David Lynch 1946 - 2025

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,688 Kraftwerk - Radio - Activity

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 126 The Dream Syndicate - The Days of Wine & Roses

 

' The early eighties Paisley Underground Scene of guitar-led garage bands was a particular movement. Based around a set of like-minded and mutually supportive souls, looking more to the sixties than the seventies generally, it produced a bunch of good to middling records and perhaps one album that verges on greatness, the debut outing from The Dream Syndicate, The Days of Wine & Roses.

Built around the songwriting and vocals of Steve Wynn, but very much a group effort, it was recorded in a couple of days in late 1982 and released later in the same year. Very much indebted to the methedrine intensity of The Velvet Underground, there's even a slower Nico / Mo Tucker track, sung by bassist Kendra Smith. Wynn became increasingly defensive in response to the inevitable comparisons, (they did after all take their name from the original pre-Velvets grouping), nevertheless, it's certainly much more than mere tribute, sounding very much a West Coast record rather than an East Coast one, drenched as it is in Hollywood paranoia and cinematic angst, A series of well-crafted and impressively delivered songs of guitar adventuring

The band draw on Punk and New Wave in addition to the sixties. Wynn and lead guitarist Karl Precoda duel in a manner not dissimilar to Television's Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd but their interplay is intentionally more ragged and open-ended, (and occasionally awash in feedback), than that band's recorded output and nods its head to Crazy Horse, Dylan and Creedence too, while The Fall were also an influence that Wynn has repeatedly mentioned in interview.   He was also apparently an avid fan of Postcard Records, Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes. He applies his own, half-spoken, drawled vocals, telling a set of  tales of vague, existential dread of lives spinning irretrievably out of control, played out under the unrelenting Californian sun. In addition to all this, the album acts as something of a pre-cursor to Sonic Youth, who were just forming at the same point and preceded to take things to an altogether more unhinged extreme in the following decade.

The Days of Wine & Roses, seen on its own terms, is a pretty much perfect guitar album. Never quite as inspired as Reed, Verlaine or Young, Wynn's songs nevertheless operate highly efficiently in their slipstream and Precoda's playing particularly elevates the record to its own equisite heights.It very much sounds like the work of a band on the uneasy cusp of adulthood and laying down their own path.

Setting off with the creamy Tell Me When It's Over, each track on here keeps up the pace and occasionally, when the band really let rip, they set down a template that has barely been matched since. Wynn is an observer of life's strange tribulations, troubled, but also detached and occasionally the band lock into an inspired almost jazz like hazy, opiate groove.  

Going at cross-purposes to much of the New Wave which was turning on mass towards synth-pop, The Days of Wine & Roses revisits and renews the glorious potential of guitar driven Rock and Roll. The Dream Syndicate were far from alone, at least in the States. The Replacements, R.E.M. Husker Du and The Minutemen along with countless others had embarked along similar roads but they were all very much underground concerns at this point, with the possible exception of R.E.M. who immediately began making chart inroads the same year with the release of Murmur.

The Days of Wine & Roses is a record with limited commercial appeal. The Velvet Underground, regardless of Wynn's protestations, the guiding influence of everything on here, were never meant to top the hit parade. Nevertheless, the record did open up a whole field of exciting possibilities which those with like-minded sensibilities leapt on, in Europe as well as the States.

When I personally started hearing this music myself, round about the time, when I was forming my own taste and starting to buy my first records, it was a revelation. The influence of Punk was beginning to dim, with 1982 and New Pop probably its last direct immediate impact on the mainstream. The Smiths emerged to offer an alternative route along with The Go-Betweens, Prefab Sprout, Aztec Camera, The Triffids and Lloyd Cole & the Commotions but there were also all of these American bands, though, again with the exception of R.E.M. they didn't gain much footing over here except for touring occasionally in small halls to appreciative audiences.

