Speaker 1Hello and welcome to another episode of The Album Years with myself, Stephen Wilson, and my co-host, Mr. Timothy Bowness. Hello, Tim. Hello. And today is quite special because we are going to be, for the first time I think I'm right in saying, we are going to be doing a year that is adjacent to one that we've already done. Now, I think I'm right in saying the very first episode we did was 1980, is that right? Does that sound right? It was, yeah. Yeah. So today we're going to be doing 1979. Now, this is not a coincidence. I think this is partly to do with our generation, Tim, but you and I, this kind of era, this kind of late 70s, early 80s period. of four or five years or so, is very close to our hearts, isn't it? I think we were the right age, you know, both sort of just coming into our teen years, and it was a golden era also, I think, for music anyway, wasn't it? We're kind of spoilt for choice with this period, aren't we?
Speaker 2Absolutely. And I think what was interesting is that at almost every single level, whether it was kind of experimental, underground, or very mainstream, there were a lot of creative ideas about. And as with 1980, I mean, we're just going to really struggle. We've got to get our favourites. And I genuinely think we're probably going to miss out about 30 of our favourites. And I think we had, what was it, three or four pages worth?
Speaker 1I think this is the most I've ever had on a single list for one episode. Yeah, I've got three, I've got about, wow, it must be about 120 albums on this list. But, you know, they're all good. And they're all like, oh, I don't want to leave that one out. But I think we're obviously, as always, we're going to try and focus on a small group of albums and try and sort of give a mention to some of the others. But we're going to try and focus on albums that we feel. They're perhaps not the obvious ones. Now, I mean, is it as simple, Tim, as this is kind of the fallout from the kind of punk rock aesthetic where anyone can make music and you don't have to be a trained musician? Is that why there's this kind of explosion of people that are not necessarily, you know, proper musicians suddenly making really ambitious and experimental music at this time?
Speaker 2Is it as simple as that? I don't know, because actually, if you look at artists like Elvis Costello and the Attractions or Squeeze or even the E&Jury band, these were accomplished musicians who were every bit as good as anybody in Pink Floyd, for example. In some ways, maybe it's to do with the opening up of the industry that it was more open. There's a great line, I think it's from Frank Zappa, that he was talking in the late 60s that one of the reasons why the late 60s was so interesting was because the record companies didn't actually know what people liked. So they'd sign 10 bands and out of that, you get people like. Frank Zappa. And I think the same thing was kind of happening in the late 70s, that actually a lot of the executives didn't know what was hip, what was right. And so you did get accomplished songwriters who'd been around for years before, you know, like Elvis Costello, even Kate Bush got signed during this period that was very much in flux.
Speaker 1Yeah, maybe I was simplifying things there. I mean, I don't think it was necessarily to do with the fact that, you know, it's not to do with the musicianship. There's something else. It's a kind of aesthetic of punk, isn't it? I mean, it's difficult for me to imagine, for example, bands like Talking Heads or The Police, you know, or Madness. It's difficult for me to imagine any of these bands breaking through to the mainstream if punk hadn't happened. I'm sure we'll talk more about that. Anyway, so to cut a long story short, which we're obviously not very good at on this show, but we'll try, we are so overwhelmed with the albums that we want to talk about that we're going for the first time to break up a year into two separate. We just, I just think we looked at this list and we felt there's no way we can get through this list and do it justice in a single, you know, 50 minute episode. So we're going to have 1979 part one. And then next time we're going to have 1979 part two, which will hopefully give us a lot more opportunity to, well, to not skim over some of these records, which I think will be doing them, doing them an injustice. So let's, so let's get into it, Tim, then shall we? 1979 part one. Let's, I mean, I guess let's start with Gary Newman. And, and, and Tubeway Army. Now he made an album as both a solo artist and within Tubeway Army this year, both absolute classics, Tubeway Army's replicas, which of course has our, our friends electric on it. And Gary Newman's The Pleasure Principle, which has cars on it. So his two biggest hits came from this year, two different projects. Although let's be honest, it's difficult to, to really see where Tubeway Army, the band stops and Gary Newman, the solo artist starts.
Speaker 2Yeah. I think they're both fantastic albums. And I always kind of, it's a bizarre comparison in a way, but I've always seen Gary Newman as being the black Sabbath of this particular movement in the sense that he has got such a signature sound and in a way producing wonders within quite a limited vocabulary. And I remember, you know, hearing our friends electric and it was one of those songs that certainly when I was at school, everybody was talking about it the next day after they'd heard it. You know, this was. It was one of the pieces that kind of cut through whatever genre you liked. It was unlike anything anybody had heard. And it seems odd now because of course we'd had Kraftwerk, of course we'd had Ultravox, but actually there was something really unique about his vocal delivery. There was a big thing at the time that David Bowie apparently felt quite insulted by Newman imitating him. And I have to say as a huge Bowie fan, I couldn't really see very much in comparison. But really, of course, there's an aspect in the makeup, in the use of synthesizer. But, you know, Newman's compositional style, his voice, even his lyrical obsessions, the whole Philip K. Dick futurism was very much his and a little like Black Sabbath. Once he'd found that sound, he mined it and mined it and mined it. And there are some wonderful pieces, you know, Dan in the Parks was one of my favourites in that period as well.
