1978

                Another really great year.  Maybe better than ’77; if ’77 was all about potential and a raft of exciting new bands appearing, here’s where they start to get really good.  Also, here’s where “New Wave” as distinct from punk really starts to emerge, and even though New Wave as a genre tag is kinda meaningless (as it runs from the retro-rock of Nick Lowe to the synthy futurism of Gary Numan), it’s still a phenomenal time.  Much like after psychedelia, it’s a period where the normal rules of genre break down, and anything is fair game for a brief, fantastic time.  Punk in its breaking the rules way, if not at all sonically.

                Punk proper is starting to spread more widely.  Last year it was basically a London/NYC phenomenon, but now we’re starting to get punk bands crop up in places like L.A. and Boston; still in the big, hip cities, but spreading among them.  In L.A., we get the young Black Flag, who, like the early Brit-punks last year, yelp along in an energetic but primitive fashion.  Definitely still at this point with the rule-breaking excitement of punk, and not the highly rule-driven hardcore they’ll end up being associated with.  At this point, they also sound a lot like X, who again are a band yet to really live up to their rockabilly potential, but sound like a pretty solid punk group.  Meanwhile, in Boston, we’ve got the Real Kids, who are (like the Stranglers) actually an older group getting their first record out thanks to punk.  It makes me wonder how much of this stuff was going on throughout the 70s, but just couldn’t get recorded, and thus gets forgotten.  We already know acts like Strummer and Petty were already going, but basically ignored, and those are just the ones who managed to get a single recorded.

                In NYC, where punk was always more an ethos than a genre, most of what’s going on gets tagged as new-wave.  But in London, punk proper is even better this year.  Last year it was the Pistols and the Clash, and a bunch of bands with potential that weren’t there yet.  This year, the Pistols are gone, but the Clash’s 2^nd album actually sounds better than (the UK version of) their first.  I’m sympathetic intellectually to defending the 1^st as more “punk,” sounding as it does more stripped and driven by pure adrenaline, but the 2^nd benefits from real production and improved songcraft.  The Clash took a lot of grief for getting Blue Öyster Cult’s producer (Sandy Perlman) to produce Give ‘Em Enough Rope, and the album gets called the Clash’s “metal” album, but that’s not exactly right.  First of all, BÖC were always better/smarter than they were taken for, but more importantly, Give ‘Em Enough Rope isn’t a metal album; it’s a glam rock album.  The Ramones influence is stripped out, but the Mott the Hoople influence remains, making this basically a harder version of Mott’s sound.  This carries through into the Clash’s “Jail Guitar Doors” single (itself a reconstruct of an old 101ers track), but the other singles sound like the Who (“Clash City Rockers”) or more punk-reggae (“White Man in Hammersmith Palais”, the excellent Toots-cover b-side “Pressure Drop”).  The Clash’s non-album singles this year, by the way, are better than their album; some of the best stuff they’d ever do.  If only some US record label would throw them on a bastardized version of their first album…

                Also better than the Clash’s album this year are both of the Buzzcocks’ two records.  The Buzzcocks make a surprising move to being the best active punk band this year, both out-pop-punking the Ramones (at least the Ramones of Road to Ruin) and incorporating a subtle but very real Krautrock influence (mostly Can, but with some hints of the motorik beat as well).  Smarter than the Ramones lyrically, too, although the Ramones were always more “dumb” than dumb, lyrically.  It’s kind of not-punk to point it out, but the ’77 bands sound phenomenal with better production.  Still, there is something to the way that raw enthusiasm can make primitive songcraft and amateurish performance sound thrilling; this is true of the Black Flag stuff this year, but the best example is probably the Mekons’ singles this year, especially “Where Were You?”  The Mekons will get better later on, but never quite capture that primitive rush again.  And, heck, hardcore was basically all about trying to codify & capture what made that primitive rush great (and mostly failing, but that comes later).