Several of the other Paisley Underground bands were worthy of note. The Rain Parade, True West, The Long Ryders and The Bangles for example. But it was The Dream Syndicate who most successfully built a bridge from the sixties to the eighties with this record. Sadly they never quite matched it, signing to A&M and worked with big-hitting producer Sandy Pearlman on their second album The Medicine Show. In comparison with their first outing, they worked painstakingly on the record's sound but despite having great moments, (it's a fine 'nearly' record, particularly the mighty John Coltrane's Stereo Blues), overall it failed to match the sustained, inspirational peaks of its successor. The Days of Wine & Roses remains the band's definitive statement. It still sounds quite wonderful today, more than thirty years on

* For an excellent account of the record an its context, see this Uncut Magazine review

1985 Singles # 35 Eurythmics

 

Eurythmics were really getting inyo their stride in 1985. A Pop mindset with attitude.Shiny videos wit sass and attitude demanding the Yankee Dollar.  It was good to have something of reliablility and quality in the charts. Statements if pride and resilience, substance on daytime radio in response to much mush and mindlessness. Would I Lie To You was a another stylish punched home run into the stands to get the crowd on their feet.. If it were that easy others would have done it. 

 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,976 The Weather Station

 

January remains something of a trial regardless if how we approach it. For me, leaving a hearth and home, elderly parents the length of the country one short week ago, back to work, lessons to plan and teach.

 A best friend struggling with health elsewhere.. Meanwhile outsude my window the sun is struggling to show its face outside the window in the darkness.

It's a consolation to have a new Weather Station album Humanhood to listen to on my headphones as my bath runs. Tamara Lindeman (for Weather Station is she), is a doughty, resilient talent. A box to box performer who knows her craft and gufts.

The Joni Mitchell comparison is inevitable and plain here, but that's ni slur o defecit. You can't beat a bit of Joni. This is a record of vitality and health. Another winner. Humanity strikes back. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,689 Keane - Under The Iron Sea

 

With some bands who make little impression on you though they're omnipresent, you associate them with one personal association, For me it's a memory of being in a flat somewhere in Riga in 2005. Very drunk in the company of people I didn't know who were also equally drunk, wondering whether I should really be there. Staring at a beautiful woman who I wished to kiss and was much younger than me and quite out of my class.  Wondering whether I was drinking too much for no specific reason and it might get me into dangerous scenarios. .

As for Keane. They have their moments although they always struggled with the slightly mundane . The impression that they are making music that will appeal to Estate Agents. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 127 Tears For Fears - The Hurting

A repost from elsewhere.:

'Tears for Fears were my very first gig, and ample evidence that this is not some late bid for credibility. I was seventeen when I went, a late developer emerging from a spotty undistinguished teenage phase, looking for ways of constructing a self.

Hammersmith was a bus ride away from my family home in South West London. Still my favourite part of that city. Even now, I dream about being on that and other local bus routes. I went to this on my own. Not ready for a girlfriend to share a particular teenage rites of passage with at this moment. Thompson Twins and Tears For Fears were both set to embark on what turned out to be sustained assaults on the British and global pop charts which would bear decidedly mixed fruit though we were none of us to know that at the time. The pop world, particularly in Britain was about to change, reflecting the times. Undoubtedly for the worse. I'll brook no arguments with that.

Tears For Fears first. I had quite a bit of time for them at round about that point. Their debut album The Hurting was out and I'd bought it. All exaggerated teenage mannerisms and psychodramas but I was a bit like that at that moment and still have the diaries to prove it. Late developer as I said.

I'm listening to it now. I'd maintain it's a reasonable record but that may be my teenage self confusing me. Still, some fine melodies, magpie thievery and the title track, Mad World and Pale Shelter, some opening salvo. The singles are generally the ones that stand the test of time best. I stood a few rows back from the stage in my John Lennon specs and curly mop of hair, probably swaying slightly. Lost in irredeemably teenage thought.

The record overcomes me now eventually in terms of it's non-stop angsty projections, particularly when the pace drops. Some tracks actively repel me. I no longer have a Holden Caulfield fixation. They had tunes but little depth. Still, they were right for me at the time. I enjoyed them and they were probably one of the best support bands I've ever seen, all these years later.'

1985 Singles # 36 The Colourfield

 

What Terry did next. Departing Funboy Three and Ska for the song and the acoustic guitar. Thinking Of  You is still the kind of song you'd always be pleased to hear coming out of your radio or from the jukebox at your local. Teery of course always brought Terry to the table. The best kind of Pop Star,

Song(s) of the Day # 3,975 Bridget Hayden & The Apparations

 

Bridget Hayden & The Apparations. A great name for a band. Cold Blows The Rain, s great name for a record. The kind of New Folk / Old Folk albums that's been back in vogue with an enormous vengeance these last few years.It's the end of the world as we know it. And we feel fine.

