REM – Gardening At Night
Because obviously I rushed out to buy the Chronic Town EP aged 4.
The Clash – Straight To Hell
Excellent cover of the Lily Allen classic, with its cheeky MIA sample
Paul McCartney – Wanderlust
One I do actually remember from the time. I thought it was a thing of wondrous beauty. I hadn’t listened to it for years until just now, but you know, it kind of is.
Would have liked to have added Futility by The Ravishing Beauties, but the Peel Session version.(which I prefer) isn’t on YouTube as a single track. Here it is on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/treetopclub/the-ravishing-beauties
Several more obvious ones too, but will leave them to you…
in the old days I could have shoved the duvet over me head and wallowed in self pity – but when I did wake/recover from the delirium I’d stupidly switch my phone on and catch up with the world – trouble is, when people you know are updating their chemo results or heart attack status – you feel even more pants for fevering and snotting up the world… (the fever was quite dangerous!- honest).
Out of bed now, so I’ll be all fixed up and looking sharpe, before anyone can plague me with an atishoo.
It’s not widely accepted but Too-Rye-Ay is the best Dexys album. Likewise it’s not generally accepted but Combat Rock is the best Clash album. Joined by something a bit more offbeat from The Cravats.
The funny thing about this is that none of these are straight punk records (or punk at all in the case of Dexys) but 1982 was the best year for punk – classics by Exploited, Violators, Chaos UK, Test Tubes, GBH, Varukers, Discharge, Adicts, One Way System, Abrasive Wheels, Blitzkrieg, Mayhem, Blitz, Special Duties, Attak, Dead Wretched, Drongos For Europe, Court Martial, The Dark, The Fits, Riot Squad, Action Pact, Cult Maniax, Dead Man’s Shadow, Crass, The System, The Disrupters, Subhumans, The Mob, A-Heads, Red Alert, Infa Riot, Cock Sparrer, The Samples, The Defects, Anti Nowhere League, Chelsea, UK Subs……etc, etc
Not to mention early goth stuff such as Sisters, Bauhaus, UK Decay, Play Dead..
A good year!
I have loads of play dead records though was never sure how much I liked them. I think the record artwork on them was always good. break, shine, sacrosanct were probably my favourites.
Goth you say? I am late, but my three are
Bauhaus – Spirit
goth, about ghosts and uplifting!
The Birthday Party – Deep In The Woods
about a murdered girl, spooky and deep, lovely
Soft Cell – Torch
Here is a video from TOTP’s with added John Peel and lashings of eyeliner. added to boombox too
Donds to many of those punk bands, Sisters did release Alice and Body and Soul which I have on vinyl still, but my favourites by them are in different years 🙂
Spirit and Torch are two of my favourites as well.
I heard Deep In The Woods years ago played on a mate’s ghetto blaster in a park at night. Creepy enough already. Then he suddenly grabbed my arm and pointed up a reddish triangular shape in the sky. A few of the scariest seconds of my life …until the clouds cleared and we realised it was just the partially obscured moon!
A pedant writes: it was Body Electric, not Body And Soul. Alice is another favourite.
Same here really. I agree with you about Shine and particularly Sacrosanct.
I’ve known a couple of people who saw them supporting Killing Joke in around 82. One thought they were great and started following them. The other said he couldn’t understand the point of having a crap version of Killing Joke as support band to the real thing. I think the truth is probably in the middle.
Apologies, @wyngatecarpenter, I did get the wrong sisters body and I don’t have the single, I lose 5 goth points and will wear a bright colour as penance ;-P Your Deep In The Woods experience sounds very spooky!
ok so I had to make some mistake somewhere. thanks to an impossibly slow connection where I am, and my own impatience, I seem to have added Our House 3 times. Apologies. Had a choice of Madness singles to go for, but Our House is just such a perfect picture of family life, nostalgic and even poetic. Also my first nom to be listed on RR, after several months of trying. A Town Called Malice seemed to sum up the zeitgeist and Only You is simply a beautiful song. Yes, I did quite like the Flying Pickets’ cover version too, guilty pleasure!
