just spent over an hour doing a PIL post,finished it then tried to put a picture of Johnny Lydon up and the fuckin thing crashed and I lost the lot, gutted

Day 407.
Public Image Ltd................................Public Image   (1978)












Right take 2,

Having never heard this album before, but thoroughly enjoyed the singles and obviously the Pistols, to say I was fair looking forward to this would be a massive under statement................what a disappointment, I don't think I've felt so let down by an album that I was so looking forward to from this book as of yet.I tried, boy did I try, listened to it twice on Sunday, once in late afternoon when slightly inebriated, once more later when well wankered, and once more on Monday morning when stone cold sober, and unfortunately still didn't like it whatever state I was in.



I honestly don't think I've heard an opening track on an album with less appeal than "Theme," what the fuck was he thinking about, what a load of shite, this may well have had a bearing on the rest of the tracks, as I don't think I recovered fully from that monotonous diatribe. The album wasn't without some highlights, "Public Image" is a belting track, and not far behind were "Low Life" and surprisingly "Religion I" that is not my usual thing but stood out for me, the rest can be sent to room 101 for all I care, and as for that "Fodderstompf," there's nothing worse than having the piss ripped out of you, and the persons taking the piss, bamming about taking the piss out of you, if you get my drift.


Anyways, it is with great regret that I tell you, this album wont be going into my collection.



Bits & Bobs;


Following the Sex Pistols' break-up in 1978, John Lydon spent three weeks in Jamaica with Virgin Records head Richard Branson, in which Lydon assisted Branson in scouting for emerging reggae musicians. Branson also flew American band Devo to Jamaica, aiming to install Lydon as lead singer in the band. Devo declined the offer.


 Upon returning to England, Lydon approached Jah Wobble (John Wardle) about forming a band together. The pair had been friends since the early 1970s when they attended the same school in Hackney (both belonged to a circle of friends Lydon informally dubbed "The Gang of Johns" – John Lydon, John Wardle, John Gray, and John Simon Ritchie, a.k.a. Sid Vicious). Lydon and Wobble had previously played some music together during the final days of the Sex Pistols. Both had similarly broad musical tastes, and were avid fans of reggae and world music. Lydon assumed, much as he had with Sid Vicious, that Wobble would learn to play bass guitar as he went. While that had proven a fatal assumption with Vicious (Lydon cites Sid's musical inability as a prime reason for the Pistols' break-up), Wobble would prove to be a natural talent. Lydon also approached guitarist Keith Levine, with whom he had toured in mid-1976, while Levene was a member of The Clash. Lydon and Levene had both considered themselves outsiders even within their own bands. Jim Walker, a Canadian student newly arrived in the UK, was recruited on drums, after answering an ad placed in Melody Maker.


 PiL began rehearsing together in May 1978, although the band was still unnamed. In July 1978, Lydon officially named the band "Public Image" (the "Ltd" was not added until several months later), after the Muriel Spark novel The Public Image.



 PiL debuted in October 1978 with "Public Image", a song written while Lydon was still a member of the Sex Pistols. The single was well received and reached number 9 on the UK charts, and it also performed well on import in the US.


 The photography for the album was shot by Dennis Morris who also created the iconic PiL logo. In preparing their debut album, "Public Image, First Issue, the band spent their recording budget well before the record was completed. As a result, the final album comprised eight tracks of varying sound quality, half of which were written and recorded in a rush after the money had run out. Wobble had also beaten up producer Bill Price's assistant engineer (Price, with John Leckie, had secured the tight sound of the "Public Image" single), inciting Price to ban the group from their preferred Wessex Studios. The album was considered ground-breaking on its release in December 1978. Grounded in heavy dub reggae, Wobble's bass tone was called "impossibly deep" by contemporary reviews. Levene's sharp guitar sound, played on an aluminium Veleno guitar, was imitated most notably by The Edge of U2. Levene would later state :

"I've had questions asked of me as direct as 'What do you think of the fact that The Edge ripped off your sound?' and I just say 'Good luck to him'. Some people say 'A lot of people use your sound. Do you resent their position as opposed to yours?' Actually I don't, I put it down to good taste."


 The single "Public Image" was widely seen as diatribe against Malcolm McLarenand his perceived manipulation of Lydon during his career with the Sex Pistols. The track "Low Life" (with its accusatory lyrics of "Egomaniac traitor", "You fell in love with your ego" and "Bourgeoisie anarchist") has also been regarded as an attack on McLaren, although Lydon has stated that the lyrics refer to Sid Vicious. The two-part song "Religion" refers contemptuously to Roman Catholicism; Lydon came up with the lyrics when he was part of the Sex Pistols but he claims the other members of the band were reluctant to use them. The closing track "Fodderstompf", heavily influenced by dub, comprises nearly eight minutes of a circular bass riff, played over a Lydon/Wobble double act lampooning public outrage, love songs and teenage apathy. The track culminates with the sound of a fire extinguisher being let off in the recording studio, as Lydon had lit a fire whilst in a weird trance-like state during the recording session. The first album was subsequently renamed as First Issue. "PiL was the simple thing of four different people doing different drugs at different times," Wobble observed to Select. "It was only in any way together for the first two months of its existence. We had a fuckin' good drummer called Jim Walker, but he fucked off after a few months [in early 1979] and it just fell apart. Somehow it had sort of death throes that produced a couple of blinding albums."




 1978 opened with the end of Johnny Rotten fronting the Sex Pistols after their tour concluded in an infamous San Francisco gig. Closing that year, the original release of First Issue by his band, Public Image Ltd., documents astonishing growth. Punk endures on "Low Life" and "Attack" but these tracks diminish next to bolder standouts on PiL's prickly, messy ten-song debut.


 "I wish I could die" hisses John Lydon, resurrected under his rightful name, determined to shake off the Pistols' "terminal boredom" as the appropriately titled "Theme"'s last spoken words betray. The song shakes and sways over Jah Wobble's trademark bass, into a mix so heavy that Warner Brothers refused a domestic release for the album. (PiL gave in and re-recorded tracks after the label ordered them to, but most of that U.S. version never was released.) Keith Levene's guitar grinds and squeals. Unfortunately, his contribution to post-punk tends to be relegated to a footnote alongside his membership in early incarnations of The Clash and (a pre-Sid Vicious) The Flowers of Romance.


 Levene and Wobble invent an anti-rock fusion akin to reggae rhythm section Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare: supporting a wild-haired wailer: with massive confidence and utter freedom, the pair scratches, thumps, and thuds. Shifting the support from drums to guitar but advancing the bass, this crusty, metallic foundation collides off Jim Walker's slow, bashing, basic percussion. Certainly, dub warped into punk for many of the 1970s rebels against the system, and post-punk as here pioneered plunges the listener into a maelstrom.


