1979

subvert47

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
My mate's mate said "everyone knows" that 1971 was the best year for music
I've not seen the justification for that claim yet (even though everyone knows it to be true)

My mate said 1959 - a top year for jazz apparently

I said – off the top of my head – 1979
To back that up, I note that these LPs came out in 1979...

Cabaret Voltaire - Mix-Up
The Cointortions - Buy
The Cure - Three Imaginary Boys
Essential Logic - Beat Rhythm News
The Fall - Live at the Witch Trials
The Fall - Dragnet
Patrik Fitzgerald - Grubby Stories
Gang of Four - Entertainment (I don't like it, but I'm listing it anyway)
The Good Missionaries - Fire From Heaven
The Human League - Reproduction
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
Thomas Leer & Robert Rental - The Bridge
The Pop Group - Y
Public Image Litd - Metal Box
Pyrolator - Inland
The Residents - Eskimo
The Raincoats - The Raincoats
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Join Hands
The Slits - Cut
Swell Maps - A Trip to Marineville
Talking Heads - Fear of Music
This Heat - This Heat
Throbbing Gristle - 20 Jazz Funk Greats
Tubeway Army - Replicas
Wire - 154

There's probably more, but even with just those it seems a pretty good year to me (y)
 
jenks

jenks

thread death
subvert47 said:
My mate's mate said "everyone knows" that 1971 was the best year for music
I've not seen the justification for that claim yet (even though everyone knows it to be true)

My mate said 1959 - a top year for jazz apparently

I said – off the top of my head – 1979
To back that up, I note that these LPs came out in 1979...

Cabaret Voltaire - Mix-Up
The Cointortions - Buy
The Cure - Three Imaginary Boys
Essential Logic - Beat Rhythm News
The Fall - Live at the Witch Trials
The Fall - Dragnet
Patrik Fitzgerald - Grubby Stories
Gang of Four - Entertainment (I don't like it, but I'm listing it anyway)
The Good Missionaries - Fire From Heaven
The Human League - Reproduction
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
Thomas Leer & Robert Rental - The Bridge
The Pop Group - Y
Public Image Litd - Metal Box
Pyrolator - Inland
The Residents - Eskimo
The Raincoats - The Raincoats
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Join Hands
The Slits - Cut
Swell Maps - A Trip to Marineville
Talking Heads - Fear of Music
This Heat - This Heat
Throbbing Gristle - 20 Jazz Funk Greats
Tubeway Army - Replicas
Wire - 154

There's probably more, but even with just those it seems a pretty good year to me (y)
Click to expand...
Tusk
Lodger
London Calling
First Prince album
Off the Wall
And The Specials.
I was 13 - there was also a lot of shit around too.

The 1971 thing was propagated by David Hepworth - he wrote a book all about it. Also did a Spotify playlist which is pretty persuasive but I do wonder if you could’ve done it for any year between about 67-85. Essentially the golden age of pop and rock.
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
1966, 1967

1972, 1973

1979, 1981, 1982

1987, 1988

1990, 1991, 1992, 1993

(that's all for rock, but the adjacent genres were ablaze too so exciting times)

the adjacent years on either side of those sequences were pretty hot really but there's a slight sense of either a/ building-up or b/ dropping off a little

so 1980 for some reason seems like a slight pause in intensity of postpunk

tbh if we take the classic Rock Era as running 63 to some point in the mid-90s, there's only a few lulls

1970 - one cycle petering out, another (glam) yet to happen

1975 felt at the time (if you go back and look at what people were saying) like a grinding slowdown to nothingness year (but if you tot up allt he great records released that year, you can think 'what were they complaining about'?)

1985 - I lived through this paying close attention in real-time and it felt everything was grinding to a halt, dead-end directions everywhere you looked - John Peel said "I don't even like the records I like" which struck a chord at the time - I take it to mean regardless of their intrinsic quality or value, the macro-context somehow depletes them and drags them down with it

the whole 1984-85-86 patch I think of as The Bad Music Era, or A Bad Music Era

1989 felt a bit inertial
 
subvert47

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
blissblogger said:
the adjacent years on either side of those sequences were pretty hot really but there's a slight sense of either a/ building-up or b/ dropping off a little

so 1980 for some reason seems like a slight pause in intensity of postpunk
Click to expand...

I have at least these from 1980...

A Certain Ratio - The Graveyard and the Ballroom
Cabaret Voltaire - Three Mantras
The Cure - Seventeen Seconds
DAF - Die Kleinen und die Bösen
Dome - Dome / Dome 2
The Durutti Column - The Return of the Durutti Column
Eric Random - That's What I Like About Me
The Fall - Grotesque (After the Gramme)
Joy Division - Closer
Metabolist - Hansten Klork
OMD - Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark / Organisation
The Passage - Pindrop
Pink Military - Do Animals Believe in God?
The Pop Group - For How Much Longer / We Are Time
Robert Rental & The Normal - Live at West Runton Pavilion
Swell Maps - in Jane From Occupied Europe
Throbbing Gristle - Heathen Earth
Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth
Various | Clone Records - Bowling Balls From Hell

But a lot of those are personal taste rather than widely acknowledged classics perhaps.

blissblogger said:
1985 - I lived through this paying close attention in real-time and it felt everything was grinding to a halt, dead-end directions everywhere you looked - John Peel said "I don't even like the records I like" which struck a chord at the time - I take it to mean regardless of their intrinsic quality or value, the macro-context somehow depletes them and drags them down with it

the whole 1984-85-86 patch I think of as The Bad Music Era, or A Bad Music Era
Click to expand...

Searching my collection on Discogs 1984-86...

A Witness - I am John's Pancreas
Bone Orchard - Jack
Danielle Dax - Pop-Eyes
Fifth Column - To Sir With Hate
Hula - Murmur / 1000 Hours / Shadowland
Last Few Days - Pure Spirit and Saliva Live

I've not added all my LPs in the database, but even so... that's not very much 😶

Of those few, this is still a favourite...



Can't remember what I was mostly listening to back then. Probably modern classical and jazz.
 
subvert47

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
jenks said:
The 1971 thing was propagated by David Hepworth - he wrote a book all about it.
Click to expand...

Thanks :)

And googling brought up this...

Rocklist.net...David Hepworth. Never A Dull Moment: 1971

Rocklist.net...List By Publications
www.rocklistmusic.co.uk

But his selection really doesn't make the case for me.

Apart from...
The Allman Brothers Band – Live at Fillmore East
Joni Mitchell – Blue
Sly and the Family Stone - There's a Riot Goin' On
Gil Scott-Heron - Pieces of a Man
Led Zeppelin - IV

...it just seems like a list of everybody's "not their best" records.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top