1984

                1984 was somewhat surprisingly a bit of an improvement on 1983.  No major musical innovations, but a whole host of excellent albums from established bands both old and new, especially in the American alt-rock world.  In addition, a lot of “background noise”: solid work from a host of bands that maybe didn’t put out a remarkable album or break substantial new ground, but put out worthy stuff.  Acts like Queen, Rush, the Violent Femmes, or Nick Lowe.  Or the Ramones, who discover hardcore this year (which they do well at, but still isn’t as compelling as the classic 70s Ramones sound; still better than when Dee Dee discovers rap). 

                But, of course, a pair of the biggest albums of the 80s also come out in ’84, albums that tower, Thriller-like over both the decade and the respective artists’ careers.  I refer, of course, to Born in the U.S.A. and Purple Rain.  Not a whole lot of similarities to draw between the two of them.  Springsteen’s is by no means his peak, but not the sellout it gets dismissed as.  Prince’s arguably is his peak, or at least one of his best two (the other being Sign O’ The Times).  Both artists do, for what it’s worth, bury one of their best songs of the year on a b-side.  Springsteen has “Pink Cadillac,” which may be the most straight-up fun song in his catalogue, while Prince’s “Erotic City” is the most Parliament-like track he’s ever done, and as funky as that sounds.   Downright criminal that the full 7 minute edit has never been re-released. 
                A great year for Minneapolis generally this year.  Partly this is because of Prince, what with Morris Day and the Time basically being a vehicle for Prince to release more lightweight party jams.  (though “Jungle Love” is a fantastic lightweight party jam).  But a lot of it has nothing to do with Prince, or funk at all, and rather comes from the city’s burgeoning punk scene.  The Replacements finally develop into the band they’ve been building toward since Stink.  No longer a punk band (they even cover KISS!), but a masterful alt-rock band.  Westerberg has become one of the best Townshend-style chroniclers of young-man angst, and like Townshend has more or less kept a sense of humor.  Still sloppy as hell, but in a way that just makes the Replacements more relatable.  The other (other) great Minneapolis act of the 80s also release their first masterpiece, but while the Replacements have moved beyond their hardcore roots, Hüsker Dü instead make one of the finest punk-rock albums not only of the decade, but of the genre.  Zen Arcade is nothing short of a Quadrophenia for the 80s, a double album that tells a moderately-coherent story of alienated youth that’s just under a side too long.  But unlike Townshend’s operatic synths, the Hüskers are working out of a hardcore paradigm.  What’s downright exciting is you can practically hear the process of the band evolving, from the more straight-up hardcore of  the first half through the more classic punk-rock sound of the third side to the side-long psychedelic jam that closes out the record (and unlike, say George Harrison’s Apple Jam, well worth the time).  This was the first hardcore album I ever purchased, so maybe that explains why the rest of the genre has been a disappointment to me.

                Remarkably enough, though, not even the best double-lp released on SST in 1984.  The Minutemen put out their masterpiece, the phenomenal Double Nickels on the Dime.  If you want to play SATs, I suppose you’d say Double Nickels : Zen Arcade :: The White Album : Exile on Main St.  You have to go to an album like The White Album or Sandinista to find a band packing as many ideas into songs.  It’s not perfect: they still don’t have a great producer, and some of the 46(!) songs are unsurprisingly more fragments or sketches than fully-formed pieces.  Also, they’re not nearly as stylistically diverse as either the Beatles or Clash, although they’ve expanded well beyond their original funk-punk template.  And they cover Van Halen (as a piss-take) and Steely Dan (as, I think, a genuine tribute).  As they themselves say in the liner notes, take that, Hüskers!

                Black Flag also return in ’84, after label disputes kept them from releasing a follow up to Damaged for a couple of years.  Like labelmates Hüsker Dü and the Minutemen, they release 2 lps worth of material, albeit across two albums.  Side one of My War is straight-up punk (and my favorite side of Flag material), but elsewhere they’ve begun their transition into a sludgy metal band.  Not that they sound anything like mainstream metal in ’84.  It’s a long long way from the atonal howling & sludge of My War’s side two to the highly polished power-metal of Dio.  Sadly, while last year Dio recalled his work with Sabbath enough to be fun enough to overcome the ridiculousness, this year the balance doesn’t work out so well.  “Mystery” in particular is all operatic vocals and production sheen, without any riffs to make a compelling listen.  Fortunately, Judas Priest do an admirable job with a similar sound, remembering to add the riffs and a bit of grit.  Not a patch on the grit of Mötorhead, though, who haven’t changed their sound much at all, but I should mention here as my favorite Mötorhead jam, “Killed By Death,” is from this year.  Still, probably my favorite metal album this year is Spinal Tap’s.  The Tap, of course, got their start as a 60s mod-rock band, but really hit their stride with a Deep Purple-based 70s metal style.  It’s refreshing to hear that sound again, on the excellent career retrospective that accompanies their documentary from this year.