Not buying any records at the time I don’t think, no spare cash, busy with small children, living in the country and thinking about moving house – which we did the following year. Of course watching TOTP and Old Grey Whistle Test. Not going to any gigs – not possible at the time.
I was 24 and living at my girlfriend’s family home, a posh riverside apartment in Barnes.
I think that my third favourite album of the year (after Yazoo and Elvis C) was Abba’s The Visitors.
Also loved Say Hello Wave Goodbye, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me and sundry other (New Romantic?) classics. Bought a few singles by The Jam and Madness too of course.
suspect everyone’s best year crops circa age 17/18…
I haven’t really participated in this series but that certainly doesn’t hold true for me… my “best years” span the respective genres I’ve fallen in love with, 50’s-10’s for jazz/jazz-rock/jazz-funk, 80’s-90’s for NZ, Aussie, US and British Indie, 90’s Trip hop/acid jazz, 90’s-10’s for electronic/breakbeat/nu-jazz/hip hop etc. And the only really dead period in all that coincides with my later teen years… aside from The Smiths, The The, NZ/Aus Indie and the odd African or late Miles/Weather Report track I could quite happily exist without the entire recorded output of the 1982-88 period.
“suspect everyone’s best year crops circa age 17/18.”
1987-88? You must be joking. 82 was the year I started buying records (Goody Two Shoes being the first. Red Scab on the b-side was an interesting contrast) and actively being interested in music, so there’s a lot of nostalgia, but most of the stuff I like from then I got into much later.
2) Alabama – Mountain MusicThey made the tempo-shift-on-the-outro into a worn out cliche, but this catches them near the top of their game. The harmonies just work perfectly and no song says “Southern summer fun” so well.
The Look of Love – ABC
State of Independence – Donna Summer. Oh glory, glory!
The whole of Simple Mind’s New Gold Dream would be great, but if it’s one, I’ll pick Someone, Somewhere in the Summertime.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, I just love the playlists this thread throws up. Last week was a real surprise with all of the jazz postings. As I often play this at work on a Thursday morning – a dead time for us – this week’s is going to be a dance-around-the-office jobbie, I can sense already. Great fun!
A very bad year for me! My kids and I had been made homeless just before Christmas 1981 and we were rehoused by the council in an upstairs maisonette on a sink estate. I couldn’t get credit while we lived there. and it was the only place I’d ever lived where I couldn’t get a paper delivered – the shop said it was because the paperboys were scared to come on the estate because of the packs of dogs that roamed there. Packs of dogs there certainly were, but of course the real reason was they thought I wouldn’t pay the bill.
I found consolation in Gary US Bonds’ Jole Blon (really 1981 but I’m cheating here) which I played incessantly and was convinced would be a huge hit. This proved not to be the case. Richard and Linda Thompson were having a bad year too – their marriage had broken down but they were contractually obliged to make one more album and tour the US, so they were Walking On A Wire as well as me.
My teacher training course came to an end and I got a job at a progressive comprehensive school in Milton Keynes – the one we’d been shown videos of during our training! In those days, if you moved to MK to take up that kind of job the Development Corporation would give you a house, so I thought our troubles were over – but I was wrong there.
By the end of the year, however, I was obsessed with another song, not at all my usual taste, and the kids bought me the 12″ single for Christmas – the Eurythmics’ Love Is A Stranger.
I’ve got to this a bit late and many of the songs I might have picked are gone, so donds for A Town Called Malice, The Look Of Love, Genius Of Love, Sexual Healing, Go Wild In The Country, Straight To Hell, Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy and Love Is A Stranger.
Anyway, I was buying quite a bit of music in 1982, particularly quite a few singles because the Charts were packed with good things. The problem is picking them.
