Speaker 1hello and welcome back to the album years and we are on part four of 1977 part four can you believe i mean i knew 1977 was going to be a big one tim you know i predicted three parts but what happened is it just us becoming more sort of verbally incontinent or something i think so i think we've lost all discipline well we've certainly talked a lot about a lot of records and that's the bottom line there's a lot of records we wanted to talk about 1977 isn't it now one of the genres we haven't talked about at all is reggae now i unfortunately i feel i i mean i quite like reggae i have some reggae albums but i feel completely out of my depth talking about i feel like mr greatest hits when it comes to reggae is it oh yeah i like bob marley's greatest hits you know it's very good that bob marley i mean i have got the album from this year exodus it's it's a fantastic record but i feel like you know talking when i talk about reggae it's like the guy that says he likes rock music and then he can only talk about the beatles yeah i don't i mean and the only comment you've got to make on it's got a good beat it's got a i know the song police and thieves yeah the upsetters return of the super ape i'm i'm out
Speaker 2of my depth here now well i was assuming you'd know that one i mean no like you i mean i do like reggae and dub and the only reason i sort of added it to this episode is that you didn't feel there was enough albums we were talking about there wasn't enough i felt that really it should go on for 10 years yeah rather than two episodes give it time and um a couple of people have said it's like what is wrong with you and wilson they've complained about a couple of things saying what's wrong with you and wilson where is the blues where is the reggae
Speaker 1well i think we're you know to be fair to ourselves we were very clear from the beginning we're going to talk about things that we feel informed about which is our own personal to it we're not trying to make a podcast here which deals with everything that came out of particular well actually we are trying to do that aren't we but the bottom line is that we you know there are certain things that we feel qualified to talk about because we genuinely love them and we there are other things that i'm completely ignorant of what would be the point of us discussing those things we just make fools of ourselves wouldn't we i think we're you know i
Speaker 2think the point is the reason i've added it is that we both do have some interest in reggae and especially dub to a certain extent and i think in 77 it was interesting because reggae particularly in the uk was going through a commercial peak primarily through bob marley but there were other artists as well but it was informing a lot of the early artists and a lot of the artists that were early punks as well there was a kind of combination of punk reggae and i think that really comes to fruition um with the great clash album you know sandinista for me i think and also elements on london calling as i've said i really didn't like the clashes first two albums they just weren't for me in any way and in some ways i kind of think there's a kind of affected punk gruffness and then suddenly on london town they come into the london town oh my god calling that's embarrassing london town the wow obviously the wonderful paul mccartney and wings album from 1978 which didn't feature much reggae or dub it must be said but i think that it came to fruition on you know london calling and sandinista and they revealed themselves as being an extremely gifted uh pop band with extraordinary eclectic influences but yeah i mean like you i i like some dub i like some reggae but i can't consider myself to be an expert on it in any way whatsoever this year i have and i really like exodus of course and i have and i really like junio mervin's police and thieves and that's an interesting album because that's a bit like steely dan in a way in that lyrically it's quite politically charged but musically it's very smooth uh junio mervin's got this kind of very very beautiful high-pitched voice and it has a kind of narcotic hypnotic quality as an album so uh it's one of those reggae albums it's a delight to listen to from beginning to end but you have to think about the lyrics or you it's a retrospective was this the year that
Speaker 1alfie and donna had uptown top ranking number one single i wish i could answer because that's probably the extent of my knowledge of okay the number one novelty i mean like you i like the influence of reggae i mean you know you can hear it in lots of things you can hear in public image limited you can hear it in xtc you can hear it in the music industry you can hear it in the music industry you can hear it later on you can hear things like massive attack you can hear it in rush you can hear in the police the police obviously but we're middle-class white boys that's our world we do i mean i you know i would be completely out of my depth talking about reggae i have a few reggae albums i really like them and like you i love the influence of reggae um on other music but i don't feel qualified to talk about it we've
Speaker 2also had i mean one of the great unreleased no man tracks is one of our dub pieces as well i don't know if you've heard of it i don't know if you've heard of it i'd forgotten that which one's that do you not remember we brought in michael bear park because michael bear park is a real sound system aficionado right is he yeah kim king tubby of letchworth he is indeed he is prince tubby from letchworth and uh he came in with with various tapes and loops and we did um a couple of dub experiments with him in the 90s i'd completely forgotten that and i also did weirdly enough i worked with um a dub musician in warrington in the early 90s and i did a couple of dub experiments with him in the early 90s and i did a couple of the minister of noise and he was really interesting and obsessed with with dub music and had um an old studio with the old-fashioned looping and echo techniques it's amazing sound but again he was from newtonly willows which i didn't think necessarily qualified him but he was superb and we had a duo project called the minister of poise okay anyway shall we shall we draw a veil over our
Speaker 1lack of we can inside exodus good police and thieves good yeah but it's probably a bit like saying oh yeah the best of the beatles that's my favorite album of this year i mean i don't know there's probably all there's probably
Speaker 2all these amazing underground reggae mentioning king tubby mentioning king tubby and prince jammy to most aficionados even mentioning horace andy to most aficionados it's like you're just saying oh i like the rolling stones and the who exactly i'm not sure if you've heard of them exactly
Speaker 1exactly so there's probably all these amazing underground reggae and dub albums from 1977 myself and tim are unashamedly uh well actually i'm a bit ashamed but no am i ashamed no it's just not my taste it's just not my taste well look the only