It's hardly celebratory stuff for the most part. Folk certainly can be if we're talking dancing round the maypole fare on the first Saturday of the month of May. But as we've just got beyond the midway poinr of Janiary and the Post Christmas blues may not all have departed quite yet Cold Blows The Rain, ticks my boxes with the sun yet ro show signs of itsclimb outside m dsek at the window of my flat.

A mix of traditionals and originals in the grand tradition. This grounds itself on the Yorkshire Moors and is appropriately foreboding and atmospheric. Album of the month for January in Uncut Magazine. And not without reason. 

Sam Moore 1935 - 2025

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 128 Prince & The Revolution - 1999

 

Ut's Prince. I'm sure you kniw what Prince does by niw. Here you get a hundred and ten minutes if it., Much of it funny, funky, some of it sweet and slow. Some slightly disposable. Elsewhere genius!

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,690 Joni Mitchell - Clouds

 

It's Joni. There's so much of Joni to process. Like Dylan, Bowie, Miles or Prince. You seek your entry points where you choose but it's foolhardy to dismiss her. This is probably the Joni who made the most impact on the popular conciousness. Chelsea Morning, Clouds. This is a sunny record for the most part with illusive depth.

1985 Singles # 37 Bryan Adams

 

Music was changing in tems of its focus in 1985 though I didn't realise it. immersed in my rich experience of vitality, beauty and youth in the Swiss Alps. Musically Madonna, Prince, Springsteen and Michael Jackson ruled the roost. All fantastic in their own ways but personally I was more interested in guitar toting romantic refuseniks. R.E.M, The Smiths, The Go Betweens.

Bryan Adams never particularly turned my head though I didn dance to Run To You, his breakthrough song of sexual betrayal when it played in a Saturday night in the Italian disco in town where I went with my colleagues and friends.It was his notable New Wave moment and it helped make his name and he moved off to blander arena lighters aloft material. It still makes my toes tap.  

Song(s) of the Day # 3,974 Imaginary Family

 

                          

                          'We are rough around the edges.Almost finished prototypes.'

Miles Davis famously didn't like the term Jazz as a descsiption for the area of activity which he was involved and engaged in all of his adult life.He preferred Social Music. Labels are notoriously slippery. In music and and generally just as lists of preferences ot sexual or mental mindset descriptions can be. 

But as human beings we need some ways of arranging the things we listen to and read, just as supermarkets need systems for arranging their products on shelves. Otherwise shopping would be a particularly feverish and demented social activity,

Take Imaginary Family's fascinating Builders, Believers the first newly released album that's really blown me away un 2025. The moniker of Joanna Issele, born in the French Alps, working out of Ghent singing in English. This is glorious Art.

In the Spotify bio for the project, the music here is described as Indie Folk expanding to a broader music palette. This will do. Listening to Builders, Believers is an experience akin to watching a film at the Arts Cinema. Reading a short story. Eating a rich soup at a local cafe.

Listening to it as I wrote this I experienced a range of emotions. Just as we do as we do within a short timespan as human beings. By turn I found myself engaged, reflective, intrigued, moved. In short, this is a rich and splendid cultural experience which relaxed me and just set me up nicely for the day ahead. It's highly nuanced art. Looks like 2025 is up and running on It Starts With a Birthstone,

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,691 The Descendants - Milo Goes To College

 

Joyous hardcore punk and melody from 1982. Pogo around your living room. You know you want to.

1985 Singles # 38 John Fogerty

 

I'd had a Saturday job at Tesco Home & Wear in Teddington High Street and then a shift in the months approaching Christmas in 1984 and I'd invested. In an excellent assembled stereo bought in Richer Souns off the Tottenham Court Road.In records

I'd discovered The Doors, NeilYoung, Patti Smith and Television. Also in Creedence, getting muself in a greatest hits collection where virtually every song was spun gold. Going back beyond The Understones and Buzzcocks. Discovering the Pre Lapsarian origins of the guitar bands I was getting into. Haight Ashbury, Monterey and Woodstock,

John Fogerty made a surprising comeback in 1985 and I read about it.. In Rolling Stones magazines pn the  shelves of Newagents on the High Street of Locarno. I bought a copy of Centerfield when I got back to England in the Summer. It had some great tunes.

