Theboarddot’s Albums of the 1980s- Discussion Thread

[doso]

Aug 22, 2022 12:29:18 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

Anyways, I think my reviews are getting a little overlong (tho in my defense, I have very little to do at work). So, in lieu of another wall of text, here's a quick top 5 for Prince's most fascinating and sonically diverse 80s album.

1. I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man (his best guitar solo?)
2. Starfish and Coffee
3. Play in the Sunshine
4. Hot Thing
5. U Got The Look

This is the best Prince album imo. Top 10 for me. Might be Top 5 or 3, actually.

[doso]

Oooooooh w/ Totp authority to boot.

[falcozappa]

Oops. Just realised Songs For Drella is 1990. I’ll amend.

[monasterymonochrome]

Aug 23, 2022 5:14:42 GMT -6 falcozappa said:

Oops. Just realised Songs For Drella is 1990. I’ll amend.

Like your list!  Lots of stuff I never got around to, most prominent of which is Faith No More.  Gonna add them to the queue today!

[monasterymonochrome]

Aug 23, 2022 9:08:03 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

Aug 23, 2022 5:14:42 GMT -6 falcozappa said:

Oops. Just realised Songs For Drella is 1990. I’ll amend.

Like your list!  Lots of stuff I never got around to, most prominent of which is Faith No More.  Gonna add them to the queue today!

Also, Songs for Drella rules.  One of my favorite Reed projects in his entire career.

[Tweet]

I’ll update this later today I hope but I think ballotting will be extended to the Friday before Labor Day (9-2) and the results will probably come out the week after at some point once it’s all tied up. Monestary doesn’t know it yet but he’s done a lot of the reviewing for me lol

[monasterymonochrome]

Absolutely love this album. One of the most focused, fun power-pop records I've ever heard. Every song - not just the megahits - are clinics in perfect hooky songwriting (Tonite and Skidmarks on my Heart are my favorites). This is another roadtrip classic for me and Emma, and it's been cool to see them get their roses these last couple years.

[monasterymonochrome]

Meanwhile, I had this one on my shortlist but didn't revisit it until today. Turns out I was probably overestimating how much I like it due to "Althea," probably the best - certainly in the top tier - Dead studio song. Like, how did I blank out that there's only two Garcia originals on here? I love me some 80s Dead, but I'm not so much of a homer to shoehorn this one in here.

In The Dark tho? Jury's still out on that one.

[chvrchbarrel]

Aug 23, 2022 12:04:07 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

Absolutely love this album. One of the most focused, fun power-pop records I've ever heard. Every song - not just the megahits - are clinics in perfect hooky songwriting (Tonite and Skidmarks on my Heart are my favorites). This is another roadtrip classic for me and Emma, and it's been cool to see them get their roses these last couple years.

I can't remember if this either barely made it onto my list, or just barely didn't - but I do really like most of this album and it hits the turntable a lot at my house

[monasterymonochrome]

The Fall are a hard band to like. It's like VU at their most shambolic and with an even more sardonic, higher energy frontman. There are no tunes here. There are scant few melodies. But! And this is big - at their best, these songs sound cool as hell. "New Face In Hell" for example lays down a foundation that dozens of mid-rate post-punk wannabes would copy for decades to come. Maybe they shoulda tried Mark E. Smith's helium-esque voice cracks too? But yeah, generally I don't enjoy Fall albums from beginning to end, but this is my big exception. They're young, hungry, and pissed off. The songs are pretty approachable instrumentally and it's also (very often) fucking hilarious. More eloquent words have been writ about this band - maybe the most adored critical : ignored commercially band of all time. I just think they're cool.

[falcozappa]

Aug 23, 2022 9:08:30 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

Aug 23, 2022 9:08:03 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

Like your list!  Lots of stuff I never got around to, most prominent of which is Faith No More.  Gonna add them to the queue today!

Also, Songs for Drella rules.  One of my favorite Reed projects in his entire career.