I bought The Clash‘s Combat Rock as soon as it was released, and I still think of it as one of the best albums of the decade. Others that I liked at the time haven’t worn so well, Tropical Gangsters by Kid Creole And The Coconuts, for example.
King Crimson released Beat, but I didn’t get to hear it until the end of the year, when I had it as a Christmas present, so I cannot claim anything from it. I did buy H2O by Hall And Oates but it isn’t my favourite of theirs by any stretch of the imagination. Too commercial and glossy, and lacking in blue-eyed soul.
One album I did buy and which I still play a lot is The Nightfly by Donald Fagen. I’ve got to have something from that.
OK, let’s plunge in.
Donald Fagen – New Frontier
ABC – All Of My Heart
Shalamar – A Night To Remember
love my way – psychedelic furs
zu jung zu alt – xmal deutschland
the girl – southern death cult
was really into 1983/4 for the last two (and Alice- Sisters) which I initially picked for ’83. Bauhaus’ Press the eject was out in ’82 as well with the great live versions of In the flatfield and rosegarden.
I’m going country this week just to mess with people’s minds because there’s no horses, pick-up trucks, rifles, whiskey, cattle or girls done gone and left. There’s no overalls, no big hats, no rhinestones, and no spittin’, fightin’ or sittin’ in a deer blind with Pappy wishing he’d tell you he’s proud of you.
Bela Fleck – Flexibility
Bela starts wondering if you can play jazz with a banjo..
Dolly Parton – Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?
She’s written several classics that only sound country with her twang. She recorded it in 1976 to little notice but hit big with it in ’82. (Curiously, someone named Micheal Smotherman wrote a sorta copy of it in in ’82 that was recorded 22 years later by Ray Charles and Bonnie Raitt.)
Willie Nelson – You Were Always On My Mind
Not his song, but he shucked his country rube image and won himself a Grammy by taking it to No 1. The best Elvis could manage was No 16.
1982, like the preceding couple of years, was rather shit. I shared an office with a stupid Tory prick who was rejoicing as Thatcher got on with dismantling society (well, ffs, it didn’t exist anyway, remember?). And then she went all Boudicca on us and took us to war with the ‘Argies’, with Murdoch & co cheering her on. What a pair of cunts (I’m sorry, but that’s what I felt then and what I still feel now).
Oh, and my marriage was not fun either….
Yes, the Falklands War. Something that should have been completely avoidable, except for the government’s desire to save a tiny amount of money, and ended up spending a whole load more, leaving aside the loss of lives.
Please refrain from comparing that woman and Boudicca – stripped of nobility and avenging the rape of her two daughter – the 3 women united disparate tribes against an army of Roman invaders… avenging themselves with two major battles and foiled in the third by the Romans burning their own food stores (as they fled) leaving the barbarian British tribes hungry for the third and final uphill battle… they fought from the front on a chariot commanding the tribes!
Thatcher on the other hand ended up being voted back in after a jingoistic ‘war’ that she never went near, but is useful for claiming any oil rights found under the antarctic.
thank you,
from the Independent Republic of Iceni.
A few more donds for ABC and Culture Club, both were on my shortlist. As we’re
Clash – Should I Stay or Should I Go
Billy Idol – White Wedding
Roxy Music – More Than This
Go Go’s – Vacation
Peter Gabriel – Shock the Monkey
Fixx – Red Skies at Night, Stand or Fall
Michael Jackson – Billing Jean
Destroyers- Bad to the Bone
I’ve always thought that it was. The words are ambiguous, but what does the “You’re going to reap just what you sow” ending about if it isn’t about the pleasure of the here-and-now carrying a dire threat for the future?
That line is really the only hint though, isn’t it?
It’s quite a busy day – drinking Sangria in the park, going to the zoo, going to a movie. Are Heroin users usually so active?
Either way, it might just fit tonight’s topic…
I was 12 and 1982 was a year of two halves emotionally really – Wot! and Come On Eileen are entirely entwined with my first love (she was the best looking girl in our year and decided I was going to be her boyfriend for the summer – who was I to argue!) and I will NEVER get tired of them.