Speaker 2one we know is duke bear park from lechworth and the minister of poise from newtonly willows that's the obscure dub artist well they're probably
Speaker 1so obscure that even the aficionados wouldn't know those so there you go one on for us there you go yeah one nil so let but let's seriously let's draw a veil over our over our ignorance of reggae and dub music and and move on to something yeah
Speaker 2well that explains i'm just saying you know that partly explains why we've not dealt with reggae because we're not qualified to talk about reggae
Speaker 1i don't know i don't know enough about reggae i haven't listened to enough about whereas i have listened to a lot of the other music you know and i feel qualified to talk about those yeah and and be very sort of nerdy and anal about what about blues no ditto i've never been particularly into the blues either i don't you know i don't know i
Speaker 2don't i do i i you know obviously i'm aware of things obviously like robert johnson skip james did he make an album in 1977 roger he made an album 1977 yeah probably quite a number of reissues and even the sort of country blues of jimmy rogers i'm quite familiar with completely lost there i'm
Speaker 1afraid now one thing i do know a lot about is electronic pioneers oh i know lots about this you know an awful lot i know lots about this now were it not for van gelis in this category we we might as well call this the you know the german department because most of these are german artists klaus schultz released one of his greatest records this year mirage we also had can now signed to virgin perhaps past their peak but making their sore delight i always
Speaker 2like the virgin albums because i think it's interesting isn't it because when captain beefheart went to virgin initially in the mid-70s people don't like his albums i always quite like them because i thought it was him in some ways tempering his talent but doing it in an interesting way i've got to say i always like those can virgin albums thought they were quite underrated
Speaker 1well i think people like them but i don't think anyone would argue they're in the same league as tego may go future days that you know the early the difference is of course that when they signed to virgin they were suddenly recording in big studios multi-track recording and they were able to overdub and and strangely the music became slightly more neutered and slightly more slick whereas the early records they were literally recording everything live without any possibility to remix or edit or anything well they could edit but they couldn't remix or change the balances of the instruments everything directly to two-track tape and there's something very visceral about those early recordings for that reason i think they were forced to be to be masters of editing editing tape whereas now they've got the option on these records the one before and this one and the ones that came after the virgin records i think there's three isn't there on virgin landed flow motion and so delight so this is the third of those records probably the last one they've got the opportunity to go into a big recording studios and it didn't quite suit them i don't think i think their recordings became a little bit slicker a little bit less uh on the edge uh like those early records really felt like they were on the edge of falling apart the whole time which is what gave them that sort of power um but i still like them yeah it's more it's more technical
Speaker 2Yes, Judith's more controlled. More controlled. And of course, they have a kind of more conventional rhythm section in some ways, because they brought in the guys from Traffic, didn't they?
Speaker 1That's right. The guy with the unpronounceable name. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And then we've also got Ashra's Blackouts. Now, Ashra also had signed to Virgin, having been independent. But I think by this time, Ashra is just Manuel Gotching. This is a beautiful record of sequences and echoplex guitar. I mean, he very much had a sound at this time. He was kind of ploughing a particular furrow. This and the Klaus Schulze, what you'd say, kind of archetypes of the Berlin school of electronic music. And I think you're right.
Speaker 2They've kind of, they've had their period of experimentation in 76, 77, 78. It's almost the peak in some ways, because they have the sound. They're very complete albums. And it's before they kind of venture off into some slightly less successful territories as well. So it's a great period for this music.
Speaker 1Well, there's still, I think with Klaus Schulze and Ashra, both of them, there's still no sense that they're compromising or they're trying to make more pop orientated music, which would come, certainly in the case of Ashra. Yeah, this track's 17 minutes long and I'm just going to, you know, let it flow. And I like these records very much. Craftwork, Trans Europe Express, which of course name checks David Bowie and Iggy Pop. He did. Yeah. So we could have put that in the David Bowie. We could have. Could have put that in the David Bowie and Chums section. Obviously Craftwork, you know, one of the most ridiculously, I can't remember if we talked about them on the show, but we have done, yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the most ridiculously influential bands in history. In fact, there's an argument to say their influence is as great, if not greater in some respects, of something like the Beatles, because we live in a world now where electronic music really is dominant. And so much of it comes from, well, we talked about the Giorgio Moroder Donna Summer records in a previous episode, but obviously so much of it is you can sort of track, trace back to craft. It's a craft work, even this idea of de-emphasizing personality. Sure. It's a craft work experimenting with putting robots of themselves on stage. This is just before the peak, the man machine peak. I am, you know, robots and the model, but Trans Europe Express is of course itself. The title track has been massively influential over the years, sampled endlessly, imitated endlessly.
Speaker 2And I think as well, it's part of, you know, going back once more. to image that I think Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra can to a lesser extent had that kind of psychedelic hippie
Speaker 1underground hangover. But interestingly, that's where craft work also started.
Speaker 2And it is, I agree. Yeah. But they somehow managed to detach themselves from it while also being a strong part of it. I mean, they were Dusseldorf, weren't they?
Speaker 1And it also has a much more of a pop sensibility. Let's, let's be honest. And also that kind of underachieving voice as well. It's quite compelling, isn't it? The sort of robotic, underachieving voice. I mean, when Tangerine Dream attempted to write pop and have songs and vocals, it just, it just didn't really work, you know. Well, this works.
Speaker 2It's a perfect fit to an extent.