Angel Dust is my favourite FNM album, but I listened to The Real Thing a ton when it came out.
Songs For Drella is by far my most listened to Lou Reed project. I’m still not sure I’m ready to listen to that Metallica collaboration, though.

[falcozappa]

A friend of mine who was a massive fan of The Fall once made me a mixtape. I liked it, but it was curated for me. One of the songs had a few lines that sounded similar to a Zappa song I know; when I mentioned it to him, he told me that he’d included the cover because he knew I liked Zappa. It was so reworked that I didn’t recognise that it was supposed to be a cover in the first place.
I caught them once at a festival. I’ve never seen anyone wind up their own band members at a live gig as much as Mark E Smith. Walking around the stage, tapping arhythmically on the high hat; plinky-plonking on the keyboard as he went by; twiddling with the amp setting for the guitarist (who immediately changed the settings back as soon as he’d passed by, with what looked like a great deal of annoyances). There was one song that I thought was an instrumental h tail I looked around and saw some die hard fans passionately singing along.
The look favoured by fans of The Fall seems to be one part the perma-toting plastic bag chic of outsider art; the other part sharply coiffured provincial slicker.
The album I’d recommend is I Am Kurious Oranj

[nanatod]

for a long time I owned the A Sides fall greatest hits LP, and I really liked mr pharmacist, oh brother, hit the north, and a couple of the others, but it seems that the album itself was issued in 1990, so it can't make my list.

[monasterymonochrome]

The Kirkwood brothers are guitar heroes. This record is just a masterwork in subtle, brilliant moments. The cosmic solo in "We're Here." The acoustic mandolin-esque interlude in "Climbing." The honky-tonk rhythm of "Lost" that culminates in a psych-edged burnt out solo. Not to mention the gorgeous instrumental jams, "I'm A Mindless Idiot" (my fave) and "Aurora Borealis" (which feels like an early period UMO song about 30 years beforehand). Meat Puppets II absolutely rules. I don't think of it as the Nirvana Unplugged album (tho those songs kill too!). Or even as one of the biggest cowpunk albums. I just think of it as a touchstone for loose, creative, heartfelt guitar playing.

[monasterymonochrome]

Sometimes I think of this as U2's last album as a "normal" band. It's certainly their most hard-edged, muscular rock record. Listen to Edge's stabbing rhythm in "Two Hearts..." to get a feel for that. Not to mention the knife-sharp textures of "Sunday Bloody Sunday," a song that I've heard a million times and really need to take a step back to appreciate its boldness. After this, U2 moved beyond the sonic palettes of their post-punk contemporaries, into something larger, grander. And the inklings of that are all over this record too. Bono's choruses are fucking huge. Two Hearts again being the best example of how big he can go. Surrender is another one where Edge is moving the sound into the beyond. But they also sneak incredible hooks into the more driving post-punk tracks that set them faaaar apart from anyone else on the scene. Tracks like Refugee, Red Light (w/ that horn solo!), and Seconds are fucking immediate. War is def overshadowed by the three LPs that followed it, but fuck, it is good. Would've cemented them as legends in its own right.

[chvrchbarrel]

Aug 24, 2022 9:01:49 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

Sometimes I think of this as U2's last album as a "normal" band. It's certainly their most hard-edged, muscular rock record. Listen to Edge's stabbing rhythm in "Two Hearts..." to get a feel for that. Not to mention the knife-sharp textures of "Sunday Bloody Sunday," a song that I've heard a million times and really need to take a step back to appreciate its boldness. After this, U2 moved beyond the sonic palettes of their post-punk contemporaries, into something larger, grander. And the inklings of that are all over this record too. Bono's choruses are fucking huge. Two Hearts again being the best example of how big he can go. Surrender is another one where Edge is moving the sound into the beyond. But they also sneak incredible hooks into the more driving post-punk tracks that set them faaaar apart from anyone else on the scene. Tracks like Refugee, Red Light (w/ that horn solo!), and Seconds are fucking immediate. War is def overshadowed by the three LPs that followed it, but fuck, it is good. Would've cemented them as legends in its own right.

great review of War. I think TUF has a lot of the angst and passion of War but channeled in a totally different way. probably their most interesting record of the 80s.

