| Author | Message | ||
     Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8678 Registered: 05-2005 |
No Go-Betweens. https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and -guides/the-200-best-albums-of-the-1980s / | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3973 Registered: 03-2005 |
Boo. Hiss. A list of the records that made me think the 1980s was a musically crap decade. Ok, I have rather specific tastes, but you cannot make a case for Duran Duran at all unless sales is all you're talking about. There are a bunch of records on here that I bought back then which haven't aged at all well. Shouldn't a list compiled nearly 40 years later filter out the chaff and tell people what from the decade they ought to pay attention to? Wouldn't that almost certainly include a LOT of at-the-time obscure releases that have worn well with age? Isn't that a music critic's actual job? Who needs a list of best sellers? Yes, most of us are probably Uni graduates and that removes us from the mainstream but NO Go Betweens? None? Really? With how many groups they inspired including everybody's sacred Smiths and later on Belle & Sebastian? Look at all of the authentically unimportant, uninfluential records on this list and consider that Pitchfork regards them as more important than "Before Hollywood" or "Liberty Belle" or "16 Lovers Lane." I suppose the real purpose is to reassure the readers that their old choices were the right ones, instead of providing information. How else to explain the likes Madonna and Michael Jackson on there? Multiple times! At least they figured out that the Cocteaus' "Treasure" is better than "Blue Bell Knoll." At least they heard of the Cocteaus. "Purple Rain" Prince's big forgettable fluff record is #1!! Best album of the 1980s! Rob, was Pitchfork always this way? Were they bought out by Times Warner or something? Re Brooce's "Born in the USA" cover, you non-gay folks might be interested in knowing that hanging a red thing (usually a handkerchief, but a cap will do just fine) in your righthand rear pocket in the 70s and 80s meant you like to have another guy put his fist up your posterior. I'm not making that up. That was standard urban gay signalling in the US. Basically Australia didn't exist for the Pitchfork folks. They think AC/DC takes care of Oz. Would these dummies be shocked if they heard the Triffids' through-'86 records? Had they ever heard of the Saints? The Scientists? Ok, Padraig, mission accomplished. You got me all riled up. But this is a perfectly fine example of why mainstream music critics are not worth notice. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 552 Registered: 08-2005 |
Hmmm, haven't gone through it yet - skimmed the bottom 40 and top 40 - but their taste is drastically different from mine. Good to see REM's Murmur so high, and Remain in Light and Hounds of Love in the top five, but Disintegration, the highest placed Cure album, can't compete with Seventeen Seconds or Pornography. No Go-Betweens albums (Noooooo!) presumably also means no Brave Words by The Chills? | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8681 Registered: 05-2005 |
Early 1984, on a highway in New Jersey, as final preparations are made for the release of Born In The USA. Jon Landau (Springsteen's manger): Bruce, the new record is sensational, it's gonna be huge. But there is one demographic that has traditionally been resistant to you. Bruce Springsteen: Is it the Republicans, Jon? Landau: No, they're on board thanks to misinterpreting your lyrics. What it is, is you need to reach out to the fisting community. Springsteen: (Pauses a moment to think...) I have a plan... | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8682 Registered: 05-2005 |
I was previously unaware of the meaning of the red in the back pocket btw. I always found that cover curious. It's good to have it explained 34 years later. As for the Pitchfork list, there are several albums I've never heard of ion it. Most of them seem to be electronic and I am going to check them out if I can. At least one features the dread phrase "never released on CD" which probably means the record, if possible to find at all, would cost a fortune. And yes, the amount of Madonna records that should be in there is zero. Mainstream pop has almost always sucked to me. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3974 Registered: 03-2005 |
No Chills, Simon, unless I missed it in all my dudgeon. I don't think I did. They did list a 1988 compilation of the Clean released in the U.S. but not an actual album of theirs. Padraig I know exactly nothing about Brooce except that he is a famously super nice guy. I have never heard a story of him being a jerk. I don't know what to think of that cover but I might wonder if it's some sort of answer to the cover of Sticky Fingers. Maybe a record label art director was getting revenge on him. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1922 Registered: 08-2006 |
Oh, my god, Padraig's post made me spit coffee. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1923 Registered: 08-2006 |
I confess I haven't looked at the list. Partly because it's Pitchfork and Pitchfork always does their revisionist/we-have-to-own-music-history thing but also because these best-of-a-decade lists are exhausting. Pitchfork puts "Purple Rain" at #1 and from a certain perspective, it certainly could be. That's one perspective on that decade. I happen to think "Let It Be" by the Replacements is unquestionably the greatest album of that decade and think anyone who thinks differently has lead between their ears. But that's how I experienced that decade. It was X and the Clash and Husker Du and Elvis Costello and the Go-Betweens and Richard Thompson and, yes, Prince and Bruce Springsteen (in massive doses). It was also all that wonderful fluff on the radio. The point is, no list will satisfy me. I lived through it. The kids at Pitchfork didn't. And even if they did, like you guys here, they probably lived it (and heard it) differently. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8684 Registered: 05-2005 |
Rob, I think that's the second time I've made you spit your coffee with a Springsteen reference. The previous time was about a decade ago when I made a reference to the "Bruce-hating eurotrash on this board". I'd be more inclined to put Don't Tell A Soul at the top of my list of Replacements albums. I've never understood why so many Replacements fans dislike it. It was the first Replacements album I bought, so that probably colours my view. But Don't Tell A Soul is not my favourite 80s record. That would be Hounds Of Love. Have we done a thread on this in the past, or did we just do individual years? | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1474 Registered: 10-2006 |
The 80s was the decade of my own personal Brexit, if in the opposite direction. My old man, bless him, bought me an Aiwa CS 210, a perfect size to slip into my suitcase, and I was off. Of the cascade of cassettes I took with me, none was more cherished than Hatful of Hollow, a musical life changer if ever there was one. Suddenly, wit, literariness and sensitivity were important in music. British geography leapt into perspective, rainswept moors, iron bridges, dreary canals. Young men did not have to leap into hotrods and accelerate into the badlands. And it all came tumbling towards you on a mellifluous resonance of clanging guitars. I had lost interest in modern music for a period, but I would never do so again. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1232 Registered: 04-2005 |
Lovely Stuart ! Ever thought of taking up writing ? Personally as far as all these lists go, I'm past caring about other peoples' opinions and ranking of the unrankable. The nadir was a Mojo with The Smiths' top 50 songs...and I thought they can't have actually written that many more. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1475 Registered: 10-2006 |
Furthermore: the song that convinced me to buy HOH was William it was really nothing. The song, it is said, refers to Billy McKenzie. Billy McKenzie came from Dundee and started a group called the Associates with a lad called Alan Rankine. For a brief period, Alan Rankine sat beside me in Mrs Nimmo’s Modern Studies class in secondary. Q. E. D. Shame AR didn’t pick up on my own unique vocal abilities at the time, but I was too absorbed in Jan Akkerman, and he in tennis. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3976 Registered: 03-2005 |
Small world. Stuart, what is taught in Modern Studies class? | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1476 Registered: 10-2006 |
Considering the rather addled mental state of the teacher, very little. I remember we saw a documentary about the Trans-Siberian railway about ten times, mainly by request, and simply for the fun of seeing her struggle with working the projector. Alan himself became a sort of running joke, since she insisted on calling out his name long after he'd headed elsewhere. This gave us the chance to be creative regarding the wide range of accidents that had sadly befallen him and kept him to his bed."Oh miss, a penguin bit him at the zoo. His hand got poisoned." And so on. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 8687 Registered: 05-2005 |
Great stories, Stuart. More please, when you get a chance. |