ITT: /mu/ in 1981
>>128850444nothing like it anymore...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn8APTMyKsg
OH GOD, REO SPEEDWAGON SUCKS
JUST CALL ME ANGEL OF THE MORNINGJUST TOUCH MY CHEEK BEFORE YOU LEAVE
There's never been any doubt that James was commercial, as they say, but this time that's a plus--when he's not rocking, which is mostly, he even comes up with some dynamite love-man bullshit. And the street simulations are convincing enough. But I still want to know whether "The kind of girl you read about/In new-wave magazines" is "kinky" after the manner of the one in "Ghetto Life" who has "pigtails down to her shoulders." 'Cause with her, it may just be the hair. A-
Olivia Newton-John is hot.
J. Lydon's right--rock and roll is boring. And needless to say, so's rock criticism--in a multimedia age I should be able to write my reviews in scratch-'n-sniff. If I could, this one would smell like an old fart. I mean, rock and roll may be boring, but at least it's boring in an engaging way. Bassless Araboiserie is interesting in a boring way. C+
As they push past twenty their ambitions are showing, and suddenly the hope-addicts whiff both commerce and pretension. Sure it's still all fresh-faced and puissant in that vaguely political way that so moves the concerned rock journalist (and fan)--just not altogether unspoiled, sniff sniff. Bono Vox gets poetic, Steve Lillywhite gets arty, and those of us who expect more than sonic essence of rock and roll get enough melody and construction to make the first side a bit of all right. What a stupid band to expect purity from. B-
Although the music's "tight," and sometimes kinda hip rhythmically too, I guarantee it took him longer to get the Uptown Horns on the telephone than to write these lyrics. Iggy: "Ivan, what rhymes with `touches my feet'?" Ivan: "How about something with `creep'--about how you're not a creep, you know?" "But Ivan, I am a creep." "No one will ever know." C+
>>128850837tf is he yodeling on about? (not Cuckgau, Johnny)
>>128850896I didn't understand what the review meant until sampling track 1. Now it makes perfect sense. Ugggh...
Computers? What can you do with those except write a BASIC program to fill the screen with the word "boobs"? Get back to me when they're good enough to display photo-real boobs.
This is impressive and good-hearted. Not only did B. Springsteen get a record deal for the rock and roller whose oldies have been topping B.'s show since whenever, he got him a hit. Featuring the voice of none other than B. Springsteen, who comes more naturally to these impressive, good-hearted, new B. Springsteen songs (as well as the Dylan and Browne and Lennon-McCartney oldies) than the rock and roller. For one thing, B. has more soul. C+
>>128850627>>128850747some really balls-to-the-wall production on these. everyone this year was trying to copy Mutt Lange's sound on BIB.
Blondie plus Chic sounded like a natural--charming klutz confronts the meaning of grace. But in the world of surfaces that both inhabit so intensely there are no naturals, and the kind of spiritual heat that might have made the bond take is rare at any depth. Lots of sharp little moments are intermittently arresting, and if both artists establish themselves as classic the strain may sound noble eventually. Right now it sounds klutzy. B-
Dylan's abandonment of Muscle Shoals for the fleshpots of El Lay--Benmont Tench! Ron Wood! Ringo Starr on tom tom!--has a reassuring aura of apostasy, which may be why I think this year's born-again boilerplate "sounds better" than last year's. But two songs that belong in the lower reaches of his canon don't hurt. "Property of Jesus," about how bad it is to mock born-againers, has Staple Singers written all over it. "Lenny Bruce" is apostasy down to its reverent setting. B-
With Lionel readying his farewells, they'd better take care of tunecraft, but only on "Lady (You Bring Me Up)," where William King shares the credit with someone I presume is his wife and someone else I presume is a song doctor, do they give off the signals. Lionel antes up two slow ones, both of which cut the funky competition. B-
hey got Van Halen tix?
