind of coming through through the ether almost like memories nostalgic memories but very fond nostalgic memories through this layer of of of time that's having passed you know it didn't sound like it was an album that she sweated over in the studio it sounds so effortless um and natural and and underproduced it doesn't sound like it was produced at all it literally feels like it just sort of flowed out onto the i'm sure it was very considered um and very carefully thought out but it's an album that just has that glow about it that sort of intimate natural glow to it doesn't it well it sort of has
Speaker 3a diy classical feel as well and one of the things i've always felt about the album is that it could have been made in the 1920s the 1930s the 1940s there's a certain weird timelessness yeah it's
Speaker 2come it's completely uh out of time isn't it in that sense it is an anachronism in the best possible sense of the word like like a lot of albums i think we've talked about on here i mean you know again without wishing to invoke one of the holy trinity that the kind of hollis thing you know of mate of making albums which almost sound like they could have been recorded in jazz studio in 1940 yeah um in the sense that they have nothing about them which ties them to the time that they're being made in and i think that's the hallmark of a lot of the albums that you and i
Speaker 3come back to i mean this could have been an outsider composer who'd been discovered in the 40s and recorded in that school you know there's an aspect of that and i love the fact at the time when she was interviewed for the album she was talked about her influences and she just mentioned motorhead which i thought was quite funny
Speaker 2now i wonder if this album will be in the running for our pick of the bunch when it comes to the end of the 1983 i suspect it will definitely be in the run in the mix there um because we both love it so much but let's talking about albums that are completely out of time let's talk about albums that are completely of their time and um the next category you've got on the list is progressive titans and i think it's fair to say the 80s was not the easiest time for for the the so-called progressive titans that come through the through the 70s and even through the late 60s um but some rode the storm better than others and you know we've talked about this before um on your list you have genesis self-title which i i i don't know this album at all i do know the single from the album mama which is brilliant yeah
Speaker 3yeah fantastic single
Speaker 2one record of course i do know very well and another band that rode the storm moving from sort of 70s progressive tropes into into the 80s is yes and again one of the greatest singles of the whole 80s you'd have to admit is owner of love owner of a lonely heart um and the album it came from 90125 now i did listen to this again at the time it was an incredible reinvention wasn't it um to you know of a band that should have been uh kind of washed up and written off but no they came back with their biggest hit single of of all time and a completely fresh take on a i'm not sure if you can call it progressive rock but certainly a very intelligent rock song and i think it's a very intelligent rock song of modern pop with the help of the two trevors uh trevor horn and trevor it it has dated i think it has dated a bit i just i did listen to it recently it does sound very much of its time um i don't think it's for examples um dated as well as say the propaganda album a secret wish which for me would be a much better and more timeless example of kind of progressive pop hybrid from from the kind of ztt school but it still represents an incredible reinvention and i suppose it kind of gave yes you know uh at least another at least another 10 years kind of at the top of their game didn't
Speaker 3it it did and it was a very brave statement really i mean completely unlike anything they've done before and i always remember in the bill briefer autobiography he'd said that what he admired about yes during that time was that they were prepared to almost give themselves to people like trevor rabin trevor horn and he felt that although king crimson had been progressing during that period they were so bloody minded they would have never allowed them to do that and they were so bloody minded that they would have never allowed a producer to dictate their direction but he felt that yes had done it in a fairly creative way that in a sense they they knew that they didn't quite have the skills to navigate the early 80s but they found wonderful people to actually do that with and um yeah you know as an album i don't think it's as strong as the single the same with the genesis album as well i think you know mama is certainly the standout there are a couple of other decent tracks as well but what is kind of interesting if you think of genesis it's kind of like a song that's kind of like a song that's kind of like a by genesis you think of 901 25 and to an extent the mike olfield album crises suddenly you've got a lot of the progressive bands embracing new wave values you know you've got brevity you've got bite you've got very contemporary cutting edge production values and of course they could afford the fair lights and the big studios and then what you're getting in the post-punk world if you're thinking about the this mortal coil that's emerging eyeless in gaza um they're actually reaching out almost to the world and they're reaching out to the world and they're reaching in a progressive way so the new wave post-punk artists are becoming more flamboyantly out there and experimental while the progressive bands of old are actually reigning themselves in almost as if they feel that they have to kind of meet the times head on well and you can look
