ITT: /mu/ in 1980

>>127030258 (OP)
Progsisters.....not like this

>>127030258 (OP)
Why are europoors obsessed with discoslop? The fad is over.

>>127030311
Yes like this. It’s fucking kino.

>>127030464
>fad
It was here long before you honkeys learned about it and it’ll be around long after you dropped it, cracka.

Great drinking album and my favorite by Merle Haggard.

>>127030311
Their best record in years. If they keep making stuff of this quality I don't mind experimenting like that every couple of albums.

>>127030553
I thought you niggers moved on and now listen to that Kurtis Blow shit.

I'm not saying they deserve the biggest selling album of their crummy era, but these boys have always known a thing or two about the hook and the readymade. Best song--"Tough Guys," which will never make the radio because it features this inspirational verse: "They think they're full of fire/She thinks they're full of shit." C

Don't vote for Reagan. He'll abolish Social Security and the Civil Rights Act and start a dangerous arms race with the Russians!

>>127030677
Ain't no way I'm voting for that faggot Carter again.

>>127030677
that's somehow literally every Democrat campaign ad from 1964 to present

>>127030650
If they hadn't made a song knocking on macho men he would've given it a D-

Replacing Aerosmith as the band of choice for heavy machinery-loving primitives, these Aussies are a bit too archetypical. Angus Young does come up with some killer riffs, although not as often as a refined person such as myself would hope, while newly-recruited vocalist Brian Johnson sings as if he has a cattle prod at his scrotum, just the thing for fans who can't decide if their newfound testosterone is agony or ecstasy. Songs such as "Shake a Leg", "Given (sic) The Dog a Bone" and "Let Me Put My Love Into You" detail all the unimaginative sexual acts you'd imagine, while "What Do You Do For Money, Honey" has fewer answers than the average secretary would prefer. My sister is glad they don't write science fiction and if you're male feel free to share in her relief. Brothers are more deeply implicated in these matters. B-

>>127030258 (OP)
This band kicks so much ass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGbb8-j1Suo

>>127030749
that was their only album he even bothered reviewing even though they were almost a decade into their recording career by this point

>>127030677
nah man Jimmy the Peanut is a total failure and this economy is for the birds

I want there to be more punk rock, I do, I do. I want there to be more left-wing new wave, actually. By Americans, I swear! But not from an out-of-work actor with Tiny Tim vibrato who spent the first half of the '70s creating rock cabaret. And it sounds as if, although I'm being kind here, Jello Biafra discovered the Stooges in 1977. C

>leaves Motown
>instantly starts producing kino
what the FUCK is going on over there?

From the straight-up hubba-hubba of "You May Be Right" to the Rick Wakeman ostinatos of "Sometimes a Fantasy" to the McCartneyesque melodicism of "Don't Ask Me Why" to the what-it-is of "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me," it's all rock and roll to him, but to me it's closer to what pop meant before ironists and aesthetes, including yours truly, appropriated the term. Closer than any skinny-tie bands, that's for sure: gregarious, shameless, and above all profitable. Of course, if it doesn't make up in reach what it lacks in edge, ironists and aesthetes needn't notice it's there. And beyond "Sleeping With the Television On," I couldn't tell you thing one about side two, which I just played three times. B-

>>127030907
>mad because ISRARTM took a shot at critics

>>127030677
I'm tired of waiting in line for gas, eat shit fag.

Unless he does something really stupid like grant amnesty to illegal aliens, I'm voting for Bonzo.

>>127030771
>intellectualizing AC/DC

>>127030924
>Reddit spacing

>>127030934
What's this "reddit"? What network are you on over at the MIT campus?

>>127030893
>enhances you're music
Why do we hate him again, /mu/ ? It's time to admit this man will do great things.

>>127030893
Motown has two songwriters and two producers for their entire roster. No wonder everything they release sounds the same. If you want to stand out, the logical choice is to leave.

ROLLING THUNDER
POURING RAIN
COMING DOWN LIKE A HURRICANE

I had hopes for this album--Linda's always been underrated as a rocker--but it falls way over on the strident side of powerful. The songs could be sharper, although except for "Justine" those from Richard Perry's prefab Cretones are more than adequate, but the real problem is the basic fallacy of L.A. punk--Linda doesn't understand that the idea is to use a sledgehammer deftly. This is how Ethel Merman would do Elvis Costello, only Ethel Merman has a better sense of humor. And though the other covers sound pretty good, only "I Can't Let Go" fits in conceptually, and I'd rather hear them from Little Anthony or Young Neil or Ye Olde Hollies. B-

So it's official, heavy metal has peaked here?