 The one thing John Fogerty could be relied on was excellent, stripped back guitar tunes of beauty and simplicity, harking back to the Golden Days of Rock & Roll. The man was a mythic figure. An Old Testament prophet..

  

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 129 ESG - Come Away With ESG

 

If you looked up the word 'funky' in a decent dictionary you would probably find a picture of this album sleeve.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,973 Bridget Mae Power

 

Bridget Mae Power's Songs For You, a set of spartan, stripped down covers of Roy Orbison, Television, Neil Young and Cass McCombs tracks that take the songs as the point of departure and sails off to surprising and easeful shores..

Strangely emotive and affecting. his makes a mindful listen, taking me from six to half six with easy and compoulsive grace  and making me wish to go back to the source. Job well done. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,692 Jim O'Rourke - Eureka

 

The cut and paste button comes into uts own. Jim O'Rourke can be seen as a younger generational eqyuivalent to John Cale in many respects. He works in a similar field and his music has a similar, rich, thoughtful quality. His  albums function as genuine reflective art as well as any Rock Music I know. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 130 John Cale - Music For A New Society

'First thought best thought.'

John Cale albums funcion as genuine reflective art as well as any Rock Music I know. 

 

1985 Singles # 39 The Housemartins

 

The Housemartins sang about stuff. Real stuff. Their first three singles focused on mindlessness.. Mindless flagwaving, conformity, drinking and sexism. Not much changes. Great tunes to boot.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,972 Moscow Puzzles

 

 'Loose, raw and organic Post -Rock from the coral prarues if Iowa.' Let's face it, just what you were hoping for on a Monday. Rather bleak where I am I have to say.

Moscow Puzzles rather magnificent instrumental.forty minute album  Vast Spaces of the Interior might do something to shake you from January torpor. This kind of commitment is admirable frankly. Superior jagged engagement.. Stakhanovite endeavour.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 131 Billy Bragg - Talking With The Taxman About Poetry

 

Billy Bragg's early 'Don't pay no more than ....' EPs and Albums were wonderful statements. Again it feels like a very long time ago. Great songs. Great attitude. Great sleeves. Great politics. Woody Guthrie and The Clash for those who'd been a bit too young,

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,693 Band of Horses - Everything All The Time

 

I'm constantly reminded of how the world has changed during my lifetime. When I was young we wrote letters as a matter of course. Computers were the size of a room. As a teenager I played Pong Tennis on TV with my older brothers on the family TV set. We considered it state of the art. People communicated on a regular basis by writing letters which they took loving care of the creation of. Went and purchased an envelope and stamp for and posted lovingly. Now people get together and split up online without ever having actually met ... 

I've worken upthis morning and listened to Doors and Peter Gabriel albums on my record player. Old school! Strange how everybodyis going back to old school. And no wonder. Now I'm listening to Band of Horses ' Everything All The Time' on Spotify on my TV screen. I can't remember which year it came out so I check it on my phone. I don't wish to become one of those 'when I was young' types. But you had to work harder back then.That's for sure.

 Band of Horses are one of the pack that clearly yearn for those olden, golden days. In their minds they are touring the States in support of Neil Young & Crazy Horse in 1971.. The record's OK. We all yearn for simplicity I'd say. 

1985 Singles # 39 Billy Idol

 

Billy Idol was never the most convincing of the Bromley Contingent. Hamf Kureishi went to school with him and depicts him in Buddha of Suburbia as a teenage hippie who went to Sussex University, saw Punk coming along and jumped onto its bandwagon with indecent haste. Heading straight to the barbers.Then into London.

That permanent cartoon pose. The upraised upper lip. It's all a bit daft. But Billy was probably the one of that circle that went on to make the most money. White Wedding was the moment of his rebirth in The States..Rock & Roll as permanent pose. It still sounds great. 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,971 Explosions In The Sky

 

Explosions In The Sky am instrumental Post Rock band from Austin Texas. Their soundtrack to American Primeval a Netflix film in the Revenant vein which looks worth watching.

What you get here is atmosphere and iy might be one to sit and listen to on headphones in the dark as I'm doing, waiting for the sun to rise wherever you are. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 132 Mission Of Burma - Vs

 

A propulsive furious, smart and engaged Rick and Roll album. It rings too.

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,694 Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase

 

Boards of Canada albums don't sound quite like anyone else's. This is enough to recommend them.