Speaker 2forward folks to a whole box set on which i explore that very concept that tim's just outlined because i have put together this box set called intrigue which is coming out soon which is kind of exactly what you're talking about how a lot of the post-punk music became just as ambitious just as pretentious in the best possible sense of the word and just as just as reaching as a lot of the the so-called progressive music of the early 70s have been and and i and i've always believed that and i've always believed that the 80s in many respects was just as creative uh and just as ambitious as the decade before and um another i mean you mentioned the mike olfield and of course the other thing that the mike olfield album crisis is that it's not just about the music it's about again has in common with 90125 and the genesis self-titled album is an absolutely brilliant single moonlight shadow i mean arguably again the rest of the album doesn't quite match up to the brilliance of the single but in in the same way the owner of a lonely hump and potentially mama um make you think the albums maybe are a bit stronger than they actually are because they they did kind of restart and kickstart the careers of these so-called uh old you know old farts who were still at this time you know still at this time you know still at this time you know still at this time again it's worth pointing out we've talked about this before still only in their early 30s at the most you know yeah some of them even younger you know so here's another example but you know in a completely different way you know and we talk about albums that seem out of time and pay no kind of heed to what's going on in in you know in the rest of the music industry and just do their own thing do their own thing pink floyd's the final cut i love this record i mean okay i am a pink floyd apologist anyway but sometimes i see people very dismissive of this record almost as if it's some kind of aberration that should be overlooked and yet i think it's one cohesive records the band ever made sure it is essentially an album that is so dominated by roger waters it's difficult to think of it as anything other than a kind of a roger waters folly in that sense but there are at the same time there are some of david gilmore's most beautifully crafted guitar solos on this record and whenever whenever he appears on the record he completely you know makes his mark so it isn't just a roger waters folly i just think this album is almost to be listened to as kind of almost a symphonic tone poem as a as a complete whole the idea of individual songs becomes almost irrelevant and i know again that's something you can say about earlier floyd records but particularly here it is it is almost like a sweet i just adore this record tim what's your feeling on this record yeah i've
Speaker 3always thought it's one of the strongest um i've again been a great apologist for this album and strangely enough i see a kind of connection with the virginia rastian there's a lot of found sound there's a lot of fragile piano there's there's a journey that this album goes on and i always kind of felt that it was underrated because it was a pink floyd album you know i like you i think gilmore when he makes his presence known is utterly devastating and so i think it has more of a pink floyd band identity than the roger waters solo albums that followed and it has more of a sense of cohesion because even when gilmore isn't playing there's a lushness to the album the production and i kind of feel that it's always been dismissed because it's pink floyd i think if this had been a bob dylan album or a leonard cohen album because it certainly shares some of that gravelly singer-songwriter intensity and intimacy that you hear in in the best cohen and the best dylan i think it would be seen as their tour de force but perhaps for a pink floyd album maybe comes across as too intimate too ragged too personal i'm not sure because i've never really seen many of the problems that other people have
Speaker 2with it well i think it takes the more intimate aspects of the wall and kind of fashions them into a whole continuum a whole kind of vibe a whole kind of piece the use of the brass band the kind of salvation army that you hear on sort of wish you were here could it i mean i suppose that's the problem if people think of pink floyd as you know the archetype of pink floyd of dark side moon and wish you were here this is a long way from that isn't it it's not got the lushness and the radio friendly kind of fm radio friendly sheen of things like money or comfortably numb or shine on you crazy diamond maybe people have an issue with that it's just not what they want from pink floyd but then i've always loved bands that confront expectations of their audience you know and i think floyd were a band that continued to reinvent themselves um and here's a great testament to that paranoid eyes is one of my favorite pink floyd tracks of all time i've never heard anyone else talk about
Speaker 3that song no i totally one of the most touching lyrics as well i think this is the thing that for me i think it features some of roger water's most personal most beautifully rendered lyrics um and that yeah paranoid eyes fantastic piece gunner's dream also
Speaker 2so let's move on from from the so-called progressive titans to this is also the year of neo prog music neo progressive music because this is the year that marillion uh and iq arguably the two most successful exponents from that that whole kind of movement um released their their debut records and uh marillion obviously to to great fanfare and to great success iq less so but certainly more so than the two most successful exponents from that in the beginning of a of of a career that continues to this day and we talked about neo-progressive music i think before that there's something quite unique about it in the sense that it obviously is very derivative is obviously drawing from a lot of tropes that were laid down particularly by genesis and camel and those kind of bands but there is a kind of diy aesthetic and a kind of non-schooled musicianship that gave it something else that the original wave of progressive hadn't had and made it almost like our punk music the people like i who loved progressive rock music were looking for something that would be you know contemporary to me and i was able to go and see all these bands in pubs and clubs as i'm sure you were famously i saw marillion's first ever show at the age of 12 without you know completely randomly had gone to see a band called the chilton volcanoes who were a punk group and it turned out they were opening for this band that everyone told me were called marilyn and it turned out to be marillion and they're like so famously i i have this this kind of connection with this with this music and this genre but these albums i mean script for justice tier still sounds like a bit of a classic to me in its own way um it isn't as slick or as as as musical as the original wave but in doing so we talked about this with the lewis thing it kind of achieves something else almost despite itself doesn't it it does i