>>127030970
yeah she does overdo it a bit on here

>flops
Is it over for Aretha?

so when will new wave go mainstream?

So Nancy Wilson breaks up with her fella, soundman Mike Fisher, who naturally departs the band, along with his brother Roger, who happens to be the guitarist. And whether it's the absence of pomp-rockish Roger, stripping to a five-piece, or what hell hath no fury like, suddenly they're lean and mean and playing to the sisters--title cut's a fan letter to the female Johnny B. Goode, who I guess is Nancy, now playing a lot of lead. Take note, fellas--as Zep rips go, this one is something special, and not just for its sexual politics. Unfortunately, things go gushy at the end with an Ann-penned love song. Men--who needs 'em? B+

>>127031115
Next year Mike will release the worst album of all time.

>>127030771
Why does he always highlight all the filler tracks?

>>127030970
Also I kind of wish Taylor Swift had never discovered this album.

holy fuck, what happened to Aerosmith!?

Something tells me that if the Beatles don't reunite this year, they never will.

McCartney II [Columbia, 1980]
McCartney's self-production and diy instrumentals bespoke an appealing modesty and newfound sense of freedom. This one was recorded on a 16-track with an engineer in attendance. Its songs are mere sketches, doodles, and unfinished demos by a man who scores a hit every once in a while just to prove he's a genius. Which he isn't. C

>>127031272
>listens to Alan Parsons Project and Kraftwerk once while stoned

>>127031232
Hopefully they reunite just long enough for John to punch Paul in the face for this thing >>127031272

BREAKIN' THE LAW
BREAKIN' THE LAW

>>127031272
The fuck did I just listen to?

Hey now, don't blame me--I was insulting them back when your roommate still thought they might be Important. Now that that's taken care of itself, we can all afford to sit back and laugh a little. Robot satire, indeed--if they ever teach a rhythm box how to get funky, a Mothersbaugh will be there to plug it in. B

>>127031371
>Warner released Girl U Want It as the lead single because they thought that one was the surefire hit
>went over like a lead balloon
Boy they were retarded lol.

>>127031390
They thought Americans would go for that because it was a rocker while track 3 was disco shit that would probably appeal more in Yurop.

>>127031390
>>127031414
you think they'd have figured out that Girl U Want It isn't very catchy and wasn't going to get airplay for that reason

Who needs another live double? A master guitarist whose studio albums have been cited by Sominex for unfair trade practices, that's who. All your AM and FM favorites served up hot, cold, raw, or all of the above. A-

SING ME A SONG
YOU'RE A SINGER
DO ME A WRONG
YOU'RE A BRINGER OF EVIL

Yes, there are bright spots--a funk trifle with Re on piano, an autobiographical reminiscence speeded up Vegas-style, her voice. But the guidance she gets from new corporate mentor Clive Davis is typified by the vamp she adds to "What a Fool Believes." "Get the funk, get it now," she murmurs valiantly over a rhythm section anchored, as they say, by Louis Johnson and Jeff Porcaro. And who do you think plays the sax outro? If you guessed David Sanborn you get the picture. [Catalogue number: AL 9358.] B-

Slow songs about love alternate with medium-rocking songs about sex. Title and concept: Slow song about the futility of life, just in case you think he's "sold out" or somesuch. C

>>127031444
Call it what you like but Lay Down Sally feels wrong with the backbeat it has on this live version.

...

What is this year's best Saxon record and why is it Wheels?

>>127031444
I see this also includes Cocaine which was a song he didn't really do live too often because he thought the audience would interpret the lyrics the wrong way and assume it was a pro-drug song.

>>127031520
Seger is the lamest man in rock who makes the lamest 40 year old guy midlife crisis barroom background music.

>Ozz man kicked out of Sabbath
>replace him with the Rainbow midget
What the FUCK is Ionni thinking?

Beefheart relesed the best record of the year.
Runner up: The Fall

>>127031604
Ozzy can't do NWOBM stuff one would logically assume.