 Over this squall, which skews rock (Lydon denies it but what category contains this?) into noise, elongated dance, and chant, Lydon lets rip. "Religion" repeats, first as a confession of disgust with clerical hypocrisy in a time when such a naked entry may have surprised listeners expecting rants. Nowadays, contempt for ecclesiastical malfeasance has turned common chat, but even for a singer as controversial as Lydon from a scene known for iconoclasm, this turned a few ears red around me.


 I heard this LP as soon as it was imported (given Warner's dissent stateside), as my classmates played it in the music room of our Catholic high school. I admit back then the novelty of the declaimed disdain wore off rapidly, although the musically enhanced reprise as track three stirs its curdled lyrics into a dense, dismal concoction. The song lumbers on, daring the hearer to skip it, but the fingered piano stands out as one offbeat, typically grating moment in a straightforward, mid-tempo, not-quite-rock song. "Religion II" proves less distinctive than what would follow, but its phased guitar anticipates the blistering songs that make about half of this record so distinctive.


 It's easy to reconstruct what Warner Brothers feared as "Annalisa" begins. Wobble's bass totters as Walker's drums crash under Levene's hesitantly plucked notes or attenuated chords. I bet this would have been grimly exciting to hear in concert. Lydon recites a tale of a young German woman's demonic possession. After repeated exorcisms, her parents let her perish from starvation. The efficient tom-tom fills and the dryly mastered, claustrophobic ambiance of this in the studio, via this handsome re-release by Light In the Attic, improves on the original CD German import I had long kept safe. It conveys some of the analog starkness sustained on my original vinyl version. Techniques premiered here were perfected on the following year's LP experimental Music Box (again import only, as Americans had to be content with the inferior, re-sequenced Second Edition 1980 version).


 Side Two clatters into "Public Image": a mission statement and a potent, terse, defiant cry: "I'm not the same as when I began / I will not be treated as property." Suffice to say this swaggering song pummels as it soars. Levene's trebly string-scraping shivers; Wobble's thick thumps resound over Walker's clanging. Lydon demands and commands respect. He clears his throat as this anthem ends.


 "Low Life" lurches in. It and the rest of the album, recorded more cheaply as the band ran out of money, suffers somewhat. Promoted as a self-producing and self-governing collective, PiL struggled. Fittingly or ironically settling into a cheaper reggae studio, the original album's final three tracks prove more ramshackle. You can hear the shallower rumbles and the muddier production on the rest of the original album. However, if played loud enough, this and "Attack" recover some of their force.


 I played that song relentlessly on my LP, cassette, and import CD; whichever format I chose, I tried to grasp Lydon's echoed vocals buried within the whirling Levene-Wobble-Walker assault. Lydon's angry at someone: fill in whom you wish among a few possibilities. "Low Life" blends the dub and hard rock sides of the band respectably, although its whirlpool ingredients merit a less cloudy mix. The song as with its predecessor does not move forward much, but its energy sustains a brisk pace.


 This will never be said for the closing track. In time-tested form, with an album to finish and nearly eight minutes running time, Lydon's warbles wrap around Wobble's "we only wanted to be loved" sarcastic shrillness. "Fodderstompf" full of chatter betrays the need to fill out the album and forces the listener to submit. The temptation to end this album battles against what might happen next on this track, or not. It's brash amplification, Wobble credited for fire extinguisher, the remnants of a label's advance, drugged attitude, and young men resigned to further alienate whomever expected them to deliver another ten tracks of punk. As anti-punk and proto-dance, it works.


 Yet, a more patient consideration of this grating mock-disco may reveal "be bland, be dull, be boring" as the new decade's post-punk creed. Someone in the 1980s concocting hip-hop must have sampled the tinkly, dusted synthesizer trills. "White Lines" always reminded me of that ethereal snippet.


"Theme"



Public Image Ltd. opened their self-titled debut album with this song that has the agonizing refrain, "I wish I could die." John Lydon explained to Mojo magazine August 2012: "You've got to know the second line, 'But I will survive.' There's hope in misery. I used to have very bad depressions when I was younger, because of the headaches from the meningitis. I'm still very prone to them, but I've learnt now, when I feel down, to just let that moment happen and go into a deep think, rather than a self-pity, because self-pity doesn't solve anything."



"Religion"


 
 John Lydon was in fine form when interviewed by Bill Turnbull and Sian Williams on the BBC Breakfast news programme, July 7, 2010. The latter suggested his song "Religion" was "raw," of which he said "that states the case quite clearly" and, alluding to the then ongoing scandal over child abuse including sexual abuse, he added, "in light of the Catholic Church's scandals at the moment, I hate to say it, but seen it coming." This was partly due to his once being a choirboy, but there is another reason for his antagonism towards, religion, and especially the Catholic Church.


When asked by Sian Williams, "Your Mum was Catholic, wasn't she?" a look of pain came over his face, and his voice was filled with bitterness as he replied: "They treated 'er very badly; they wouldn't give 'er [the] last rites when she died of cancer in the hospital, so we 'ave a really bad, negative view, our family, of the Catholic Church."



 
Among other things, Lydon's song notes that God is dog spelt backwards, and although probably Al Stewart wouldn't agree with all its sentiments, there are obvious parallels between this punk-based rant against Christianity (Catholicism in particular) and the folk-based "Gethsemane, Again




"Public Image"


Lead singer Johnny Lydon wrote this song while he was still with The Sex Pistols. He was extremely unhappy at the time and thought that he and his fellow Sex Pistols were abused and manipulated by band manager Malcolm McClaren. Public Image, Ltd. was his new group, and it was designed to be a business venture as well as a band (thus the name that sounds like a corporation).



With The Sex Pistols, Lydon was known as "Johnny Rotten." He used his real name for this group. When Public Image Ltd. (also known as PiL) first started, everyone was looking for Sex Pistols version 2.0 and Lydon was not having it. He wanted a completely different image and sound for the new band.


 
This song finds Lydon starting afresh and going deeper after the Pistols. He told Mojo magazine August 2012: "I think it was clear: 'I don't need to repeat where I stand politically, not ever again. Now let's deal with the personal politics, sort myself out, get rid of the wrong things in me.' You can change everything that's wrong with your enemy by changing yourself first."



 

Listened to the Public Image album twice, because I think I should like it. Better on second listen, but still unsure.

