“Nobody was paying much attention anymore to the Steve Miller Band come the 1980s, which means the spaced out analog synthetic bliss of 1981’s side long Macho City got mostly overlooked. Which is a pity. Because there has never been enough spaced out groove music, particularly during the 1980s. Ronald Reagan’s War On Drugs in full effect, the marijuana getting stronger and stronger. Something weird was going down. I’m still trying to figure out what.” (Philip Random)
In which Devo lay down their worldview in three and a half minutes or less. Yes, it’s a Beautiful World. Too bad it sucks. Which, if you were young and reasonably smart (raised on the ideals of the ever expanding western world only to see them turn on themselves as they did with the collapse of the Hippie 60s and their sorry fallout) was the only sane way to see things. Punk rock all the way – just pursuing different means.
The Simple Minds (from before they decided the world needed yet another U2 and thus became officially uncool), 1981 being the year that they released two solid albums in Britain (jammed into one for North American consumers), then hit the road with one of the hottest live shows on earth. It would never really get any better, except for maybe that one night in Dortmund, 1984.
In which we are reminded that way back when (1980-81 to be specific) U2 were still pretty much complete unknowns. But one listen to something like Another Time Another Place and you knew that wasn’t going to last. Because this outfit was like Joy Division with the doom removed, rhythm like runaway horses, guitar like great sheets of illuminating light, big voice, epiphanies by the minute.
“1981 was a pretty brilliant year if you were an open-minded Clash fan. Between London Calling and Sandinista, they’d just released ten sides of genre bending, ever expanding, often superlative vinyl in barely more than a year. So when Radio Clash (the single) appeared in four different versions, all dubbed up and dance floor ready, there was no reason to doubt what was being promised. Hell yeah! Their next move would be to launch a pirate satellite so the world would finally have all cool radio All The Time. If you dropped enough of the ole lysergic, it felt very possible. Maybe even likely.” (Philip Random)
The Teardrop Explodes being A.one of the best band names ever, B. the outfit that gave the world the one and only Julian Cope who, by all accounts, has equal parts madness and genius erupting from his psychedelic soul, which put him rather out of synch with much of what was going down in the early 80s. But being a properly mad genius he didn’t care. And thus, we get the eerie and timeless strangeness of 1981’s Ouch Monkeys! (a title we’re still trying to figure out).
Randophonic 