Speaker 3mean i think that you know like the new wave of british heavy metal had something of the raw diy you know like the new wave of british heavy metal had something of the raw punk diy you know i've always felt that iron maiden's debut in in a sense you can put that in with the punk movement although they're drawing from classic rock and classic hard rock influences there's an energy and a raggedness that comes through on that and i think you hear that on script for justice tier and of course that's what makes it an early 80s album it's interesting at the time it was seen for its rips from genesis or its rips from camel or rips from pink floyd but when you listen to it there's a kind of an enthusiasm and a passion and a very lyric a very different lyrical slant as well because of course if you think of fish whose voice is more unschooled than some of the traditional progressive singers he's actually quite a direct passionate personal lyricist and vocalist it communicates in a way that foxtrot doesn't and i think that a lot of people kind of forget that that's perhaps what then distinguishes it it isn't a rip-off because they've done something very different with it and they've done something very different with it and they've done something very different with it and partly it's because they they aren't drawing from the same pool you know i love that underground of the 60s and 70s where they were drawing from classical folk jazz psychedelia liberally these are drawing from certain as we've noted before certain genesis tropes but they're doing something very different that's partly determined by the era they're recording it in and i think they've got a very different sort of audience as well
Speaker 2yeah i mean the lyrical subject matter you can't imagine apart from roger waters possibly you can't imagine or maybe hamill you can't imagine many of the classical progressive bands sort of dealing with the the kind of subject matter in such a kind of visceral way that he is i mean okay it's it's very wordy but it's also quite some of the lyrical imagery is quite brutal um and his his his presence was also i mean i used to go and see them a lot in the early days when they used to play around ellsbury and hamill hempstead his presence was also quite confrontational and he's quite scary as a front man um in a way i can't imagine john anderson being you know um yeah genuinely quite terrifying and when he was delivering songs like forgotten sons and and you know and he knows you know and those kind of songs so it was almost again almost despite themselves i think they were they were setting out to do something that they felt was quite traditional but despite themselves they ended up doing something which did have as much in common as you say with you know with a kind of confrontational punk aesthetic and i still think it i still think it holds up uh as a record i think it's a great one of the great debut albums actually well i think
Speaker 3it's one of those albums that actually gets slightly better with age and also when you're detached from it you can hear what the 1980s is in it you know the use of technology as well some of these sort of brass stabs on the keyboards and kind of lyrically and vocally in some ways fish is almost like if i can say this the grandiloquent flip side of morrissey because it is bedroom memoir bedroom misery yes very much it's personal relationships being ripped apart whereas morrissey had perhaps that kind of northern kitchen sink slightly sarcastic eye fish was coming more from a sort of hamill level of intensity and confrontation but equally as we said something that kind of sits quite comfortably with um some of the more brutal post-punk artists at the time you know even the tonality of his voice is as much howard devoto as it is gabriel yeah i think
Speaker 2so i think so and and you know and if you actually talk to fish and you you realize what he was listening to what he was growing up listening to it was quite a you know an eclectic i think he was as much influenced by people like roger dolter and pete townsend as he was by you know by by the genesis kind of yeah alex harvey you can hear alex harvey yes absolutely absolutely yeah yeah you definitely can hear that very confrontational almost like you know um someone who's grown up having to really fight for themselves literally physically and mentally defend and fight for themselves yeah right let's go on to a category you've called old dogs new tricks which includes some people that have been around since the 60s essentially trying to embrace again another theme that we come back to time and time again don't we these artists trying to embrace the zeitgeist and of course king of this, the post a child for reinventing yourself, Bowie managed to do it this year in arguably, certainly commercial terms, the most successful way he ever did. It's interesting because I've just seen the Moon Age Daydream movie and you do kind of appreciate that this was in many ways just another part of his master plan, wasn't it? It was almost like David Bowie decided one day he was, you know, he was fed up with being the sort of art house underachiever commercially. He wanted to be the biggest pop star in the world. And lo and behold, he goes and does it, almost as if it was just a matter of him flicking a switch and deciding to do it, which is incredible, really, you know. But here he is, Let's Dance, a massive record. Is it good, Tim? Is it a good record?