                Of course, elsewhere the punks are getting sophisticated fast, especially in the newly-emerging post-punk.  If the Clash were a closet glam-rock band, it now becomes clear that a lot of the others were closet prog-rockers, or at least art-rockers.  We always knew this was the case for Wire, but they go deeper down the rabbit hole here, adding synths and mixing in longer drones with their radically short songs.  They may be the only band I know whose single edits can be twice as long as their album versions.  Elsewhere, both Magazine (a Buzzcocks off-shoot) and Public Image Limited (John(ny Rotton)Lydon’s new band) both basically abandon their initial punk sounds for something more down-tempo and moody.  Which makes it sound like metal, except that it’s much more about the drone than the beat.  Also much more emphasis on a cold, synthetic sound.  Overall, proof that these bands, at least, are just as interested in unconventional song structure and atmosphere as the prog-rockers, although the more limited musicianship puts them closer to Pink Floyd than the other proggers (not a slam, by the way: like Floyd, their non-virtuosic playing means they have to emphasize their songcraft rather than covering mediocre songwriting with flashy playing, the way (especially) Crimson could).   Johnny Rotten may have worn an “I Hate Pink Floyd” t-shirt, but I think the punk rocker doth protest too much.  Still, if you’re looking for a direct sonic influence, these bands owe a lot more to Bowie and Pop’s Berlin records of last year (especially Magazine, who have fallen in love with that cold synth sound).  Bowie, incidentally, releases his 2^nd live album, which is both better and less interesting than his first: better in that it sounds better while playing, but less interesting in that he’s not adding a lot to the songs, as opposed to the interesting but bad soul-style reinventions on David Live.

                Closely related to the post-punks (and, in fact, basically indistinguishable at this point) are the early goth-rockers.  I feel like I owe an apology to both Bauhaus and Siouxie and the Banshees, as I’d previously dismissed the goths as Joy Division wanna-bes.  But in ’78, Joy Division are still calling themselves Warsaw and still trying to be a punk band (and a pretty decent one, if not a groundbreaking one).  But the aforementioned early goths are mining post-punk territory already, and if pressed, I’n not sure I could say what separates them from the post-punks.  Probably lyrics, or maybe a slightly more danceable kind of darkness.  They do seem a touch more pop, if you can call a 7 minute single about a dead horror movie star “pop.”  It also could well be that synth-heavy post-punks I like get called “post-punk” and post-punks I don’t like get called “goth.”

                Post-punk, overall, though, is very much a UK phenomenon.  Maybe you could argue that Devo or Talking Heads count, but that’s a bit of a stretch.  Devo do, however, sound about as conventionally punk as they ever will on “Uncontrollable Urge.”  A stronger case might be made for the Talking Heads, who do, after all, release their first Brian Eno collaboration, which actually doesn’t sound much at all like what Eno was up to with Bowie last year.  Realizing how much the Talking Heads took from Roxy Music makes it obvious in retrospect to see why Eno was drawn to them.  It also makes it interesting to compare their “Take Me To The River” to fellow ex-Roxy member Brian Ferry’s, both released this year.  The Talking Head win this one easily, with a rearrangement that plays to David Byrne’s nervy energy, as opposed to Ferry’s more tepid arrangement and smarmy vocals.  Rev. Green’s is still the best, though.

                More broadly, New Wave is exploding in all sorts of directions.  Well, maybe two directions.  You’ve got on the one hand the upbeat pop-rock songs with synths of Squeeze, the Cars, and Blondie, and on the other a more straight-up retro sound from the likes of Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, and the Jam.  The latter are probably still more properly considered a punk band, but their songcraft is definitely getting subtler and they’ve moved away from the frantic rush of punk.  Costello puts out his most punk-like album himself, but like the Stranglers, sounds more like especially vitriolic garage rock than true buzzsaw-guitar punk rock.  Oh, and the Police have started this year, a band that a lot of people really love that I just think are pretty good.  Still, they certainly help contribute to a very good New Wave year.  Probably the best pop-rock year since ’66, at a minimum, with a bunch of bands throwing a bunch of elements into the stew, and generally producing entertaining  & clever results.

                You also get some artists that float around on the margins of New Wave.  You wouldn’t really call Cheap Trick New Wave, but it’s also not entirely clear why you wouldn’t.  They also go for the short, upbeat, pop-rock songs, albeit more conventional in their songcraft and without even a hint that they know that punk is going on.  You could say the same thing about Tom Petty, except that I really suspect that if he had stopped after his first 4 albums, people would still call Petty New Wave.  He’s certainly at least as New Wave-sounding as Nick Lowe, and (unlike Cheap Trick) based in a city (L.A.) where you can assume he’s at least aware of punk going on.  Also, like the New Wave acts, he’s got a certain nervy energy and a hint of rawness, especially on the album cuts.  See “I Need To Know,” for instance.  You could definitely hear some of the UK New Wave/punk acts doing that song.  Certainly at least as punk as, say, Generation X.

