Re: 1987...

A fluke hit by the non-mainstream Dead causes a mainstream tie-dye trend. Hair metal dominates MTV. Springteen fills stadiums and stains critic's underwear. REM turns their back on their college-rock brethren. CDs begin to challenge records as format-of-choice. The Smiths and the Hüskers break up. Gun 'n Roses dominate mainstream rock. U2 made your grandma happy with the easy-listening, establishment-awarding Joshua Tree which becomes one of the biggest LPs of all time. We also had typical pap like Genesis' 'Tonight Tonight'. Yet, as bad as all this sounds, "indie" began to separate from "college rock" in the form of "underground" and "alternative" was not yet a marketing term for gullible high-schoolers. This made a healthy situation for klepto-cultural rasta-trouserians.

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20 great LPs to revisit:
BUTTHOLE SURFERS - Locust Abortion Technician. Still sounds fresh. Because nothing sounds like this to this day (for good reason...) not even the Butts themselves. At the time I thought this was genius. Now I realize it's just the sound of wastos hitting the record button on the 16-track after absconding studio time followed by wankery. Genius wankery. The Butties at their most Buttholian.
CURE - Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. Their first double-length and their magnum opus. It would seem now that Smith has tried to repeat this once too often rather than trim the tripe. Yet, this item stands as proof that this band had a claim to their fame. With this release they would pass out of obscurity in the US, yet quite a few tracks are moody/experimental.
DINOSAUR JR - You're Living All Over Me. Known previously as Dinosaur (and listed as such on my copy), it was their second album that felt like new ground in the underground. Was it hardcore? College Rock? Metal? It was intense and it bridged the gaps. The underground had a new guitar hero. There are people who think YLAOM is the best noisy-rock LP of all time. It's the sound of a Superfuzz-Bigmuff into a Marshall Stack/Twin Reverb combo.
ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN - s/t. While they had been consistent up to this point, it seemed like they were backing themselves into a corner. This one busted out of the corner and out of the building with massive arrangements and more moods than the first four LPs put together.
FALL - The Domesday Pay-Off Triad. This was Bend Sinister in the UK, but the US version drops some of the sludgier tracks for concurrent singles making one of the best Fall LPs. A classic during one of the peak periods for the band.
fIREHOSE - If'n. Firehose may have started off as "the band that used to be The Minutemen" but, with If'n , they became one of the best bands of the year both on LP and on tour. Their best batch. You and me, windmilling.
GAME THEORY – Lolita Nation. Scott Miller's pure-pop projects (since under the moniker Loud Family) went unnoticed by all but the bin-diggers until this two-by which seemed to contain the kitchen sink, the tools from the garage and the very car used to cruise all the way to the stadium; the disparates being strung together with clatter, chains, and premises which, if not entirely holding up today, have at least remained unequalled. It's a pop master effort in a Baroque kind of way and a concept piece. (Note: avoid the euro 1x version).
HÜSKER DÜ – Warehouse: Songs and Stories. A 'troubled' batch of songs. The band was now two solo acts working with the same drummer. I would not have put this on a best-of-year list just a decade ago but, in retrospect...
JESUS and MARY CHAIN – Darklands. Upon release, fans decried "it doesn't sound like Psychocandy" which made me wonder if people were actually listening to the simple pop structures of the debut. This bunch were much more developed, musically, and the lands explored were, well, darker. By proving they were not just just a fluke and beating the sophomore slump adage (this LP actually followed the excellent Some Candy Talking single), J & MC became one of the world's most important bands.
LOVE and ROCKETS - Earth*Sun*Moon. The band many knew as the 'other child of Bauhaus' had failed to turn heads in the US until this release garnered critical appreciation and college-airplay. Start-to-finish their strongest. The haiku of it: An electric side, an acoustic side, smirky zen.
MEAT PUPPETS – Mirage; Huevos. The fourth and fifth astounding releases in a row from the boys. Though hackneyed to say it, this was the 'maturing' of the band with a clean sound exemplifying the technical prowess this time out as opposed to the frantic measures of previous efforts. Huevos is probably not as strong as Mirage but this was the year of the Puppets and the band's now extensive touring (some cities hit three times) was bolstered by their most complete writing to date and a heady batch of new material.
NEW ORDER - Substance. Is it fair to list an album that is essentially viewed as a compilation? More so than Hot Rocks, this album is the essential release by this band. Not only was this their most popular and arguably their most representative, the tracks either weren't on the other albums or were remixed, so, yes, it counts as a release of new material as well as one of their best.
PIXIES - Come on Pilgrim. You know he loves you! And, 'I bite lament/this human form/where I was born/I now repent'. But it's not just the kewl lyrics, it's the way such simple damned instrumentation sounds so complex as a whole. Possibly the best debut EP of all time. Odd: like Hendrix before them, the band had to hit first in the UK.
REPLACEMENTS - Pleased to Meet Me. (see mats84, below)
SMITHS - Louder Than Bombs; Strangeways, Here We Come. Louder is the US version of The World Won't Listen and though they're technically compilations, they contain otherwise non-LP tracks and play like an LP in the Smiths' catalogue. Strangeways probably came too soon for objective absorption, but then, it would be their last. Now, with time past, it contains some of their finest tracks; it's one of the best releases of 1987 and the first I reach for when I need the Marr/Morrissey attitude shift.
SONIC YOUTH - Sister. The second homerun by the re-tooled band. They were in a league of their own as of this release and the terms 'sonic' and 'sonic-ethereal' would soon describe a genre. Once you become familiar with this one, the opening chords take you right back to a certain place; a place denser and more interactive than most of the band's oeuvre. A forward-reaching landmark.
WEDDING PRESENT - George Best. The 2nd LP on this list that reached forward all the way to the mid-90s. Ira said it best when he described it as a "breathless rush". In fact, it was just like holding your breath; perhaps after a nitrous hit. It sounded immediately comfortable while at the same time left the listener wondering why no one had sounded like this previously. It also had its enigmatic side. Could somebody be this lovelorn? Damn! Could somebody be this and this big a footballer?
X - See How We Are?. I overlooked this one the first go around. I'm probably not the first to do so. On a revisit, this one really bloomed. With Billy Zoom gone (and Dave Alvin taking over on lead guitar) it's easy to be skeptical but the songwriting and playing are there (particularly with Bonebrake) and it's an improvement from Ain't Love Grand. The production is a little overbaked but it turns out they turned in one of their better works on this one from rockers to anthems like "Fourth of July".