Speaker 1Yeah. So also this year we have Vangelis Spiral. I'm a massive Vangelis fan. I mean, this is a guy that just created a whole musical world of his own. Very prolific through, through the seventies and the eighties. Spiral, the title track particularly is, is a phenomenal piece. If you're interested in sequences or arpeggiators, this is one of the definitive sequence or arpeggiator tracks, but instantly recognisable. Isn't he Vangelis? Very much so. Yeah. I think it's the choice of sounds and
Speaker 2sounds, processing, everything. And it is interesting because obviously, you know, these, the whole thing about synthesis, synthesise and so on. It's ubiquitous. You know, this is ubiquitous. Anyone can make music with it. Anyone can make a sound. And so it's always fascinating. It's fascinating when you get artists like Vangelis who you recognise with one note. And it's not only his use of synth, it's his use of piano. It's an electric piano as well. And of course it's in, in the processing, but he's got a very distinctive, sometimes classically inspired harmonic palette as well, which is quite different from a lot of the other electronic artists. And he's more, I suppose, authentically symphonic than most people.
Speaker 1He's a player. Yeah. I mean, whereas the guys from Tangerine Dream, you would never say, well, we're keyboard, you know, pianos, piano players or keyboard players. He's a real player and you can tell he's got the chops as well. But what's interesting, you know, we talk about how Kraftwerk have had a massive influence on electronic music and dance music and DJ culture and arguably can also would have had kind of influence on that too. Vangelis has had a massive influence on the whole world of film soundtrack music. I mean, you hear his influence through so much contemporary soundtrack music. Obviously he's created some of the most iconic. Soundtracks of all time, you know, things like Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner. And I think a lot of people, you know, that for a lot of people in the world of soundtracking, that's still a touchstone of how to create incredible, how to soundtrack a movie, go back and listen to how Vangelis was doing. And I understand he used to do it by literally having the movie up on a screen and playing the piano and Kevin, although it didn't Mars Davis do that in the fifties with, um, apparently he did do that with, with lift of the scaffold. Exactly. Yeah. Beautiful record. A lovely record. Yeah. All right, Tim, let's move on to your favorite genre. Yeah. Go on. Macho rock. Oh, great. Big fan of macho rock music. Yeah. And to quote Stuart Lee, by the way, folks, sometimes I say things, I don't mean that. I mean the opposite of that. So I'm being a bit sarcastic, Tim, macho rock. It's not really your thing, is it? It's not really my thing either. I have to say, we've kind of talked about some of these things already. Sticks. Yeah. Biff Wilson. Yeah. Well, I mean, I did go through my fate when I was 11, 12 years old, I discovered the new wave British heavy metal. I quite liked it, you know, and I still like a lot of those records, but generally speaking, macho rock's never been my thing. Um, we've talked about some of these things already. Sticks. Did we talk about foreigner in the, cause they're another band I would put in that sort of category. Yeah.
Speaker 2We didn't, but we don't need to discuss it. Although this was their, um, self titled debut, I think with a couple of huge hits. Okay. What were the huge hits? Cold as Ice. Oh, I know that one.
Speaker 1Yeah. Which of these were.
Speaker 2And Ian Macdonald and King Crimson, of course, was.
Speaker 1Of course. Yeah. There are some records on this list that I do know very well. ACDC's Let There Be Rock or Late There Be Rock, as you've written here. Late There Be Rock. That was a very good album. Terrible era. Let There Be Rock, probably my favorite ACDC album. It has a whole lot of Rosie and the title track, rock and roll at its absolute finest. ACDC, they just have the definitive heavy rock and roll band. I mean, the sound of the guitars, Angus' guitar, the rhythm section, just always just get. I mean, we were talking about this in one of the other episodes, weren't we? That there's nothing particularly technically proficient about what they do. They just lock into the perfect groove.
Speaker 2I think they've got a very, very distinctive sound and also quite a distinctive riff rhythm. You know, for me, in some ways, they're like a template for rock in the way that the early Rolling Stones were a template for rock. ACDC are, and they have a sound which they perfected. Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of familiar with the Bon Scott era and the very, very first Brian Johnson album. And in terms of macho rock, really, my entire knowledge is sort of late 70s rock bands. And I was kind of wondering, you know, this idea of how music enters your life and why you like it at certain points. And I've never really liked meat and potatoes rock or rock. And as I said, you know, when I was at school, I. Absolutely sort of despise the contemporary pop and contemporary rock bands. But I did very, very briefly sort of late 79, early 1980 have a thing for hard rock bands. And that would be light UFO, ACDC, Thin Lizzy to an extent as well. And I think it was partly because it was a really difficult time emotionally. And I'm kind of wondering whether there's an aspect that that music has a sense of catharsis. I don't know.
Speaker 1I mean, you know, I think similarly to you, around about the age of 11 or 12, I really love the new wave of British heavy metal. But then it wasn't enough. After a while, it just wasn't enough for me because I think, you know, again, this thing of having grown up in a house where I was hearing records like Dark Side of the Moon and Cheap and the Bells and Saturday Night Fever. And there seemed to be so much going on in the music, all these layers, all these different textures, the production, the sound design. They seemed to be. They seemed like, you know, to coin a phrase, they were cinema for the ears, you know, amazing kind of musical journeys. And so, again, like you, a lot of people I was at school with were listening to this more direct heavy rock. And I quite liked it. But ultimately, there wasn't enough there for me as someone that was fascinated by the idea of production and sound design. They're quite stripped down. They're quite raw records. I mean, a lot of the time they are essentially representations of the way the music will be played live. Sure. I'm not talking about the Styx's and the more American stuff, but certainly some of these AC/DC, UFO. You can imagine the recording process is very similar to just recording a live album in that sense. There's not a lot of overdubbing. There's not a lot of layering. There's nothing much in the way of sound design or production gags. And to be fair, that was pretty much all the stuff that I was fascinated with. And UFO had it a bit more.