                By ’78, you also get some of the first hints of older acts responding to punk.  Zeppelin are spurred to try some more uptempo material, but you certainly wouldn’t really call “Wearing & Tearing” punk; it actually sounds more like Aerosmith (who basically sound like a more energetic Zeppelin at this point anyway).  Far more exciting, however, are the Stones.  After several years of diffidently drifting along, something’s lit a fire under Jagger (and I strongly suspect it wasn’t new guitarist/Richards drug buddy Ron Wood).  Maybe Mick just felt challenged by the punks in a constructive kinda way.  At any rate, Some Girls is a flat out fantastic album, even without the “for a band that’s been around this long” tag.  The Stones have always been a band with an ear to the ground of what’s going on, and this is, of course, both their big disco response and their big punk response.  That they put out some disco isn’t too surprising; they’d hardly be the first, and anyway they’d done some funk/disco on their last one.  But that “Miss You” is quite possibly the best disco song of them all is pretty remarkable.  I usually say that I like dance/electronic music about 10 years after it comes out, once it’s dated enough to sound cheap and trashy (like rock & roll, in other words): the Stones, however, manage to make it sound trashy right out of the gate (emphatically a complement).  Dance scenes are always kinda sleazy; the Stones just make it explicit.  Even more surprising than their disco touches are their punk ones.  It might be a stretch to call “Lies” or “When the Whip Comes Down” punk songs, but it’s not exactly ridiculous to do so either.  Curious that the Stones sounded like trend-chasers when they went glam on It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll, but energized when they turn to punk, what with glam being basically a tarted-up homage to the Stones anyway.  This is also the last record in which the Stones are innovators, although I suspect it’s accidental.  Still, near as I can tell, the Stones invent dance-punk here, on “Shattered.”  I can’t think of any other contenders, anyway.  Blondie have “Heart of Glass,” but that’s basically just a straight disco song done by a band with punk roots.  But the Stones actually combine the aggression & guitar of punk with the beat of disco.  So credit to them, although I don’t actually think, say, Gang of Four were inspired by the Stones.

                The only other major act this year to engage with punk is probably Springsteen.  Darkness on the Edge of Town is by no means a punk record, although it is considerably bleaker and more stripped sonically than his earlier stuff.  Springsteen himself claims that the punks energized him and motivated a lot of the construction of this one, and I have no reason to doubt him.  Certainly “Adam Raised A Cain” rocks harder than Springsteen has in the past.  Also, this year he writes a song for Patti Smith (“Because The Night”) and next year he’ll do the same for the Ramones (“Hungry Heart”, although he’ll end up keeping that one), so if not punk himself, he’s certainly got some ties to the NYC scene.  And punk or no, Darkness is a masterpiece.  My pet theory is that the indie kids love Nebraska more because that one’s bleakness is more abstracted and literary; Darkness is firmly connected to real people & their experiences (with despair and hope, dreams and disillusion) , and could feel downright voyeuristic to someone without a genuine working class connection. 

                One act that somewhat surprisingly hasn’t noticed punk yet is the Kinks.  If glam was an homage to the Stones, punk is practically an homage to the early Kinks.  But at this point the Kinks sound more like first-album Skynyrd (in terms of melodic guitar epics – think “Rock & Roll Fantasy” vs “Tuesday’s Gone”) than any punking descendents.  While I’m glad to have the Kinks back making records, this period of their career you’re really better off getting a greatest-hits: magnificent moments, but a big drop-off on the album cuts.  “Rock & Roll Fantasy” is one of my all-time Kinks favorites, goofy and stadium-ready as it may be, and it’s a bit jarring that it’s on the same album as “Hay Fever,” which sounds like it was written in a fit of needing to finish the album.