Post Edited (10-06-07 20:22)

World Party - PRIVATE REVOLUTION
Sinead O'Connor - THE LION AND THE COBRA

No case beyond the fact that they are two very obviously great albums.

Oh - and Leslie (Sam) Phillips - THE TURNING - her kiss-off to the Christian recording industry and her arrival as a great songwriter.

Great list, and I'll gladly take any opportunity to ramble about "Pleased to Meet Me". My two picks would be veteran artists in top form in '87, nothing revolutionary, just great music :

1. Tom Verlaine "Flash Light" - Sounds like the meeting of Radiohead's "The Bends" and Built to Spill's "Keep It Like A Secret" . It's quite a beautiful record and alot of it seems off the cuff and accidental.

2. Warren Zevon "Sentimental Hygiene" - One of the few records I can recommend on the basis of the lyrics alone. A fine record to play when you're feeling your most misanthropic.

PTMM is not my favorite 'Mats record, but thankfully we live in a world where I don't have to choose because it's obviously great on it's own merits.

It has the "hey, what me worry?" vibe that Let it Be had in parts but where that record was a statement of youthful confusion/bravado, PTMM had the feel of a hard won optimism from life lived. Think how many times Westerberg plays off the "we're screwed", but SCREW IT let's have a laugh sensibility - "I Don't Know", Can't Hardly Wait" , "Valentine" (he's gonna get that girl eventually !), the "you're all wroooooong, and I'm RIGHT" part of "IOU". Especially in "Alex Chilton", where, in celebrating one of his heroes, he finds his own voice.......almost as if he's saying, "this guy (Big Star) should have been HUGE, but the world doesn't always (ever?) work out that way I guess, but I love him anyway - what a great world it would be if children by the millions really did wait for Alex Chilton."

There's that old saying (recently used smartly in the film "Oldboy") "laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone" .....on PTMM the Replacements laugh and weep simultaneously, flip off the world and embrace it - it's that rarest of birds, a grown-up and terrific Rock record.



Post Edited (02-03-06 21:20)

eik b and rakim
go between's tallulah

oops

lime spiders debut
a great swans record
joe ely's highway LP--a man i've been listening to a lot of lately
and hoodoo's Blow Yr Cool


i like game theory a lot; if'n fails to move me; george best is a top ten UK lp fer me from the 80's; darklands doesn't even faze me; i don't like that fall lp much, but they are good musicains there; i have never and i presume will never get the cure: i like some of the singles, and i kinda get the mood thing, but they/it/him leaves me chilly...