All the standard objections apply. His beat is still clunky, his singing overwrought, his sense of significance shot through with Mazola Oil. He's too white and too male, though he's decent enough to wish he weren't; too unanalytic and fatalistic, though his eye is sharp as can be. Yet by continuing to root his writing in the small victories and large compromises of ordinary joes and janies whose need to understand as well as celebrate is as restless as his own, he's grown into a bitter empathy. These are the wages of young romantic love among those who get paid by the hour, and even if he's only giving forth with so many short fast ones because the circles of frustration and escape seem tighter now, the condensed songcraft makes this double album a model of condensation--upbeat enough for a revery there, he elaborates a myth about the fate of the guys he grew up with that hits a lot of people where they live. A-

>>127031661
>He's too white and too male, though he's decent enough to wish he weren't
so much projection

>>127031589
Well, you gotta be a jaded blue collar alcoholic from the Midwest who has to pay alimony to his two ex-wives to "get" his music.

>>127031661
Bruce's singing as usual is even more horrible than Bowie's but still a better album than Against The Wind, anyway.

This album proves that the real hero of Slow Train wasn't Jerry Wexler or the former R. Zimmerman or Jesus Christ, it was Mark Knopfler. May Bobby never indenture soul sisters again. C

>>127030970
yeah yeah she heard Pat Benatar once and decided "Hey I can do that."

AND IT'S ON AND ON AND ON
IT'S HEAVEN AND HELL

>>127031907
>IT'S HEAVEN AND HELL
but here in my country mostly the second

>>127030979
That's not Heavy Metal.
That's ZZ Top jumping on the punk rock bandwagon.

>>127031956
Or to put it another way it's AC/DC with faster songs.

Now that the Bee Gees and KISS are finally dead, let's celebrate this new arrangement with the adding of chocolate to milk.

Disco is here to stay.
This film is going to win both Oscars AND Grammys.
Even that All American Olympian, Bruce Jenner is in it.
That's a real man, and Disco is music for real (Macho) men!

ALL IN ALL, YOU'RE JUST ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL

>>127031489
Did she really try to sue Steely Dan over this album?
OK, it's not as good as Aja, but there's no need for a lawsuit.

THERE'S GONNA BE A HEARTACHE TONIGHT, I KNOW

The comeback album of the year.
And Yoko goes NEW WAVE!
Welcome back, John.
Next time don't make us wait so long for a new album.
And, by the way, how about a Beatles reunion?

>>127032029
>On November 17, 1980, Los Angeles police investigating reports of a teenage runaway stopped at Henley's home. Inside they found the missing 15 year old girl. A different 16 year old was laying passed out naked on the living room floor. Henley was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He pled guilty and paid a fine.

>>127031981
I wouldn't put it that way.
AC/DC is basically just The Who meets The Rolling Stones.
No, Motorhead is a British ZZ Top.
Fuck, just look at the cover.
They're dressed like cowboys in the desert.
AC/DC would do that.
The only thing AC/DC and Motorhead have in common is the blues, but that's where it ends.

>>127032078
so you're telling me back then when the LAPD got a report of a missing teenage girl, they knew Don Henley's house was the first place to check. lol.

Peter Gabriel on Atco gives way to. . .Peter Gabriel on Mercury, replacing DIY DOR with pessimistic art-rock minidrama, while side two opens with "Games Without Frontiers," about a different kind of internationalism, and closes with "Biko," about a different kind of Africanism. Either he misunderstands his own strengths or he underestimates his audience or both. B-

Leaping from mediocrity to wretched excess, they throw two discs on the market when they don't have the material for one. The lead cut/single, "Let Me Talk," is too political in its fluffy way to break down the racism to today's top 40, and after that they never top the Doobies rip on side three--certainly not with the title number, which I blame on the fools who think they abandoned their principles when they gave up ersatz jazz. C+

>>127032157
Like all of Gabriel's songwriting, so pretentious it hurts. Just...just pass Ace of Spades this way, thank you.

Sad. The best cut is "I'm Affected" (note double-edged title); the second best is a Ronettes remake (Joey outsings Andy Kim); the third best is a ballad about their manager (now departed). They also remake two of their own songs--"Judy Is a Punk" (good sequel) and "Rock 'n' Roll High School" (unnecessary Spectorization)--and one of the Heartbreakers' (inferior). And take on the Sports and Joe Jackson with a song about the radio that would be the worst they'd ever written were it not for "This Ain't Havana" and "High Risk Insurance," in which the group's reactionary political instincts finally escape that invisible ironic shield (bet Johnny provided worse-than-Barry-McGuire rhymes like "on your way to life's promotion/You hinder it with emotion"). Phil Spector doesn't make that much difference; his guitar overdubs are worse than his orchestrations, and they're not uncute. But this band sounds tired. B+

>>127032251
Old Phil's "Wall of Sound" gimmick doesn't work with The Ramones.
They should've stuck with Craig Leon and Ed Stasium, like the old days.
That's what made them so endearing.