                Neil Young, who will become the punks’ favorite Old Waver, however, still hasn’t noticed punk at all either.  He’s still off on his country-rock reverie.  Comes A Time is a fine album, mining a mellow groove far more entertainingly than Harvest for my money (no big standout singles, but no pretentious string arrangements weighing it down either).  Pretty detached from the musical world around him, despite having AM gold chanteuse Nicolette Larson sing backup.  Dylan also is off in his own world, mining a bigger band sound on Street-Legal, a worthy if unremarkable follow-up to Desire.  Probably his third-best album of the 70s, but Dylan’s solidly off on his own path at this point, with little-to-no engagement with the rest of the musical world around him.  More power to him, and he still puts out a couple of really solid tracks on this one, though apart from “Changing of the Guard” and “Senor,” little really sticks off of this one.  Jethro Tull, also, are off in their own musical world, continuing their prog-folk journey.  Stuff like Dylan and Tull are hard for me to write about in this project, as they don’t really relate to whatever else is going on, however good they may be.  And Heavy Horses is pretty solid, my favorite of Tull’s late-period albums. 

                Based on my own music collection, it’s easy to think  that punk & New Wave was huge in ’78, but of course it barely made a blip commercially relative to other things.  Tull, for instance, sound out-of-touch in my collection, but were still a big touring draw, and they’ve got a double-live album to prove it.  Bursting Out is pretty solid, with entertaining performances and wry interludes by Ian Anderson (though I suspect the latter are scripted: certainly when we compared notes on our respective Tull concerts a couple of summers ago, my brother and I learned that he said about the same things in two different East Coast cities…).  The biggest thing in the mainstream is probably the rise of pop-metal.  Judas Priest is probably my best exemplar here; they’ve pretty much abandoned their proggier roots in favor of sounding like a harder AC/DC.  Also Motorhead are kicking around, but they’re ragged enough that you could mistake them for a punk band if the guitar playing wasn’t a touch too professional. 

                Speaking of guitar-playing, you get the second (and second-best) Boston album, which makes me really think this is a band that suffered from coming around too late.  Compared to what else was coming out of Boston in ’78 (the Cars, the Real Kids), Boston sound entirely too clinical and precise.  But it’s a really nice pop-prog sound, and if their contemporaries had been ELO and Queen (i.e. in ’74) they’d probably be much more fondly remembered than they are (instead they’re grouped with bands like Toto and Journey, about which I have far less good to say – as I’ve noted before, they count calculated in a commercial way, while Boston sounds calculated in a vaguely OCD way).  Elsewhere in pop-prog, Queen put out two of my favorite Queen songs – “Fat Bottomed Girls” and “Don’t Stop Me Now,” so they’re having a good year, while more straight-up prog has a year of me just not feeling that strongly about it.  Yes’s Tormato isn’t as bad as its reputation, but neither is it a record I can get particularly excited about.  That’s more or less also the case for Rush’s Hemispheres; it’s got some good songs, but none of my favorite Rush songs.  Partly it’s impatience on my part.  I know that Rush are about to get much better…

                Outside of rock, my collection is surprisingly limited this year.  I have enough funk, however, to say that it’s the other genre that’s got a lot going on in it this year.  This is something of a high-water-mark for the P-Funk Mob.  Parliament has one of their biggest and best hits (“Flashlight”), Fundadelic release what a lot of people claim is their best album (One Nation Under The Groove), and even Bootsy Collins puts out his best record (Bootsy? Player of the Year).  I can’t argue with much of that, except to note that One Nation Under the Groove, while a fantastic album, sounds like a fantastic Parliament album, and I liked Funkadelic better when they had their own, somewhat more rock, musical identity; so my favorite Funkadelic record is probably either Maggot Brain or America Eats Its Young.  Also, a couple of artists show up this year who’ll be major players in funk in the upcoming decade.  Rick James already has his sound down, but Prince is still working on his stuff.  Give him a year or two, though…

Song of the Year:  Parliament – “Flashlight” Good in its 3-minute edit, better in its 5-minute edit, but magnificent in its 11-minute edit.  Both funky as hell and compositionally innovative; what’s not to love?  Like a “Heroes” you can’t help but dance to.

Album of the Year:  Either the Rolling Stones’ Some Girls or Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town.  More accurately, whichever one I listened to most recently.  See above for details.  Not that there aren’t fantastic New Wave albums this year – both Blondie and the Cars release their best albums in ’78.

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  The Buzzcocks.  I’d always loved them, but they really were the finest punk band active in ’78.  Considering the Clash and the Ramones were still at/near near their peaks, that says something too…

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  Generation X, maybe?  I never took them all that seriously, but heard back-to-back with the superior pop-punk of the Buzzcocks and the much more raw punk of the Mekons leaves Generation X sounding like 3^rd-stringers in comparison.