1985 Singles # 40 Depeche Mode

So we're at theTop Forty. The mark of success. the charts rundown when they were announced on Tuesday lunchtimes on Radio One and then again more formally on Sunday afternoons. l lost track of this after 1985 largely. I became more interested in Sonic Youth and Mantronix as I moved out until the world with a vague,undirected thrill.

I was excited most of all I suspect. About what was coming next. What was around the corner.  But the charts still meant a lot to a lot to a lot to a lot of people. Including me. It meant everything to have one of 'my bands' featuring there. Maybe meaning they'd  be on Top of the Pops on Thursday evening. But 1985 marked the point at which I made my move. From hearth and home to the outside world and the charts became more marginal as they became irrelevant to my thinking. Became more negligible despite Morrissy's Last Stand. I knew what I liked. It was the year of Live Aid.

My culture was in decline, though we didn't know it. 'My Bands' featured in the charts towards the end of the Seventies and early Eighties. They were the charts and The Culture. Interventions from the likes of Rene & Renata, Captain Beaky and Shaddapa Your Face were the abberations. Keeping the likes of Blondie and Squeeze from their rightully deserved Number Ones. I remember when Bob Geldof ripped up a picture of John Travolta up when the Bootownn Rats usurped Grease at Number One with Ratrap in 1978. It mattered. It was a teenage game played out in the charts, the music papers and magazines and TOTP. Us V Them.

A gradual transition toom place in the early Eighties. 'My Bands,' the Punk and Post Punk bands fell from favour one by one, had had their chartmoment and disbanded or made their move to The States to try to make it there. A thankless task. The Cure and Depeche Mode were notably the British bands who made the signiicant and lasting breakthrough.

Mode featured less among the bands I considered mine from now on. even as their commercial star rose.  I thought the lyrics were daft, even though at this distance what they were doing musically seems masterful. Jackie meets S&M. and leather and painted nails.

1985 saw them holding ground with a Mute singles compilation on the market whie they plotted their next move. It felt like younger sister stuff to me. My own younger sister I suspect wasn't paying too much attention herself. She had discovered The Triffids. The Jesus & Maty Chain. Bobby Gillespie. Ranting in the NME about the American guitar invasion. Showing off his leather trousers and Chelsea Boots and banging on about Aftermath. Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds. And errm Public Image Limited.

Song(s) of the Day # 3,970 The Rolling Stones

 

Rolled Gold the remarkable Stines compilation was one of my formative buys in the early Eighties. In some respects it's all you need. It tells the whole story. But I dutifully bought the great albums; Exile, Sticky Fingers, Some Girls, Let It Bleed, Out of Our Head. hey. I was an NME reader. I do what I'm told to!

I listen to them less. I don't respect Mick and Keith much and don't really care what they have to say. They're 'Yesterday's Papers.' Yesterday's Men .I lusten to The Beatles much much more. But play Rolled\Gold. It's still steeped in datk, magical  lore. Every single track.Molten.  Gold is right.

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 133 Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth

 

I'm with Kurt Cobain. As usual. Young Marble Giants came out of the heart of darkness in late 1979 in provincial Wales. From a time when 'coming from nowhere' genuinely meant just that. Cheaply written and performed on DiY instrumentation. Endorsed by Geoff Travis from Rough Trade they recorded and released the still fantastic and incredibly influential Colossal Giants.

It's a remarkable and inspiring indicator of what can be done with vision, fire in the belly and drive. It sounded wonderful coming out of cheap transistors on late night John Peel. A statement of intent and creativity. A paradox. But a totally engaging and gtipping one , A cold disengaged voice, like an AI answerphone that speaks of deep passion and commitment. Searching For Mr. Right. Pre Tinder messaging and dreaming. 

 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,695 The XX - I See You

 

Interesting fusion of R& B and Indie sensibilities. Leaves me slightly cold I confess due to my own sensibilities and tastes.

1985 Singles # 41 The Stranglers

 

Towards the end of my time at Casa Locarno Tim a friend from home came out to stay with me for a few days. Guests were not allowed to stay in the house so we had to smuggle him in and out to the attic at the top of the building where we hung sheets. He bedded done on the wooden boards.

Tim brought with him a cassette of Aural Sculpture, The Stranglers album from 1984. We listened to it in my room. Golden Brown and Strange Little Girl a coupe of years earlier had marked out the beginning of the big sea change for the band. They had mellowed over time by now  and set their co-ordinates for the charts and Radio 2.