Speaker 3I think it's a good record. I mean, the thing is, it's disappointing in the sense that everything Bowie had done up to this point had an edge and was certainly more experimental. But as a contemporary 1980s pop album, it's quite masterful, you know, in a way that the following years, Tonight was not. Tonight had a couple of good tracks, but overall, it was as if he was barely there. And I think that Never Let Me Down was similar. And those two albums were more disappointing in the sense that he was trying to embrace what was out there and he was failing quite badly. And I think to a certain extent, that also was on the Tim Machine albums. Not that they're terrible records, but they're not the pixies. You know, for the first time ever on the albums after this, he's not what he's trying to be. Whereas Let's Dance, it was, as you say, it's almost like he flicked a switch, like, I want to be the world's biggest pop star. He becomes the world's biggest pop star with a strong album. You know, the title track is wonderful. There's other great tracks, Ricochet, China Girl. It's a good album. You know, the complaints would be that it's a little too straight and a little too clean, but his voice is still amazing. There's a scope and there's a tremendous detail in the production as well. I think Nile Rodgers does a great job and brings that kind of chic production house style to this. While Scary Monsters remains one of my favourite albums of all time, and Let's Dance will never hit that for me. I think what's interesting about it is that he picks a target and he hits it. And in this case, it is contemporary and he does it with style, panache and quality. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2I love the fact that he made the record and I love the fact that he pulled it off, you know.
Speaker 3Yeah, I mean, like 90125. And interestingly enough, those two albums became the biggest that either artist had done for quite a long time afterwards.
Speaker 2But probably not the albums that you would go back to, you know. So in that sense, they were more of their time. They achieved, they captured the zeitgeist. They were very different. But actually, when you look at the catalogue in retrospect, they seem slightly lesser, don't they? In terms of, you know, the creativity. So we also have Old Dogs, New Tricks, Herbie Hancock's Future Shock. Has that got rockets on it? It has, yeah. Which is what I think is one of the great, great, as you say, for a jazz, a jazz musician to produce such an extraordinary piece of electro pop is a fantastic Bowie-like piece of attention. Likewise, New Order, Power, Corruption and Lies. For me, New Order were always about singles. I've never really warmed to their albums. Obviously, they had that thing where they never put their singles on their albums anyway, at least not until later on with, you know, with albums like Low Life. But they're still at that stage where they're not putting singles on the album. So arguably one of the greatest singles made by anyone at any time, Blue Monday, is not on Power, Corruption and Lies, even though it comes from the album Sessions. So it's hard to kind of think of those two apart. But yeah, I mean, Blue Monday, obviously one of the one of the greatest for a band that had only a couple of years before been reeling in the aftermath of the death of their singer as a kind of northern miserablest kind of indie alternative post-punk band to creating one of the definitive dance tracks, if not the definitive dance track, you know, of the whole era. That, as you say, is an incredible.
Speaker 3It's interesting in that it's kind of simultaneously quite morose while being very uplifting. Yeah, absolutely. It's almost
Speaker 2like they've kept everything that you think of as being, you know, part of the Joy Division New Order sound. Yeah, I mean, that's a hard trick to pull off. There's no sense of compromise, is there?