DAY 408.
Magazine........................................................................... Real Life   (1978)












What an excellent find this has been, I always liked "Shot By Both Sides" but to be honest wasn't to sure who it was by. Magazine kinda slipped by me regrettably, after hearing this once I wanted to hear it again, this sounds like it was pretty influential and it may just be me but I can hear quite a few later bands, ranging from Echo and The Bunnymen to Pulp to The Fun Boy Three, to name but a few.


Maybe this is where John Lydon should have been aiming/trying for.................the next step!  This for me seems to be a bit of a link from punk into new wave, and some, the more I play this the more I get out of it, this album doesn't just stick to a tried and trusted format, there is definitely wide ranging styles on this album, something for everybody.



Anyways, trying to pick my favourite tracks has been very difficult as every time I play it, something else comes to the fore, which to me means it must be one hell of an album, it's funny the amount of people who asked what's yer album the day? and I say "Magazine" and they go "Nah" then I say "Shot From Both Sides" and they all say "What a tune," this album will be going into my collection (in fact I've just bought an original on e-bay) and being honest this has got to be listened to if you haven't heard it, in fact I'd go as far as to say no record collection would be complete with out this influential and superb album being part of it.





Bits & Bobs;




With all of today's waxing nostalgia for the music of the late '70s and early '80s, our memory lane is pockmarked by potholes. Many bands of the 2000s owe an obvious debt to post-punk. And yet, to read the lists of influences generated by the majority of both publicists and reviewers, you might think that the only two acts from the post-punk era were Joy Division and Gang of Four. This presents an unrealistically limited view of the breadth of creativity occurring at that time, as if the scene was limited to either gray-toned gloom or spiky funk-punk. While this makes for a conveniently tidy definition of the genre, it's one that's also inaccurate and inadequate. Did you know that post-punk could also display catchy melodies and, more amazingly, a sense of humor? In a world where bands tended to take themselves quite seriously, a maverick quintet of Mancunians stood apart from the pack: Magazine. Perhaps because they were difficult to pigeonhole, their contributions and influence has been largely forgotten. Thankfully, EMI have just issued remastered CDs of the band's four albums.



The members of Magazine boast impressive pedigrees. Singer Howard Devoto was a founding member and lead vocalist for Buzzcocks, one of the great original punk bands. Devoto left before they made it big, appearing only on Buzzcocks' Spiral Scratch EP and the quasi-official Time's Up compilation. In April 1977, he hooked up with Scottish guitarist John McGeoch. Although McGeoch hadn't come from a famous band, he would go on to become one of the most well-respected guitarists around, recording with Siouxsie and the Banshees, P.I.L., and Peter Murphy. The duo then recruited bassist Barry Adamson, who would later become a member of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds, as well as a composer of film soundtracks. Original drummer Martin Jackson went on to join a latter day Chameleons , to play with Frank Zappa (wow), and to program drums for Swing Out Sister (hmm, well, okay). Only Magazine's keyboardists didn't go on to future greatness. The first man to fill that slot, Bob Dickinson didn't last long enough to make it to the recording studio. He was replaced in 1978 by Dave Formula. A former cabaret musician, he added a great deal to the Magazine sound, although his only other claim to infamy was tagging along with Adamson and McGeoch to join Visage, a synth-heavy, new romantic one hit wonder ("Fade to Grey"). Regardless, Magazine in their heyday were comprised of terrific musicians, all bursting with creativity.



 These qualities shone through immediately on the band's 1978 debut, the classic Real Life LP. Coming back to it now and listening with fresh ears (and to a freshly remastered mix), the album's tracklist seems almost impossibly good. How could one record contain so many killer songs? There isn't a weak spot to be found. Track eight, "The Light Pours Out of Me", with its dryly funky verses and lushly melodramatic chorus, is just as good as track one, "Definitive Gaze", which moves from a creepy, fun-house organ intro to an anthemic, wordless chorus. It also contains the lyric that birthed the album's title: "Clarity has reared / Its ugly head again / So this is real life / You're telling me". Pathos and bathos, all delivered with a wink and a smile; this is the Devoto way. "The Great Beautician in the Sky" is another carnival ride, as waltz time slides into straight 4/4, then a loping oompah, and back again. In lesser hands, this stylistic slalom would go crashing off course. Magazine, though, were a dexterous bunch of songwriters. They also had great chops and could also lock into a dirty jam and rock it out, as on the double-time second half of "Motorcade". Best of all is "Shot by Both Sides", with its glorious guitar theme and theatrically gothic chorus. An earlier version, recorded between keyboardists, was the group's first single and their only ever to chart (peaking at #41 in the UK). It's included as a bonus track on the updated CD, along with another pre-album single, the more straightforward punk-pop cut "Touch and Go". Both b-sides were added, as well. These make for fine additions, although an album as magnificent as Real Life could scarcely use improving.



 After Magazine's first tour, Jackson left and was replaced by John Doyle. Despite this change in the drummer slot, Magazine took little time getting to their follow-up LP, 1979's Secondhand Daylight. A less kooky album, it trades out the haunted fairground motifs that accented Real Life for the occasional gray mood more befitting of a typical post-punk band. Then again, Magazine weren't typical of any particular style, so these overcast moments don't dominate. They do, however, usher in the record. The first song, "Feed the Enemy", doesn't reach and grab you so much as it lulls you in. Showing the band's indebtedness to their immediate forebears, the beginning of the track could have come from side two of either of Bowie's 1977 Berlin albums, while the rest of the track is a Roxy Music-like slow boiler. The Bowie factor looms even larger in "The Thin Air", a druggy instrumental track featuring chilly synth washes and sorrowful sax. Still, this spaceyness is balanced out by quicker paced songs like the glam-punk of "Rhythm of Cruelty" and "Talk to the Body", where Devoto gives us a Johnny Rotten sneer and then insists repeatedly that we all "Clam up / Calm down".



 As the decade changed from the '70s to the '80s, Magazine returned to the winning blueprint of Real Life, reinvigorating their sound with pop hooks and livelier tempos. Produced by the legendary Martin Hannett (Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Psychedelic Furs, New Order), the album showcased the tightest songwriting of the band's career. This yielded a great album that's just a fraction less vital and gripping than Real Life. Perky leadoff track "Because You're Frightened" showed why the group is sometimes categorized as new wave, although McGeoch's guitar riff sounds just like another beyond-punk song from that same year, the Clash's recording of "Police on My Back". Like "the only band that mattered", Magazine, too, were largely uncategorizable. No song in their catalog proved this more than their darkly groovy cover of Sly & the Family Stone's "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)". This experiment shouldn't have worked, but Magazine pulled it off brilliantly. As with much of their best material, the division between seriousness and humor is a thin and permeable membrane through which their music ebbed and flowed. The album ends with one of their all-time killer tracks, "A Song from Under the Floorboards". The delicious verses burble along on a Durany bass line, while the chorus features subtle yet irresistible "la, la"'s.



