1987 - A Year in Music

It seems like my choices for the best of 1987 are split fairly evenly between the things I was actually listening to at the time, and that year's offerings I would come to discover later in life. Two 'later' discoveries, Tom Waits and Los Lobos, are still around. Los Lobos particularly have had a long and varied career, and continue to put out good records. Tom Waits, an acquired taste, tends to bounce from borderline genius to borderline unlistenable. Scratch that, just unlistenable.

Echo and the Bunnymen were one of those mainstream 'alternative' bands I was so keen to like in the late to mid 80's. They didn't really float my boat in the way that The Cult did, but they scratched a certain itch. 'Love Removal Machine' on the other hand, blew my head off. I bought it on a Saturday afternoon in Birmingham and couldn't wait to get home and play it. It doesn't seem to have completely stood the test of time with my taste buds that well, if that makes sense, but hats off to even calling a song Love Removal Machine. It was quite so apparent to me at the time quite how much Ian Asbury wanted to be Jim Morrison.

The final track, listed on YouTube as 'Bono-Sweet Fire of Love', is actually from the first Robbie Robertson (of The Band) solo album, notable for the appearance of Peter Gabriel, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko, Maria McKee and others. Daniel Lanois was the dots that joined it all together. The album spawned the hit 'Somewhere Down the Crazy River'.

1985 - A Year in Music

I left school in 1985. That summer I was the only teenager in Europe who didn't see Live Aid. We were camping in the south of France and I couldn't even get it on the radio. I seem to remember reading a Frederick Forsyth thriller instead and not being too thrilled. I watched the whole thing on video when I got home, and wondered who George Thorogood was on the US one.

I never really saw the attraction of the Jesus and Mary Chain, and got heartily sick of the NME going on about them. Listening now I quite like it, although it's hardly the musical earthquake it was always painted as.

There are several songs in the list below that I bought, and they got the heavy heavy rotation that only a 15 year old can survive. She Sells Sanctuary blew my mind when I heard it first, and Eldritch and Hussey condemned me to a couple of years of black drainpipe trousers with the ultimate goth template of First and Last and Always. Spear of Destiny also dominated my listening for 12 months, as did going to see them anywhere I could (usually Hanley). The Pogues and The Waterboys opened my eyes to bang-yerself-on-the-head-pissed-up folk, and big expansive 6 minute epic angry folk, respectively.

Notice the rap/rock crossover of Timezone pre-dating Aerosmith and Run DMC by quite some time. It was recorded in a day, and it was very nearly the bloke out of Def Leppard instead of John Lydon. Hmmm.

Aerosmith - Let the Music Do the Talking
Billy Bragg - Between the Wars
Dream Academy - Life in a Northern Town

Jesus and Mary Chain - Just Like Honey
Killing Joke - A Love Like Blood
Kirsty Maccoll – A New England
Lone Justice - Ways to be Wicked

Pete Townsend - Face the Face
REM – Can’t Get There from Here
Spear of Destiny - Once in Her Lifetime
Suzanne Vega - Small Blue Thing
The Cult – She Sells Sanctuary

Tom Waits – Downtown Train
The Pogues - Dirty Old Town
The Sisters of Mercy – First and Last and Always
The Smiths – How Soon is Now (yes I know, the re-release)
The Waterboys - Don't Bang the Drum
Timezone - World Destruction

Name Check

Peter has managed to name-check so many artists in the last few weeks that he has shamed me into a post with as many artists as I can muster under one tenuous roof. I salute his endurance for festival going with the kids. If the price of warm beer wasn't enough I'd have to say the complete lack of decent seating now really puts me off. And my God, the price of a ticket. I am the developing world's correspondent for this blog, so the cost of a Leeds festival ticket would keep me in fairly stylish cloth sacking for a whole year. Or possibly a lacoste bag for the Mrs.

Back to that tenuous roof (rather apt given that the ceiling in the second bedroom is being re-plastered today). A Friday night pint with guest poster Tom C (him of the Funky Chicken Rufus Thomas post) had me reminiscing about favourite and formative gigs of the past. A good reminisce is about all I can do on the topic of live music, as my gig-going days are well behind me and highly unlikely to return.

Of a thousand gigs over the years I'm not sure any will ever compete with my youthful exuberance for the early and mid - eighties Spear of Destiny. My mind plays tricks on me as to how many times I saw them live, although it always seemed to be at Hanley Victoria Hall or Nottingham's Rock City. Certain tracks from the 1985 World Service album can still make the hairs on my neck stand up, given the right mixture of beer consumed and heady nostalgia. Oh to be a teenager again and find something that blows your socks off.

It would probably be around the same time, the early 80's, that I saw The Cult, with Ian Astbury as the high priest of acceptable, alternative, lip-licking Indie-dom. It says something for my honest naivety that I found him to be a mesmeric performer live. He lacked Kirk Brandon's epileptic energy, but oozed a certain class in a daft costume. Spiritwalker, indeed.

Two dismal college going years seemed only tolerable because we went to see The Mission almost every weekend, or at least Pop Will Eat Itself (before they became a t-shirt), or The Mighty Lemon Drops. Every gig seemed to have Balaam and the Angel on the line up, or All About Eve. The Pogues also seemed to be almost permanently on tour, as did New Model Army, who also managed to play Telford Ice Rink at what must have been a low point in their career.




Oddities in my gig-going teens include what appeared to me to be an OAP fronted UK Subs, and a very scary evening where I think I may have seen Conflict. Sigue Sigue Sputnik at Birmingham Powerhouse was a great evening, not that I remember any of it, and Mr Lydon's PIL outfit in about '86 were excellent.

'86 saw me at Glastonbury for my one and only visit, where Billy Bragg lived up to all my expectations and played a stormer. The Cure were largely unengaging, although the pissing rain didn't help. Christy Moore was a giant amongst the pygmies of Level 42 and Simply Red on the main stage, although the Housemartins were hilarious.