Tag Archives: 1980

699. listening wind

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“Remain In Light is one of those albums that changed me forever. Because here were the Talking Heads, a so-called New Wave band, embracing every sound (musical and otherwise) that the world had to offer and making it work, brilliantly, rearranging how my ears heard music. Listening Wind comes from toward the end of Side-B and speaks of wide open spaces, infinity even, all manner of mystery and imagination and reasons to live. I’ve watched a lot of suns set to this one, and a few rise.” (Philip Random)

TalkingHeads-1980-2

704. reverse lion + downtown samba

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Two tracks that flow together as one in Philip Random‘s mind. “It always bugs me when people call Yello synth-pop. Yeah, they have synths and they’re not afraid to pop, but there’s so much more going on, with their first album Solid Pleasure a solid clue as what it was all about. It was about everything – from drones to sambas to just pure out there techno-pleasures. I had a drummer friend who’d throw side-one onto the turntable and just pound away to it. He said it was all there, everything he could ever want from music. Ten years later, he was a deadhead, but that’s another chapter.” (Philip Random)

yello-1980

708. somewhere over the rainbow

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“I first heard Bobby Blue Bland‘s take on this masterpiece of yearning wafting over a backyard barbeque sometime in the early 1990s. And it was good. I believe I was playing croquet at the time, taking it very seriously, understanding that it was far more than just a game, that it was in fact a working metaphor for the great and imponderable complexity of the universe, and man’s place in it, the games we really must play in order to reconcile it all for our small, but ever expanding brains and imaginations. I’m sure the LSD and Tequila helped.” (Philip Random)

(image source)

739. the card cheat

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“Second of two in a row from London Calling, arguably the greatest rock and roll album ever. Released at the very end of the 1970s which definitely makes it the first indispensably great rock and roll album for the 1980s, because none of it was looking back. Commercial radio, of course, only played two tracks but all four sides were nigh on brilliant – the power and rage of full-on punk tempered only enough to allow everything else to burst on through. With The Card Cheat, that meant widescreen rock all brassed up and gunning for the promised land, which is again miles beyond anything Bruce Springsteen could have hoped for at the time, who I’m only mentioning here because his 1980 double album The River had no problem getting played all over the radio. And it was at least two sides too long.” (Philip Random)

(photo: Joyce Weir)

757. Sister Europe

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“Maybe I’d would’ve liked them more if they hadn’t call themselves the Psychedelic Furs. Or as a friend once put it – too much fur, not enough psychedelic. But that doesn’t apply to the first album, which was cool and dark and working more edges than any normal reality could offer. And a rare sound that was in 1980, the new decade dawning with all of its overblown and over-shiny colours and sounds and whatever else. In fact, you can do a pretty good job of tracking all that by just lining up the first three Psychedelic Furs album covers in chronological order. Not bad. Just not getting better.” (Philip Random)

PsycheFurs-1980

780. Premonition

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“Premonition was the first Simple Minds track I ever heard, and it came via mixtape – the follow up to an argument I’d had with a friend about so-called New Wave music. Simplistic and annoying (my opinion) versus the cool sound of the future (his opinion). I was wrong. The proof was on that tape, Premonition sealing the deal with its big, dark groove. So much so that I was quick to grab the album, embrace the future, even if Simple Minds themselves would eventually come to truly, unironically earn their name, but that took at least five or six albums, so who’s really complaining?” (Philip Random)