Speaker 3No, not at all. And this album very much is, in a sense, the accompaniment to Blue Monday. It has a similar kind of electro club influence in some of the rhythms and synth sounds and so on. And I wonder as well, you know, talking about Herbie Hancock, I think MTV played a great role in hits. And perhaps, you know, this is one of the reasons as well why bands like Genesis and 9-1-2-5, not only were they great reinventions of the bands, they had quite striking videos that got played on MTV. So this became quite important in bands reaching fresh audiences, audiences who possibly didn't even know who these bands were before. And Blue Monday would have been another example of that. But with Herbie Hancock's Rocket, if you remember, the video was done by one of our favourites, Godly Cream.
Speaker 2So let's move on. You've also mentioned here Tom Waits, Swordfish Trombones, also, I think we both agree, one of our favourite albums of the whole period. Yeah, this was a surprise reinvention because he's gone from being what he was through most of the 70s, essentially a ballroom piano balladeer, albeit, you know, with a few quirks on the albums just prior to this, like Blue Monday. But when you think about it, I mean, he's gone from being a true troubadour in a true troubadour vein to being something much, much stranger, hasn't he? Almost overnight with this record, Swordfish Trombones. The use of sort of junkyard percussion, that kind of Harry Parche-like use of found, homemade instrumentation, and a much more uncompromising kind of approach to songwriting. Very much so.
Speaker 3I mean, I wonder if it was the transition to Island Records, because Island Records always had that reputation for being slightly more. Giving their artists more
Speaker 2creative freedom. Exactly.
Speaker 3You know, they had a roster of very groundbreaking artists. And in the early 80s, they were certainly one of the most important labels. So I wondered if it was a label transition and Chris Blackwell allowing Waits to be what he wanted to be. Because, you know, he had done Blue Valentine's 78, but he'd also done a couple of fairly middle-of-the-road albums in between that and this, including, I think it was one from the Heart, a film soundtrack.
Speaker 2Yeah, and Heart Attack and Vine. Heart Attack and Vine.
Speaker 3And this was a tremendous breakthrough. And I think he said that he'd been listening to Captain Beefheart. And you can partly hear that. I mean, you can hear in some of the ballads that cracked early Randy Newman quality. You can hear in some of the clattering junkyard rhythms Captain Beefheart. And also the eccentricities. But he certainly makes it all his own. And as you say, I think it's that Harry Parche use of unusual homemade instruments that gives it quite a unique tonality throughout. But also he's letting his voice.
Speaker 2I mean, you could easily have put this album, Couldn't You, in the Mad as a Hatter category too. He's really letting his voice to go beyond. I mean, he's always had a little bit of that. But here, it's almost to the point of absurdity, almost a little bit of that. But I love it. And you mentioned Captain Beefheart. I must say, I always felt the title Swordfish Trombones must be an homage to the title Trout Mask Replica. And of course, Trout Mask Replica being his most infamous and uncompromising record. It seems no coincidence to me that Tom Waits would call this album Swordfish Trombones. Seems like a very deliberate nod to me.
Speaker 3And it's an interesting album in the sense that he, to a certain extent, was almost a copy of the album. I mean, you know, he knew a lot of famous film directors. His wife was a screenwriter. And yet there's a real dirty street quality about this music.
Speaker 2But also some, you know, some incredibly beautiful tender moments too, isn't it? Johnsburg, Illinois. Yeah, Johnsburg, Illinois. I mean, just absolutely devastatingly beautiful little moments of tenderness that perhaps do kind of, you know, connect back to his earlier records, not. They seem more intimate, more stripped back, more tender. Perhaps it's no coincidence that Ireland was a, you know, was a British label. He suddenly found himself on a British label, having been on an American label for most of the previous 10 years. And it does have a slightly more European sensibility.
Speaker 3I was going to say it is, it's this sound design. You've got quite a lot of dissonant guitar. You've got, as we said, this almost kind of trash can drumming. But what then on pieces like Rainbirds, you have tuned glass and it's exquisite.