First year at senior school and too many games of football. Dubious attempts at pre contract agreements from professional clubs and a tour of the Netherlands awaiting, with trials for England schoolboys in the pipeline – I’d end the year on a physio’s table in Holland and the prospect of never playing football again.. and my parents moved house (so at least I never got dumped by my first love) so; hey ho, them’s the breaks.
Captain Sensible’s – Wot ! (Maxi Extended Mix)
The Cure – The hanging garden
Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Come On Eileen
Some of these I hadn’t heard yet – but were absolutely brilliant:
Romeo Void – Never Say Never
Colourbox – Breakdown (7″ Version One)
Bauhaus – All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
THE CURE – LET’S GO TO BED
Sister Nancy – Bam Bam
Michael Nyman – Chasing sheep is best left to shepherds
Grandmaster Flash – The Message
oh and the other tracks that I heard two years later that would be in my top 9 would be:
Tell Me When It’s Over
Definitely Clean
That’s What You Always Say
Then She Remembers
Halloween
When You Smile
Until Lately
Too Little, Too Late
The Days of Wine and Roses
released in 1982 I purchased it in ’84 and I still played it in it’s entirety at least once a month.
The Dream Syndicate – Days of Wine and Roses = pure perfection.
Apologies, bit late this week.
3 from me:
REM – Gardening At Night
Because obviously I rushed out to buy the Chronic Town EP aged 4.
The Clash – Straight To Hell
Excellent cover of the Lily Allen classic, with its cheeky MIA sample
Paul McCartney – Wanderlust
One I do actually remember from the time. I thought it was a thing of wondrous beauty. I hadn’t listened to it for years until just now, but you know, it kind of is.
Would have liked to have added Futility by The Ravishing Beauties, but the Peel Session version.(which I prefer) isn’t on YouTube as a single track. Here it is on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/treetopclub/the-ravishing-beauties
Several more obvious ones too, but will leave them to you…
Scritti Politti – The Sweetest Girl
23 Skidoo – Kundalini
Hunters & Collectors – Run Run Run
The best year for music! And possibly collectively the longest songs I’ve chosen in the year challenge
Dexys Midnight Runners – Until I Believe In My Soul
https://youtu.be/IkL-PilveHg
The Clash – Straight To Hell
https://youtu.be/bkyCrx4DyMk
The Cravats – Rub Me Out
https://youtu.be/4q5wGc_Gya4
1990 – 8 = 1982…
I’m not sure our choices have ever overlapped before, but I already picked Straight To Hell, so feel free to add another Clash song.
Sorry can’t bring myself to drop it!
Threadjack:
Going to be a perfectly formed, but short, festive ‘spill unless some of you get off your bottoms.
Have some files from Vanwolf & Beth in my inbox to sort, but that’s about it.
You know who you are.
You know what to do.
[Threadjack ends]
Coming…..!
Have two, just sorting third. Will send at weekend. Leavey
Been passed out ill all week – maybe more – not really sure where I am still – music and art on it’s way as soon as I crawl to my proper computer.
all together now:
🎶hit the thread jack – and don’t come back no more no more no more🎶
I’ve got 1 and 3 sorted, but tradition dictates that my number 2 pick should be a long and tortuous drawn out drone, but which one, which one….??!
Hope you’re feeling better Shane. Sounds like you caught quite a bug.
cheers tinny – bit like this:
the bug
in the old days I could have shoved the duvet over me head and wallowed in self pity – but when I did wake/recover from the delirium I’d stupidly switch my phone on and catch up with the world – trouble is, when people you know are updating their chemo results or heart attack status – you feel even more pants for fevering and snotting up the world… (the fever was quite dangerous!- honest).