Speaker 1You know, I can see, I mean, I can see where Bowie kind of is part of his DNA. But I can see how he's very much influenced by Bowie playing Thomas Newton in The Man Who Fell to Earth. It's that kind of image, isn't it? That kind of slightly alien, very pale, tall, white automaton, you know, almost kind of that kind of autism, which, as we now know, was genuine. I mean, I think Gary Newman was genuinely quite autistic. And that was his image. And he played it to perfection, whether knowingly or not he played it to perfection. And lest we not forget, wrote some. He wrote some incredibly good pop songs as well. And of course, that's always the trick, isn't it? You can have everything in place. But if you can't write these great pop songs to complete the picture, it's not going to happen for you. But he had the songs too, didn't he? I mean, he had everything.
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, you know, something like Cars is just an amazingly hook-laden piece, instrumentally, vocally. Yeah. And from quite simple materials, which I guess is what you're saying. You know, it's coming out of punk that you couldn't necessarily have imagined a single like that. Being a hit in 1975, because another influence clearly is Kraftwerk when you're talking about the automaton image.
Speaker 1Yeah. Well, if it's not a paradox to say so, it's almost like he took the Kraftwerk thing of We Are The Robots and he kind of humanized it, didn't he? He gave it a personality. So the Kraftwerk thing is, it's almost de-emphasizing the cult of the personality. It's like, we're not even going to appear in our own videos. We're just going to put these mannequins there in place. Gary Newman kind of, in a way, took the opposite thing, which is it's all about. It's all about my personality. It's all about the fact that I am weird and I'm going to kind of, I'm going to push that as part of my shtick, you know, and it really worked. I remember there was a kid at my school at the time that just dressed and acted exactly like Gary Newman. He was completely obsessed, you know, and everyone else took the piss out of him, of course, but he kind of got away with it, you know. So it's, it's, it's just one of those kind of like moments in time, isn't it? Where I think everything just comes together almost despite the artist, you know, I mean, you could never. Have planned or predicted for a Gary Newman to be so massive, so instantly. And of course he was on an independent label. A major levels would never have touched him. And lest we forget the music press hated him and crucified him at the time. I mean, he would continue to do so, continue to do so. He was seen as a bit of a laughingstock. So he, you know, he kind of, he kind of cut right through all that as Led Zeppelin had in the previous decade, because Led Zeppelin were hated by the music press to, to become the biggest artist for it. At least a 12 month period, you know.
Speaker 2Yeah. And I think he carried on, you know, this winning streak artistically, at least until the mid eighties. And if you listen to some of his early eighties albums in particular, where he's expanding the palette with fretless bass.
Speaker 1Yeah, Dance is a great album.
Speaker 2There's some amazing pieces on that. And, you know, he's, he incorporates influences from funk and disco, but he does it in such a robotic, unique Newman-esque way that he personalises whatever he touches. So, yeah, you know, I, you know, personally, I'm a fan of those early eighties Newman albums as well, because he continued to stretch himself and thankfully as well, he's one of those artists who's still around making interesting albums and still seeming curious about what he can do. And these days he's actually manipulating orchestras, full orchestras to his will.
Speaker 1He's kept his fan base, hasn't he? He's still got, I mean, his new, his last album, I think, which came out, you know, a few months ago was a top five album and he's still got a very, very obsessive. Yeah, yeah. I think partly because he is unique in the history of music. In the history of pop music, he is unique. I mean, I've, I've got him in the sort of synth pop category here for, for those. have listened to the episodes before you'll know that we try and we try and group the albums together so i've got this little category i've also got the human league who released uh reproduction this year which is also a great record although their day is kind of mainstream crossover successes would come uh would come later on with dare of course uh yellow magic orchestra solid state survivor and a lot of other albums i think are somewhere uh between being kind of post-punk and synth pop so we're going to talk about i think simple minds album from this year real to real cacophony which you i just remind the listeners you completely dismissed in a in a previous episode uh saying that you felt empires and dance was the first proper simple minds album and i made a point at the time of saying that that was completely inaccurate because real to real cacophony is also masterpiece but it's kind of an album that fits somewhere between you know synthesized pop and post-punk and also you could say things that you could say the same of things like magazines secondhand daylight so so maybe that would dovetail nicely into talking about what was going on in in the post-punk it seems to me has come up in a few episodes for us it's it's a kind of it's a kind of music that um obviously stating the obvious it came out of punk it came out of the punk aesthetic um but it was it was something which was um i guess it was played it was adopted by musicians who felt too limited by the simplicity of punk and they they had pretensions in the best possible sense of the word they wanted to make great pop and they wanted to make great high concept artistic statements but they there was also something about it that couldn't have happened without punk and i think the one that's the most important to it well there's two i know there's three no there's four there's so many um joy divisions unknown pleasures we're not going to talk about i think it's a masterpiece but the bottom line is it's kind of canon anyway i don't think we need to talk any more about that album but there are other albums xtc's drums and wires just a genius album for me wires 154 now i wanted to talk about this album because i think it's fair to say i wonder i don't know if you'd agree with me why i were kind of like they were kind of like the pink floyd of post-punk weren't they there's something very intellectual and high concept about why not not just the music but the way it was packaged uh the lyrics
Speaker 2they kind of have the conceptual influence of the waters era but also that real pop psychedelic sensibility of barrett which i hear in newman's voice in particular on that so you know they're they're very good pop song writers and of course they have that what we now see as the post-punk sound to perfection the sort of the razor guitars but they were bringing in more atmosphere more synth textures um are there even clarinets on this album i mean we're talking
