1981 - A Year in Music

If you look at the Wikipedia page for 1981, under the heading of 'Events' it lists notable points in history for that year; Ronald Reegan became president of the USA, Rupert Murdoch bought The Times, Muhammad Ali entered the ring for the final time, and so on. But right there in April, somewhere between Bobby Sands winning a by-election and Mitterrand becoming president of France, is this

The rock band Yes splits up (regrouping in 1983).

Now, I'm all for music finding its rightful place in the priorities of life list, but surely, surely, this doesn't merit the words devoted to it. As if this wasn't bad enough, the bastards re-formed two years later, and it's that little bracket at the end which is like salt in the wound.

My top picks for the music of the year is a mixture of those that obviously registered with me at the time (The Specials, Stray Cats, Altered Images) due probably to Top of the Pops performances, and also songs and artists that I found I liked many years later (Randy Crawford, Mission of Burma, Colin Hay from Men at Work). I remember finding Under Your Thumb quite unnerving. Then again, most things were unnerving as I was 12.

On with the list then.

Altered Images - I Could be Happy

Bauhaus - The Passion of Lovers

Godley and Creme - Under Your Thumb

Hazel O'Connor - Will You

Human League - Love Action

Men at Work - Overkill

Mission of Burma - That's When I Reach for My Revolver

The Ramones - The KKK Took my Baby Away

Randy Crawford - You Might Need Somebody

Siouxsie and The Banshees - Spellbound

Soft Cell - Bedsitter

Teardrop Explodes - Reward

The Specials - Ghost Town

The Stray Cats - Runaway Boys

Shuffle Medley

My friend Thom was musing this morning on his 3 song, car park to office, ipod shuffle medley musical accompaniment, and how this might determine the mood with which he enters the building, ready for a new day at the coalface. His three this morning were Dancin in the Moonlight - Van Morrison, Alphabet Street - Prince and Al Wilson's The Snake (yes Peter, I know it's a metaphor, but the woman went home with a snake for God's sake). His musings spookily coincided with my own thoughts, as I have being trying to formulate a posting on my own shuffle experiences of yesterday, which were

• Tree Top Flyer - Stephen Stills


• That's When I Reach for My Revolver - Mission of Burma


• You Don't Know Like I Know - Sam & Dave
  

I'm sure people more learn-ed than me have written wise words on the topic of how the ipod has shaped our listening habits, and how society is now even more fractured due to us all being cocooned in our own little world, with our own soundtrack. Does anyone today ever phone up a friend and say 'I've got the new ****** album! Wanna come over for a listen?' I guess not, we no longer listen comunally, unless we're at a concert. I'm not talking about listening to the new ELP album in a religious silence, but there is a joy to listening together isn't there? The shared experience? No? Oh put your headphones back on then.

I remember a computing teacher at school telling me that computers only did what we told them to do. In my case, with no interest in such machines (or the people who used them, other than my friend Stu who had a fishtailed parka and liked The Who), this meant nothing to me, other than a vague understanding that we control the machine, rather than it controlling us. The ipod is the same. It only plays what we put into it, although the combinations created on shuffle can create emotionally confusing episodes when sardine'd onto the metro and pressed up against the back of a builder who knocked off early and has been in the pub for three hours. Stale beer and fags smell suit a random Damned track but not Bobby Darin.

I have recently been listening to a podcast of Treasure Island, read by nasal Americans with little feeling for the language. A short burst of pirates, maps and one legged scoundrels sandwiched between Natacha Atlas, Merle Haggard and At the Drive-In, turn the whole thing into something akin to the soundtrack for Carry on Up the Atlas Mountains crossed with the Dukes of BioHazard.

But this is what we're all after isn't it? It's the personal shopper we can't afford. It's the butler we'll never have bringing us our slippers and crack pipe at the end of a long day. It's personalised, monogrammed, hand made and rolled on the thighs of virgins for your own satisfaction. It's not just right up your street, it's knocked on your door, and if there's nobody in it's gone round the back, let itself in, and put the kettle on, and there are two cups with teabags in, one with sugar and the other with sweetner. That's how good it is.

But is it? The ipod can't replicate that feeling you get when you hear something on the radio that stops you in your tracks, and you have to press your ear to the speaker in order to catch who it was, and when the divjockey doesn't say who it is you scramble around in your own head for a fragment of the lyrics in order to find it. The ipod doesn't do that.

I have a wife, and I don't want to swap her (unless of course it's for a re-chroming of my 1959 Lambretta), but the principle is a good one. Lets gather like minded people together, throw our ipods in a dish and go home with someone elses musical mrs.

It seems only fitting to now have a video from The Soundtrack of Our Lives.