"Moral Majority," which proceeds directly from the Mickey Mouse club theme to a rousing verse prominently featuring the words "Blow it out your ass," and the long-awaited "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" ("you'll be the first to go") are their best songs or whatever since they attacked California and Cambodia. Both are available on a single. Forgo the documentary value of "Kepone Factory"'s false start ("Itstooslow") and the intensely appropriate "Hyperactive Child." Think small. B-
>>128850627>>128851080this band kicks ass, they'll be around forever. i don't see them turning into a band that our moms will like any time soon, imagine if they did a fucking ballad
Pretty impressive show-off stuff--not just Eddie's latest sound effects, but a few good jokes along with the mean ones and a rhythm section that can handle punk speed emotionally and technically. At times Eddie could even be said to play an expressive--lyrical?--role. Of course, what he's expressing is hard to say. Technocracy putting a patina on cynicism, a critic might say. B-
There's no denying it--taken as a whole, the six songs do exude punk-style intelligence. Titles like "Middle Mass," "An Older Lover Etc.," and "Prole Art Threat" don't disappoint--Mark Smith is interested in the kind of stuff you want intelligent-style punks to be interested in, and gives evidence of understanding it, too. But only "Fit and Working Again," marked by an exploding two-note guitar riff, makes itself felt as an individual entity. And in the end it's hard to know exactly what Smith does think about all that stuff he's interested in--except that it's interesting. Inspirational Instruction: "Don't start improvising, for God's sake." B
>>128851390her "9 to 5" came out before Dolly's, incidentally. in fact Dolly ripped this album the fuck off hard.
>>128851398She made it a lot better though.
I once convinced myself to enjoy this band--if there had to be synthesizer rock, I thought, better it should be candidly dinky. And this is their funniest to date--every time I hear that machine intone "I program my home computer/Bring myself into the future," I want to make a tape for all those zealots who claim a word processor will change my life. But fun plus dinky doesn't make funky no matter who's dancing to what program. Funk has blood in it. B
>>128851433>I want to make a tape for all those zealots who claim a word processor will change my life.Cuckgau did enter the computer age in 91 when he started using a PC instead of a typewriter. A decade later but actually he was still a fairly early computer adopter especially for a boomer.
Filler plus three major songs, each of which gets an explanatory video in concert, which with these art-school ciphers is a comfort. In "Through Being Cool," a sexually and racially integrated platoon of "young alien types" do in fact "eliminate the ninnies and the twits," though rather than the bone-crunching tactics the lyric prescribes they utilize a ray gun that reduces two discoids to a Clyfford Still blur, transforms three joggers into old people, and blows two old people away. In "Love Without Anger" two humans in chicken suits bill and coo after fighting over pecking order. And in "Beautiful World" the mild closing disclaimer "But not for me" is amplified by a panoply of newsreel horrors. None of which will satisfy the ninnies and twits who think war toys and visual aids are evil by definition. B
>>128851591>tracks 1-2yay for video arcade jokes. it was that era after all.
If nothing else, Keith Moon's death seems to have delivered Pete Townshend of his obsession with the band he created--and with his own mortality. His new sex songs are stylish and passionate, the strongest he's written for the Who in a decade. Problem is, his pretty-boy mouthpiece sounds like he's forcing the passion. Which reminds me that sex always has to do with mortality--and that mortality catches up with pretty boys faster than with the rest of us. B+
This isn't so much hard country as quiet honky tonk, which I don't hold against Strait, a handsome and discerning fellow whose pleasant baritone, though not designed to swallow whole cans of corn (cf. John Anderson, Ricky Skaggs), boasts a subtle, built-in catch. But he's so unassuming I'm afraid he's destined to remain a minor pleasure--one more lonely tiller in fields left fallow by Billy Sherrill. B+
I've always found "Tainted Love" catchy-annoying rather than catchy-seductive, but these takeoffs on Clubland "decadence" get at the emotion underneath with just the right admixture of camp cynicism. Now you feel it, now you don't. B+
In music as tactful as this, where so much of the meaning is carried on the skip and flow of rhythm and timbre, songwriting doesn't matter all that much. So Vandross can attach tropes like "sugar and spice" and "she's a super lady" to undistinguished melodies and make me like them. But when his touch is just a little off, the great hit single you've just heard (or at least the good one that's sure to follow) seems almost as forgettable as the loser he's singing. B+
>>128851549rushed out follow-up album and they didn't have a killer cut on here like the debut or BKS
Dammit, Mutt, when I want an AC/DC album I will buy an AC/DC album.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3NUoe76fI4SW80ltwCY6Zr?si=gD8gqMqsTlmh49C56wLeAA&pi=nUgpJx44TCu1BStop.Go to this playlist and listen to and comment on every 1981 song.If you don't do this, this thread is a waste.