Out of bed now, so I’ll be all fixed up and looking sharpe, before anyone can plague me with an atishoo.
glad mine arrived okay 🙂
It’s not widely accepted but Too-Rye-Ay is the best Dexys album. Likewise it’s not generally accepted but Combat Rock is the best Clash album. Joined by something a bit more offbeat from The Cravats.
The funny thing about this is that none of these are straight punk records (or punk at all in the case of Dexys) but 1982 was the best year for punk – classics by Exploited, Violators, Chaos UK, Test Tubes, GBH, Varukers, Discharge, Adicts, One Way System, Abrasive Wheels, Blitzkrieg, Mayhem, Blitz, Special Duties, Attak, Dead Wretched, Drongos For Europe, Court Martial, The Dark, The Fits, Riot Squad, Action Pact, Cult Maniax, Dead Man’s Shadow, Crass, The System, The Disrupters, Subhumans, The Mob, A-Heads, Red Alert, Infa Riot, Cock Sparrer, The Samples, The Defects, Anti Nowhere League, Chelsea, UK Subs……etc, etc
Not to mention early goth stuff such as Sisters, Bauhaus, UK Decay, Play Dead..
A good year!
I have loads of play dead records though was never sure how much I liked them. I think the record artwork on them was always good. break, shine, sacrosanct were probably my favourites.
Goth you say? I am late, but my three are
Bauhaus – Spirit
goth, about ghosts and uplifting!
The Birthday Party – Deep In The Woods
about a murdered girl, spooky and deep, lovely
Soft Cell – Torch
Here is a video from TOTP’s with added John Peel and lashings of eyeliner.
added to boombox too
Donds to many of those punk bands, Sisters did release Alice and Body and Soul which I have on vinyl still, but my favourites by them are in different years 🙂
Spirit and Torch are two of my favourites as well.
I heard Deep In The Woods years ago played on a mate’s ghetto blaster in a park at night. Creepy enough already. Then he suddenly grabbed my arm and pointed up a reddish triangular shape in the sky. A few of the scariest seconds of my life …until the clouds cleared and we realised it was just the partially obscured moon!
A pedant writes: it was Body Electric, not Body And Soul. Alice is another favourite.
Same here really. I agree with you about Shine and particularly Sacrosanct.
I’ve known a couple of people who saw them supporting Killing Joke in around 82. One thought they were great and started following them. The other said he couldn’t understand the point of having a crap version of Killing Joke as support band to the real thing. I think the truth is probably in the middle.
Apologies, @wyngatecarpenter, I did get the wrong sisters body and I don’t have the single, I lose 5 goth points and will wear a bright colour as penance ;-P Your Deep In The Woods experience sounds very spooky!
Just 3 quick picks –
A Town Called Malice – the Jam
Our House – Madness
Only You – Yazoo
ok so I had to make some mistake somewhere. thanks to an impossibly slow connection where I am, and my own impatience, I seem to have added Our House 3 times. Apologies. Had a choice of Madness singles to go for, but Our House is just such a perfect picture of family life, nostalgic and even poetic. Also my first nom to be listed on RR, after several months of trying. A Town Called Malice seemed to sum up the zeitgeist and Only You is simply a beautiful song. Yes, I did quite like the Flying Pickets’ cover version too, guilty pleasure!
Not buying any records at the time I don’t think, no spare cash, busy with small children, living in the country and thinking about moving house – which we did the following year. Of course watching TOTP and Old Grey Whistle Test. Not going to any gigs – not possible at the time.
Possibly my choices at the time and now.
Yazoo – Only You
Robert Wyatt – Shipbuilding
Elvis Costello – Almost Blue
Other EC and Yazoo tracks are available.
Suzi beat me to Only You so – Winter Kills
I was 24 and living at my girlfriend’s family home, a posh riverside apartment in Barnes.
I think that my third favourite album of the year (after Yazoo and Elvis C) was Abba’s The Visitors.
Also loved Say Hello Wave Goodbye, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me and sundry other (New Romantic?) classics. Bought a few singles by The Jam and Madness too of course.