With Lionel Richie turning his attentions to inspirational numbers varying the theme "Got to Be Together," with "Jesus" joining William King's "Mighty Spirit" for the finale, this is an improvement. For one thing, most of the brotherhood anthems--which avoid the gender-specific, actually, with lots of "people," "folks," and "y'all"--have a somewhat more rousing beat than "Three Times a Lady." And on the fond "Old-Fashion Love" and the cold-hearted "Sorry to Say," the brothers remind Lionel that this is still supposed to be a funk band. B

>>127031371
>got mad that their serious political song became a party anthem for frat retards

>>127032282
well he sure succeeded in turning them into Van Halen, anyway

>>127032327
they were already moving to a bigged-up arena sound on album #3 so i guess going all the way was the logical conclusion lol

Holy based, this sounds awesome, aside from the synths. Hope they don't go too far with it on their next records.

The right-every-which-way "Upside Down" and all-purpose gay lib pep song "I'm Coming Out" are only the highlights: not since Lady Sings the Blues has Ms. R. been forced into such a becoming straitjacket. Her perky angularity and fit-to-burst verve could have been designed for Rodgers & Edwards's synergy--you'd swear she was as great a singer as Alfa Anderson herself. And Nile is showing off more axemanship than any rhythm guitarist in history. A-

It's odd at best that the two hits and the two high points are the two songs predicated on black sources--the resourceful reggae cover "The Tide Is High" and the genius rap rip "Rapture" (which stands, let me assure my fellow Flash fans, as the funniest, fondest joke she ever told on herself). Elsewhere power pop turns power cabaret and Sgt. Pepper turns white album, only without Lennon-McCartney, or even McCartney. Debbie sings better all the time, but a better singer than she'll ever be couldn't save "T-Birds," or "Faces." They got what they wanted and now what? B-

Hey anons, some friends invited me to a concert and want to record it. How big of a wheelchair do I need if want to sneak in one of these?

>>127030311
kino af

>>127031115
Is it shit? Yeah it's shit.

>>127030258 (OP)
Synthesizers are going usher in a great new era of music, I just know it

Eddie VH's quicksilver whomp earns the Hendrix comparisons, and he's no clone--he's faster, colder, more structural. David Lee Roth adds a wild-ass sophistication to the usual macho--no mortal arena singer would even think of the goofy country blues takeoff that provides the title. But the message of the music isn't the exuberance of untrammeled skill, it's the arrogance of unchallenged mastery. Without being pompous about it, which is a plus, these guys show as little feeling for their zonked, hopelessly adoring fans as Queen. They're kings of the hill and we're not. B

>>127031606
You're fuckin weird.
No one listens to that shit.
And if you do you spend more time inside your locker in H.S. then you do out of it nerd.

>>127032393
>40 years passes
>decides track 4 is problematic and she's not going to do it live anymore

>>127031995
>Disco is here to stay.
no one thought this in 1980, Spirits Having Flown was probably the end of the disco era

another here today, gone tomorrow generic heavy metal band

>>127032420
Synthesizers have been out for a decade now but they've been too expensive and even the simpler models like the Moog Prodigy are a bit too difficult to use for most musicians.
The thing that's truly going to change the game are affordable microprocessors like the Z80. We already saw a glimpse of the possibilities with the Prophet 5 and its programmable preset memory but I think we'll be able to do so much more. Imagine a synthesizer that doesn't need tuning whenever the temperature changes for example.

>>127032097
>AC/DC is basically just The Who meets The Rolling Stones.
w h a t
t h e
f u c k

l o l N O

>>127032493
Strictly speaking no however the Billboard in '80 was still full of disco tunes like Funkytown, Another Brick In The Wall, Upside Down, Guilty, etc.

>>127032377
I liked "Follow me". I know it's an old show tune, but she makes it work.