Album List

ABBA - Gold

AC/DC - AC/DC

Aerosmith - Aerosmith's Greatest Hits

Albert Collins - Ice Pickin'

Black Flag - The First Four Years

Blondie - Best Of Blondie

Blondie – Parallel Lines

Blue Öyster Cult - Workshop Of The Telescopes

Bob Dylan – Street-Legal

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Legend

Bootsy’s Rubber Band – Bootsy? Player of the Year

Boston – Don’t Look Back

Brian Ferry – The Bride Stripped Bare

Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town

Bruce Springsteen - The Essential Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen - The Promise

Buzzcocks - Another Music In A Different Kitchen

Buzzcocks - Live At The Lyceum

Buzzcocks - Love Bites

Cheap Trick - The Authorized Greatest Hits

Chuck Brown - The Best Of Chuck Brown

Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young) - Carry On

David Bowie – Stage

Devo - Pioneers Who Got Scalped: The Anthology

Elvis Costello - Best Of

Elvis Costello – This Year’s Model

Fela Kuti - The Best Best Of Fela Kuti

Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove

Generation X – Generation X

Gentle Giant – Giant For A Day

Goblin - Goblin

Jethro Tull - Heavy Horses

Jethro Tull – Live – Bursting Out

Jimmy Buffett - Songs You Know By Heart

Johnny Thunders - So Alone

Joy Division - 1977-1978 - Warsaw

Joy Division - Substance 1977-1980

Judas Priest - Metal Works '73-'93

Lou Reed - Collections

Lynyrd Skynyrd - All-Time Greatest Hits

Magazine - Rays And Hail 1978-1981: The Best Of Magazine

Marvin Gaye - Here, My Dear

Michael Jackson - The Essential Michael Jackson

Motörhead - No Remorse

Neil Young – Comes A Time

Nick Lowe - Basher: The Best Of Nick Lowe

Nick Lowe - Jesus of Cool (Reissue)

Nick Lowe - Nutted By Reality

Parliament - Tear The Roof Off 1974-1980

Patti Smith - Outside Society

Paul McCartney - Wingspan: History

Paul McCartney - Wingspan: Hits

Peter Tosh - Equal Rights [Bonus Tracks]

Prince - The Hits

Public Image Ltd. - First Issue

Queen - Greatest Hits

Rick James - Motown Legends: Give It to Me Baby

Rush - Chronicles

Siouxie & the Banshees – The Scream

Squeeze - Singles 45's And Under

Steely Dan - A Decade of Steely Dan

Sun Ra - Lanquidity

Talking Heads – More Songs About Buildings and Food

Talking Heads - Sand In The Vaseline

Talking Heads - The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads [Live] [Bonus Tracks]

The Cars – The Cars

The Cars - The Cars Greatest Hits

The Clash - Clash On Broadway

The Clash – Give ‘Em Enough Rope

The Clash - Live: From Here to Eternity

The Fall - 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats

The Grateful Dead - Shakedown Street

The Grateful Dead (live incomplete) - Dick's Picks Volume 25: New Haven, CT 5/10/1978 / Springfiel

The Jam - All Mod Cons

The Jam - Compact Snap

The Kinks - Come Dancing With The Kinks

The Kinks – Misfits

The Mekons - Fast Product Singles

The Mekons - Where Were You?

The Police - Every Breath You Take: The Singles

The Ramones - Mania

The Ramones - Road to Ruin

The Real Kids - The Real Kids

The Rolling Stones - Forty Licks

The Rolling Stones – Some Girls

The Stranglers – Black & White

The Upsetters - Arkology I: Dub Organiser

The Upsetters - Arkology III: Dub Adventurer

The Who - Pete Townshend - Lifehouse Elements

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Playback I: The Big Jangle

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Playback IV: The Other Sides

V/A - Back In The Day Jamz

V/A - Beleza Tropical: Brazil Classics 1

V/A - Children Of Nuggets I

V/A - Children Of Nuggets II

V/A - Children Of Nuggets III

V/A - Post Punk Chronicles: Left Of The Dial

V/A - Pure Funk

V/A - Russ's Punk Mix

V/A - Snatch

V/A - Trojan Dub Massive Chapter I

Waylon Jennings - Best Of Waylon Jennings

Wire - Chairs Missing

X - Beyond & Back: The X Anthology

Yes – Tormato