Africa by Toto was released in 1982.
Shipbuilding donds
1980 would be the best year for me so far, but suspect everyone’s best year crops circa age 17/18.
suspect everyone’s best year crops circa age 17/18…
I haven’t really participated in this series but that certainly doesn’t hold true for me… my “best years” span the respective genres I’ve fallen in love with, 50’s-10’s for jazz/jazz-rock/jazz-funk, 80’s-90’s for NZ, Aussie, US and British Indie, 90’s Trip hop/acid jazz, 90’s-10’s for electronic/breakbeat/nu-jazz/hip hop etc. And the only really dead period in all that coincides with my later teen years… aside from The Smiths, The The, NZ/Aus Indie and the odd African or late Miles/Weather Report track I could quite happily exist without the entire recorded output of the 1982-88 period.
“suspect everyone’s best year crops circa age 17/18.”
1987-88? You must be joking. 82 was the year I started buying records (Goody Two Shoes being the first. Red Scab on the b-side was an interesting contrast) and actively being interested in music, so there’s a lot of nostalgia, but most of the stuff I like from then I got into much later.
A very fine year indeed!
Roxy Music – Avalon
Modern English – I Melt With You
George Clinton – Atomic Dog
I have many more, but some other folks may cough some of them up.
“Bow-wow-wow, yippee yo, yippee yay!”
Looks like quite a good year though I can’t say I remember it well. I was 23. I will go with:
Steve Miller – Abracadabra
J. Geils Band – Centrefold
John Cougar Mellencamp – Jack and Diane
Can’t see any albums I bought but I do remember these singles:
Bow Wow Wow – Go Wild In The Country
Kid Creole & The Coconuts – Annie I’m Not Your Daddy
Marvin Gaye – (Sexual) Healing
Huge done for Marv.
1) Joe Jackson – Breaking Us In Two What more to say? Just a great LP from start to finish
2) Alabama – Mountain Music They made the tempo-shift-on-the-outro into a worn out cliche, but this catches them near the top of their game. The harmonies just work perfectly and no song says “Southern summer fun” so well.
3) Tom Tom Club – Genius Of Love Who needs to think when your feet just go?
What a f***ing brilliant year for pop!
The Look of Love – ABC
State of Independence – Donna Summer. Oh glory, glory!
The whole of Simple Mind’s New Gold Dream would be great, but if it’s one, I’ll pick Someone, Somewhere in the Summertime.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, I just love the playlists this thread throws up. Last week was a real surprise with all of the jazz postings. As I often play this at work on a Thursday morning – a dead time for us – this week’s is going to be a dance-around-the-office jobbie, I can sense already. Great fun!
A very bad year for me! My kids and I had been made homeless just before Christmas 1981 and we were rehoused by the council in an upstairs maisonette on a sink estate. I couldn’t get credit while we lived there. and it was the only place I’d ever lived where I couldn’t get a paper delivered – the shop said it was because the paperboys were scared to come on the estate because of the packs of dogs that roamed there. Packs of dogs there certainly were, but of course the real reason was they thought I wouldn’t pay the bill.
I found consolation in Gary US Bonds’ Jole Blon (really 1981 but I’m cheating here) which I played incessantly and was convinced would be a huge hit. This proved not to be the case. Richard and Linda Thompson were having a bad year too – their marriage had broken down but they were contractually obliged to make one more album and tour the US, so they were Walking On A Wire as well as me.
My teacher training course came to an end and I got a job at a progressive comprehensive school in Milton Keynes – the one we’d been shown videos of during our training! In those days, if you moved to MK to take up that kind of job the Development Corporation would give you a house, so I thought our troubles were over – but I was wrong there.
By the end of the year, however, I was obsessed with another song, not at all my usual taste, and the kids bought me the 12″ single for Christmas – the Eurythmics’ Love Is A Stranger.
