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

1980 - A Year in Music

Don't you just love the 80's? No? Well, you've got a point. If you were to ask my wife what the 80's meant for her she'd have to say something along the lines of learning to walk and leaving the nappies behind. For me the 80's immediately conjures up mental images of TV news footage of many a grim going on; hunger strikes, the Falklands war, Handsworth and Brixton riots, unemployment, the miner's strike, CND and so on. It's not a pretty picture, and for a lot of the 80's, growing up in a fairly depressed midlands new town (not that I was economically affected), not a pretty picture is about as well as I can put it. A couple of the upsides that spring to mind are the Sony Walkman and post punk, a great combination.

So, get off your BMX, hitch up yer leg warmers, and have a look at my top picks for the year 1980, the year John Lennon got shot.

UB40 - King
Echo & The Bunnymen - Villiers Terrace
Bob Marley - Redemption Song
Dexy's Midnight Runners - Geno
Dolly Parton - 9 to 5

Hot Chocolate - Emma
John Martyn - Sweet Little Mystery
Stevie Wonder - Master Blaster
The Ruts - Staring at the Rude Boys
The Specials - Do Nothing
Willie Nelson - On the Road Again

The Who - You Better You Bet
Neil Diamond - America
AC/DC - Have a Drink On Me
Wah! Heat - Better Scream

More Specials

My in car commute CD today was More Specials, the second album by The Specials.
A good album but not one that really compares to yesterdays. I thought at times, ah a more darker album, and then there were really really light moments to it. When I also think ah, they are moving away from their roots, they put together something like Stereotypes Pt 2.
It was an alright CD though, just alright, not bad, pretty good, but not excellent, and as it was only The Specials second CD, it should have been excellent? No?
What it did bring though was a few childhood memories, notably being in class at Donnington Wood Junior School, quietly singing to myself the words to Pearls Café, notably “it’s all a load of bollocks” and being sent swiftly to Mr Weaver for the slipper. Ouch. And the second memory was first year of secondary school and our class were doing the assembly, some girls in the class needed the rich baritone of a Neville Staples, unfortunately they got the tenor of a castrated Aled Jones, this was all for a rendition of Do Nothing with words altered to fit in with the life of a child at The John Hunt School. The song was dreadful, and I suspect the only reason that I did it was to be around some girl or other that I hoped had a liking for spotty greasy boys that had a voice like a castrated Aled Jones. Inevitably they didn’t.
Highlights from this disc are the aforementioned Stereotypes and Pearls café, but also the International Jet Set and Hey Little Rich Girl. Unsure about the guilty pleasure that is Enjoy Yourself, at times it verges on comedic, maybe that’s its intention? Who knows? But as the week finishes, 7 out of 10. You get a bonus disc tomorrow as Villa re at home to Bolton.



Pearls Café by The Specials

The Specials

Today’s commute CD helped me get over the disappointment of yesterday in The Specials self titled debut. For the shit Dammers produced on In The Studio, he redeems himself in spades on this album.
I am a late starter with The Specials, although my older brother and sister were big fans, as were their friends, it only rubbed off on me slightly as a 9 or 10 year old. My music taste was entrenched in Abba and The specials and their ilk were purely for the big kids. Not to say I wasn’t aware of them at the time and more so as I grew up, it was difficult in the early eighties not to go to a youth club and not listen to Ghost Town or Too Much Too Young.
Fast forward to a year or two ago, and am out looking for a new book and Horace Panters book catches my eye, at the end of it, as is often the case when I read a music biography, I felt the need to investigate further. Amazon were selling their albums cheap and so I bought their 2 studio albums, The Specials and More Specials.
The debut is part Dammers songwriting, part reggae and ska covers. The Dammers element is exceptional, lyrically amazing, musically fantastic. The band capture the time perfectly, utterly perfectly. This was released in 1979, the year Thatcher came to the throne, a time that was so completely grim. The Specials sing on New Era, “This aint exactly heaven” little did they know what was to come.

You’re Wondering Now is so damn forlorn, you wonder how they can possibly have the energy in their live show for which they became famous, but it isn’t a forlorn that has its head low, its in its own place, evoking something, not joy, not sadness, just something inbetween that isn’t ennui.

They take on other classics, extremely well known ska, reggae and blue beat anthems, I am certain raised eyebrows at the time of its release, but time has made them songs their own, be it A Message to You Rudy or Monkey Man, its difficult to hear the latter and think of Toots, and the former, for me, is the only version. That all said, my view of West Indian music is extremely limited.

So the album, as you will kind of expect was marvellous, very very good and in the pissing rain, traffic jam ridden roads it made me feel that my journey wasn’t a long one and really I could go once more round the block.

10 out of 10. Easily.