"My Baby Thinks She's French". . . etc...A great LP there. Featuring Bobby Keys as well.

A meaningful year for me, as I graduated high school that year.
I would add:

R.E.M - Document (Last REM I loved)

Spacemen 3 - Perfect Prescription

Alex Chilton : High Priest
Townes Van Zandt: At My Window
Prince: Sign O' The Times
Victoria Williams: Happy Come Home
Tom Waits: Franks Wild Years
The Young Gods: The Young Gods (still one of my all-time favs)
John Hiatt: Bring the family
Yello: One Second
Big Black: Songs About Fucking

opal - happy nightmare baby
bats - daddy's highway
verlaines - juvenilia
sister ray - random violence
these immortal souls - get lost (don't lie)
union carbide productions - in the air tonight
wreckery - here at pains insistence
angst - mystery spot
celibate rifles - roman beach party
chain gang - mondo manhattan
mekons - honky tonkin'
green - elaine macenzie
original sins - big soul
passion fodder - fat tuesday
swans - children of god
plasticland - salon
headless horsemen - can't help but shake
wylde mammoths - go baby go
yo la tengo - new wave hotdogs
killdozer - little baby buntin'
cows - taint plurbus taint unum
didjits - fizzjob
breaking circus - smoker's paradise
tar babies - fried milk
vemon p stinger - meet my friend venom
walking seeds - skullfuck
sloth - s/t
spasmodique - s/t
stomachmouths - voxx lp
lazy cowgirls - tapping the source
live skull - dusted
bevis frond - miasma
tav falco's panther burns - the world we knew
bird nest roys - s/t
band of outsiders - acts of faith
creepers - rock n roll liqourice flavour
crucifucks - wisconsin
for against - echelons
jeremy gluck and nikki sudden - i knew buffalo bill
reptiles at dawn - dressed in flesh
paul roland - danse macabre
jandek - modern dances
king snake roost - from barbarism to christian manhood
lubricated goat - plays the devil's music
scrawl - plus, also, too
screaming trees - even if an especially when
sex clark five - strum and drum
mice - scooter
daggermen - dagger in my mind
mighty caesars - wiseblood
not quite - s/t
desperate rock n roll vol 5
sin alley vol 3
skeletons - rockin' bones
63 eyes - look in for mothmen
sonny sharrock - seize the rainbow
fungus brains - s/t



Post Edited (10-07-07 20:08)

a kinda cool 1987 record i just bought yesterday...

nobody likes...the dik van dykes

sounds like a fullband version of deja voodoo!!! holy cow!

damn!!
union carbide and plasticland and sex clark and tav and bats

all faves all killers

NW aristocrats

the scholars (exclude me please) that frequent (shout out) this board are hereby noted.

Speaking of exclusions,

strange times- the chameleons
(something like) The last I had A DRINK! was...Channel 3
Joe pop o pie- joe's third

special notary PLASTICLAND. However, if you listen to Ed Ackerman's APPROXIMAYELY 23rd VARIOUS you'll forget all about Milwaukee and move to Minneapolis. Hello, Chan Poling!

Uh, what else...

I once liked Love and Rockets while on Army issue acid.

updated without the ed. help



Post Edited (02-04-06 03:42)

>
> special notary PLASTICLAND. However, if you listen to Ed
> Ackerman's APPROXIMAYELY 23rd VARIOUS you'll forget all about
> Milwaukee and move to Minneapolis. Hello, Chan Poling!
>


yeah, the 27 various' hi came out 1987-ish, too...

but they got sooooo much better!!!

I just noticed this post from when I must have been wasted. I think I put it in the wrong thread, so I'm making it go away. In 1987, far as I remember, it was the end of punk and the beginning of grunge. And gangster rap. I was fucked up that year.

Crumbsuckers
Motorhead
eric b and rakim
flaming lips
butthole surfers
beastie boys
Rhythm Pigs
Victims Family
MDC

I don't know some are concerts, some are friends cassettes. I used to know this stuff. I've given up rearranging my albums by different categories, it got too hard to fix.



