998. blue water

“As the story goes, when Keith Levene split Public Image Ltd, he had a few recent master recordings under his arm. Which is a good thing. Else we probably would never have heard the likes of Blue Water, which first showed up as a b-side in 1983. Deep and weird and exactly the kind of thing you wanted cranked to the nines on your ghetto blaster when the drugs were all kicking in and you had an abandoned industrial zone to explore, with a fog moving in from the harbour and twilight looming.” (Philip Random)

PIL-live

999. made of stone

The Stone Roses hit like a fresh breeze in 1989 with a self-titled debut album which they’d never come close to matching. The lyrics may have worked a dark edge but the sound was all cool light, a powerful pop that was also ethereal, expansive, exploding with the sort of complex colours that the decade in question had mostly forgotten even existed. The future looked vibrant, maybe even good.

stoneRoses-painted

1000. time

The actor (aka David Bowie, David Jones, Ziggy Stardust) is starting to crack here. We all were in retrospect. Even if you were a thickheaded suburban kid barely into puberty – the whole 60s thing just wasn’t playing out as anticipated.  Revolution in our time?  Maybe. But by 1973, it was clear it wouldn’t be an old-fashioned political revolution.  No, it was all going to be much weirder than that.

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