                If Dio sounded ridiculous singing about elves this year, the Fall's Mark E. Smith gratifyingly sounds as grumpy and bitter as ever. The Fall actually go pop this year, with catchy guitar and chipper backing vocals from their new guitarist/Mrs. Smith.  Still, pop for the Fall still means slurred drunken vocals ranting angrily about whatever's on Mark's mind, whether its English folklore or an inability to find a light bulb.  Although it’s far more well-written than that description might lead one to believe.  Also the Flaming Lips (on their debut EP) are starting to sound like Fall followers this year.

 Also going somewhat pop this year are Public Image, who score an honest to goodness club hit with their Clash-mocking "This Is Not A Love Song," an even more unlikely hit than the Gang of Four's “I Love A Man In A Uniform.”  They actually sound not unlike the Gang of Four this year, with horn chart and a more prominent danceable beat, and a bitter Englishman spitting out fragmentary lyrics on top.  Of course, this sound touches on a couple of other elements as well, at times recalling the early industrial sound starting to develop and at other times reminding me of Run-DMC’s attempts to fuse big beats and rock guitars.  This isn’t so incredible, really what with John Lydon also collaborating with Afrika Bambaata and Bill Laswell (who’ll produce the next PiL record) on the very PiL-sounding “Time Zone.”  Overall, this is the beginning of PiL the radio-ready alt-rock band and the end of PiL the abrasive noise-rock band.

                Elsewhere in the art-rock world, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic and King Crimson continue to draw closer to each other, although by this point Birdsongs sound far less pop-friendly than Crimson.  Three of A Perfect Pair is starting to suffer from diminishing returns, though, as this sound just isn’t as new as it was back on Discipline.  The band too, apparently felt that they were reaching their limit, and would break up for awhile after this year.  Birdsongs, however, do quite well with their “hard rocking chamber music” sound, which again sounds most comfortable around Crimson’s similarly classically-minded hard rock.

                Closer to the mainstream, Midnight Oil continue to work their “big” stadium post-punk, this time adding a horn section to great effect but otherwise very close in sound to last year.  Much better album art, though.  U2, however, are moving back in a somewhat more obtuse direction, having hooked up with their new producer, Brian Eno.  If nothing else, this project has made me realize why Eno stopped making pop records on his own in 1977: he started just stepping in to take a commanding role in other acts as a producer, first with Bowie, then with the Talking Heads, and now with U2.  In that sense, “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” is very much in a lineage with “Heroes” and “Once In A Lifetime” of shimmering, vaguely formless pop songs carried far more on textures than riffs.  So U2 have moved away from the “big” sound of last year’s War, and to a degree back to the texture-based post-punk of October, but it’s when they fuse the Unforgettable Fire sound with the big hooks of War that they’ll hit the peak of their classic period.  If nothing else, this project is making me realize just how much, even in their “classic” period, U2 was constantly playing with their sound.

                Meanwhile, the Talking Heads have moved outside of the Eno camp, and while they don’t have a new studio record this year, they do have a phenomenal live album.  And the Grateful Dead in the 90s will totally steal the keyboard sound they use here (although since they bring in guest keyboardist Bernie Worrell, late of P-Funk, it might be his sound I’m praising here).  Anyway, the Talking Heads are almost the last American New Wave band standing at this point.  Devo are practically a self-parody at this point.  The Cars are back, though, with a slick radio-ready sound courtesy of Def Leppard-AC/DC producer Mutt Lange.  It makes me wonder if the chart success of Heartbeat City didn’t inspire X to get their own pop-metal producer to glam their sound up next year.  The Cars and Bruce Springsteen actually both make very similar records this year.  In both cases, the core sound is basically unchanged, but they’ve added a thick candy gloss on top of the same kind of songs they’ve always done.  Some of these are among their best songs for both (esp. “Drive” but in both cases, the production sheen, while translating into the biggest seller of their career, means that these records are much more dated and sound more compromised than their classic records.  Of course, it’s worth noting with Springsteen’s that, if you listen to the lyrics, Born In The U.S.A. is as bleak a record as Darkness On The Edge of Town or Nebraska, just smuggled into mainstream radio play.  Fooled Reagan, that’s for sure…

                The New Wave in the UK is also starting to reach its end, although here it’s basically mutated into a kind of soul-pop sound.  Certainly this is the last year I have a release from some derivative of all of the “big three” of the Second Wave, although two of those come with a big asterisk.  The Special AKA are a worthy band, and certainly sound more Specials-like than the other Specials successors, the Fun Boy Three.  Although it’s also probably fair to say that what the Special AKA do is following up on the moody, jazzy darkness of the Ghost Town EP, while the Fun Boy Three are much more a follow-up to the upbeat eclecticism of More Specials.  Probably what you can hear are the very forces that pulled the Specials apart at work…