Speaker 2Yeah. He's definitely looking for, he's definitely looking for a new musical vocabulary on this record, isn't he? Very much so. And trying, you know, literally trying anything, you know, again, it's that Harry Parshney, which we mentioned, trying to make homemade things into musical instruments and completely pulling it off.
Speaker 3But what's interesting about it is that, you know, this represents a dramatic departure from an artist who has had a relatively conventional career with albums logically following from one another for about 11 years. This then defines the rest of his career but that's
Speaker 2interesting isn't it because this is an example of an artist becoming more experimental and in doing so having a commercial breakthrough yeah um which you know it doesn't happen very often does it but it you know i think i think it's fair to say that the earlier albums beautiful that they are i mean i love some of the early tom waits in fact all of them i love all but he never really achieved that crossover did he until he decides i don't care
Speaker 3anymore i was going to say you know around this time sort of 83 84 85 there were word of mouth albums you know blue nile walk across the rooftops was one of them this was another that people were recommending to everybody you've not heard anything like this and i think that it kind of works because it has the anger the strangeness but when it all comes down to it it'll have a piece like johnsburg illinois which is so painfully tender and
Speaker 2then mad things like frank the butcher yeah just this weird kind of queasy listening instrumental but it all works because it's his personality is so strong that he can he can put these seemingly disparate elements together and create something completely cohesive and a brilliant album from beginning to end um okay tim i think we should wind up this half of 1983 with uh two two more categories that you kind of um lead on from one another they're kind of interlocked so you've got enter the stadium yeah and show me the way to the stadium okay so approach you'd like to explain the distinction first between those two categories enter the stadium and show me the way to the stadium well
Speaker 3i think the thing is that 83 in particular it's when the new stadium rock that defines a lot of the 80s to come emerges you know you've got you two's war you've got the police synchronicity you've also got rem's debut and they become a lot of the same thing so i think it's a lot of the age of figures and then you have bands who in a sense they're occupying a similar territory and maybe even influential on that territory but never quite made that transition from the big concert halls to the huge stadiums in the states and so i think that there was this big guitar music that suddenly became de rigueur during that period and once more it kind of comes out of post-punk but it's not got many of the qualities of post-punk so you know post-punk is interesting i remember reading simon raymond he was in a band before cocktail twins and he said that post-punk he felt a little like psychedelia was one of those eras where anything went and there's an aspect of truth to that but actually by 82 there's a particular template you know there's that razor edge guitar that particular metallic drum sound that very heavy sometimes flanged bass there were lots of pointers to post-punk sounds and i think what's interesting about 83 is all of that disappears you know even in a band like the cocktail twins who released an album this year their soundscape broadens tremendously and with the stadium rock it was almost as if that era had had its day something new whether it be better or worse was was replacing
Speaker 2it yeah it's certainly a music about being big gestures isn't it so the drums become big the reverbs become big the guitar tones become big with lots of echo on you know like the classic the quintessential edge sound with all the delay on and all the reverb and and the and the vocals are kind of reaching out to the back row of the stadium aren't they they're like you know yeah you're gonna hit it's nothing intimate you're gonna hear me right at the back with this big rousing anthemic chorus um and of course bono being a great exponent of that you know for better or worse i'm i'm a fan of early you too for sure but the album that you've kind of highlighted that you think is the one that we should focus on the most and it's certainly my favorite of of the u2 rem police sort of axis this year is the police's swan song synchronicity which i think is a fantastic record and again very distinct in their catalogue but what a great way to go out isn't it it is
Speaker 3and it has a sound all of its own i mean one of the things that was nice about the police is that most of the you know the first two albums to an extent are very logically entwined this album has its own very distinct sound led very much by the guitar i mean this thing is it's it's a guitar band on this i know there are synth textures and so on but this is a guitar band and summers does something very fresh with his instrument on this album