Speaker 1about two years on from the kind of the peak of yeah the punk anyone can play you know the mark perry alternative tv learn three chords go and form a band we're only two years on from that and here we are with wire making something which to me has much more in common with you know with weighty intellectual progressive rock and by the way this is all a good thing for me i'm not i'm not criticizing it for that so i i haven't actually talked about the the one album um that i think is the preeminent masterpiece of post-punk and we're going to do that now but let's just quickly uh list the other ones the stranglers the raven from this album and the one album that i think is the which is which is a good record i think it's beginning to tail off a little bit for me the previous album black and white is my favorite anyway i like the raven i like the raven very much too yeah simple minds real to real cacophony we've mentioned uh buzzcocks a different kind of tension uh the slits cuts the pop group y gang of fours entertainment a lot of very inventive music there but for me the preeminent masterpiece of the whole post-punk scene was made by an artist one of the members of this band had genuinely come from punk and i think it's a really good example of that in fact you could argue is the punk rock musician uh johnny lyden johnny ruttenhouse johnny ron as was and the second public image limited album from this year known as metal box or second edition um to me this is like an album that is so extraordinary that it's never really been successfully imitated by anyone it seems to me like a sound that just came from nowhere and through no fault of its own didn't really prevail at all i don't know why i mean it's i don't know i don't know i don't almost don't know how to describe it um it's just out on its own isn't it this
Speaker 2album it's an extraordinary album i mean i still find lyden you know is a tremendous innovator and public image were a very important band but i find it difficult to love mostly because of my aversion to to lyden's voice although i think he's great um but i love you know jar wobble keith levine it's an amazing band as much as anything else and they're creating an astonishing sound and once more you know they're coming from so many different backgrounds you know lyden was very informed regarding kraut rock art rock prog rock experimental music uh perhaps even you know stockhouse it sounds like on this
Speaker 1at times his biggest influence at the time was reggae was reggae music and dub music wobble of
Speaker 2course was dub yeah you know huge dub fan as well and so you know the collision of influence is is fantastic and you're right it is a sound out on his own and they continue to do this you know i liked um flowers of romance which of course took out wobble the drum sound on flowers of romance alone is worth buying the album
Speaker 1for so you you have these little chunks of music and just for people that don't know metal box was was originally released in a film can as three 12 inch singles which is something that i think they very much directly took from you know the sort of break the music down into three 12 inch singles each of 20 minutes each later on it was released as a double album called second edition which is actually the version of the album that i i first became familiar with and the music is almost like little it's almost like you're kind of just cutting into the middle of a session i mean some of the tracks just start mid flow and they're kind of unceremoniously cut off in the middle of the middle of flow so it's almost like the tracks could have been they could have been playing that track all day and you've just taken a little five minute chunk out of the middle at random it has that kind of almost fantastic sound and it's sound like eavesdrop eavesdropping quality to it but it still sounds like nothing else i've ever heard i mean apart from maybe the very first wolfgang press album um maybe a little bit of influence on some of the early factory bands like section 25 this sound never really caught on did it um okay so um shall we move on tim so um let's talk about uh you know what let's we've kind of missed who they're talking about post-punk let's talk about progressive rock in 1979 um because um it's an interesting year isn't it because progressive rock is supposed to be dead isn't it in 1979 yeah and to all
Speaker 2intents and purposes it is with the music papers i mean right it's interesting because i kind of bought um you know this is when i started buying the music papers and at the time i'd bought an awful lot of music and um for me and i don't know that it's just because i i lived outside the major cities anything i just kind of listened to music and i bought what i liked and so you know i've got specific days where i can remember going out and buying the ruts babylon's burning angelic upstarts i'm an upstart and genesis foxtrot and this was from rumbelows obviously you know i remember buying music shops of the day and um but progressive rock was still there and a lot of the artists were still in some ways at the top of the game and a lot of the artists were still a lot of the artists in a sense had just ignored the prevailing trends it was an interesting time but one of the the funniest things i remember or not funny a few of the artists was i think it was melody maker in the early 80s and they decided that they were going to bin any votes for yes genesis weather report all of the people who had previously won the polls to be fair though that's
Speaker 1what pop music has always done isn't it um it's always out with the old garden with the new isn't it and i think it's a very important thing to do and i think it's a very important thing to do and i guess part of that is what keeps pop music fresh and keeps it progressing at least it did you know for a very long time yeah but at the same time you know we've talked about some of these artists that are on this list here and i know you also like me believe that for example jethro tell stormwatch which was which came from this year which was crucified by by the music press at the time and didn't really sell i think it scraped into the top 30 you know but now in hindsight you look back and you say well that is a classic toll record and it's just as good uh at least it's not as good as it used to be but i think it's just as good as it used to be at least i believe just as good as i think yeah
Speaker 2totally and it sounded that at the time and one of the things about stormwatch for me is that everything from the cover to the sound it really captures the dismal late 1970s political climate in the way that pink floyd's animals does as well as much as the angelic upstarts as much as sham 69 of course it's a more articulate assault on the times but yeah there's something very current about that and it's got a um quite a dark emotional edge stormwatch as well as you know the beautiful dunring run gill my favorite
Speaker 1jethro tall tractor in fact this album has my two favorite jethro tall tracks on it dunring gill and flying dutchman yes it's it's an odd one isn't it i mean it's after this album uh ian anderson definitely made a very very uh concerted effort to do something different so this is really the last album you know perhaps not coincidentally the last album of the 70s but also the last album of the 70s and i think it's a really good album and i think it's the last album to have that kind of classic jethro tall sound you know i've never quite understood why this album is the last album of the 70s and i think it's a really good album and i think it's associated as being part of a trilogy with songs from The Wood and Heavy Horses. They call it the folk trilogy. I don't see this album as a folk album at all. You know, it's like, as you say, it's much, it has a much darker undercurrent. It has some real rockers on it as well. Things like Something's On The Move. I love this record. I was very lucky enough to remix this record comparatively recently. And I gained a whole new kind of respect for it.