                Certainly the motives that split the Beat are less clear from their successor groups (although we won’t hear from the Fine Young Cannibals until next year).  Certainly General Public sound like a worthy follower to the pop sound of the last Beat record, if a bit disappointing as a Clash follow-up (Mick Jones was briefly a member of General Public, long enough to play guitar on their debut but already gone when it came time to shoot the cover art; there were also former Specials and Dexy’s Midnight Runners in there, but you can’t hear their influence either).  It’s poppy like the Beat, but lacks the musical adventurousness of the Clash.  Still, “Tenderness” is an entirely worthy soul-pop song in a similar vein as Squeeze or the Style Council.

                The Beat may have joined the Specials in the dustbin of history, but Madness are still together, and still pushing a soul-pop sound that has little to do with their ska roots, but nevertheless is quite compelling.  It’s interesting to speculate on why Madness do so well with this sound, but Elvis Costello (who last year started sharing their producer) flounders so badly with it this year.  Perhaps because the horn section was an integral part of Madness, and just session musicians tacked on to the Attractions.  Or maybe because Madness were just better at writing in that style.  Either way, Elvis himself calls Goodbye, Cruel World the worst record of his career, and who am I to disagree?  The Style Council also have a terrible year this year.  Three singles, all of them duds, in keeping with the “ballads-are-terrible” formula I put forth last year.  Such limp trendy pop stuff; you’d never guess Paul Weller used to be a punk rocker.

                That’s actually something I’ve found myself pondering a fair amount this year with the last dregs of New Wave (esp. UK New Wave).  Have I just become accustomed to the gradual decline of the New Wave that I accept this stuff, a lot of which is pretty disposable pop at this point, or have my ears now started learning to appreciate this music on its own terms?  I guess the test will be in ’91, when punk comes back…

                Speaking of punk coming back, though, the Pogues debut this year.  This is a band that I always assumed were contemporaries of the likes of the Clash and the Damned, but I hear them differently realizing what it means that they debuted in ’84, long after punk died out in the UK.  It actually makes me think more highly of the Pogues (who I always loved, but now moreso), knowing that their contemporaries were such UK alt-rock of the likes of New Order and the Smiths.  Whatever the virtues of those acts (and they certainly had their virtues), they were very mannered, with everything in its right place.  The Pogues, on the other hand, have the “about to go off the rails” quality of the best of punk rock, just applied to Irish folk songs.  And about the only other band bottling a similar energy in the UK this year is the Fall. 

The Pogues are also kind of a one-band folk revival, which makes them stand out all the more.  I suppose you could count Billy Bragg, who, after all, is very much in a folk idiom, although really he sounds more like a lost disciple of the old 60s NYC folk scene, while the Pogues are to Irish folk as, say, the Stones are to American blues.  Genuinely devoted, but more than willing to muck it up a bit.  That said, I do grow fonder and fonder of Billy Bragg, who may be derived from the disappointing NYC folk scene, but is so much better than the lot of them, both on his love songs and his political songs.  Plus, this year he starts messing with his sound, adding a trumpet here or a keyboard there, still very Spartan but opening up his palette a lot. 

Also if you’re looking for folk rock, there’s the Byrds-post-punk fusion of both R.E.M. and the Smiths.  R.E.M. are also opening up their sound this year, moving away from the murky Murmer aesthetic to a more clean production and more articulate vocals from Michael Stipe.  Still, though, one of the most distinctive frontmen in rock in a long long time.  It’s interesting to compare Stipe to Morrissey in the Smiths.  Sonically, the two acts have a lot in common, all Byrds-derived guitar arpeggio sounds with more post-punk beats and textures, with a frontman missing a lot of the stereotypical rock frontman postures.  Still, though, Morrissey is far closer to “conventional” than Stipe, recalling (most proximately) Terry Hall of Fun Boy Three/the Specials, but also some of the more literate end of glam rock.  Stipe, however, is both much more without precedent, and therefore much more interesting; also very much the template for the reclusive frontman in the Kurt Cobain/Eddie Vedder vein, although now we’re getting ahead of ourselves.  Still, if the first Athens band to break, Pylon, were an Athens band imitating the British Gang of Four, this year the Smiths sound like a Manchester band following the Athens-based R.E.M. 

I suppose I’ll just close by mentioning another Manchester band.  No new album from New Order, but a pair of singles that, together with last year’s “Confusion” really show the band finally getting into territory where it’s inconceivable that Joy Division would have gotten to.  So they’ve really found their own identity, and that’s to be commended, even if that identity is less interesting than Joy Division’s….