Speaker 2Because I think they were more, I always saw them as being a hard rock equivalent of Bruce Springsteen. You know, their lyrics were story lyrics. And they clearly listened to a lot of Springsteen. Plus, they were one of the few bands that had very prominent synths, particularly on Lights Out and the odd epic and ballads. So there were different levels, which you wouldn't get necessarily in ACDC, obviously. And of course, Thin Lizzy as well. I sort of always saw Linnet to an extent as a descendant of Van Morrison, but in a harder rocking style. And they managed very, very effectively to make music that was kind of hard rock, pop and somehow kind of singer-songwriter oriented.
Speaker 1Yeah, Thin Lizzy is quite diverse, isn't it? I mean, you would get these, sometimes you forget and then you go back and you listen to the records and you realise it's this beautiful acoustic ballad.
Speaker 2And again, very distinctive voice, great singer, great songwriter, really.
Speaker 1Yeah. So Bad Reputation was this year. And is that the album that Gary Moore plays guitar on? I thought so. I thought so. I thought that was Brian Robertson. And Gary Moore plays on Black Rose. Black Rose. OK, so I remember the title track. I'd have to remind myself exactly which tracks are on this record. The Thin Lizzy albums I know the best are Jailbreak and Johnny the Fox.
Speaker 2This is a similar way. It's slightly tougher. I think this has got Don't Believe a Word or is that on? Oh, no, that's on Johnny the Fox. That's great. Yeah, it's wonderful. I mean, I really like the first two albums, the ones where they're kind of finding the sound. Yeah. And they've kind of come out more of it. It's almost Van Morrison. And Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac and maybe the Touchstones.
Speaker 1Yeah. And there's lots of keyboards. Yeah. Well, Mellotron, of course. Mellotron, yeah. In fact, doesn't Cloda Simons? Cloda Favia Hex. Yeah, is on Mellotron, yeah. So also this year, we've got Queen's News of the World. Now, this might be. Now, I'm, you know, I got in trouble once because I reviewed. I got asked to review some Queen reissues for Classic Rock magazine. And I made the point that Queen were. One of the most incredible bands of all time, but I felt personally that they were ultimately a singles band. Mm hmm. And the reason I said that is because when you listen to the albums and there's a re there's a reason why you don't see Queen's albums very often in the top albums of all time is because they're a little bit patchy and there are always these extraordinary singles or, you know, one or two songs that are just mind blowing. And then there's what I would call a fair bit of filler on most of the Queen albums and I love Queen. So I got in trouble because I kind of said this and then the readers all wrote in and said, what does Stephen Wilson know about Queen? Blah, blah, blah, blah. They're amazing. And they are. They're amazing. But News of the World is a good example. It's got some of the most amazing things I've ever heard from a rock band on it. Most of them were released to singles. You know, if you look if you look at the track. Let's see. Let's see. Let's see the listing of News of the World. It starts with what a triple whammy this is. We Will Rock You. We Are The Champions, which I had on a double A side single about a year at the time. Yeah, yeah. Sheer Heart Attack, which is one of Roger Taylor's more metal songs, which is an amazing piece of rock. Yeah. If you want to hear Queen rock out, that for me is the definitive Queen rocking out track. And then Spread Your Wings, the John Deacon ballad, which was also a single. It wasn't it? Which is a gorgeous, beautiful song. But then you've also got things like Sleeping on the Sidewalk, which is a sort of sort of very meaty potatoes, bluesy workout. And it's like the album is all the albums tend to be littered with these sort of filler tracks between these moments of pure pop rock genius. And for me, listening to a Queen album, you always come away with the impression that if they had a little bit more time, if they had a little bit more time, they would have done it better. If they had a little bit more material, they could have made an album that would be thought of alongside your Dark Side of the Moons or your classic rock canon records, your Paranoids and whatever, or your Led Zeppelin 4s. And I feel that that record for Queen is the greatest hits album. I mean, that's one of the best selling records of all time, isn't it? And deservedly so, because every track on it is just a moment of absolute genius. But the albums themselves, outside of the greatest hits, are always. They're always a little bit patchy. And this is no exception for me, although probably I think on balance, I would say this would be one of my top two or three Queen albums. Yeah. I mean, they were
Speaker 2always very playful. And this is maybe more playful and more loose than they'd been before, because, of course, when they start off, you know, especially thinking Queen 2, it's quite consistently majestic. I mean, arguably, that's the one consistent album they made. But you're right.
Speaker 1They've never. The first few records they made, I think, are more. They're thinking more like an album span. But I think once they start having the hits, then a lot of the attention seems to go into these two or three songs on every record that they kind of know are going to be the big singles.
Speaker 2But I think even on the early albums, Sheer Heart Attack is really quite good. But actually, you know, Killer Queen is a remarkable single. Amazing. And in some ways, I think you're right that maybe 90% of the best of Queen was what ended up on the album. You know, they're not. There are deep cuts and there are some fantastic album-only tracks, but they were a band where maybe 90% of their best material was what the public knows. So I think there's an aspect of truth to that. And you're right. They never made an album that could ever be considered in the league of Led Zepp 4 or Paranoid. A consistent, powerful statement. And I personally quite like some of their excursions. I think it's partly sequencing as well. I think it's almost like, here's the breather. Here's the pause between the big tracks. I think especially on a night at the opera. You know, these kind of mini pastiches of 1920s and so on. Yeah, yeah. And they're never meant to be anything other than frivolous throwaways that are a breather between the more serious tracks. And so I've always kind of had slightly more time for them than not.