Speaker 2Yeah, and actually it has a sound distinct from other albums. I kind of always saw it as being closer in a way to that kind of dense rock that they were producing on Benefits and Aqualung. And it was that updated to the late 70s, politically and musically. And sonically, it has a few new tricks with them. I think for necessity's sake, given what happened, Ian Anderson playing the bass guitar on this and playing it extremely well. Or in an extremely interesting way. So yeah, you know, I've never quite understood the hatred. But part of the thing was that when you were reading the papers at this time, some mediocre new wave albums will be declared the future of music. And albums like The Wall, albums like Stormwatch were completely crucified.
Speaker 1So, I mean, we won't talk about The Wall because it is canon. It's been discussed and over-discussed as always, you know, with these classic albums. But I want to talk about, you know, something else which is happening in the world of progressive rock. Now, again, we've kind of mentioned how the press were doing their best to kind of bury the genre completely. And, of course, there are bands that have been around for many years that are still making records and still selling records and still filling arenas, presumably. You know, the Floyds, the Jethro Tulls. Camel made an album this year. Mike Oldfield made an album this year. But strangely, there are two or three bands here that are still at the beginning, relatively at the beginning of their career. Sky. Now, Sky is surely an anomaly because Sky make, I'm not a fan. I find their music, it's very mediocre. It's very vanilla, mediocre prog rock, isn't it? It's like a, it's almost like a sort of blanded out Mike Oldfield in a way. Sort of, you know, paying sort of homage to the classics but playing it with rock instrumentation in a very kind of stiff, white way. You know, it's, but this band were massive. The first two albums were number one records and they had hit singles. How, how did this happen? You know, in an era when supposedly punk and post-punk and disco had done away with all of this stuff. A new band could come along and they're not the only band either. UK have just made their second record. I don't think it's sold that well, but the Enid are around as well. Just relatively still early in their career, the Enid. Again, another band, it's almost like, it's not just progressive rock. It's the most pompous form of progressive rock. And I like the, I do like, I'm not a fan of ska, but I do like the Enid. But it's this idea of like, you know, taking classical music and rocking it up. I mean, what could be less cool than that to your average Stranglers and Jelly Cupstarts fan in 1979 than a rock band rocking up the classics and presumably doing okay with it. You know, I mean, there must've been an audience, still for this as Skye proves. How do we explain this anomaly? I mean, it's amazing, isn't it?
Speaker 2Well, I think it was kind of happening throughout the late seventies in the sense that if you look at 1978, bands like Renaissance were having the greatest success in their career at a point when they really should have been buried by the prevailing trends. And War of the Worlds was one of the biggest albums of 1978. So I guess that, you know, for every movement, there's an antithesis of that movement. You know, it was, an era in which these extremes could succeed. But it was interesting. So kind of going back to my point about how I was buying from all sides, what was interesting to me is- -
Speaker 1Don't tell us the story about the Angelic Upstarts Genesis again, Tim, we've heard it. -
Speaker 2Anyway, so I went into Rumblos and I bought- -
Speaker 1Angelic Upstarts, Genesis, Foxtrot. Yeah, we've heard that one.