Neither of us complained. It was a great record. Skin Deep the big commercial number had hit the upper reaches of the Single Charts. No Mercy made a lesser splash. Let Me Down Easy was less memorable still, but was still clearly The Stranglers. The middle of the road Men In Black.

   

Song(s) of the Day # 3,969 SGO

Brisbane's SGO on the evidence of latest album One More Year sound nothing, but nothing from that city's favourite sons and daughters The Go Betweens. Instead they sound remarkably like a marriage of convenience between Slowdive and New Order. With a dollop of Allvays sprinkled in for good measure.

Not being the hugest fan of Slowdive, in fact quite the opposite, this led to an unconvinced listening experience for me. Slowdive are the prominent influence visible on here leading to a slightly sopirific disengagement on my part. I'll give it 4.. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,696 The War On Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore

 

Sounds too me much like easy listening for the alternatve New Hippie set. Perfectly pleasant without frankly transcending that description and becoming genuinely memorable

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 134 Husker Du : Warehouse Songs & Stories

 

Any album called Warehouse that's over an hour long is likely to be sprawling.Especially one that's fuelled by the visions of two competing and conflicted singer songwriters.  Husker Du's final album is certainly something. There's much that's quite mindblowing and tender but also some slightly variable moments.Way to go.. 

1985 Singles # 42 Pale Fountains

 

Pale Fountains had fantastic songs and spirit but they weren't managed or handled well and made a negligible critical and commercial impact It's only now that their leader Michael Head is getting his proper due. The Pale Fountains songs are for the most part are not fully realised or slightly over embellished, admirable as they often are, They seemed to always just tail off just North of the Top Forty so that's where they find themselves here. Nevertheless, the best stuff is generally slightly off the beaten track. 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,968 Chinese American Bear

 

Chinese American Bear/ Out of Seattle and although not remotely in the image of Nirvana in any respect, you do get the sense that they do a thing which Kurt might have appreciated to a certain degree,

Latest abum Wah !!! apparently is a mando pop /rock duo creating bilingual ear candy. It's jolly and springy highly likeable fuzzy felt Outsider Pop Music. Probably not too great for the teeth but I imagine not bad for the soul..

This is a record that becomes  more more-ish the longer it spins. Not an album that deserves to be explained so much as enjoyed..

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,697 The Misfits - Walk Among Us

 

One of those bands that you are told are 'legendary' and 'seminal' but actually seem rather loud and messy and less essential than you've been led to believe. 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 135 Genesis - Duke

 

Duke seems like it's an almost conscious attempt to drain what was so outlandish and peculiar about Gabriel#s Genesis and monetise.I still like Turn It On but still have the same sense about Genesis that I did when I was 15 and saw them on Top of the Pops with Phil Collins swaying around the mic in a loud hawaian shirt and booming into the mic like some athletic uncle.  That they are a fair bit older than me and this is music for people a fair bit older than me. I've got a lot of time for the initial records but this is incredibly  pedestrian and going through the motions for the most part. 

1985 Singles # 43 The Farmer's Boys

 

'When you're young, you don't especially think of yourself as being young. You're just alive and everything's interesting and you don't think of things in terms of age because you're not conscious of it.'

Richard Hell

Everything of course is a 'journey' these days, but I actually find it an invaluable metaphor as a portal here in accessing myself as a nineteen year old in the act of self-construction in preparation for leaving the family nest and heading out into the big world.

Objectively you might think that nineteen is not so young but actually I was callow, innocent, slightly clueless (but working on it in the only way I knew how)..  Essentially happy. Protected and guided by loving parents I took a year out and went off for the invaluable gap year experience of Switzerland and Casa Locarno. I was terribly disorganised and haphazard in my decision making and have a focused and clear sighted mother particularly to thank that I'd got my applications and paperwork sufficiently in place to have a University place at UEA ahead of me when I headed off to my big adventure in Switzerland. I had just arrived at the Casa forty years ago from today. It's extraordinary looking back exactly how youthful I was.. 

I'd chosen to study The University of East Anglia for sketchy barely thought through reasons. I knew I was interested in writing and UEA famously had a Creative Writing course. Established by Malcolm Bradbury just over a decade previously with Ian McEwan as his sole student in its vanguard year. I fancied a bit of that. I was reading a lot. Making my way through Graham Greene. Camus, Sartre, Herman Hesse. Errm Agatha Chrsitie.