>>127032513
>disco tunes like Another Brick In The Wall
anon, huffing glue is not doing your brain any favours

It's not fair for punks to pick on him--rock Hollywood has spawned worse corruption, after all, and his band is a lot tougher and cooler than the Stranglers ever were. But he doesn't do himself a lot of favors, either. He didn't have to include a poster of all the hotels he's trashed. He didn't have to repeat the phrase "Kill my wife" for the umpteenth time (someone tell Brit it was all a joke). He didn't have to invoke passion as a universal solvent like some surly asshole at a bar where all the women have been taken. He didn't have to bury "Oh God, I Really Wish I Was Home Tonight" on an album nobody will remember a year and a half after it goes platinum. He implores his sweetheart to save her best bits for him on a naughty postcard. But I remember the young stud who was good enough for "Maggie May." C

>>127032493
Not to interrupt the flow of the thread, but I was alive in 1980, and people were still jumping on the Disco bandwagon back then, in spite of Steve Dahl's Disco Demolition night at Comisky Park one year earlier.
>>127032461 is living proof of that.
I was there.
You WEREN'T!
>Now can we get back to our LARP party, please?

>>127032461
fucking disco sellouts. there goes their US radio play from now on. Euros can have them.

>>127032545
I don't know man, the funk guitars sound pretty disco to me.

>>127032513
Olivia Newton-John - Magic, etc. I'm sure all of Blondie's hits would have also qualified as disco.

and hey even Heaven and Hell has disco rhythms on it.

>>127032589
>>127032582
The fad this year was disco rhythms with that spacey reverb sound like Magic has that made everything sound hypnotic. It appears on a lot of 1980 songs and yes even Black Sabbath did it. AC/DC's dry sound was an exception.

>>127032552
Point of information. The Stranglers sent Cuckgau death threats for something unkind he wrote about them.

COME TAKE MY HAND
YOU SHOULD KNOW ME
ALWAYS BEEN IN YOUR MIND
YOU KNOW I WILL BE KIND

>>127032563
>but I was alive in 1980
hey good music but shitty year otherwise with a broken economy, out of control crime, terrible cars, and a failed president everyone couldn't wait to get rid of in November

Only Australians cared about this album and afaik they only played two US concerts for this tour

>>127032642
That was almost 2024 except for missing the good music part.

IT'S OVER!
Dio was good in Rainbow, but, let's face it, nobody can ever replace Ozzy.
It's a good album, but it's not Black Sabbath.
They should change their name.

>>127032660
I think they should unmask for real. The gimmick has run its course.

>>127032672
things were really dystopian back then in many ways it was worse than today

>>127032660
it was also the end of Peter Criss who was replaced by Eric Carr here

This "Star Wars" thing - it's just another fad. It won't last.

THE TIDE IS HIGH
BUT I'M HOLDIN' ON

>>127032684
It's a lot better than their last two releases with Ozzy and the Rainbow guy is a better vocalist. But I agree, they sound nothing like they did with Ozzy and should probably change the name.

In which former three-chord savage J. Lydon turns self-conscious primitivist, quite sophisticated in his rotten way. PIL complements Lydon's civilized bestiality by reorganizing the punk basics--ineluctable pulse, impermeable bass, attack guitar--into a full-bodied superaware white dub with disorienting European echoes. Much of the music on this double-LP version of the exorbitant three-disc, forty-five r.p.m. Metal Box is difficult; some of it fails. But the lyrics are both listenable and readable, and thanks to the bass parts even the artiest instrumentals have a leg up on, to choose a telling comparison, Brian Eno's. Don't say I didn't warn you, though--it may portend some really appalling bullshit. No matter what J. Lydon says, rock and roll doesn't deserve to die just because it's twenty-five years old. J. Lydon will be twenty-five years old himself before he knows it. A-

>>127033577
>>127033566
I can't figure out which cover came first and ripped off the other one.

The sound is dry post-punk guitar with spare, witty flourishes abounding and nearly every track gives up a quotable phrase, sometimes two. Intelligent phrases they are, too. But what are we to make of a group whose best song is a reading of Camus's "The Stranger," a book that was holy writ for collegiate existentialists since before Robert Smith was born? I mean, do we really need collegiate existentialism nostalgia? B

>>127033566
even here they got a disco rhythm going on

>>127033566
Interesting experiments here but a little too amelodic for me.