Speaker 2Yeah, go on. - But in truth, actually, I loved Babylon's Burning, but the reason I bought I'm an Upstart is I'd heard that Paul Thompson of Roxy Music, was going to join them. - Oh, okay, is that true? Did he? - He did eventually, he was a member at one point. - I did not know that. - Yeah, of the Angelic Upstarts. Because actually Menzies and the Boys weren't necessarily favourites. Whereas, you know, Babylon's Burning was a fantastic single from that period. And the Ruts went on to work with another favourite of mine, Kevin Coyne. - Kevin Coyne, yeah. - But what was interesting to me is that I could hear the connections and, you know, this is genuinely a true story because The Raven, which we've kind of passed over, I loved The Raven. And in many ways, I saw The Raven as being a kind of contemporary, progressive work. And I remember at the time saying, well, you know, what they're doing is they're kind of reinventing the progressive vocabulary in the punk era. And I said this to one of my cousins who was a huge fan. And in a kind of a Three Studios style way, I got punched over the head three times. He couldn't bear this thought. - Right. - And of course, years later, we find out that Jean-Jacques Burnell and Dave Greenfield were huge progressive
Speaker 1rock fans. - I don't remember if I've told this story. If I have, I'll cut it out. But one of the things that always blew my mind was if you ever get a copy of the book by Deborah Curtis about her husband called Touching at a Distance, which is what I believe is what the movie, the Anton Corbin movie was based on. There is a photo, as in many paperback books, there is a photo sort of section in the middle of the book. And there are various pictures of Ian, you know, as a child, you know, with his family growing up, you know, as always with these kind of books. You know, biographies. And there's one picture which always, I always remember, which is a picture of Ian standing in his back garden at the age of 14, proudly wearing a Nectar t-shirt. And that just blows my mind, you know. But of course it makes perfect sense, not necessarily with Nectar, but it makes perfect sense that Ian Curtis at the age of 14, you know, what would have been the music that all the kids were listening to? It wasn't only Roxy Music and David Bowie. It was all that stuff too. So. That speaks volumes, doesn't it?
Speaker 2I think, you know. Interestingly enough, I think it was Pete Shelley was doing an interview and he said, well, you know, the coder of one of the tracks from our first EP, Spiral Scratch, we actually played a little focus riff. Wow. At the end as a joke. So again, those influences were clearly in the mix. And I sort of got involved in making music in the early 80s. And a few of the musicians I worked with were a lot older than I was. And they'd been either in Liverpudlian or Mancunian new wave or post-punk bands. And every single one of them had come through the, yes, Floyd, King Crimson focus, taste machine, if you like. Some of them from classical and jazz backgrounds as well. -
Speaker 1Because in a way that was the punk of its era, wasn't it? Progressive rock was the kind of underground music of the early 70s in the way that punk was the underground music of the late 70s. Because it didn't, it didn't necessarily translate into massive single sales. You know, at the time progressive rock was, you know, the thing, the singles artists were people like T-Rex, you know, and Sweet and Slade. It wasn't progressive rock. So it was the underground music of its generation, of its era, wasn't it? In the same way that punk five years later became the underground music for the kids of that generation. - Absolutely. - I think this is a perfect way for us to dovetail into a section which I've called keeping up with the times, which is, we've talked about musicians coming through that kind of transition from growing up with progressive rock but making punk rock. But there's also another generation of musicians that did both, that made progressive rock and actually transitioned beautifully into making music, which was more of the time of post-punk. It's not a long list, but some of the people we've got on the list are, for example, Peter Hamill, our old friend, Peter Hamill, very much transitioning beautifully into albums like Peter Hamill, PH7. Then we have Led Zeppelin making in through the outdoor, which is now where they kind of embrace having made presence, which we talked about on the 1976 episode, which was almost a keyboard free album. They go completely in the other direction here and they give a lot more, you know, kind of freedom to John Paul Jones to experiment with synthesizers. It's very much Zeppelin trying to transition into a newer, not entirely successful, but I think it is, I mean, Led Zeppelin never made a bad record as far as I'm concerned. Hawkwind, PXR5, they've come out of this kind of space rock era, sci-fi era, and they've transitioned into something with Bob Calvert on vocals, much more new wave. But the three, I think, that are the best examples here are one of which I'm going to ask you to talk about, 'cause I'm not so familiar with it. Let's start with this one, which is Sparks, who made an album this year with Giorgio Moroder producing called Number One Song in Heaven. Now I'm very familiar with the single, the title track, which I think is amazing. I'm not so familiar with the album, so tell us about this album, Tim. -
Speaker 2Well, the album, weirdly enough, when we were making Love You to Bits, I kind of saw this and Grace Jones' Slave to the Rhythm as being something of a blueprint of what we were attempting to do, because with Number One Song in Heaven, it's effectively six pieces that almost form a disco suite. So it's very ambitious, it's often, texturally quite complex and quite beautiful. it's also full of magnificent melodies and it's interesting there are a couple of albums during this year where i hear the birth of a band i've mentioned before the associates but you particularly hear it in the way in which male sings on this album and this is their collaboration with georgia maroda and if anything it's my favorite georgia maroda work because it's a beautiful album length suite and it's one of my favorite sparks albums um loved the singles at the time and it's something you know i still find quite thrilling and again it does the thing that you talked about with i think it was magma where they will shift the tempo within a piece as well but this is within with electronics it's playful accessible experimental and what they did of course was bypass the new wave bypass punk and go into the other area that had been commercially popular at that time disco