Very much donds for the Love is a Stranger. Didn’t spot that one on the lists of songs I was looking at.
oh dear, sorry to hear it was such a difficult year for you. I like that Eurythmics song too.
Things did start to get better…eventually. (1990)
I’ve got to this a bit late and many of the songs I might have picked are gone, so donds for A Town Called Malice, The Look Of Love, Genius Of Love, Sexual Healing, Go Wild In The Country, Straight To Hell, Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy and Love Is A Stranger.
Anyway, I was buying quite a bit of music in 1982, particularly quite a few singles because the Charts were packed with good things. The problem is picking them.
I bought The Clash‘s Combat Rock as soon as it was released, and I still think of it as one of the best albums of the decade. Others that I liked at the time haven’t worn so well, Tropical Gangsters by Kid Creole And The Coconuts, for example.
King Crimson released Beat, but I didn’t get to hear it until the end of the year, when I had it as a Christmas present, so I cannot claim anything from it. I did buy H2O by Hall And Oates but it isn’t my favourite of theirs by any stretch of the imagination. Too commercial and glossy, and lacking in blue-eyed soul.
One album I did buy and which I still play a lot is The Nightfly by Donald Fagen. I’ve got to have something from that.
OK, let’s plunge in.
Donald Fagen – New Frontier
ABC – All Of My Heart
Shalamar – A Night To Remember
Donds for Sexual Healing and The Look of Love both of which I bought at the time and still have but I was solidly into soul at the time so
You’re The Sweetest One – Luther Vandross
Never Give Up on a Good Thing – George Benson
Rising to the Top – Keni Burke (in my top 5 songs of all time)
love my way – psychedelic furs
zu jung zu alt – xmal deutschland
the girl – southern death cult
was really into 1983/4 for the last two (and Alice- Sisters) which I initially picked for ’83. Bauhaus’ Press the eject was out in ’82 as well with the great live versions of In the flatfield and rosegarden.
donds to SDC, Psychedelic Furs and Xmal and Bauhaus, this seems to be where our record collections match!
I’m going country this week just to mess with people’s minds because there’s no horses, pick-up trucks, rifles, whiskey, cattle or girls done gone and left. There’s no overalls, no big hats, no rhinestones, and no spittin’, fightin’ or sittin’ in a deer blind with Pappy wishing he’d tell you he’s proud of you.
Bela Fleck – Flexibility
Bela starts wondering if you can play jazz with a banjo..
Dolly Parton – Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?
She’s written several classics that only sound country with her twang. She recorded it in 1976 to little notice but hit big with it in ’82. (Curiously, someone named Micheal Smotherman wrote a sorta copy of it in in ’82 that was recorded 22 years later by Ray Charles and Bonnie Raitt.)
Willie Nelson – You Were Always On My Mind
Not his song, but he shucked his country rube image and won himself a Grammy by taking it to No 1. The best Elvis could manage was No 16.
1982, like the preceding couple of years, was rather shit. I shared an office with a stupid Tory prick who was rejoicing as Thatcher got on with dismantling society (well, ffs, it didn’t exist anyway, remember?). And then she went all Boudicca on us and took us to war with the ‘Argies’, with Murdoch & co cheering her on. What a pair of cunts (I’m sorry, but that’s what I felt then and what I still feel now).
Oh, and my marriage was not fun either….
Agree with all of that except the bit about your marriage obviously !!!
Yes, the Falklands War. Something that should have been completely avoidable, except for the government’s desire to save a tiny amount of money, and ended up spending a whole load more, leaving aside the loss of lives.
Please refrain from comparing that woman and Boudicca – stripped of nobility and avenging the rape of her two daughter – the 3 women united disparate tribes against an army of Roman invaders… avenging themselves with two major battles and foiled in the third by the Romans burning their own food stores (as they fled) leaving the barbarian British tribes hungry for the third and final uphill battle… they fought from the front on a chariot commanding the tribes!