[chvrchbarrel]

the kid on the cover is the same one from "boy" which i also think is cool, as you can hear such an enormous leap of maturity between those two records

[kb]

boy is a top 5 for moi and war a top 15 or so. the only u2 that would make an appearance on my hypothetical list. 

[monasterymonochrome]

Aug 24, 2022 9:18:05 GMT -6 chvrchbarrel said:

Aug 24, 2022 9:01:49 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

great review of War. I think TUF has a lot of the angst and passion of War but channeled in a totally different way. probably their most interesting record of the 80s.

Thanks!  And hard agree - I adore TUF, tho I find it to have a few more weak spots than War (not super into the Indian Summer > Elvis pairing), the high spots are some of the best songs of the entire decade - let alone the U2 catalogue.  Like, "Pride" is the absolute culmination of everything they'd spent their first three LPs reaching for.  It's a miracle (and it's also one of the first songs I tried to learn on drums).  It's also the moment where The Edge really comes into his own.  He has a defined style beforehand, but TUF is where he becomes wholly distinctive as a guitarist.  Like a machine gun of chimes or something.  Oh yeah, and "Bad" is my favorite track here - probably my favorite U2 song ever (tho "One Tree Hill" gives it a run for its money).  A song that's so gorgeous, so moving - it seems unfair.  Honestly, Bono's latter-day reputation has made him underrated, IMO.  Dude is probably the best frontman of the last 40 years - and this is the album that cemented that status.

[monasterymonochrome]

Aug 24, 2022 12:16:58 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

Aug 24, 2022 9:18:05 GMT -6 chvrchbarrel said:

Thanks!  And hard agree - I adore TUF, tho I find it to have a few more weak spots than War (not super into the Indian Summer > Elvis pairing), the high spots are some of the best songs of the entire decade - let alone the U2 catalogue.  Like, "Pride" is the absolute culmination of everything they'd spent their first three LPs reaching for.  It's a miracle (and it's also one of the first songs I tried to learn on drums).  It's also the moment where The Edge really comes into his own.  He has a defined style beforehand, but TUF is where he becomes wholly distinctive as a guitarist.  Like a machine gun of chimes or something.  Oh yeah, and "Bad" is my favorite track here - probably my favorite U2 song ever (tho "One Tree Hill" gives it a run for its money).  A song that's so gorgeous, so moving - it seems unfair.  Honestly, Bono's latter-day reputation has made him underrated, IMO.  Dude is probably the best frontman of the last 40 years - and this is the album that cemented that status.

And a photo to stay on my trend

[monasterymonochrome]

My other favorite band of the 80s. My biggest concert regret of my life is not seeing their 'reunion' in 2015, as I was only just starting to listen to them. Now their records have been a constant companion through the last 7+ years of my life. Loads of disaffected 20-year olds were bashing out punk/hardcore-adjacent songs in the early 80s, but none of them - and I mean that - had a melodic sensibility even close to Paul Westerberg's. These guys confidently strode the space between writing beautiful, heartfelt - perfectly crafted songs... and always being one step away from falling apart at the seams. I think that's what makes them so compelling. These guys sound like a mess at times. I mean, c'mon, "Gary's Got A Boner"? But then they'll pull the most affecting, achingly gorgeous songs out of the ether like they're fuckin' Lennon/McCartney. It's impossible to listen to "I Will Dare" and not feel something. Ditto for "Androgynous" and the desperate howl of "Answering Machine." This was genuinely heart-on-your-sleeves music from four dudes who could barely walk in a straight line (seriously, read Bob Mehr's excellent Trouble Boys if you haven't already). It's not my fave Replacements record (stay tuned for Tim!) - but it stands toe to toe with every great rock record of the decade.