Speaker 1i mean i love the single for some reason i've never got around to to investigating the album i mean it's kind of sparks at this point it's kind of you kind of mentioned this phrase electro disc it's like electronic disco with that kind of operatic voice over the top isn't it uh and and i can just that's just a dream combination is it in a way at least for us anyway uh and as you as you say the associates very much took that as a blueprint you know didn't they um but two other examples bill nelson made red noise this no he made sound on sound the red noise album so just to clarify bill nelson's red noise was the name of the band the album was called sound on sound it was the only red noise album and it was his attempt to kind of reinvent himself after bebop deluxe um with more of a new wave kind of punk edge isn't it but it's but it's the thing is it's still got the cleverness that you know some artists they just can't they can't hide it can they you know xdc always had this i want to call it a problem it wasn't a problem uh it wasn't a problem in retrospect but at the time it was almost a problem that they they could a sickness they couldn't hide it from the music press that they were clever you know um and i think bill bill nelson's got that too isn't it red noise is some really quite complex musical sort of gymnastics on this record but superficially it has all the hallmarks of a very spiky new wave post-punk record doesn't it i absolutely love this record you see this is what
Speaker 2i'm not so sure about because um i quite like drastic plastic drastic plastic is coming out of bowie's heroes to a certain extent and maybe it's too close to that blueprint at times and i really like what nelson goes on to do in the early 80s um the love that whirls i think is maybe for me his his best album but quick dreaming and get off the beam i think is a fantastic album as well but he sounds more natural on days i think my problem with with red noise kind of is twofold i think that vocally he has that kind of um andy partridge seal bark it seems as if he's trying for that comedy punk voice a little too hard whereas on drastic plastic he's still got that quite natural nelson take on bowie and by quick dream he's found his own voice and you know love that whirls and a lot of the other 80s albums chimera i loved but i don't know why it was just that thing where it seemed a little too it was trying too hard for the punk credentials and it was far too fiddly for my taste you know this was as complex as any prog or jazz fusion well you so you've never been
Speaker 1you've never been a particular fan of cardiacs for me this is like the origins of that cardiac sound i love that i love that kind of combination of punk energy irreverence and complicated progressive rock uh you know that kind of mixture of energy and and finesse for me i'm a sucker for that uh so so am
Speaker 2i i guess it's just in this case um as i said you know by quick dreaming i'm with him it's just this album for whatever reason always kind of left me slightly cold and i think you're entirely right that it's a brilliant piece of work it was a tremendous influence on cardiacs who of course had released their first single in 79 i think i can see it you know as with public image i would agree with everything you say about these albums being important influential anything but compromised or safe or weak yet it just kind of doesn't quite communicate to me and i and and always you try and quantify this so for me it's partly that you know the voice seems to be trying that little bit too hard for attitude and i've always been left cold by this kind of delirious dexterity i mean i can take it sometimes you know return to forever could sometimes do this and yes certainly had a kind of a magic with their delirious dexterity i don't know why this just always left me slightly cold yeah so one
Speaker 1other album we should definitely mention as keeping up with the times is is frip's exposure as well which is um uh simultaneously a hundred percent frip could not be more frip but at the same time it is a reinvention isn't it i mean he's he's working with um you know soul singers and he's working with the roaches and he's got hamill involved in this record and he's working with uh peter gabriel i mean it's it's almost it's almost like a summation of everything he's done and everyone he's worked with until that point but it comes across i think it does come across with a real kind of edge doesn't it this record and i know crimson records always had an edge in that sense but this record it definitely seems to belong to to the post-punk era in a
Speaker 2sense isn't he fine tuning for it because almost all of those elements have been in his work before you know the work with eno um and even the you know the edge of pieces like breathless you can hear in red and he is perfectly fine tuning it to the era and what's amazing about exposure for me is it manages to be cutting edge in tune with what's happening especially with the new york scene but also it has quite a beautiful mor sheen you know the pieces with daryl hall or um i think it's terry roach um and the version of here comes the flood i think is perhaps is the greatest version of one of gabriel's greatest songs so let's move
Speaker 1on uh to something completely different now let's let's talk about uh i guess the singer-songwriter scene you know and we talked previously about how perhaps you know the progressive rock scene having grown up through the 70s was going through a fairly odd time towards the end of the 70s sort of derided by the the media but still musically you know kind of was up there and still had its fans and i guess the same is partly true of of the singer-songwriter scene um now you know some of these albums that i don't i don't know the randy newman album born again i don't know the annette peacock album the perfect release but the two that you wanted to talk about i think correct me if i'm wrong tim are the marianne faithful album broken english which i do know um and the alex chilton album alex chilton of course from big star uh from like flies on sherbets which i did listen to uh because you'd mentioned it i didn't think it was very good i have to say uh i mean i'm i'm a massive i love the first big star album and i love about half of the third big star album i remember those kind of gorgeous ballads like holocaust um from the third album and i adore the first album this to me is like somebody going out of their way to sound shit uh in an attempt now this may be very unfair in just this is based on one listen by the way somebody going out of their way to sound as shit as they can in an attempt to align themselves with the kind of punk era now i don't know how much of that is artifice and how much of it is genuine maybe he was completely off his head and that's just naturally the way it sounded i i i didn't get it i have to say so maybe you say you really like it so maybe you can explain to us what you like