Got loads of feedback. Ain't got no takeoff. B+
>>128850747The trend in hard rock this year is big blistering BIB wannabe production, but it's not as much of a song year as '80 was.
>>128851803it's filler to run out his Reprise contract
Titles like "Popcorn 80's," "Love 80's," "Super Bull/Super Bad," "I Go Crazy," signal a contract-fulfilling rehash, but this time he's rehashing the right stuff in the right way--the horn charts and rhythm arrangements are as tricky and on the one as in any newfangled funk you want to name. Most of the sweet ache has disappeared from "I Go Crazy" since 1960, and I'm not going to claim that the successfully renegotiated tempo makes up for it. But it is a consolation. B+
>>128851803how long does "T Bone" go on anyway?
This is her best pop album since Young, Gifted and Black because it's her best groove album since Spirit in the Dark. The swinging, streaming, Quincy Jonesish dance pulse of (no getting around it) Toto (though Arif Mardin did have the smarts to add Jacksons vet Greg Philinganes) even helps her through jivy remakes of "Hold On I'm Coming" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want" on side one. But side two is, as Aretha puts it in her candid "Whole Lot of Me," the "cream de la cream": for once her voice is as rich and confident as it always has every right to be, and Aretha asserts her needs and prerogatives as if they go with the flow. Which they do. A-
>>128851899>>128851866good ol' James and Aretha, always there for us in all of these threads due to sheer extreme productivity. we had them in the /mu/ in 1962 thread last week and they're in every year in between i think.
>>128851918Here's a protip: '82 will be the first year since 1957 without a James Brown LP (even if his albums before the late 60s weren't really "albums")
>>128851243not a drone but its nice that christgau gets the fall. rock music logical conclusion.
only 8 years until Taylor Swift is born. enjoy it while it lasts.
The most obscure KISS album, a soundtrack to an unreleased movie and none of it was ever played live.
>>128852490yeah that was this era alright. dirty, greasy, and dangerous (don't go to NYC unless you know martial arts or are an ex-Marine)
The second side drags more painfully than I bet was intended, but nonetheless this is powerful stuff. Greg Ginn is the greatest noise guitarist since Johnny Thunders, new vocalist Henry Rollins can snarl out any torture contour he serves up, and "Rise Above" shows that they can even write songs in addition to gnash fragments. A-
No Beatles reunion ever, that's for sure. Sigh.
Turning 50 this year and...>track 3Should have replaced that one with "It's a Sin To Tell a Lie.">track 4You never really did to begin with.
>>128852665Oh well, like Johnny Cash once said, guess things happen that way.
>>128852619Still, The Hit (TM) isn't really until next year.
>>128852710yes but also The Hit (TM) is next year. well i guess track 1 came out in '81 as a single.
>>128852718OLAS was a somewhat lesser hit but it still made the top 20.
>>128852619Plus the title track did come out in the fall of '81 as a single.
Hippies couldn't understand jealousy because they believed in universal love; punks can't understand it because they believe sex is a doomed reflex of existentially discrete monads. As X-Catholics obsessed with a guilt they can't accept and committed to a subculture that gives them no peace, Exene and John Doe are prey to both misconceptions, and their struggle with them is thrilling and edifying--would the Ramones could cop to such wisdom. Who knows whether the insightful ministrations of their guitarist will prove as therapeutic for them as for you and me, but I say trust a bohemian bearing gifts. How often do we get a great love album and a great punk album in the same package? A+
>>128852676oh look it's the '50s Olivia Newton-John. hopefully the current one doesn't also decide to LARP as a jazz singer someday when her chart relevance is ancient history.