 Magazine decided to call it a day in 1981, but not before recording their fourth and final studio album, Magic, Murder and the Weather. Maybe their heart wasn't in it, because the record is a lackluster affair. Not that the writing and performances are entirely to blame. Hannett returned as producer, but he left his golden ears behind. For every good and tidy track like the catchy "About the Weather" or the return-to-cabaret feel of "The Honeymoon Killers", we're burdened with at least as many murky cuts like "So Lucky", "Vigilance", and "Naked Eye", all of which sound like they were recorded on a Walkman from the back of a nightclub (minus the excitement of applause, that is). Although Formula's synth sounds are laid on a little thick, closing number "The Garden" somewhat redeems the album's worth. In a strange way, the remastering crew should be rewarded for maintaining the integrity of Hannett's original mix of the album, even if that mix was often detrimental to the songs. The two bonus tracks here, b-sides to "About the Weather", were produced by the band and are the clearest tracks on the CD. I suppose that, for completion's sake, EMI had to reissue this mediocre album along with the great ones that preceded it, but most of us would be happy to simply excise this disc from Magazine's discography. It's one for the hardcore fans only.



 Their final release aside, Magazine left behind a great legacy. They were one of the most inventive bands of their time. Like two other excellent groups of their nonconformist contemporaries, the Stranglers and the Damned, Magazine had no compunction about poking fun at the shadowy realms in which their music dwelled, even as they reveled in the gooey darkness. They took their craft quite seriously, but not themselves. Any given passage from their best material could be both cool and funny at the same time; at once brimming with sentiment and mocking sentimentality. This was true of both the band's music and Devoto's lyrics. These elements reinforced one another, sometimes through juxtaposition and sometimes by fusing together to get the point across. Not that the experience of listening to Magazine needs to be intellectualized to be enjoyed. For a band that played outside the rules of a scene that supposedly had no rules, Magazine were often quite accessible and fun. If you've been missing out all these years, now is the perfect time to join the weird little party. Their four remastered studio albums all sound great, offer a choice selection of quality bonus tracks, and feature good liner notes.


 The story of Magazine is typical of a band born out of the post-punk explosion of the late 1970s. They released a trio of moderately received albums which attracted little mainstream attention before splitting after barely three years together. Described as the band that “dragged British punk-rock into a new dimension of thinking,” their name and music lived on thanks to the numerous bands they inspired. Their legacy can still be heard today; Radiohead in particular owe Magazine a considerable debt of gratitude.



 Formed in 1978 by ex-Buzzcock Howard Devotto as a way of making more experimental music away from the constraints of punk, Magazine’s debut single 'Shot by Both Sides' remains one of the stand-out tracks of that era. A defiant defence of non-conformism, it was a bold statement at a time of otherwise over-bearing political sentiments. “I was totally apolitical,” explains Devotto. “A socialist friend said to me, ‘you’ll end up getting shot by both sides.”



 What was radical then is of course considered normal today. But despite the British public widely embracing Devotto’s apolitical stance, albeit for very different reasons, it still must have been a daunting exercise reforming a band which was, at best, a cult concern. “We were pretty confident that there would be quite a lot of interest,” says Devotto. “The thing that worried me was preparing myself, as it had been twenty years since I last performed. I’ll let you into a little known fact; I’m not actually as young as I once was.” Devotto was proved right; Magazine’s comeback tour in February was a sell-out, and received rave-reviews.


 Dave Formula, Magazine’s enigmatic keyboard player, was delighted. “It's possibly a bit of a cliché, but the shows went far better than we could have possibly anticipated. The reception was thrilling really, from the press and more so the audience.”



 Were they surprised at the reception? “I think the word is yes,” says Devotto. Formula adds: “We knew it was going to sound good, as it had sounded good in rehearsals, but until you actually walk out there and do it, you just don’t know.”


 Many bands of Magazine’s generation have been frank about their motivations for reforming. Having received little attention or money first time round, they feel they deserve something, given their supposed influence. Devotto however is dismissive of this stance. “There were certain musicians who didn’t get what they deserved, and they act like that’s some sort of crime. I just don’t feel like that. I try to lump it, you know ‘like it or lump it’. I’ll lump it!”


 Formula agrees. “There was certainly no hard and fast plan on my behalf to put the band back together. It was very circumstantial but in a positive way, no one thought 'oh I want to make a lot of money from this'.”


 Over the years, Magazine songs have been covered by artists as diverse as Morrissey and Simple Minds. It must be flattering when that happens. “Definitely, without a doubt,” says Formula. “Not flattering, flattering is the wrong word, but it is reassuring when you find out people still cite you as an influence and record your songs.”


 Being ‘influential’ does not pay the bills however. It would of course be easy to become bitter watching a band become successful when they are clearly aping something you created. In a review of one of their comeback shows, one critic was moved to comment "it’s a crime that Simple Minds became big, but Magazine didn’t." Formula pauses momentarily. “Crime is quite a serious word I think. At the time it was a little bit galling to see other bands that had clearly taken a lot of influence or benefit from being around us and having success. I'd be lying if I said that wasn't the case... I don't want to harp on about it, but I think, if anything, what got some of the members of Magazine was that Simple Minds called one of their albums Real Life and didn't actually credit Magazine.”


 So why were they not successful? Formula explains: "I think a lot of people, particularly the press, misunderstood a lot of aspects of Magazine first time around. As well as being quite dark at times, especially with Howard's lyrics, there was a very strong pop element in a lot of the music, very catchy melodies and hooks, if you're allowed to say that! I think that's one of the things that's being re-examined.” Devotto adds cautiously: “Yes, but on the other hand if they had grasped too well what we were about I suspect we wouldn’t talking about this now. People were different back then, but now fortunately people do seem to know what we are about.”


 


The smart band liked by older brothers who saw no crime in buying Real Life at the same time as Genesis' And Then There Were Three, Magazine were an absolute gift for lovers of cerebral pop. Unfortunately, they never recovered from their initial hype. They carved a very particular swathe through the late 70s, the time when post-punk was known by its old money title, new wave.