Speaker 2about well actually i've not heard it for years but i used to really like this album and i liked it partly because there was a quality i kind of like that a lot of the american bands sometimes had patty smith sometimes had it um richard helen's helen the voidoids had it where they were taking a kind of gene vincent rock and roll influence and they were twisting it i suppose what i liked about it is that it's almost taking the innocence and the optimism of that kind of 50s especially sort of early elvis presley gene vincent rock and roll and 60s girl group music and twisting it into something darker and that is kind of what i heard in the alex shilton and i think he was being quite honest um in terms of his own influences and perhaps as you say i think it's more of a kind of chemically induced expression of where he was rather than an attempt to sound like robert quine or whoever was the guitarist in the no wave scene at that point that was um most influential um the the album i kept
Speaker 1thinking of when i was listening to this album the album it reminded me the most is spence's or album and also perhaps sid barrett's madcap laughs it's the sound of somebody going to pieces you know their muse is kind of going to pieces now i like the skip spence album i like the sid barrett album i didn't particularly like this album didn't didn't appeal to me i love his voice on you know on things like the first big star album and some of the tracks on the third album here he just sounds like he's he's lost it and he's drunk and he all that kind of beauty in his voice and that emotional quality has just kind of been reduced this kind of drunken drawl and i can see how maybe if you're really into an artist sometimes those albums are fascinating you know the sound of someone falling apart you know bob dylan's self-portrait i'm a big apologist for that record i really like that record but most dylan fans would point at it and say you know that's the sound of dylan had his absolute nadir it's the sound of dylan losing his way so i can see if you're a big chilton fan maybe this would be fascinating but we're not talking about an artist who made a string of amazing albums here we're talking about an artist who made two or three great records in the mid-70s disappeared and then came back with this uh yeah and it's just not very good to me and it's like less than 30 minutes it's it's mercifully
Speaker 2brief i'll give it that it well it reminds me a little as well of suicide and i think i always had slightly more time for suicide than you and again because suicide although they were using synths and it's something that had become you know by the late 70s early 80s considerably more popular again something in the suicide musical vocabulary it's almost as if elvis has gone electro pop and elvis has gone psychotic electro pop and um there's just something in that sound and that approach i've quite liked and it's one of the reasons why you know i have time for some of the richard hell singles as well and what robert quine is doing in that era um i mean the marionne faithful album is intriguing because this was a complete reinvention and again it was a reinvention um that firmly put her in the new wave vanguard because there's quite spiky guitar playing quite frip influenced guitar playing on this album and her voice has completely changed and she's been a part of the music industry for a long time and she's been a part of the change it's amazing to think what it would have been like to have heard this had you been a huge fan of faithful in the 60s where she had this heavenly voice singing very pretty ballads and suddenly she comes back with foul-mouthed tirades guitar dissonance yeah she's like she sounds like
Speaker 1the female tom whites on this album doesn't she absolutely i mean that in a good way i like this record very much yeah yeah
Speaker 2yeah and the title track is fantastic and how'd you do it is one of the most yeah vicious
Speaker 1pieces with lyrics lyrics by heathcote williams right lyrics by heathcote williams right those
Speaker 2and and they are yeah absolutely foul lyrics and um amazing piece of music but but a great production that album sounds good and um you know once more i'd say if we're talking about kind of older artists who suddenly found themselves confronted by the scene you know i know we've always disagreed on this to an extent but i always felt lindsey buckingham had also reassessed fleetwood mac i think tusk is one of their best most experimental ambitious albums and his soundscape is more bare stripped down and kind of in keeping with the era
Speaker 1i i love tusk but i i you know i think the the influence from punk is overstated on tusky you know you listen to a track like it's not that funny which everyone says oh it's lindsey buckingham doing punk now it still sounds closer to super tramp than sex pistol sorry but it does and i again i love it so don't don't get me wrong i think tusk is an extraordinary for me let's let's this is uh an example of a band that have just had an extraordinarily massively successful mainstream album basically gambling everything on the follow-up i mean not only is it a double album it's a double album which is all over the place the title track is the first single i mean wow what a brave choice of single to release the title track from tusk and i still think that for me that's the highlight of the album for me because it sounds it's mad i mean it's like it's like it's like marching music isn't it it's i don't know how you describe it but didn't they have like a whole bunch of cheerleaders in the video and all this stuff it's it's absolutely insane but it's also a fantastic piece of pop yeah obeys no rules it obeys no rules at all yeah it always has afro beat
Speaker 2elements in it you know you're right cheerleading music afro beat some great guitar playing from buckingham and an arrangement that makes no sense yet as you
Speaker 1say yeah incredibly
Speaker 2memorable i will reach for tusk
Speaker 110 times more often than i will reach for rumours or fleetwood mac i i can see you know i think what's interesting is yes you can see how new wave has rubbed off on them i i well i
Speaker 2think buckingham's production on the drums is quite interesting and there is intentionally a more stripped down sound but i think what's interesting is once more maybe they're going back to their root influences so you can actually hear aspects of kind of everly brothers guitar in what he's doing rather than punk or early beatles even there's something in that stripped down sound on the album but you know for me it's got a couple of Stevie Nicks' best ballad.