Their youth, their serious air, and their guitar sound are setting a small world on fire, and I fear the worst. No matter where they're starting off--not as big as Zep, maybe, but not exactly on the grunge circuit either--their echoey vocals already teeter on the edge (in-joke) of grandiosity, so how are they going to sound by the time they reach the Garden? What kind of Christian idealists lift their best riff from PIL (or from anywhere at all)? As bubble-headed as the teen-telos lyrics at best. As dumb as Uriah Heep at worst. C+

>>127033638
Fuck, I can't believe we forgot to post his review of Pornography when we had the /mu/ in 1982 thread last week. One of his most WTF reviews.

>>127032489
Her best known song, and she won't sing it any more?

How about, maybe ... write some new stuff?

The latest propaganda coming out of the P-Funk ministry is calling him Slick Rick. Slick Lame is more like it. Here he makes do like crazy with the free-love smarm, returning only to what he calls funk on the title track, while "Mary-Go-Round" takes a decidedly utilitarian view of a woman living the free loving lifestyle. C

Here's where they start showing off. If "Lost in the Supermarket," for instance, is just another alienated-consumption song, it leaps instantly to the head of the genre on the empathy of Mick Jones's vocal. And so it goes. Complaints about "slick" production are absurd--Guy Stevens slick?--and insofar as the purity of the guitar attack is impinged upon by brass, pianner, and shuffle, this is an expansion, not a compromise. A gratifyingly loose Joe Strummer makes virtuoso use of his four-note range, and Paul Simonon has obviously been studying his reggae records. Warm, angry, and thoughtful, confident, melodic, and hard-rocking, this is the best double-LP since Exile on Main Street. And it's selling for about $7.50. A+

>>127033699
lol accurate, he knew from the get-go what was coming with this band

Produced by Gibb-Galuten-Richardson, and Barbra Goes Disco ain't all. Somewhere in their success-addled minds Barry and Robin saw a chance to return to heartthrob ballads like "To Love Somebody" and "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?" But after years of writing fluff--great fluff, occasionally, but fluff--they can't match that standard. Lucky for them Streisand doesn't oversing every time out, even floats some of the uptempo stuff--music of the spheres if you consider her voice a platonic ideal, polyurethane disco if you don't. But most of the time she oversings. And when she dramatizes a soap like "Life Story," the mismatch is ridiculous. C+

START SPREADIN' THE NEWS
YOU'RE LEAVIN' TODAY
I WANT TO BE A PART OF IT
NEW YORK, NEW YORK

>>127033932
Apparently despite the Bee Gees' blacklist from US radio they still had no problem playing "Guilty" to death.

Never hep to his jive, I'm less than shocked by the generalized sentimentality disillusioned admirers descry within these hallowed tracks, though the one about the late great Lowell George (think it's him, any other El Lay rocker die recently?) is unusually rank. I grant that the sincere vocals and rising organ chords do make my heart swell in spite of itself once in a while. But I wonder whether the lost kids (i.e., Lost Kids) in "Boulevard" wear mohawks, and whether JB will ever find it in himself to sing to them. Inspirational Line: "That girl was sane." C+

Only Neil would make a deliberately minor record about war and peace after three successive masterworks about himself. Its music fragile and sometimes partial, its length under 30 minutes despite throwaways, it divides less neatly into "dove" and "hawk" sides than the packaging advertises. Side one's haltingly lyrical "Little Wing" and shaggy head story "The Old Homestead" can be read as hippie paradigms, side two's rallying cries for old marrieds and union stalwarts as middle-American anthems. But Young's working men are from the American Federation of Musicians, and the confused "young mariner" who finishes off side one with a half-swallowed "I hope that I can kill good"; doesn't sound much like a hippie to me. So what I want to know is whether the DEW-line boys in "Comin' Apart at Every Nail" launched a missile or let one slip through. Some joke on the Pentagon either way. A-

No one will ever mistake this for a great Stones album, but I bet it sounds more interesting than It's Only Rock 'n Roll should we take the time to compare and contrast in our respective retirement communities. The mid-'60s charm of such tossed-off tropes as "Where the Boys Go" and "She's So Cold" goes with music that's far more allusive and irregular and knowing: for better and worse its drive isn't so monolithic, and the bass comes front and center like Bill was James Jamerson. Looser than you'll ever be. B+

>>127031108
that was the end of the real Heart, nothing after this counts

>>127030464
I predict in the future they will find a more computerized, soulless type of disco. something more futuristic and techno-like, if you will. just computers

>>127034048
I have a bit of a disdain for Livin' After Midnight because they turned into Foreigner for that one track.