Speaker 1Is there also. There's also an element perhaps with Queen that because they were all writers, there was four writers, that sometimes material that perhaps wouldn't have got on otherwise gets through because it's like everyone has to have an equal part of the pie, you know. So, I mean, I love some Roger Taylor songs, but there are also some songs that he has on some of the records. I feel like, you know what, I'm sure Freddie had a better song than that. Yeah. So, and like you say, Freddie also had this tendency to have his sort of 20s. And pastiches, Bring Back That Leroy Brown, Seaside Rendezvous, there seems to be one on every album, you know, for a certain period of time. And, you know, you listen to them and, well, that's fun. I enjoyed that. Don't want to hear it again, really. Don't really want to hear it again. Imagine that being in the middle of Led Zeppelin 4, you know, how that would change your perspective of that record.
Speaker 2But I think this is it. They were always a very, very versatile band. I mean, obviously they did their early, was it 1982, Hot Space, the disco album as well. Which I like this as well. I love the fact they made it. Yeah. Yeah, me too. And they were always incredibly versatile. And there's a real power, because when you're mentioning Roger Taylor, I think Cheer Heart Attack on this is as vicious as any punk two-minute single. Yeah, I agree. It's almost like they're saying, we can actually do this in our sleep. And they do it so well. Do they do it better than Gentle Giant did with Bet You Thought We Wouldn't Do It?
Speaker 1Yes. Considerably so. But it's more metal, isn't it, than punk? I mean, at the end of the day, this is.
Speaker 2But it's hypercharged metal.
Speaker 1It's very aggressive. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's it. They were a band with talent to burn. And, you know, maybe the part of it also is you think of the schedule that bands were on in the 70s. Yeah. Compared to the schedule that bands are on now, you know, where rock bands can take 10 years to make an album if they want, or longer, you know. And it doesn't seem particularly abnormal anymore to do that. But in the 70s, if you didn't make an album every year. Yeah. It was. Where have they just gone? Where have they disappeared to, you know?
Speaker 2I think you're absolutely right. Though sometimes I kind of wonder. I've thought about this before, you know. Because, again, I always marvel at, say, Ian Anderson's schedule, how the band were almost permanently on tour six or seven months of a year. And he managed to make one studio album a year from something like 68 to 1980, which were incredibly different. It's like, how do you evolve? You know, this is amazing progression from this was to A and what's happened in between. Ian is. While you're touring.
Speaker 1Yeah. Ian is a freak anomaly. I mean, it's just unbelievable. Because not only was he doing that, there was usually twice as much material. Yes. That didn't get on the album. I don't know how the hell he was doing it.
Speaker 2But I was thinking of it relating to a certain extent to how we would write. And sometimes I think when you're writing with restrictions, you do more. Because remember when we first started No Man, I'd come to you on very specific weekends. So we had maybe two or three days in three months. That was it. We were incredibly focused, incredibly prolific and incredibly diverse during that time. We tried everything out because that's all we had.
Speaker 1And a bit like Queen, most of what we did was filler. No, that's not fair on Queen, is it? I mean, we're just talking about a very small percentage of what Queen did.
Speaker 2But I'm saying, you know, perhaps these restrictions on bands like Queen, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin actually focus them. Because when you found a lot of artists now, there aren't this pressure. And people have 20 years to make an album or 10 months to write a song. Actually, it isn't necessarily as charged. it isn't necessarily as diverse it isn't necessarily as vital so sometimes the restrictions on art can produce better
Speaker 1results that's true but i think i think it depends on the band it depends on the artist i think in the case of queen i mean even as i'm saying this um i'm looking and i'm thinking well hold on they had four writers couldn't each of them have come up with two or three songs really strong songs every year freddy's only got three songs on this record and arguably only two of them are really album worthy which is get down make love and we are the champions and you know there's an argument to say well when one of those songs is we are the champions fair enough you know uh or if one of those songs is bohemian rhapsody okay you know you're kind of entitled to have a couple of other tracks that are maybe not quite up to that standard and but
Speaker 2but it seems as you say there isn't quite the quality control because again another album from this year where there are several writers several singers rumors there's clearly impeccable quality control so that's queen
Speaker 1uh news of the world uh motorhead's debut album got to love a bit of motorhead haven't you come on tim you love motorhead i know you do i've heard you say overkill is your favorite
Speaker 2motorhead record i bought overkill on the single during that period in 1979 great single i bought
Speaker 1lots of motorhead records at this time i bought the leaving here golden years ep i bought ace of spades on seven inch i didn't buy this album the year it came out i was nine i wasn't quite into my heavy rock listening yet but um the formula's there isn't it from the beginning pretty
Speaker 2much it is and it's a formula they don't necessarily deviate from and they are one of i mean i do what was it yes as soon as there's a compilation album they have it's something like the best of motorhead it's not the best of motorheads it's along the idea of you know louder motorhead faster forever or something along those lines yeah and that is what they were and they produced a couple of very memorable singles always a hugely distinctive sound and they had so much energy a bit like sheer heart attack it was hyper driven metal that had appeal to the punks as well and i think that their um their image probably played into that as well because they had this you know they could have come out of any pub in a sense there's that really quite earth bound image that somehow tied in with the times better than a lot of rock and metal bands is it
Speaker 1and i think part of it is because they were quite grubby weren't they they never they never kind of went down the spandex you know glammy and they they were very resistant to that even during the heyday of 80s american rock i think motorhead were essentially still making this sort of grubby you never saw lemmy with a perm no or a pair of spandex trousers yeah at least not to my knowledge but and i think in that way because of that they probably had some leanings and they were kind of lean years but they've come out the other end sounding much more timeless haven't they yeah i
Speaker 2think like acdc they have a great distinctive sound that they perfected almost from the off because again with acdc i think they can have it on their very very early albums you know dirty deeds standard cheap i think is is a great album but i've got a lot more time for acdc partly i think it's the pace of the music there's actually it sounds bizarre but there is more ports for action on an acdc album there's slightly more variety of tone well