 And none was more new wave in the broadest sense than their ever enigmatic leader, Howard Devoto. He was smart and dark; never really connecting with punk, he abandoned the band he'd formed with Pete Shelley, Buzzcocks, as early as 1977 suggesting that he was 'not stupid and I refuse to pretend to be.' Corralling Scots art-school guitarist John McGeoch and bassist Barry Adamson, (with a shifting coterie of keyboard players and drummers) the band recorded at Abbey Road and had subsequently little to do with the movement that Devoto had helped shape.



 Real Life from 1978 was an engaging debut that was as intelligent as it was oblique, with its swathes of keyboards and Devoto's mannered croon. “Definitive Gaze” encapsulates their singularity of direction; a little nod to reggae and then off on a pomp-rock overture before Devoto steps up, combining John Lydon and Peter Gabriel. “Shot By Both Sides” remains convincing as the album’s single, the group’s Top Of The Pops performance was infamous for sending the record down the charts. The knives were out for their second album, Secondhand Daylight. Produced by the recently departed Colin Thurston, much was made of its similarly to progressive rock. “Permafrost” shows the scale of their ambition.



 Correct Use Of Soap from 1980 may be their masterpiece. Pared down, dark and brooding, it sounds extremely fresh, benefiting from a Martin Hannett production, then white-hot from his work with Joy Division. Only Devoto's standing was thus that he could borrow from Dostoevsky's Notes From The Underground on their career-best “A Song From Under The Floorboards” and get away with it. The deft “You Never Knew Me” and their post-punk pre-funk cover of Sly & the Family's Stone “Thank You (Falettime Be Mice Elf Agin)” make this their most satisfying and rounded of all their albums.



 With McGeoch departed to Siouxsie and the Banshees and replaced by Ben Mandelson, Magic, Murder And The Weather is often viewed as the poor relation of the Magazine catalogue. It's certainly lower-key and less focussed than its predecessor, but its brave welding of rock and northern soul, most notably on “About The Weather” still sounds as fresh as a daisy. Although instrumentally like Japan at times, it retains a definite charm and as Devoto throws away on “So Lucky”, 'I think it turned out rather well'.



 'Magazine were always a connoisseur's choice,' John McGeoch, who died in 2004, was correctly to surmise. 'We broke new ground, we set the tone for the next twenty, thirty years, but we never made much money.'

DAY 409.
Bruce Springsteen.....................................Darkness On The Edge Of Town   (1978)











This will be short and sweet, I've never really been into Springsteen and I've no idea why, as I've said before I think he would be great in concert, but his albums always make me feel like it's "Groundhog Day." His voice is not too off-putting, and he sounds no' ban on the guitar, and the E Band seem pretty competent musicians.............but there's just something about his albums.


This album wont be going into my collection.




Bits & Bobs;


Have posted about Springsteen earlier (if interested)




Here's a Rolling Stone review;
Occasionally, a record appears that changes fundamentally the way we hear rock & roll, the way it’s recorded, the way it’s played. Such records — Jimi Hendrix’ Are You Experienced, Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, Who’s Next, The Band — force response, both from the musical community and the audience. To me, these are the records justifiably called classics, and I have no doubt that Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town will someday fit as naturally within that list as the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” or Sly and the Family Stone’s “Dance to the Music.”
  One ought to be wary of making such claims, but in this case, they’re justified at every level. In the area of production, Darkness on the Edge of Town is nothing less than a breakthrough. Springsteen — with coproducer Jon Landau, engineer Jimmy Iovine and Charles Plotkin, who helped Iovine mix the LP — is the first artist to fuse the spacious clarity of Los Angeles record making and the raw density of English productions. That’s the major reason why the result is so different from Born to Run‘s Phil Spector wall of sound. On the earlier album, for instance, the individual instruments were deliberately obscured to create the sense of one huge instrument. Here, the same power is achieved more naturally. Most obviously, Max Weinberg’s drumming has enormous size, a heartbeat with the same kind of space it occupies onstage (the only other place I’ve heard a bass drum sound this big).


 Now that it can be heard, the E Street Band is clearly one of the finest rock & roll groups ever assembled. Weinberg, bassist Garry Tallent and guitarist Steve Van Zandt are a perfect rhythm section, capable of both power and groove. Pianist Roy Bittan is as virtuosic as on Born to Run, and saxophonist Clarence Clemons, though he has fewer solos, evokes more than ever the spirit of King Curtis. But the revelation is organist Danny Federici, who barely appeared on the last L.P. Federici’s style is utterly singular, focusing on wailing, trebly chords that sing (and in the marvelous solo at the end of “Racing in the Street,” truly cry).


 Much the same can be said about Springsteen’s singing. Certainly, Van Morrison and Bob Dylan are the inspirations for taking such extreme chances: bending and twisting syllables; making two key lines on “Streets of Fire” a wordless, throttled scream; the wailing and humming that precede and follow some of the record’s most important lyrics. But more than ever, Springsteen’s voice is personal, intimate and revealing, bigger and less elusive. It’s the possibility hinted at on Born to Run’s “Backstreets” and in the postverbal wail at the end of “Jungleland,” In fact, Springsteen picks up that moan at the beginning of “Something in the Night,” on which he turns in the new album’s most adventurous vocal.



Yet the dominant instrumental focus of Darkness on the Edge of Town is Bruce Springsteen’s guitar. Like his songwriting and singing, Springsteen’s guitar playing gains much of its distinctiveness through pastiche. There are echoes of a dozen influences — Duane Eddy, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Roy Buchanan, even Ennio Morricone’s Sergio Leone soundtracks — but the synthesis is completely Springsteen’s own. Sometimes Springsteen quotes a famous solo — Robbie Robertson’s from the live version of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” at the end of “Something in the Night,” Jeff Beck’s from “Heart Full of Soul” in the bridge of “Candy’s Room” — and then shatters it into another dimension. In the end the most impressive guitar work of all is just his own: “Adam Raised a Cain” and “Streets of Fire” are things no one‘s ever heard before.



 One could say a great deal about the construction of this LP. The programming alone is impressive: each side is a discrete progression of similar lyrical and musical themes, and the whole is a more universal version of the same picture. Ideas, characters and phrases jump from song to song like threads in a tapestry, and everything’s one long interrelationship. But all of these elements — the production, the playing, even the programming — are designed to focus our attention on what Springsteen has to tell us about the last three years of his life. 
 In a way, this album might take as its text two lines from Jackson Browne: “Nothing survives — /But the way we live our lives.” But where Browne is content to know this, Springsteen explores it: Darkness on the Edge of Town is about the kind of life that deserves survival. Despite its title, it is a complete rejection of despair. Bruce Springsteen says this over and over again, more bluntly and clearly than anyone could have imagined. There isn’t a single song on this record in which his yearning for a perfect existence, a live lived to the hilt, doesn’t play a central role.