Post Edited (02-09-06 02:54)

are these your favs, or are you just making a list of albums released in 1987

superseded



Post Edited (09-30-07 14:28)

> are these your favs, or are you just making a list of albums
> released in 1987


or? why can't it be both?

hold on pardner, not pickin a fight here, or wantin to split hairs,........................ but I could have sworn the Green album was in 1988 only because I was in grad school and a big fan of Green and getting the disc when I finished my final paper as a reward to myself, and I thought the didjits was in 86 coz I bought that one the day it came out ( my roomate worked at Peaches) which coincided with breaking it off with my girlfren ( she actually dumped me) and getting shit faced on tequila and proclaiming loudly it was the best thing done in the history of both rock and roll....................so mr satch and the one who Paganizes the answer is yes!

> hold on pardner, not pickin a fight here, or wantin to split
> hairs,........................ but I could have sworn the Green
> album was in 1988 only because I was in grad school and a big
> fan of Green and getting the disc when I finished my final
> paper as a reward to myself, and I thought the didjits was in
> 86 coz I bought that one the day it came out ( my roomate
> worked at Peaches) which coincided with breaking it off with my
> girlfren ( she actually dumped me) and getting shit faced on
> tequila and proclaiming loudly it was the best thing done in
> the history of both rock and roll.........


yeah, i'm not positive they're all 87 releases, just positive that i bought em all during 1987...


just walked across the room to check, you're right on fizzjob (86), but elaine mac is indeed an 1987 release (pravda).

Young Fresh Fellows "The Men Who Loved Music..." , another fave from '87.

Squirrel Bait - Skag Heaven
Redd Kross - Neurotica
Thin White Rope - Moonhead
Smithereens - Especially For You
Breaking Circus - The Ice Machine
Dukes of Stratosphear - Psonic Psunspot

1987 was also notable for the first R.E.M. album I really disliked (apologies to erikalbany). And then what really sealed the deal was seeing them with a bunch of frat boys at Littlejohn Coliseum at Clemson University who went wild when they did a (presumably) tongue-in-cheek version of that Foreigner dude's "Midnight Blue." Man, you shoulda seen those lighters go up in the air for that song....

Metallica - The $5.98 EP: Garage Days Re-Revisited ( EP )

Men Without Hats - Pop Goes the World

ABC - Alphabet City

Michael Jackson - Bad

George Harrison - Cloud Nine

Camper Van Beethoven
The Rhythm Pigs
Treepeople

The wretched underbelly of 1987:

Psychedelic Furs - Midnight to Midnight

Easily in the top five "worst albums by bands I love" thread I intend to start one of these days.

the u-men - "dig it a hole"

Well, I was all set to flesh out this list with fav releases from The Godfathers, Screaming Blue Messiahs, The Pogues and Green River until I did a little research and discovered that all these fondly remembered records came out in '86 or '88. So here is what I came up with:

Robbie Robertson- S/T: I don't know what I was expecting from the long dormant leader of the roots rockin' The Band, but this was not it. Which made it such a pleasant surprise. Anybody who brings in Maria McKee to duet is a genius in my book.

The Bodeans had a record out in '87 that I remember my friends liking but it did not leave a lasting impression on me.

I saw the Dylan / Dead tour that year too which was pretty cool.



Post Edited (02-08-06 11:50)

The Bodeans did their 2nd album (Outside looking in) in '87 and Sammy and Kurt of the Bodeans guested on the RR album and appeared on SNL with RR and Maria Mckee.
The Bodeans 1st album is great and the rest kind of disappointing except maybe "Go Slow Down" which came out in '93, though they still sell-out huge shows in Milwaukee/Chicago



Post Edited (02-08-06 13:25)

Weddings Parties Anything - Scorn of the Women
The Bamboos - Rarer Than Rocking Horse Shit
The Chills - Brave Words

Two albums from 1987 that I haven't seen in this thread are Louder Than Bombs by the Smiths and Bo-Day-Shus by Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper

Good mention of The Smiths.

Paganizer did mention *Louder Than Bombs*, in the post that started this thread.

Mea culpa on that. Sorry. I feel like Tom Brady throwing a great throw into the hands of the opposing player.

That's okay. Me, I feel like the snotty know-it-all who's just got to point out these things.

No, man, I was the snotty know-it-all who screwed up in the first place.

I blame myself!

i can't help but feel partly responsible for the whole sorry mess.

Don't castigate yourself over this one, Reno. Hell, you have enough guilt to deal with ... enjoying the Morningwood album and all.