Speaker 1also acdc they're kind of funky yeah they've i don't mean that in the sort of traditional george clinton sense but they've got grooves great yeah whereas i think motorhead was more of a sort of power rush pummeling it's pummeling it's a it's a rush and you can hear the massive influence that motorhead would have on things like grindcore and speed metal and thrash metal i mean that's all that kind of all comes originally from motorhead doesn't it
Speaker 2acdc you know don't they use it one put a bagpipe solo on one of the tracks well there's kind of a slight variety and also bon scott could be a very funny lyricist right as i believe big balls testifies to right yes vardis had
Speaker 1bagpipes on one of their early new wave of british heavy metal records just say that the world's insane also has jules holland on piano on one of them on one of their records so we like motorhead how can you not how can you not love motorhead and actually you know ace of spades it's one of the great pop singles of all time ace of spades is a great pop single i agree with i mean pop you know in this sense and using it in my broadest sense but it's catchy it's hooky it's over in two and a half minutes phenomenal riff phenomenal riff it's it's pop i mean my
Speaker 2problem i do i really respect and think they're quite but my problem is i think overkill bomber ace of spades listen to them and that's it for me i think i've had my fill yeah
Speaker 1i mean i think to be a motorhead fan means immersing yourself pretty much in the same kind of world uh you know adding phenomenal music to it and i think that's it for an item they don't think they're the most diverse that's the problem i have with you know this comes back to my original point about at the end of the day the heavy rock stuff there wasn't enough there for me i mean i didn't think i was going to be surprised when saxon released their new album i wasn't expecting to be surprised by a radical new direction a radical reinvention of their sound i think the rock bands they were very tied to a particular archetype and they kind of plowed that uh acdc famously pretty much made the same record their whole career i think there was an element that motorhead did that too and that's fine you know there are lots of bands that do that and that's kind of what that's why i think thin
Speaker 2lizzy and ufo to a certain extent are quite different because they are closer to songwriters in a rock band and there is i think more to them than just that kind of pummeling rock shock
Speaker 1so let's let's leave rock behind and talk about another musical area that we know all about my favorite afro b album the best of fella cootie yeah no i like i mean i think the thing is we both love fella i like fella cootie yeah but i'm sure there's lots of other artists that we should be talking about in relation to afro b the fella cootie is like the again he's like the george michael of afro isn't he you know it is oh i like fella cootie
Speaker 2yeah it's like well he's the
Speaker 1equivalent of bob marley in the reggae elton
Speaker 2john yeah we just mentioned yeah if you've heard of
Speaker 1elton john i've heard of elton john if you're my favorite afro b album the best of fella cootie is the favorite album the best of elton john the the the thing is if you're ignorant of reggae bob marley's the one reggae artist you've heard of if you're ignorant of afro b fella cootie is probably the one he's the one artist i've heard of i've got some fella cootie albums i love them they're all very similar but what an amazing sound completely unique it is an amazing
Speaker 2sound i think part of the problem with fella cootie it's a bit like those mid-70s miles davis live albums that they are all brilliant mostly indistinguishable i mean there are there are different influences you know there's um he missed road for example um fella cootie where you can hear slight dub influences and there's also psychedelic influence there's some really wayward organ on it the album's produced by ginger baker um so some of the albums are quite different and some of the grooves are just compelling and brilliant most of the albums tended to be two tracks three tracks at most where you just have 17 minute grooves that built and built became more vocal and response vocals and i suppose the big influence on pop music would be talking heads remain in light i think have that fella groove so if you like the grooves of remain in light listen to a fella cootie album and you can hear where they came from and obviously david burn and the band made them their own and they did something very special with it but those fellow albums they're really interesting and again they were kind of recorded live and in a raw so he made eight
Speaker 1albums that he released with us yeah that's
Speaker 2why i mentioned he made eight albums in 1977
Speaker 1including zombie and no agreement which i think i have i couldn't tell you how those differ to all the other records he made but you're right he had this he had this kind of blueprint for a fella cootie song it was usually about 15 minutes long it would have a little bit of him rapping and then the girls would do the call and response thing and then he would pick up his saxophone and he couldn't really play and it's one of the beautiful things about fella cootie is he's kind of got this outsider musician sort of temperament which he approaches the music he'd pick up anything he'll play the organ and he can't really play but he'll have he'll do it very enthusiastically and the grooves are phenomenal i mean he you know he's he's kind of got that james brown thing where he just gets tony allen the tremors yeah it's and it's very visceral and it's very very infectious and joyous he'll get into and of course a lot of the lyrics probably would pass pass us by because a lot of them are about the situation in yeah in in his country at the time and but i love the sound i love this sort of brew he creates with the musicians and the sound the brass the girls singers the fact he can't really play but he doesn't doesn't stop him taking these extended saxophone solos it's a great sound isn't it and yes you're totally right i mean it was kind of appropriated by people like talking heads and also some of the british you know funk funk industrial funk bands like 23 skidoo 400 blows you a certain ratio you can hear how they were yeah a certain ratio also famously had you know trumpet players that couldn't really play or but i love that you know
Speaker 2no no no and yeah when i was talking about who miswrote the organ is partly wayward because sometimes it is appallingly played and they're not going to overdub they're not going to re-record it but there are you know again if you immerse yourself in 10 fellow cutie albums there are differences in tempo in the particular influences that come in and i suppose you know if you were to describe it to somebody who doesn't know there is an obviously distinctive afro beat sound but in before it, there's that relentlessness of mid 70s live you know, Miles Davis albums. And also, I think when James Brown was doing the extended funk workouts in the late 60s, early 70s, which I love, there's an element of that running through it as well, for sure. You know, 77, I mention him here because obviously he made eight albums, so. Just the eight.