 Springsteen also realizes the terrible price one pays for living at half-speed. In “Racing in the Street,” the album’s most beautiful ballad, Springsteen separates humanity into two classes: “Some guys they just give up living/And start dying little by little, piece by piece/Some guys come home from work and wash up/And go racin’ in the street.” But there’s nothing smug about it, because Springsteen knows that the line separating the living dead from the walking wounded is a fine and bitter one. In the song’s final verse, he describes with genuine love a person of the first sort, someone whose eyes “hate for just being born.” In “Factory,” he depicts the most numbing sort of life with a compassion that’s nearly religious. And in “Adam Raised a Cain,” the son who rejected his father’s world comes to understand their relationship as “the dark heart of a dream” — a dream become nightmarish, but a vision of something better nonetheless.



 There are those who will say that “Adam Raised a Cain” is full of hate, but I don’t believe it. The only hate I hear on this LP is embodied in a single song, “Streets of Fire,” where Springsteen describes how it feels to be trapped by lies. And even here, he has the maturity to hate the lie, not the liar.



 Throughout the new album, Springsteen’s lyrics are a departure from his early work, almost its opposite, in fact: dense and compact, not scattershot. And if the scenes are the same — the highways, bars, cars and toil — they also represent facets of life that rock & roll has too often ignored or, what’s worse, romanticized. Darkness on the Edge of Town faces everyday life whole, daring to see if something greater can be made of it. This is naive perhaps, but also courageous. Who else but a brave innocent could believe so boldly in a promised land, or write a song that not only quotes Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street” but paraphrases the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby”?  Bruce Springsteen has a tendency to inspire messianic regard in his fans — including this one. This isn’t so much because he’s regarded as a savior — though his influence has already been substantial — but because he fulfills the rock tradition in so many ways. Like Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly, Springsteen has the ability, and the zeal, to do it all. For many years, rock & roll has been splintered between the West Coast’s monopoly on the genre’s lyrical and pastoral characteristics and a British and Middle American stranglehold on toughness and raw power. Springsteen unites these aspects: he’s the only artist I can think of who’s simultaneously comparable to Jackson Browne and Pete Townshend. Just as the production of this record unifies certain technical trends, Springsteen’s presentation makes rock itself whole again. This is true musically — he rocks as hard as a punk, but with the verbal grace of a singer/songwriter — and especially emotionally. If these songs are about experienced adulthood, they sacrifice none of rock & roll’s adolescent innocence. Springsteen escapes the narrow dogmatism of both Old Wave and New, and the music’s possibilities are once again limitless.


 Four years ago, in a Cambridge bar, my friend Jon Landau and I watched Bruce Springsteen give a performance that changed some lives — my own included. About a similar night, Landau later wrote what was to become rock criticism’s most famous sentence: “I saw rock & roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” With its usual cynicism, the world chose to think of this as a fanciful way of calling Springsteen the Next Big Thing.



 I’ve never taken it that way. To me, these words, shamefully mistreated as they’ve been, have kept a different shape. What they’ve always said was that someday Bruce Springsteen would make rock & roll that would shake men’s souls and make them question the direction of their lives. That would do, in short, all the marvelous things rock had always promised to do.  But Born to Run was not that music. It sounded instead like the end of an era, the climax of the first twenty years of this grand tradition, the apex of our collective adolescence. Darkness on the Edge of Town does not. It feels like the threshold of a new period in which we’ll again have “lives on the line where dreams are found and lost.” It poses once more the question that rock & roll’s epiphanic moments always raise: Do you believe in magic?And once again, the answer is yes. Absolutely.  

"Darkness on the Edge of Town"


Compared to his earlier songs, this was more mature songwriting from Springsteen, reflecting the characters from the Born To Run album getting older and more pessimistic. As with many songs he wrote at the time, he came up with the title first. Said Springsteen: "I had that title and said, 'Well, I'd better come up with something that deserves that title.' That's what I was always very, very good at - I didn't have any problem thinking really hard about what I was doing."


 
This was the title track to Springsteen's fourth album. At one point, the album was going to be called "American Madness," after a 1932 Frank Capra movie about life in America during the depression.


 
Springsteen has explained that this song is best performed live so the audience can generate its intensity.


 
This was the first album Springsteen released after a legal battle with his manager, Mike Appel, kept him from recording for almost three years.


 
Springsteen explained that sing song "dealt with the idea that the setting for personal transformation is often found at the end of your rope."





"Adan Raised a Cain"


The lyrics use biblical images to explain the relationship between a father and son. Cain was Adam and Eve's rebellious son who couldn't measure up to the goodness of his brother Abel. In the book of Genesis, Cain becomes jealous when God prefers Abel's offering to his own. He lures him out into a field and murders him, but he can't hide the act from God, who puts a mark of damnation on his forehead and sentences him to life as a restless wanderer. He can't even hope to be killed, for whoever sees the mark will know they "will suffer vengeance seven times over" if they were to kill him.

Springsteen's song examines Adam's role in raising a son that went down such a crooked path.


 
Springsteen calls this song "emotionally autobiographical." The bitter, but loving relationship between the father and son is similar to Springsteen's with his dad. Said Springsteen: "Our actual relationship was probably more complicated than how I presented it. Those songs were ways that I spoke to my father at the time, because he didn't speak and we didn't talk very much."


 
This was used in the movie Baby It's You, directed by John Sayles, who would direct Springsteen's videos for "I'm On Fire" and "Born In The U.S.A."


 
In the 2010 documentary The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, sound mixer Chuck Plotkin described Springsteen's instructions for how the jarring assault of this song should sound next to the more melodic tunes on Darkness. Springsteen told Plotkin to think of a movie showing two lovers having a picnic, when the scene suddenly cuts to a dead body. This song, the singer explained, is that body.



"Badlands"


The title came from a 1973 movie of the same name starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Springsteen got the idea from a poster in the theater lobby. Springsteen did not see the movie until after he wrote this. When he did see the film, he based the song "Nebraska" on it.


 
This was more mature songwriting from Springsteen, as much of Darkness On The Edge Of Town reflects the characters of his previous album, Born To Run, getting older and more pessimistic.


 
"Badlands" was considered for the name of the album. Around this time, Springsteen would come up with titles and try to come up with deserving songs for them. He told Rolling Stone in 2010: "Badlands, that's a great title, but It would be easy to blow it. But I kept writing and I kept writing and I kept writing and writing until I had a song that I felt deserved that title."


 
This is a concert favourite. It was featured on Springsteen's 1999 reunion tour with The E Street Band, and on many of their subsequent tours.