Maybe Dirty Mind wasn't a tour de force after all; maybe it was dumb luck. The socially conscious songs are catchy enough, but they spring from the mind of a rather confused young fellow, and while his politics get better when he sticks to his favorite subject, which is s-e-x, nothing here is as far-out and on-the-money as "Head" or "Sister" or the magnificent "When You Were Mine." In fact, for a while I thought the best new song was "Jack U Off," an utter throwaway. But that was before the confused young fellow climbed onto the sofa with me and my sweetie during "Do Me, Baby." A-
There's no denying it, unfortunately--this is a damn good record, a great band showing off its mastery, like Muddy Waters (just as a for instance) getting it up one more once. But where Some Girls had impact as a Rolling Stones record, a major statement by artists with something to state, the satisfactions here are stylistic--harmonies, fills, momentum. And the lead singer isn't getting any less mean-spirited as he pushes forty. A-
I know you're not going to care, but I've played all of this live-acoustic twofer many times and felt no pain. Sure it's a mite leisurely, sure Jerry's voice creaks like an old floorboard, sure there are remakes if not reremakes. But the songs are great, the commitment palpable, and they always were my favorite folk group. B+
More conventional than Broken English, which isn't to say it's less feminist. On the contrary, Faithfull is even writing her own lyrics instead of letting some man do it, and coming up with universal truths like "where did it go to my youth" and "looking to find my identity" in the process. And singing in such palpably broken English that she almost gets away with it. This time. B+
>>128852810>But that was before the confused young fellow climbed onto the sofa with me and my sweetie during "Do Me, Baby."Ok Bob, I really didn't need to imagine you and your old lady fucking. Seriously.
Unlike so many groups who live and die by the hook, this one's got hooks, and when you pay attention to the lyrics it seems possible that they don't live and die by the hook at all--"Tonite" and "Skidmarks on My Heart," to choose but two unprepossessing examples, work subtle twists on teen fatalism and obsession, respectively. When you don't pay attention to the lyrics, which isn't hard, you begin to think they live and die by the hook after all. And you're probably right. B+
It's a tribute to persistence of something-or-other that somebody should still be getting decent music out of the sterile studio-rock formula. What that something-or-other might be is perhaps indicated by the identity of the somebody, who is second-generation pro rather than a punk revoloo. B+
TUMBLE OUT OF BED AND I STUMBLE TO THE KITCHENPOUR MYSELF A CUP OF AMBITIONAND YAWN AND STRETCH AND TRY TO COME TO LIFE
>>128852908RSO folded, only Yuropoors bought this one, and horrible lead single.
>>128852964my mom loves this song. that was pretty much her life back in '81.
>>128852940https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5qty7D7K4show often do nepobabbies have talent? not often enough, somehow she rolled lucky.
This Seattle sextet makes music for stewardesses if ever there was such a thing, and if you think I'm being condescending that's your problem--I'm awed. What a complex artifact! The lyrics Marv Ross writes for wife Rindy, who sings like a cross between Stevie Nicks and Olivia Newton-John and does clarinet impersonations on the saxophone, are all about how love doesn't last, especially with "Valerie," Rindy's benefactor and then some during an ill-advised stint in art school. And the band, which boasts chops beyond tight, steals only from the masters--Steely Dan chords and guitars, Steve Stills and Joni Mitchell vocalisms, Fleetwood Mac ambience, and of course that soupçon of "Baker Street." Inspirational Verse, I swear: "Hallelujah, Friday's here/The week is long for the insincere." B
AND I'M GONNA KEEP ON LOVING YOU'CAUSE IT'S THE ONLY THING I KNOW HOW TO DOI DON'T WANT TO EAT, I DON'T WANT TO SLEEPI JUST WANT TO KEEP ON LOVING YOU
I is born.