[monasterymonochrome]

This is a genuine contender for my #1 spot. It has "Bastards of Young" on it for christ sakes! I can't believe the same dude who wrote "Gary's Got A Boner" also casually drops "The one's who love us least / Are the ones we'll die to please" in the midst of the most anthemic song of the entire decade. And on top of that you've got "Left of the Dial," the College Radio National Anthem. Then you've got some powerful "Bob Stinson hammering home the power chords while Paul strains his voice to its absolute limit" rippers like Hold My Life, Little Mascara, and Lay It Down Clown. Plus you get a kiss-off ditty (Waitress in the Sky), aching vulnerability (Swinging Party), and a rousing ode to alcoholism (Here Comes A Regular) to close out the album. What more could you ask for? There's not a bad song on here, and the highs are All Time Great. Idk what was in the water in Minnesota circa 1980, but goddamn did it produce some powerful music.

[monasterymonochrome]

I have a long history of trying to "get" this record. I loved "Teenage Riot" (the best song of the 80s, btw), but was always frustrated that the rest of the album didn't really sound like that. If they made a song that good - why couldn't they just do it like 10 more times? Nevertheless, I kept trying it out. It was the OG Pitchfork #1 album of the 80s, after all. But it still just kinda went through me. I tried again when reading Our Band Could Be Your Life and still felt meh about it (tho I discovered other SY songs I loved, i.e. Expressway to yr Skull). I tried it when reading about No Wave and post-punk. I tried it when seeing Thurston Moore speak at MCA, or Lee Ranaldo play at the Empty Bottle. I don't think I've ever listened to an album more in an attempt to understand it.

But finally like two years ago I was reading Girl in a Band and listened to the Deluxe version... with all the live cuts appended to the end. And FINALLY the door busted down. For some reason, the songs just came alive to me in these live versions. The guitars were aflame and alive - tearing the songs themselves to shreds in an extremely visceral, arresting manner. I stopped searching for melody and started listening to texture. I also started listening to them with my Jam Band ears on. Instead of relegating the feedback as background squeals - I started listening to it as the solos themselves. The Sprawl, Candle, and Silver Rocket suddenly revealed themselves to me as epics, and Moore and Ranaldo's twin guitar approach seemed to be - in a sense - as heady as Garcia/Weir. Anyways, now Daydream Nation is def my favorite SY record - tho it took a arduous path to get there.

[monasterymonochrome]

Posting my favorite of those live cuts - Candle - here. It was even recorded at the Metro!

[monasterymonochrome]

Spent a bit of time deciding whether I liked this one or Piece of Mind more, but I think I've ended up here. I love this era of Iron Maiden, but I tend to only really like 4-6 songs on each of their albums. My go-to, then, is usually playlisting my favorites rather than listening to full LPs. Number of the Beast has their best killer:filler ratio tho, IMO. You've got Children of the Damned, The Prisoner (probably my favorite IM melody), Run for the Hills, and - of course - the title track. They've all been played a million times for a reason - they absolutely rip. I readily admit to having a pretty basic taste in metal. I like it best when it still closely resembles hard rock. Like, you'll see British Steel pretty high on my list. And this album absolutely smashes that dopamine response with all its absurdly massive hooks and choruses. Of course the solos rip. But the melodies here set them apart.

[monasterymonochrome]

Is there another album out there as divided between the Old and New paradigms than Paid in Full? Rakim's flow and rhymes here were obviously groundbreaking and revolutionary. I remember when I was trying to listen to the major early hip hop releases, Rakim was the first MC who actually sounded modern - and that's by a wiiiide margin. I Ain't No Joke, I Know You Got Soul, and Move The Crowd are massive highlights and functionally paved the way for the next 10 years of rap music. I'm particularly obsessed with the sample on I Know You Got Soul - it sounds like something the Jungle Brothers would've put together, but beat them to the punch by a couple years. That said, like half of this album's run time are instrumental scratching features. Which... was probably cooler back in its day but does not make for a super engaging listen in 2022. It's like a clear divide in the album between breaking new territory and keeping traditions alive. Very interesting, but - again - makes for an tracklist that I tend to skip around.