 
Badlands is a US national park in South Dakota. It is famous for striking scenery and expansive prairie land.


 
The second single off Darkness On The Edge Of Town, the first album Springsteen released after a legal battle with his first manager, Mike Appel, kept him from recording for almost 3 years.


 
The version on Live 1975-1985 was recorded in Arizona the night after Ronald Reagan was elected president. Bruce introduced the song by saying: "I don't know what you guys thought of what happened last night, but I thought it was pretty terrifying." Reagan would later misinterpret "Born In The U.S.A." in a 1984 campaign speech.


 
Bill Murray and Paul Shaffer chose to open the 25th Anniversary Show of Saturday Night Live with this song, as sung by Murray's character of Nick the Lounge Singer. According to the book Live From New York, they chose this song because Murray and Shaffer felt that there was a certain lyric in the song that best described their experience of growing up in life and in show business on Saturday Night Live in the '70s. Murray was quoted as saying performing the harmony with Paul was one of the high points of his entire career.

 

DAY 410.
Funkadelic.................................................One Nation Under A Groove   (1978)












This is the third George Clinton related album so far in this book, and have to say no' really taken by him in his various guises. Firstly finding some of his work no' exactly funky, lots of jams and guitar solos but no' wi' a funky beat, but having said that the guitarists certainly sound like they're no strangers to the guitar.


the tracks themselves were seriously over long, ranging from four and a half minutes to a ridiculous ten minutes fifty seconds, I know "you've got to get up, to get down" but fuck me almost eleven minutes of
"Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad (The Doo Doo Chasers)" would definitely drive this man to drink.


But have to admit I loved the album cover, It's very much of it's time, one of these days,after I get the other half committed (it's the only way I'll get to have my music room) I'm going to have the walls of the room covered in various album covers over the years, I do love album art.



Being honest the first three tracks I kinda dealt with and wasn't overly put out by them, but then it just went on and on, and for this listener too much to bear. I really didn't enjoy this one so it wont be going into my collection. 




  Bits & Bobs;




Open-mindedness, unity, the breaking-down of boundaries. These are the conceptual themes that run throughout this 1978 release. Along with 1971's Maggot-Brain, One Nation Under a Groove is the pinnacle of Funkadelic records and justifiably regarded as one of the all-time greatest funk albums. Everybody with even a mild interest in funk, whether they be a fully-pledged 'Funkateer' or casual-listner should own a copy of this album. A lot of credit should go to new recruit Walther "Junie" Morrison (formerly of the Ohio Players) who co-wrote most of the songs. George Clinton, leader of the P-Funk movement, once described him as "The most phenomenal musician on the planet". In addition to composing he also contributed keyboards, vocals, arrangements and production to the album and helped make it Funkadelic's most consistent release ever.





The album begins with a bang. The title track is one mother of a dance tune. Hand-clapping, layered guitars and synths subtely playing underneath the wonderful singing make this a joyous tribute to unity through music. One of the more commercial-sounding songs and Funkadelic's most successful single, this track claimed top spot in the singles chart and was a club favourite. It also helps to promote George Clinton's agenda. One Nation Under a Groove. Everybody together, unified, wanting to "dance our way out of our constrictions."





The call for unity continues with Groovallegience;



"Pledge groovallegience to the Funk, the united Funk of Funkadelica".





A slower track, based mainly around bass and drums with some seemingly reggae-influenced vocal-harmonies, particularly during the verses, it adds some nice psychadelic guitar-fills in the second-half and fine bass-playing. More importantly though it also furthers George Clinton's visions of unity;



"Please come on, come all to the funk. Let your feelings grow as one.
Join this nation, you will see. That we can make you free"





This slower track then leads to the fantastic and more upbeat 'Who Says a Funk Band Can't Play Rock Music"!' Once again the title shows Clinton's desire to break-down barriers and claim his freedom to do what he wants. A pounding bassline drives this one relentlessly on and Funkgeetarists Gary Shider and Mike 'Kidd Funkadelic' Hampton contribute some superb guitar licks (you can learn a lot about rock 6-stringing from these guys). Meanwhile the vocalists sing the chorus over and again, moving the groove ever forwards.



George Clinton had a passion for making up big words and 'Promental***backwashpsychosis Enema Squad (The Doo Doo Chasers)' is no exception. A slow 10-minute groover, again with some tasty guitar playing in the background. Meanwhile, the lyrics focus on the sort of toliet activity that even men prefer to do indoors.





"The world is a toll-free toilet. Our mouths neurological assholes.
And psychologically speaking. We're in a state of mental diarrhea"



It does make points about the way people live their lives and offers The Funk again as an alternative, describing themselves as;



"A musical bowel movement. Designed to rid you of moral diarrhea
Social bull***, Crazy do-loops, Mental poots"





Into You is probably Funkadelic's best-ever slow song. The excellent bass singer Ray Davis unusually sings lead, with a variety of other vocalists getting a chance to shine. Once again, the lyrics discuss the problems with society;



"I can't get into the neutron bomb
I can't get into something that will do me some harm
I can't get into a drug addict principle
I can't get into something that would close the door"




Cholly is a lovely little ode to funk (oh yeah did I forget to mention that P-Funk bands liked to sing about funk... A lot!)



"Funk gettin' ready to go, Funk gettin' ready to roll
Funk gettin' ready to go, Funk gettin' ready to roll"



A funky, stuttering, jumping bassline courtesy of Bootsy Collins grooves up the tune while Funkgeetarist Gary Shider takes lead vocals. Great song with some nice chorus vocals.





Lunchmeataphobia is a heavier, more guitar-based rocker with some distorted power-chords playing over a few distant-sounding vocals. Top guitar-work in the last minute leading to the outro.





P.E. Squad/Doo Doo Chasers is a shorter, instrumental version of Prome..yah dee dah..psychosis. It's a nice tune, although not really necessary. It did however come as part of an EP with the original album and the CD reissue has put in with the main tracks, so it is excusable.





Finally, Maggott Brain, also from the original EP. A Live version of the Eddie Hazel classic, played by Mike Hampton. (Eddie Hazel had succumbed to drug problems and his role in the P-Funk movement was greatly diminished). This track seriously kicks ass! More upbeat than the original (where George Clinton told Hazel to "play as if your momma had just died"), the quicker tempo and live setting give this a really firey edge. Whilst the original seemed melancholy and reflective, this version seems passionate and angry. Fantastic playing throughout, an absolutely killer piece to finish an album. Like the original, it's perfect for some late-night, hypnotic listening.