Song of the Year:  Prince – “Purple Rain”  Prince has always borrowed a lot from Funkadelic (Parliament too, but mostly Fundadelic), and this is definitely his “Maggot Brain” or “Wars of Armageddon” or the like.  A fine example of how, in addition to being a fine singer & songwriter, Prince was one of the best guitarist of his generation.

Album of the Year:  Either Purple Rain or Double Nickels on the Dime.  The former is damn near perfect, and hands-down the best pop album of the decade, while the latter is just bubbling over with enough ideas that a normal band would have spread them out over four albums.  Also, though, a phenomenal year for a whole host of other artists, especially in American alt-rock.

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  Billy Bragg.  I grow fonder and fonder of Billy.  So sympathetic in both his politics and his love songs.  Really not at all far from Springsteen in his lyrical focuses, if quite different musically.

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  Dio.  That whole power-metal thing got a lot ridiculous surprisingly quickly.

Album List

Billy Bragg - Must I Paint You A Picture?: The Essential Billy Bragg

Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic - Magnetic Flip

Black Flag – My War

Black Flag - The Last Two Years

Bruce Springsteen - 18 Tracks

Bruce Springsteen – Born in the U.S.A.

Bruce Springsteen - The Essential Bruce Springsteen

Chuck Brown - The Best Of Chuck Brown

David Bowie - Best Of Bowie

David Bowie - Changesbowie

Devo - Pioneers Who Got Scalped: The Anthology

Dio - The Very Beast Of Dio

Edwyn Collins | Orange Juice - A Casual Introduction 1981/2001

Elvis Costello - Best Of

Elvis Costello - Out Of Our Idiot

Fela Kuti - The Best Best Of Fela Kuti

General Public - …All The Rage

Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade

Iron Maiden - Misc.

Joe Pass / J.J. Johnson - We'll Be Together Again

Judas Priest - Metal Works '73-'93

King Crimson - In the Studio 1981-1984

King Crimson - Live 1982-1984

King Crimson – Three of a Perfect Pair

Lou Reed - Collections

Madness – Keep Moving

Madness - Total Madness: The Very Best Of Madness

Merle Haggard - HAG: The Best Of Merle Haggard

Midnight Oil - 20,000 Watts R.S.L.: Greatest Hits

Midnight Oil – Red Sails in the Sunset

Minutemen - Double Nickels On The Dime

Motörhead - No Remorse

New Order - Substance

Nick Lowe - Basher: The Best Of Nick Lowe

Nick Lowe - Nutted By Reality

Paul McCartney - Wingspan: History

Paul McCartney - Wingspan: Hits

Prince - Misc.

Prince – Purple Rain

Prince - The B-Sides

Prince - The Hits

Public Image Ltd. - This Is What You Want...This Is What You Get

Queen - Classic Queen

Queen - Greatest Hits

R.E.M. - Dead Letter Office

R.E.M. - Reckoning

Red Hot Chili Peppers - What Hits!?

Run-D.M.C. - Greatest Hits

Rush - Chronicles

Skinny Puppy - Back And Forth Series Two

Spinal Tap - This Is Spinal Tap

Steel Pulse - Earth Crisis

Stevie Ray Vaughan - Greatest Hits

Stevie Ray Vaughan - The Real Deal: Greatest Hits Vol. 2

Talking Heads - Sand In The Vaseline

Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense: Special New Edition (1984 Film)

The Cars – Heartbeat City

The Cars - The Cars Greatest Hits

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

The Fall - Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall

The Flaming Lips - The Flaming Lips EP

The Grateful Dead - 1984-07-21 - Ventura County Fairgrounds

The Grateful Dead - 1984-07-22 - Ventura County Fairgrounds

The Jesus & Mary Chain - 21 Singles

The Kinks - Come Dancing With The Kinks

The Pogues - Red Roses For Me

The Ramones - Mania

The Replacements - Let It Be

The Smiths - Louder Than Bombs

The Smiths - Singles

The Special AKA – In The Studio

The Specials - The Singles Collection

The Style Council - The Singular Adventures Of The Style Council

The Wards - Don't Make the U.S. Shoot the Pershing II

Time Zone – World Destruction

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

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Playback V: Through The Cracks

Toots & The Maytals - Time Tough - The Anthology

U2 - B-Sides 1980-1990

U2 - The Best Of 1980-1990

U2 - The Unforgettable Fire

V/A - '80s Hits Back

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 - Children Of Nuggets IV

V/A - Old School II

V/A - Pure 80's

Violent Femmes - Add It Up (1981-1993)

Wailing Souls - The Best of the Wailing Souls

Waylon Jennings - Best Of Waylon Jennings

Yellowman – King Yellowman