Speaker 2yeah there's the the sounds are beginning to be more processed the bigger sounds more use of delay and chorus and things like that the the production certainly stands out a lot and i think it's a it sounds like expensive it sounds expensive it sounds like they've recorded in the bahamas or monterey expensive studio and they've spent a lot of time refining the sounds and honing them honing the music you know obviously famously everything every breath you take is is on this record what i think one of the great uh dark love songs of all time and and if you don't understand what i mean when i say dark love songs then you haven't read the lyrics properly uh it's very dark love song um but also tracks like synchronicity one and two these are deaf as you say these are definitely um in the mold of stadium rock big yeah big songs with big anthemic choruses and big lyrical concerns um which we see reflected as you say throughout the rest of the decade not only in bands like you too in arian but also in the bands you've you said didn't quite make it to the stadium but bands like echo and the bunny men and the chameleons are definitely reaching for something the big music to coin a mike scott's song title well
Speaker 3also vocally you know if you think about that era 77 to 82 post-punk had its own very distinct clipped vocal vocabulary and you can think as again you know howard devoto who i love his work but he has that sound it's arch it's clipped suddenly when you're listening to bono you're listening to sting in 83 they've got it somewhere between soul rock jazz tonality sometimes and they are picking people out of a hundred thousand in the audience they've got those big voices that can reach people so there's a kind of a real expanse in terms of production the singing um it's all opened up
Speaker 2yeah i think you're right it's interesting there's a certain type of voice you know it's difficult to imagine howard devoto really you know engaging more than the first few rows of the audience you think of the classic rock singers like robert plant you know he could be singing in madison square garden and he was reaching every single person in that in that big stadium yeah and again that's the difference between say someone like sting or michael stipe or bono and well vinnie riley bless him i can't imagine you know his voice even reaching beyond the edge of the stage let alone the back row of the stadium um and there's definitely a tradition that's coming in with you say people like ian mcculloch from echo and the bunnyman or even someone like wayne hussey from the from the mission you know we're kind of reaching for that stadium rock appeal weren't they and you're right we do see the appeal of this and i think a couple of years later live aid is going to completely focus the rest of the decade on that kind of approach yeah i mean
Speaker 3it's a return in some ways to the stadium rock values of the who led zeppelin and so on of course like so the police would have been fans of possibly even you too as well but it's that stadium vocabulary done differently because there is very much a kind of 80s streamlined production as much as it's big there aren't many instruments on synchronicity aren't many instruments on war or unforgettable fire you know they make a little go a long way
Speaker 2which is kind of what helps it to work in a stadium you know in a way because stadiums notoriously are very big and very echoey so you almost you almost have to do away with the subtleties in the music sometimes to make it work in that context and i think that's what bands like you two understood uh and also simple minds kind of went in that direction too they began to take away a lot of the quirks from their music to to some degree of success i think you know i i do like some of simple minds more stadium orientated records but certainly they they kind of raised some of the quirks in an attempt to make the music more direct to make it more simple to make it work in the context of a stadium and i do think live aid was a kind of a watershed moment for that because the bands that really came out covered in glory from live aid were the bands that could pull it off in a stadium queen you too um and and that live aid very much became the defining i think no coincidence that it occurs exactly the same way as the live aid exactly in the middle of the 80s i think it it became the defining moment of the 80s i mean
Speaker 3obviously section 25 just didn't make the impact that freddie
Speaker 2mackery section 20 section 25 in the juriti column uh and eyeless and gaza for some reason didn't somehow manage to make the transition to to stadium rock yeah funny that which is a great pity well yeah we're going to talk about some of those bands i think we're going to we're going to leave it here tim for episode one um of 1983 another extraordinary year fantastic year where we we just cannot possibly talk about talk about everything in a single episode. So we still have a few categories to do. um in in part two uh including some other great records but for now i think we'll leave it uh 1983 part one please join us for episode two of 1983 if you've enjoyed this one and by the way if you have enjoyed this one please do go and leave us a good review on whichever podcast platform
Speaker 3you use yeah and you will have people saying i listened to lewis it was nothing like they said
Speaker 2it was but it is exactly like we said it is that's i think i think we've managed to sum that album up pretty sometimes i do worry actually i have to be sometimes i worry if we've really done justice justice in terms of describing a record but i think in the case of lewis i think we were spot
Speaker 3on don't you think i do i think we were in the case of the future now no matter what peter hamill
Speaker 2thinks absolutely i think we should get him on to defend himself how dare he disagree how dare he disagree with our with our particular interpretation of his own record and his own lyrics he has no rights how dare you peter anyway so that we'll leave it there tim and um so for now goodbye from me and goodbye from tim goodbye you
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