It's pointless to deny that they make the chops work for the common good--both their trickiness and their simplicity provide consistent pleasure here. But with drummer, manager, and booking agent all scions of a CIA honcho, I have my doubts about their standing as a progressive force. Whether you're following in the old man's footsteps, offing the motherfucker, or striving for a livable compromise, roots like that leave you twisted, if only to the tune of a middlebrow cliché like Sting's "There is no political solution." In the kindest construction, say their politics are as astute, liberal, and well-meaning as those of Pete "Won't Get Fooled Again" Townshend, who also needs reminding that we're not just spirits in the material world--we're also matter in the material world, which is why things get sticky. B+
TOE TO TOEDANCING VERY CLOSEBARELY BREATHINGALMOST COMATOSEWALL TO WALLPEOPLE HYPNOTIZED
>>128853238this song had a horrendously racist music video if you seen it
As postpunk splinters into a thousand shafts of shadow, these arty lefties are definitely going for poetry readings with two-chord backing. My favorite is the first punk song ever to mention Herb Alpert, who appears not as a musical icon but as a record executive--at the company that distributed them back when they were trying to sell out. B
daily reminder that christgau is a nobody.
You whippersnappers want catchy pop tunes, this high-tech cornball's got 'em with blues changes--four nifties on side one. You want hypnotic electro-groove, he's got that with blues changes too--eighteen minutes of it, complete with muddled attack on the military-industrial establishment. Both sides offer sound effects at no additional charge, and Steve would like everyone to know that he's been doing this shit since 1968. B
Another three this year.
Thankfully he only had one.
This is not only a comeback but a speedup--comes on like he thinks Depeche Mode is the next Vanilla Fudge. These days the "Mandolin Wind" man only sounds genuinely sensitive when his ego's threatened--on the cuckolded "How Long," not the icky-inspirational "Never Give Up on a Dream." And he's most convincing when he sounds really mad, on the cuckolded "Jealous." B
Minutemen - The Punch line
>>128853371
This is the year the 80s really begins, not 1980 which was still the late 70s.
>>128851645He only picked that guy because he had a boner for him
>>128850444Punk kids finally discovered the Byrds and it sounds amazing. The singer should stop mumbling and write some real lyrics.
Hook-laden and hard-rocking, this is the best-crafted Kinks album in over a decade, which means that for someone who's found Ray Davies's world-view increasingly mean-spirited and mush-brained, it's also the biggest turnoff. Back when he was chairing the Village Green Preservation Society, Ray's dotty lyricism put his nostalgia in appealing and appropriate musical perspective; his current clean-cut arena style makes him sound smug and strident, as well it should. Opening with a piece of radio pimpery in which a deejay becomes not just a benefactor (lie enough these days) but a hero of modern mythos, it moves on to songs about paranoids, battered wives, murderers, and dirty old men that reveal minimal charity for either side of the interactions they put down. Giveaways the self-fulfilling "Predictable" and the misanthropic title tune. C+
Covering the Dave Clark Five and "Little Drummer Boy" on the same side is a great schlock yea-saying move, but a move is all it is--makes me want to hear the originals rather than play the side again. Maybe if I knew the real "Nag" I'd feel the same about that. As it is, "Nag" has a spark that's lacking in all of Jett's originals except the complementary "You're Too Possessive." And I love rock 'n roll for its spark. B+
>>128853524I don't feel Nag works either just because nobody's buying the idea of her as a battered housewife.
as i think anon already mentioned, this year had uncommonly good production on heavy rock albums. most sounded really loud and sharp.
F
>>128853611Gone too soon.
>>128853524>except the complementary "You're Too Possessive."was that song directed at Kim Fowley? lol.
>>128853581Yes because Back In Black. Everyone was trying to copy that album's sound this year.
Christgau is a faggot, i hope the Voice fires him soon.
Hey did you guys hear that they're coming out with Pac-Man for the VCS this Christmas? Being able to play it at home sounds so exciting. Can't wait.
>>128851732this guy was gay
>>128854177That dog is alive
>>128853632That's actually a man.