Speaker 1Now we come to another genre. Now, there's only one record in this genre in 1977. There's a very good reason for that, is that this is the record that invented the genre. There was, well, you know, you can always go back in history and find something that was a precedent, but really and honestly, there was nothing else that existed within this genre before this record. And there were a lot more records in the genre that came in subsequent years, but in 1977, it was released right at the end of 1977, November 1977, it created a new genre. This is the flip side of punk for me. This is true punk in a way, because this is music which was made by non-musicians in a very punk way, but it's not just reverting to guitar-based drums. In fact, quite the opposite. This is music that is made with electronic sound, noise, found sound. I'm talking, of course, about Throbbing Gristles, first album, second annual report, released on their own label, which they created specially, to release industrial records. And yes, in doing so, they created the genre of industrial music by naming their music industrial music, by naming their label industrial music. And of course, the legacy of industrial music continues to this day. In fact, we even hear it in things like Billie Eilish. You know, you listen to a Billie Eilish record, you can hear the influence of industrial music. It was created by Throbbing Gristle in 1977. At least the notion of industrial music was created by Throbbing Gristle in 1977. This is a bizarre album. It's one of the few albums that when I first listened to it, the hairs on the back of my neck genuinely stood up. It's incredibly lo-fi. Most of it was recorded on very primitive recording equipment, direct-to-stereo. Some of it sounds like it's being recorded in the toilet next door to the venue. Some of it's recorded live. But it's truly, for me, truly terrifying music. And it's. In many ways, it's everything that punk wanted to be, but wasn't. It's using electronic sound rather than guitars. It's using audio verite, lo-fi. Before lo-fi was even a thing. This is a very deliberately lo-fi record. It's also the beginning of something that a lot of people may be uncomfortable with, this kind of fascination with. Which is something that became part of industrial music. Fascination with things like serial killers. Not particularly politically correct subject matter. Tim, have you listened to this record? This is a very important record to me. Have you listened to this record?
Speaker 2See, I feel awful here because I have listened to it over the years, probably a couple of times, on YouTube, which I'm sure gives me the full experience of the album. And I can't really say very much about it. I thought it was all right.
Speaker 1Really? Okay. So it completely sort of missed the mark with you. It's such an important record. It's such an important record to me. I mean, it changed. Honestly, of the few records I've heard in my lifetime that changed the way I thought about music, this is one of them. I couldn't believe it when I put the record on that it was so willfully ugly, unpleasant, badly recorded, and yet it had a power to it. A power which literally made the. Let's say the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. And I still feel that when I hear tracks like Slugbait, which is. It's so ugly. The story is ugly. The sound is ugly. To me, it's the first time I think I would have. And again, maybe it's something to do with when I discovered it. I would have heard it probably for the first time when I was like 13 or 14 years old. I had never heard anything like this. It was almost to me like somebody had the balls to actually release this. This ugly but intense, intense music. And I became completely obsessed. I had been obsessed with it for a while. I went out and bought all the other Throbbing Gristle records and I discovered other artists like Cabaret Voltaire, SPK. And then, of course, you hear the influence it had on the later generation of industrial artists like Nine Inch Nails and Coil. To me, this is a revolution in a single record. But maybe you had to be there or you had to hear it at the right time. It's difficult, isn't it?
Speaker 2Because, you know, I'm familiar with the kind of. I think it had a profound impact on a lot of music in the late 80s because the next year we're going to do is 1987. Probably bands even like Skinny Puppy.
Speaker 1Massive. Wouldn't have existed without this record.
Speaker 2So I can see the long-term influence. And some of those bands in the 80s, I suppose they might take it even further in terms of the grit, the ugliness. So I'm thinking Swans, for example, as well as Skinny Puppy. Wasn't Skinny Puppy where they were using the sounds of animals that were undergoing vivisection and so on?
Speaker 1Yeah, but Skinny Puppy is more EBM. It's more the sort of nine-inch-nails approach to industrial music. Very kind of electronic rhythms and things like that. A lot of second annual report is almost like Music Concrete. I mean, the whole of the second side is taken up by a single 20-minute piece, which is a soundtrack to an imaginary film. And it's proto sort of industrial ambient, you know, dark ambient music. There is an ambient quality.