>>127034048
Rapid Fire was the perfect song to play on the highway in your Camaro, if only it wasn't a malaise Camaro that could barely reach 70 mph and the speed limit was 55 mph so cops would be on your ass anyway.

>>127032500
hey my cousin has a computer, a TRS-80 and it's fun to play type in games from magazines on it but i don't see what practical use a computer could ever have

>>127034196
Agreed.

We have 1 phone line for 7 people. That's all we need.

Townshend has said the only reason this isn't a Who record is that it wasn't time for a Who record, which must be his oblique way of apologizing for not being able to sing like Roger Daltrey. On his earlier solo excursions, the casually reflective mood suited his light timbre. Here he's coming to terms with love, frustration, punk, and other subjects that overtax his capacity for urgency and anger (and understanding). Who fans find the gap between aspiration and achievement touching, even thematic. Nonbelievers find it whiny. And they hate those ostinatos. B-

>>127030907
Sometimes a Fantasy is the song he was playing when he went postal onstage in Moscow. I can’t hear that song without imagining his angry interjections between each line.

>>127030772
they realy do, i bet they will never change the singer

Having walked out on three different bands led by this dame, I have the credentials to certify this funny, sexy, accidental little record. Half the time she exaggerates her flat Cleveland accent into a hickish, dumb-and-dirty come-on or parody of same, and half the rest of the time she plays her foolish nihilist poetry for laughs, which leaves a quarter of the time when she's the nihilist fool I'll walk out on till the day she dies. Pat Irwin's big-band atonalisms suit her city-of-night shtick perfectly. And "Spooky" is the cover of the year. B+

>>127035271
>Half the time she exaggerates her flat Cleveland accent
>Cleveland accent
she was from upstate New York, retard

>>127032684
>>127033528
i'm glad people are realising this album and Dio Sabbath in general is extremely overrated and second rate. only gets praise for being better than the last 2 albums with Ozzy.

only aussies will get this

>>127032486
fuck off fag

WE DON'T NEED NO EDUCATION
WE DON'T NEED NO THOUGHT CONTROL

Merely by copping to the magic concept "rockabilly," Cash can kick up comeback talk. And comparison with his rockabilly rockabilly for Sun (where he was always the countriest) establishes that by the standards of an ordinary mortal he's a better singer now--more flexible physically, more expressive emotionally. But the technique is a cover for what's lost, probably forever--stolid depth as immovable presence. Same goes for the arrangements--defiantly understated for Nashville, they're customized rock-country up against the austerities of the Tennessee Two. In other words, an honorable country album with some pretty good songs on it. B-

Doc at the Radar Station [Virgin, 1980]
Beefheart is an utter original if not some kind of genius, but that doesn't make him the greatest artist ever to rock down the pike--his unreconstructed ecoprimitive eccentricity impairs his aesthetic as well as his commercial reach. Only don't tell grizzled punks now discovering the boho past, or avantish rockcrits who waited patiently through the cleansing storm for musicianship to come round again. In synch with the historical moment for once, Beefheart offers up his most uncompromised album since Trout Mask Replica in 1969--never before have his nerve-wracking harmonies and sainted-spastic rhythms been captured in such brutal living color. Me, I've always enjoyed his compromises, which tend to be crazier than normal people's wildest dreams, and wish he'd saved some of his melodic secrets for the second side. A-

Grotesque (After the Gramme) [Rough Trade, 1980]
As postpunk splinters into a thousand shafts of shadow, these arty lefties are definitely going for poetry readings with two-chord backing. My favorite is the first punk song ever to mention Herb Alpert, who appears not as a musical icon but as a record executive--at the company that distributed them back when they were trying to sell out. B

Totale's Turns [Rough Trade, 1980]
"The difference between you and us is that we have brains," Mark Smith announces to what the written notes call an "80% disco weekend mating audience" at the top of forty-three minutes of rant. The difference I notice is that the band is getting paid, but never mind--I'm so hungry for punk these days that I'm a sucker for the overall sound, maybe even the attitude. Yet though the minutes are divided officially into ten song titles, I confess I have trouble telling one from another except to point out that "Roche Rumble" is pretty fierce momentumwise. I also enjoy "Choc-Stock" (sounds like "pop star") and "That Man" (sounds like "Batman"). And almost any time Smith revs his delivery up toward squeal. B

HOLY SHIT