1037. Heavy Horses

Jethro Tull main man Ian Anderson was nothing if not level-headed come 1978.  While many of his fellow formerly cool rock star types were scrambling (often pathetically) in attempts to reinvent themselves as somehow edgy and relevant in the face of punk rock etc, he just told it like it was — that he was more concerned about his farm up in Scotland than the state of the zeitgeist, the big horses in particular. The album in question may have seemed a throwback at the time, but over time, its mix of folk and rock elements has come to feel more timeless than anything.

1067. Repo Man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfivq3Ou4_M

If you were there at the time (1984) and paying attention, Repo Man (the movie) was pretty much perfect, nailing all the right targets, scoring all the right points, and it all started with Iggy Pop cutting loose over the opening credits. Welcome to the so-called Winter of Hate, with Repo Man (and its punk-hardcore-whatever-you-want-to-call-it soundtrack) giving this long weird season (it lasted years) a fierce and virulent focus. Not that there wasn’t any love in the mid-80s. Of course there was. But you couldn’t really make sense of the times and your place in them (in North America anyway) until you owned your hate. Until you knew what to hate. Otherwise, you were just going to get eaten by hungry robots like everybody else. Or nuked. Whichever came first.

RepoMAN

1082. ride to hell

“There was a point in the mid-70s when it was easy to think that the Horslips might just be the next big amazing thing. They had a cool Irish folk thing going, and a rock thing, and they could think big, epic even. Which is what Book of Invasions was all about, a goddamned Celtic Symphony, of which Ride To Hell is climax. Unfortunately, it was released in 1977, the year punk truly erupted and laid so much of the old world to waste. Oh well.” (Philip Random)