Speaker 1They definitely have taken the sound somewhere else, but it's still soft rock to me. You know, and again, that's not a bad thing. Supertramp's Breakfast in America is this year, which of course is just their masterpiece for me. ELO's Discovery, which you mentioned again, another very mainstream pop band, making a very convincing album, which seems to tip its head, tip its hat, I should say, to perhaps a little bit more of what's going on. But let's just go back to the singer-songwriters. I mean, we talked about Marion Faith or Alex Chilton. There's also Lou Reed's The Bells from this year, the first Ricky Lee Jones album, which is a great, this is one of the rare examples of a new singer-songwriter on the block making a fantastic debut record. Joni Mitchell's Mingus, we've talked about Joni again. Perhaps not one of our most significant records, but still a great record, you know, and it's kind of a wonderful album. It's a high concept record in the sense it's a tribute to Charlie Mingus, obviously. But let's, you know, maybe we can talk a little bit about the album. Maybe we can talk a little bit about the album. Maybe we should talk about what's going on in the absolute mainstream at this time, because this is a fascinating time for mainstream pop. Now, Lord knows you would never describe The Police or Squeeze or even The Jam as punk groups or Madness as punk groups or The Specials or Elvis Costello, as you mentioned earlier, as punk groups. But it's like I said to you at the top of the episode, it's hard to imagine any of these acts existing or existing in the world. It's hard to imagine any of these acts existing in the mainstream without punk happening in the interim. Do you know what I mean? I mean. I do,
Speaker 2and I think the perception at the time is that they were part of the new God. I think it was suspicion with The Police because they were older and they were clearly very musically accomplished, all of them. But certainly bands like Elvis Costello, Squeeze, Ian Dury, the perception was that they had risen with the new wave.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's interesting how a lot of those bands that you just mentioned actually came not from punk, but they came from the pub rock scene in the UK. Certainly Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Squeeze, The Jam to an extent had all kind of grown up and paid their dues by playing the pub scene. And I suppose they'd kind of been assimilated into this punk tag almost unwittingly, but they kind of rode that wave, didn't they? Now, The Police was slightly different because they came perhaps a year or two after the explosion of punk. But you can definitely. I think it's more to do with the urgency and the delivery, that kind of energetic delivery that you hear on, particularly on those first two Police albums, which for me are my two favourite Police albums, Alain de Stamour, Regatta de Blanc. The first track on the first Police album, I know it's not this year, it's the previous album, but next to you, straight away you're into this incredibly urgent. They're on fire. There's a three-piece on fire. And so it is very much that punk aesthetic, isn't it? Now we get to Regatta de Blanc and they are starting. Sting is starting to really write very sophisticated pop songs, which are becoming almost, you know, without fail becoming number one hits, you know. And the other thing we talked about, you know, the public image album having a strong influence on reggae. Of course, even the title of this album, Regatta de Blanc, White Reggae, tips its hat to the fact that there's a strong influence here from black music and reggae music and Jamaican music. And I think that was what was really special about the place. Wasn't it? Somewhere between reggae and new wave and pure pop, they came up with this perfect combination. The other thing I love about The Police is they're one of the last bands I can think of where you can instantly recognise every single musician in that band within two bars of them playing. Stuart Copeland, Sting, Andy Summers, instantly recognisable. The only other band I can think of that were kind of a peak at this era that you can say the same of would be Rush. You know, instantly you can hear. And you know instantly who these musicians are. There aren't many bands like that. There have not been many bands like that in history, but The Police are definitely one of them, aren't they?
Speaker 2Well, that was going to be my point, actually. Yeah, individually, they were all so recognisable and all so gifted. And, you know, one of the things that always appealed to me, you know, Copeland, a stunning drummer. Amazing. But Summers' use of chords. You know, his sound was superb. His chord voicings. They were unique. And this was a band that managed simultaneously to be extremely clever, yet extremely direct and popular. And as you say, within about two bars, you can recognise every single instrumentalist. I know there are only three. And yes, Rush were definitely another example. Maybe, you know, Japan a couple of years later. And of course, when you get to bands like U2, The Edge is instantly recognisable. It's also fair to say that, you know, Will Sargent is recognisable with Echo and the Bunnymen. So you get whole bands where every single player. This was my point. You can recognise.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, public image, you could say. Yeah, I mean, yes, this is my point, that it's very hard to find a band where every single person in that band has such a signature sound. But you're absolutely right in mentioning Japan. Steve Jansen, Mick Kahn, Richard Barbieri, instantly recognisable. You know, you almost just have to hear one sound. And you know exactly who you're listening to. But I mean, again, if you take all of that and you connect it to a songwriter as good as Sting, you know, Walking on the Moon, Message in a Bottle on this album, two number one singles, just a perfect storm, a confluence of genius in one band. And another example of a band where, I wouldn't say they had the life of a Mayflower, they had a few good years, you know, but they still. seemed to be. each other's throats almost from the beginning because it's like when you have that much talent and that much ego in one band it's almost doomed from the start isn't it um yeah but they burned very very brightly for a very short time i mean i think that all five police albums i think have something to recommend them but for me the first
Speaker 2two yeah and all five of them have got their own character as well i think the first two are linked in the sense that you're right the first album they come out and they are the police the second album is the perfect refinement of that first album and arguably is their best but i've got a lot of time for um synchronicity and ghost in the machine as well you know where they're obviously stretching the sound palette and not losing any
Speaker 1of that gift okay i think this is a good point tim for us to pause on 1979 we said we were going to do two parts to this show because there's so many albums that we want to talk about and we don't want to overlook anything and we don't want to scale them down and we don't want to skim over anything so let's call it a day on part one here and say thank you very much for listening and we will see you very soon as we begin part two of 1979 goodbye for
Speaker 2now bye-bye you
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