[monasterymonochrome]

Shitty image, but it's the only non-massive one I could find. Fela Kuti - Original Sufferhead... a staggering record both musically and contextually. Fela had a long history of clashing with the military-backed government of Nigeria. His brand of 'afro-beat' was more firebranded, more punk, more youth-favored than more 'polished' musicians like King Sunny Ade. He put out the earth-shattering Zombie in 1976, and the military responded in 1977 by raiding and burning the commune where he, his family and supporters lived. Fela himself was severely beaten and his mother was thrown out a window and later died from her injuries. Fela subsequently carried a symbolic coffin in a protest march to the Nigerian head of state's home. This was memorialized in his 1980 track, aptly titled, "Coffin for Head of State." The next year he released Original Sufferhead, one of his finest records, IMO, and a clear sign that he wasn't backing down in the face of state violence. Fela - if you can't tell - was cool as hell.

This was one of his first records with the Egypt 80 band, which means - as far as I can tell - Tony Allen is not playing drums here. But goddamn is the rhythm addicting and unrelenting. Fela and his band were the masters of groove. Layers on layers of percussion and with Fela's saxophone ripping off one rousing melody after another. His vocals are bouncy and alive - ripping into the government and literally listing its numerous faults. Lack of water, lack of sufficient housing, greed at the top, and willful foreign exploitation. Lots of American musicians like to sneer at those in power - and that's cool and all! But this is fucking punk, right here. And it's also just damn good music. His call and responses with his band feel like we're ready to take on an army. And they needed to feel that way. Because, well, they literally were.

[monasterymonochrome]

One of my favorite alt-country albums, or whatever. One of my favorite country albums, period. So many remarkable songs on here and buoyed by such a huge sound. This is def Steve's most "rock" record and he knocked it outta the park. Huge chords and amped up drums without sounding hokey or muddled, which is a large feat in and of itself. I'm obsessed with the mixing on "You Belong To Me," in particular. His narrative songs are the big highlights, running drugs on "Copperhead Road" or the discarded Vietnam vet tale of "Johnny Come Lately." These songs are heartland epics. An unflinching depiction of a country reaching a tipping point. And they're the most genius melding of Springsteen and Richard Thompson that I've ever heard. "Guitar Town" is wonderful, but this is Steve's first all-around Great album, IMO.

[monasterymonochrome]

Such a great album, and one that gets a bit overlooked in Springsteen's classic period. Is it a bit overlong? Sure, maybe. But the dude was writing so many amazing songs during this period that I was album to make a killer 14-song album out of the outtakes alone. There are so many gut punching tracks on here. "Stolen Car." I mean, goddamnit, Bruce. That first verse... the way he delivers the "little by little" line... just crush me every time. I got chills just now listening to it while writing this. Then on top of that you have "The River" and "Wreck on the Highway." Dude was the Michael Jordan of songs about unhappy marriages. We even get a couple of all-time "fuck this job / this town" bangers here with "Out in the Street" (probably his best juxtaposition of fist-pumping rock track + depressing fuckin' lyrics) and "Jackson Cage." I even love the 50s rave-ups with Sherry Darling, Cadillac Ranch, and Ramrod (note: not about the Dead roadie). Its one of those double albums where everyone has a different favorite track, and everyone has a different opinion on how to edit it down. And I love those messy masterpieces. One of Bruce's best. Rave on.

[monasterymonochrome]

Aug 22, 2022 22:28:03 GMT -6 doso said:

Aug 22, 2022 12:29:18 GMT -6 monasterymonochrome said:

Anyways, I think my reviews are getting a little overlong (tho in my defense, I have very little to do at work). So, in lieu of another wall of text, here's a quick top 5 for Prince's most fascinating and sonically diverse 80s album.

1. I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man (his best guitar solo?)
2. Starfish and Coffee
3. Play in the Sunshine
4. Hot Thing
5. U Got The Look

This is the best Prince album imo. Top 10 for me. Might be Top 5 or 3, actually.

What's ur fave track on it?