Thatcher on the other hand ended up being voted back in after a jingoistic ‘war’ that she never went near, but is useful for claiming any oil rights found under the antarctic.
thank you,
from the Independent Republic of Iceni.
A few more donds for ABC and Culture Club, both were on my shortlist. As we’re
Clash – Should I Stay or Should I Go
Billy Idol – White Wedding
Roxy Music – More Than This
Go Go’s – Vacation
Peter Gabriel – Shock the Monkey
Fixx – Red Skies at Night, Stand or Fall
Michael Jackson – Billing Jean
Destroyers- Bad to the Bone
And a dond for Tom Tom Club too.
Donds for The Clash, Gabriel and Billy Idol
Leavey
Oooooh, Oooh, haven’t been around (so much so I can’t remember password!)
Iron Maiden – Run To the Hills
Jethro Tull – Beastie
Dire Straits – Telegraph Road or Private Investigations
With the following retrospective nod to the charts:
Human League – Mirror Man
Eddy Grant – I Don’t Wanna Dance
The Jam – Town Called Malice and Beat Surrender
Stranglers – Golden Brown
Leavey
It is funny how Golden Brown, like Perfect Day, a song about heroin has become a mainstream standard.
Is Perfect Day really about Heroin? I’m not convinced.
For me, Golden Brown is now unfortunately associated with Gordon.
I’ve always thought that it was. The words are ambiguous, but what does the “You’re going to reap just what you sow” ending about if it isn’t about the pleasure of the here-and-now carrying a dire threat for the future?
Golden Brown was originally a song about wanting to be a Pirate – they adapted it, to make it more punk.
That line is really the only hint though, isn’t it?
It’s quite a busy day – drinking Sangria in the park, going to the zoo, going to a movie. Are Heroin users usually so active?
Either way, it might just fit tonight’s topic…
“You’re going to reap just what you sow”
after drinking Sangria in the park, you might end up with a hangover ….
I was 12 and 1982 was a year of two halves emotionally really – Wot! and Come On Eileen are entirely entwined with my first love (she was the best looking girl in our year and decided I was going to be her boyfriend for the summer – who was I to argue!) and I will NEVER get tired of them.
First year at senior school and too many games of football. Dubious attempts at pre contract agreements from professional clubs and a tour of the Netherlands awaiting, with trials for England schoolboys in the pipeline – I’d end the year on a physio’s table in Holland and the prospect of never playing football again.. and my parents moved house (so at least I never got dumped by my first love) so; hey ho, them’s the breaks.
Captain Sensible’s – Wot ! (Maxi Extended Mix)
The Cure – The hanging garden
Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Come On Eileen
Some of these I hadn’t heard yet – but were absolutely brilliant:
Romeo Void – Never Say Never
Colourbox – Breakdown (7″ Version One)
Bauhaus – All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
THE CURE – LET’S GO TO BED
Sister Nancy – Bam Bam
Michael Nyman – Chasing sheep is best left to shepherds
Grandmaster Flash – The Message
oh and the other tracks that I heard two years later that would be in my top 9 would be:
Tell Me When It’s Over
Definitely Clean
That’s What You Always Say
Then She Remembers
Halloween
When You Smile
Until Lately
Too Little, Too Late
The Days of Wine and Roses
released in 1982 I purchased it in ’84 and I still played it in it’s entirety at least once a month.
The Dream Syndicate – Days of Wine and Roses = pure perfection.
Thought you’d forgotten Days of Wine and Roses 😉
I never knew that about your football past.
It was the days before S*Y invented football – anyone could get a game if you asked nicely enough.
I adore the Hanging Garden. Darkest and best Cure, dond.
Donds for the Jam and Dexy’s Clash and Eddie Grant…and more that I’ve forgotten while scrolling down.
Will go for:
Bad Brains – Sailin’ On
Musical Youth – Pass the Dutchie
Captain Sensible – Happy Talk ( a Panther household favourite!)
… honourable mentions for Kraftwerk (The Model) and TFF (Mad World)