You’re wondering Now by The Specials

The History of Music 19Seventy Something to The Present Day - Part One

This morning I was reading an article on pre-writing activities for EFL classes. The general idea is that you do a series of things before the actual writing, in order to make it easier yet more rewarding for your students. A good example for this is simply asking your students to 'write a story', to which they reply 'About what? I can't think of anything!' Whereas, compare this to playing them pieces of music, and asking them to decide what kind os scene in a movie this might be the soundtrack to, and they are off and running with a bag of ideas.

One of many ideas with music in the classroom included asking people to write a kind of personal music history, as placing a song in a time and a place tends to bring back lots of memories. You hear a snippet of the song in your head and the memories come flooding back, great for 'jumping off points' for a piece of writing. What did you listen to when you were a kid? What music was in the house? What did your parents listen to? What was your older brother or sister listening to? What about at school? Who were the heroes of the day? And do you and your loved one have that special song too?

Does it work though? As a poor man's muso, with anorak tendencies, I decided to put it to the test. Obviously, I took it to the absolute extreme, and rather than making a note of a few songs I liked, I thought I'd map out my entire listening history, just for the hell of it. And, don't you know, the memories did come flowing back. It was interesting to see how much more conservative my tastes have become, which is natural I guess, but also to notice that essentialy, I always go back to the same. The change in formats mean that you lose a lot of stuff along the way. Jesus there was a lot of rubbish, some of which sems to have come full circle and sound almost contemporary again. So, without further ado (it's a real word, look it up), and with links to all the audio rubbish that makes me who I am today, here is the

Official Musical History of Shropshire Lad Birth to 1980

I looked through the pop charts for 1975, but can't remember anything, although the charts from 1976 throw up clear memories, which would make me musically aware at the age of 7. Showaddywaddy's Under The Moon of Love is a clear memory, as are gangs of Teddy Boys in Blackpool on a day out with my grandmother (I thought they were exclusive to Blackpool at the time). Darts popped up in about 1977 and I loved Daddy Cool. The only punk related memory from this time was some talk of 'the lad round the block', who wore a 'bum bag', although I was never really sure what this was (the bitter Darts entry in Wikipedia reads "The band is still in the Top 250 selling list according to the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles. Despite this, and the fact that they remain Britain's best-known doo-wop vocal group, they receive almost no coverage compared to other doo-wop revival groups of the period such as Showaddywaddy").

I guess we also start with the music in the house, I certainly did. There were plenty of records to choose from including Elvis, (who now lives in Argentina, and may well have gone to the World Cup Final mentioned below), and, though I hate to say it, Cliff Richard's 'Thank You Very Much' live album with The Shadows got a lot of airplay in our living room around 1978. You can't really go wrong with Willie & The Hand Jive or Apache, can you? Also in the rack was Neil Diamond's 'Hot August Night', and his throaty "Good Lord!" at the start of the album got a good airing. It was the heaviest piece of rock in the house, apart from the rocks my Dad brought back from geology trips. I'm not making this up.

Of course, 1978 was the year of Grease, and all those singles seemed to dominate Top of the Pops for ever. For ever is a long time when you're 9. I also had a World Cup Final Birthday Party, and we saw Argentina beat Holland 3-1 (and the fixed 6-0 against Peru before???). I'd end up in a bar in Buenos Aires 25 years later, watching Birmingham v Arsenal with my brother.

1976 may have been the coming of punk, sweeping away the old guard, but it went unnoticed by me apart from an unsuspecting DJ playing 'Frigging in the Rigging' (B Side of the 'Somethin Else' cover) at a Park Junior School disco 3 years later. You'd think the title may have given him a clue to why he'd had so many requests for it. The year it all changed for me was 1979 (we watched The Waltons on BBC2 while we ate our tea), as in the same year up popped The Specials, 'Oliver's Army' by Elvis Costello, and the Smokey Robinson cover of 'Tears of a Clown' by The Beat. This was music by serious people in odd suits. Of course, I was equally as interested in Racey and 'Some Girls'.

The Jam's 'Going Underground', The Specials 'Too Much Too Young', Dexy's 'Geno', The Vapours 'Turning Japanese', all came out in 1980, and were all purchased in John Menzies in Wellington by the future fat Shropshire Lad. But, beating all of them hands down? 'Midnite Dynamos' by Matchbox.

This period was also notable for K-Tel's timeless classic, 'Axe Attack', surely the finest metal compilation to find its way into Haygate Drive. Just reading the track list gives you shivers. It was the music your mates big brother listened to. It was ROCK. Apart from Aerosmith's 'Sweet Emotion', it's music for 12 year olds. If you were still listening to The Scorpions years later you were a bit soft in the head, or coming out of east Berlin. Even then I thought Iron Maiden plainly ridiculous, although you can't knock an album too much that has Rainbow's 'All Night Long' and ACDC's 'Highway to Hell'.