One Nation Under a Groove is essential listening throughout. A wide range of funk is expertly handled by a group of talented musicians, vocalists and songwriters. There is no let-up in quality and you really feel that living under the flag of The Funk would change this world for the better, especially if they were to get the guys who drew the ONUAG CD cover to design it. A must-have!




"One Nation Under A Groove"



Bandleader George Clinton conceived this track from a comment when he was shooting film for an unfinished Parliament/Funkadelic movie outside the United Nations headquarters. The scene in question was the landing of P-Funk's signature prop, the Mothership, accompanied by a UN staffer raising the flags of the member nations. One of Clinton's friends described what he was looking at as "one nation under a groove."




Bass guitarist Bootsy Collins recalled to Uncut: "One night in D.C. some guys start shouting, 'One nation! One nation! One Nation Under a Groove!' When you've got fresh musicians around you, you can take that hook line and really make something. George's thing was, 'It don't matter how many hooks you put in. Don't matter! Put them all in there.' So, on that song, you've got 'One Nation Under a Groove... Feet don't fail me now,' all that."



 
The title is one of many mantras embraced by P-Funk, whose shows bring together a mix of races that come together over the music. "One Nation Under A Groove" represents the positive vide that comes from this connection.



 
George Clinton had the title in mind two years before the band recorded the song. He didn't have any lyrics - he came up with those in the studio.



 
Clinton wrote this song with his musical director Garry Shider and with Junie Morrison, formerly of The Ohio Players. It was the first Funkadelic track Morrison worked on. He said: "As I recall, George was not present at the inception of the track. Thankfully, Garry Shider was there and very supportive during the process. Garry helped to ease the tension between myself and the members that I did not yet know personally, which made my arrangement easier for the band to handle. Bootsy Collins added his drums at a later date.





Bernie Worrell was not present at the track's inception either. Bernie was waiting on his awesome Moog Modular to arrive, which took a bit longer than expected. However, once Bernie and Bootsy added their vibes to the track, 'One Nation Under a Groove' became unstoppable. The awesome vocal aspects of the track were also added some time later, as well."



 
This went to #1 on the R&B chart, giving Funkadelic their first topper on that tally (they had another with "(Not Just) Knee Deep"). George Clinton usually released the songs with more hit potential as Parliament tracks, but he felt it was time to get Funkadelic a hit.



"We really wanted it to be a hit so we really made it more commercial and more straightforward than I like to do it," he told Blues & Soul in 1978. "The band were even singing: 'Corny or not, here we come'! It's corny but it's clever and the time is right for it. It's something we hadn't done since our Motown days. Sure, we could have done it all along but people bag you and you can't get out of the bag then and Funkadelic mustn't be bagged.




At one time, we were gonna do it much harsher but it didn't suit the vibration of the song. We don't want people to think of us as being political – though we are political but from a mental standpoint. Burn down the ghettoes in your head and trespass in your own mind, that's what we are trying to say."



 
This was used in the 1991 movie Young Soul Rebels. The film takes place during The Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977, over a year before this was recorded.




"Maggot Brain"

Funkadelic leader George Clinton explains maggot brain as a state of mind, transcending the body and enjoying the expansive freedoms of The Funk. Achieving maggot brain is often accomplished with the help of narcotics.



 
This song was recorded in one take. Clinton surrounded Funkadelic guitarist Eddie Hazel with a massive amount of amps. He told Eddie to first play like he just heard that his mother had died, then to play like his mom was actually still alive. The result was one of the best-known funk guitar solos of all time.



 
Other musicians were playing on this track, but Clinton faded them out to focus on Hazel's guitar.



 
The only lyrics are spoken at the beginning of the song before Hazel's solo takes off. There is also a brief spoken introduction to the song.



 
Guitar World ranked Hazel's solo at #21 on its list of greatest wah solos of all time in 2015.


 
Critics have lavished praise on the guitar solo in this song, and Clinton agrees that it's the best guitar work on any P-Funk recording. He also recommends "Alice In My Fantasies" from the 1974 Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On album.



 











 

DAY 414
Buzzcocks...................................Another Music In A Different Kitchen   (1978)











also forgot to write this



Buzzcocks are rightly remembered as the poppiest of the original punk bands, But they were also the most sleekly modernist, and their debut album, from it's elegant cover onwards, shows a band who had not an ounce of spare fat.It is all speed, noise, and melody, with a healthy sense of adventure and a willingness from the start to move beyond punk's rules on lyrics and sounds.

Last edited by arabchanter (27/9/2018 9:40 pm)

PatReilly wrote:

Listened to the Public Image album twice, because I think I should like it. Better on second listen, but still unsure.

I hated it the first time I listened to it years back. But it's strangely a bit of a grower.

Albeit I haven't listened to it for some time.

There's something rather sinister and eerie about that album. Almost like someone losing their mind.
 

DAY 415.
Van Halen...........................................................Van Halen   (1978)










Van Halen’s eponymous debut is among their most influential and critically acclaimed work, with nearly every track being a hit or a classic rock staple. This is the album that introduced the world to the heretofore-unheard-of guitar tapping technique innovated by Eddie Van Halen, as well as the over the top performance style of David Lee Roth.This album laid the blueprint for heavy metal and hair metal throughout the 1980s and beyond.
 

Springsteen: never liked him.

See for the Throbbing Gristle review, a/c, I was scanning it before reading and this phrase, or a particular word, stood out: "more or less gash". Well you certainly got 'gash' with Cossi Fanni Tutti.

I like 'One Nation' but again, it's a sort of mood thing. None of my pals were ever into funk and soul to the same extent as me, so it was the type of music I listened to in my house, rather than out and about. 

Tin Lizzie? I'll raise you a Tin Ribs (only loosely related, but funnier than a Csaba 'Man City' comment):
 

PatReilly wrote:

Tin Lizzie? I'll raise you a Tin Ribs (only loosely related, but funnier than a Csaba 'Man City' comment):
 

Sorry Pat, Tin Lizzie wins by a mile, just look at the last line  




 

DAY 416.
Willie Colon And Ruben Blades..................................Siembra   (1978)











This essential release was the result of a collaboration between salsa titans Willie Colon, a New York City trombonist/bandleader, and Ruben Blades a singer/songwriter/actor from Panama.


Colon had been a salsa pioneer and his collaborations with Hector Lavoe and Celia Cruz are milestones, but with Blades he practiced music making with a social conscience.
Strong narratives complemented by stellar playing............no wonder this was also salsa's first million seller.


I thought that said Willie Collum to start with



Will try and catch up the night.

Last edited by arabchanter (29/9/2018 11:02 am)