Now every further education establishment worth its salt offers a creative writing course, its worth remembering that that was a different time. A different world. A simpler one Before The Internet. Before the whole idea of 'fact checking' and the so called 'free speech drive'. 1984 and Brave New World were just books. Not templates for control, surveillance and living. 

  

Norwich had a thriving music scene which was another major attraction to me. Like all major British cities in those Post Post Punk days. Or at least it did when I applied for UEA. I had a fantasy within my head of forming a Rock & Roll band along the lines of The Smiths, The Velvet Undergroud and R.E.M. and began to write bad lyrics and imagine scenarios for myself at a mic in crowded student union buildings. A wannabe Michael Stipe or Lou. Driven by the music I was fuelled by and directed towards by the music magazine or papers. A dreamer. 

  But whatever had been happening in Nowich was dying on the vine by the time I got in to UEA. The Higsons had disbanded and The Farmers Boys were on their last legs, despite the fact that they had signed to EMI. For some bands leaving their Independent label for a major often proved to be their death knell rather than their moment of fruition and harvest.

Farmers Boys had been a dizzy, Norfolk response to Orange Juice. By 1985 they had run out of energy like the Duracell' less drumming bunny. Their last single before folding was competent but sparkless by comparison with The Smiths who were the British Independent Guitar band in ascendancy. This song picked up towards the end but not enough to break the Top 100 of the singles charts. It's not a classic like some of their early songs. They disbanded shortly afterwards.   

Song(s) of the Day # 3,967 Steven R. Smith

 

 I featured  Steven R. Smith's marvellous Olive last year and he's back. With an entirely contrasting but equally splendid new album Triecade.

Smith is an American musician, instrument builder and printmaker with connections to the Jewelled Antler Collective. Triecade is a gently, rolling pastoral collection of atmospheric and calming instrumental pieces. Ut's beautiful. 

Psychedelic Folk apparently if you need pigeonholes and tags. It's just an inspiring listen that doesn't really need labels. Classical in its mien in many respects. It's just a wonderful world to don headphones for; immerse yourself in and reflect on the light playing on the trees and natural life outside your window,

Covers # 217 Robert Flack

 

500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 136 Cocteau Twins - Blue Bell Knoll

 

The Itchy Goblow Blow? Err yes. The Cocteau Twins to me are like walking round a Modern Art gallery. Why do I prefer Kandinsky to Joan Miro? Ultimately I can't really put my reaction into words. But I look at their canvases for a while and then move on to something I prefer. 

Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,698 The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of Understatement

 

Alex Turner and Miles Kane get together and decide they like David Bowie and Scott Walker rather a loy. I'm with them. But after a while the thought occurs. Why not listen to David Bowie and Scott Walker ? 

1985 Singles # 44 The Redskins

'On the day of reckoning... Crashing down on the pavement...'

When I was at College I was very taken by classic Soviet Iconography. I studied politics and history and wore wire rimmed steel spectacles and got called Trotsky by co-travellers I went to the Soviet Union with at the end of 1983. The Redskins Marxist spiel and ace pop tunnery appealed enormously. It still puts a spring in my DMs. Some things change. Some never do... 

Song(s) of the Day # 3,966 Magdalena Disk

 

The time of year where things start slowly in the Pop World and a relativetaly sedate commencement to my working year has allowed me to listen to the much lauded  Magdalena Disk album Imaginal Disk a number of  times.

I'm finally getting round to posting about it,  Magdalena Disk are an Alternative Pop duo from Miami though they're based in Los Angeles.There's much debate on the band's Wikipedia page as to whether they're Alternative Pop or just New Pop. As if it matters

'Plus ce change. Plus le meme chose. le meme chose.' To my untrained ears it sounds much like an old school Pop Album of the sort that Madonna and Cyndi Lauper were pumping out when I was just a lad. All fine and dandy too. Both of them had streaks in their hair too. But the Pop is what makes this stand out.

The Heartbreakers

 

Songs About People # 1,411 Will Sergeant

 

                            Julian pays tribute to Will. Last track on his latest, Friar Tuck.

The Sound of Being Human - How Music Shapes Our Lives # 6 Kraftwerk

 

A chapter about how Kraftwerk showed the author 'how music can galvanise us collectively. Help us fit in.'.