Speaker 2I think that's the thing. I think there is a dark atmospheric ambient quality to it. And I guess that. For me, it just kind of hits me in the same way that when I listen to some of the key Derrick Bailey recordings, it's almost a sound. It's a noise. It's a sound. And once I've heard it, I've heard it. And I can't necessarily lose myself in it. I suppose I'm more interested in how people then use that sound. So in the case of Nine Inch Nails, you're right. They might not be making that sound without the influence of Throbbing Gristle. I'm more interested in how Trent Reznor takes aspects of one genre, takes aspects of another genre, takes aspects of another genre. So in effect, Throbbing Gristle are one element of 10.
Speaker 1Yeah, but you're not hearing it yet. But that's making it sound like this is just some kind of investigation of sound design. It's much more than that. There is an intensity to the lyrical.
Speaker 2To me. No, I'm saying how it impacts on me. And the same with free jazz. It's the way I feel about free jazz. I can hear it. I can see it. Isolated free jazz does not. There's nothing for me for the most part. But I love it when it's used in different contexts or it's a surprising element. To say a Scott Walker track when he uses music concrete or free jazz, that it comes out of nowhere in an unexpected context. So I kind of love it when it's used in a different way in itself. Okay. I'm not quite sure why it doesn't engage me.
Speaker 1Okay. I mean, I love it. There's a sickness. And again, you have to be. You're the sort of person who would respond to that kind of thing. To me, there's a parallel between what was happening in black metal, you know, later on in the 80s. There's this kind of sickness. And it's also in the fabric of the way the music is recorded. The fact that it's not recorded in a professional studio by professional musicians. It's got this kind of atavistic, animal-like quality to it. And it's actually quite puerile in a way. This obsession with serial killer chic, for want of a better expression. But you can imagine the impact that would have had on a 13-year-old kid like me who was looking for dark. I want dark music, you know. But the most dark thing I'd heard probably until that point would have been the first Black Sabbath album. And suddenly I'm hearing this album, Second Annual Report. It's sick. It's absolutely demented and sick. And it has a power to me and obviously to a lot of other people. I mean, the sort of waves it sent out are still being felt today. And it is the beginning. You're hearing the beginning of a musical genre. And how many records can you say that about? And it's like we were saying earlier about punk. It's like when you listen to a lot of punk music, you can hear there are so many precedents. It's essentially just rock and roll tarted up in a new outfit. And you listen to something like the Second Annual Report by Throbbing Gristle, which is in many ways is the flip side of punk. It's kind of the electronic version of it. Outsider musicians, people who can't necessarily play, approaching, I mean, Cozy Fanny Tootie playing guitar. She couldn't play guitar. She didn't even know how to tune it. She's just making sound with it in this very, you know, again, very instinctive, atavistic way. And there is a power in that. It's interesting. We were talking about the power of some of the jazz records when it has this kind of devotional quality to it. Completely committing yourself to something, believing in it, living in it. And, you know, these Throbbing Gristle guys, they were all sharing a house together at the time. They were living and breathing their music. They were, they were hated. They were vilified by the parts of the music press who didn't understand the music, didn't understand what they were trying to do. They had this show at the ICA called Prostitution, which was targeted by the mainstream media in the UK as an affront against polite society in much the same way the Sex Pistols were vilified by. So there was a similar thing going on with Throbbing Gristle, albeit at a lower, perhaps a less high profile level. There's not many albums, I would say, are radical. I would say this is radical. I understand you don't like it, it doesn't do much for you. Perhaps it's because the vocabularies become much more familiar when i heard it i had never heard anything like it nine inch nails didn't even exist you know the whole sort of second wave of industrial music and ebm music hadn't even begun at that point at least not to my knowledge so when i heard it in the mid 80s as a school kid it just completely changed my idea about what music could be in that sense so i understand how to you coming coming to it now yeah a bit of noise bit of electronic music bloke mumbling about serial killers it's all right you know uh and perhaps in that sense it kind of has done it served its purpose and done its job historically speaking yeah and isn't relevant now but anyway
Speaker 2for me i mean there isn't much of an influence on it on billy joel's the stranger robin gristle
Speaker 1there isn't there isn't any influence on anything else this this year this is why this record this this category industrial this is the only record in it because it's the only industrial record that was released for a few months it was the only industrial music record that had been released by anybody maybe there was a few underground tapes or something but this is vinyl uh and then obviously in 1978 1979 you're going to get a complete explosion in particularly an underground tape cassette culture yeah people making records at home with just i mean some terrible records you know people are thinking they can just bang some sourcements together and put it through a distortion box and that's quote unquote industrial
Speaker 2well i suppose in some ways isn't this the musical equivalent of the most abstract art or even the bricks the infamous bricks and and and throbbing
Speaker 1gristle came from a performance art group called coom transmissions so this was like an extension this was like their musical extension of being performance artists putting installations together um very confrontational installations and performance art pieces and the the move into music was almost incidental uh in that sense but it's but it's interesting that that somebody can a performance artist can just decide you know what i'm today i'm going to be a musician can't play you know genesis pierre's played a trumpet never didn't even you know played a trumpet on this record didn't know how to play it but put it through enough effects boxes and it sounded like uh the the sort of dying screams of a of a slaughtered animal and again you know that sounds puerile now but in in the mid 80s a 13 year old 14 year old boy when i first heard it it sent a pretty strange feeling into my body which i i kind of responded to and i liked anyway we'll we'll draw a line under that then a very important record for me completely irrelevant record to tim ♪ ♪
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