Re: Return of Albums I've Not Listened to in Decades

A couple of years ago I spent the afternoon at work listening to albums I'd not listened to more than once or twice since their release decades ago. It was fun, so I'm going to do it again today.

First up: The Hunter by Blondie

I've maybe listened to the entire thing 4 or 5 times total since 1982. The last time being about ten years ago. Time to give it another whirl.

Strangely enough, Eat to the Beat and Parallel Lines don't seem to be on Spotify for some reason, though the rest of the Blondie catalog is, except for The Curse of Blondie, which isn't that surprising. I don't even recall what label put that one out.

Wow, The Hunter is a weird album. It reminds me of a line from The Land That Time Forgot, where the U-Boat commander observes that the T-Rex they'd been pumping bullets into had actually been dead for several minutes before its primitive nervous system got around to letting it know the news.

The Hunter is the sound of a band that was already done being a band (for the time being) that just hadn't figured it out yet.

It's got a handful of decent songs that would've been more than adequate filler on their other albums - "Danceway," "Island of Lost Souls," "For Your Eyes Only" and "(Can I) Find the Right Words (To Say" - one genuinely excellent song ("English Boys"), a strange but not entirely awful opening track ("Orchid Club") and a bunch of genre exercises that it's hard to imagine anyone having been too excited about recording, especially the weirdo science fiction spaceship race commentary "Dragonfly."

I'd completely forgotten the song "The Beast" even existed, although its riff has resurfaced as an annoying earworm many times over the years. So I'm glad to be able to identify it the next time it arises from my subconscious to vex me.

All in all, not a misunderstood classic. It's not quite as awful as everyone remembers, but it's not from a lack of trying.

Next up: Shout by DEVO. I think I listened to it once in 1984, then my brother moved out of the house and took it with him. I didn't feel its loss keenly enough to ever even consider getting my own copy of it.



Post Edited (12-30-16 12:21)

Shout is a testament to the fact that time wounds all heels. It's perfectly obvious that it's a chronicle of band burning through the last vestiges of its original inspiration. It's easy to understand why I had no use for it 1984 - it was just DEVO basically becoming a DEVO tribute band.

However, to my 2016 ears, it sounds damn nice. DEVO may have been running out of steam, but they started out so strong that their last dregs of inspiration are still damn inspired, compared to most of the pack.

It's in no danger of jumping to the top (or even the lowest 2%) of my favorite albums of all time or anything, but I'm surprised and pleased to have enjoyed the heck out of it.

Next up:

After the Snow by Modern English

After the Snow is an incredibly pleasant bit of melodic UK post-punk. I was surprised at how many songs I did recognize from it beyond the title track and "I Melt With You," which is so ingrained into the DNA of anyone who was college age in the early-mid 80s that it feels like a visitor from another planet when it pops up in the flow of the album, like "what the hell is THIS doing here"???

A dandy album from start to finish. Don't know why I've so rarely listened to the thing.

Next up:

Immigrant by Gene Loves Jezebel.

GLJ is a band that I'm very ambivalent towards, as I subscribe to Ira's assessment that they eventually became a mix of Van Halen, U2 and a billy goat. But I have always liked Discover and seem to recall liking the earlier Immigrant just fine, also. We shall see.

As I mentioned in another post, I really like After The Snow. Glad you enjoyed revisiting it!

I enjoyed Steeltown quite a bit. The main way it falls short of The Crossing is that it doesn't really stick the epic fists in the air choruses of the debut - you never feel compelled to leap to your feet and holler "OH! MY JAMES!!!!!", f'rinstance.

It was an album that I only had on cassette back in the day, and when that cassette got eaten sometime during the first Bush administration, I never got around to replacing it. And that lack of killer choruses kept it from sticking in my head in the intervening years.

Next up:

Hysteria by the Human League. Was the entire album really as big a letdown as it seemed, or was "The Lebanon" just a crappy, crappy single?

There are a couple of genuinely very good songs on Hysteria - "Louise" and "So Hurt." Otherwise, it's about as lackluster a follow-up to a massive hit album as one is likely to find. Like the Stone Roses' Second Coming, it's the very definition of a day late and a dollar short.

Few of the songs are especially memorable, which makes the fact that Oakey and the girls are not stellar vocalists stand out even more. The album does have a surprising amount of guitar on it, which admittedly adds some interesting and unexpected textures to the album, but those textures are on the surface of sadly uninteresting songs.

Ain't gonna lie - this one was a chore to make it all the way through.

Next up:

In a Chamber by Wire Train. An album I'm not entirely sure I've ever listened to in its entirety.

Human League albums that are a chore to listen through, ranked from worst to best:

1. Crash [I refuse to hear it]
2. Romantic? [DOA except for "Heart Like A Wheel" - courtesy of The Rezillos]
3. Hysteria [How could a team that produced "Dare" fall so far, so fast? "Hysteria" is awful, but I remember "Romantic?" being far worse]

Haven't heard "Credo." "Secrets" was pretty good [brilliant compared to the three above] and "Octopus" is the one I go to for the best post-"Dare" HL experience. Of course, the first two are so good, I rarely spin any other HL albums! What's the point? "Travelogue" [the CD version with bonus tracks is even better] on a loop is the apotheosis of HL for these ears.



Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

Monk, I don't think I've listened to any post-Hysteria Human League album. I think I was permanently put off them after that, though I admit that hearing "Human" on insurance commercials gives me a nice buzz of 80s nostalgia every time they're on.

Agreed that Travelogue is a goodie.

Just finished up with Wire Train's In a Chamber and it was a prime slab of 80s College Rock. I'd forgotten all about the song "Everything's Turning Up Down Again," which I had on a beloved mix tape in my car for most of college.

The interesting thing is that it came out the same year as Murmur. I am unabashed in my love for REM, but they're another band that has become over-mythologized over the decades. To read some of the things written about them, you'd be excused for believing that they invented melodic, Byrds-ish Indie Rock all by their lonesome, but listening to In a Chamber puts a lie to that pretty handily. There was a whole scene of jangly sorts hanging around in the early 80s. REM was just the band that broke out of the pack, and in retrospect, everyone tries to give them more credit than they deserve for inventing the sound.

Heck, if In a Chamber had come out a year or two later, Wire Train definitely would've been called REM acolytes. But in reality, REM evolved on its later albums to sound more like Wire Train than vice versa.

Well, this was fun to do again, but I'm heading out from work now. Happy New Year!



Post Edited (12-30-16 16:14)

Quote

"what the hell is THIS doing here"???

Shout was the one Devo album I didn't get on CD when it was reissued. I had high hopes for this when it came out but I was really underwhelmed by the album. I think it started with the lame album cover. The first one without the band on it. Plus, they didn't really have any gimmicks with this one. The only songs I remember from it are the title track (pretty lame), "Jurisdiction of Love" (good), "Are You Experienced? (very good) and "Puppet Boy" (really dumb). But, you've inspired me to check it out.

Immigrant is tolerable enough 80s goth pop. The vocals are a take it or leave it proposition, but they're nowhere near as braying as they would become on later releases. Nice guitar work in the mode of Banshees/Cure.

Its downfall is its complete lack of anything resembling a memorable song. It's a decent listen, but there's nothing at all that bleats "listen to me again!" on it.

I'm sure it was 30 years since the last time I listened to it. Maybe I'll see it again in 2046, if I'm still around and have managed to fend off the marauding refugees from former coastal cities and desert climes looking to oust any residents of Great Lakes bordering states from the last habitable region of North America.

Next up:

Steeltown by Big Country

As one of the bigger (if not possibly the biggest) BC fans on this forum, I'm interested to hear what you think about Steeltown. I'll say this...there's a lot going on in many of the songs (like 4 guitar parts in some cases), so it's a good one to listen to on headphones. I think it is a highly accomplished album, which doesn't quite reach the heights of The Crossing...though, in all fairness, it would have been impossible to do so. There's not a bum track on the album, but maybe a few that are close to filler (high quality filler at that).

Hey, think I'll listen myself. Thanks for bringing it up!

> I am unabashed in my love for REM, but they're another band that has become over-
> mythologized over the decades.

That can be pretty much entirely attributed to/blamed on writers, fanzines, fans, and really, just about everyone except the band themselves. It's hard to name another band that's achieved such mythic status while its members have remained so down-to-earth and self-effacing.

My favorite example of this was a Rolling Stone interview with Peter Buck in 1990. In his view, the Athens scene was swarming with bands he considered as good as or better than R.E.M., none of whom reached the heights that his band had. He attributed it to touring. He said that bands like Pylon only ever wanted to play Athens and Atlanta, with perhaps a showcase gig in New York if their labels could arrange it. They didn't want to load up the gear into the van, hit the road and build a fan base the old-fashioned way.

He added, "We, on the other hand, had nothing better to do."

Another thread that I'm happy to find after some time away from you guys. Lots to respond to here, but I'm glad to see "After The Snow" getting some recognition here as much more than just "I Melt With You." I was (and am) a big Echo and the Bunnymen fan and, at the time, I considered "After The Snow" as being of a piece with the Bunnymen and the Sound and the Comsat Angels. I haven't listened to it myself in at least a decade (or two), so I think I'll hafta dig it out.

Also pleased to see the discussion about Wire Train. I don't necessarily see them in the same light as R.E.M. and have always thought of them more in the Translator vein, though maybe that was because of the 415 label association. But I really liked both of those first two albums. And seeing them open for Big Country in early 1984 (?) was a revelation.

The Wire Train/REM comparison probably was counter-productive. I was grousing about how, over time, REM has for many come to be viewed as the watershed from which all folky/melodic/rootsy American College Rock flowed, when in reality it was a much more diverse field that did not all revolve around REM.

However, by making the observation, I did the very thing I was criticizing by making the whole thing revolve around REM.

After the Snow has never left my turntable rotation. I spin it once a year or so.
They had great live performances at the time and I liked Ricochet Days almost as much. They went generic pop on Stop/Start and the earlier stuff is weird Early-Cocteau Twins-Wax and Wane/Bauhaus-Gothic-Bela's Dead and with ambient experimentation. So pretty much a 2-LP catalog. I listened to their two reform LPs as they came out (one this year) and there are a few pretty good tracks. Gary was and is a very underrated and original guitarist in the Will Sergeant vein - one of the more bizarre blokes you'll meet while also very nice.

Life's just too short for those others and when there's a few sitting here from 2016 still to listen to. That's why we have you. (Sitting through The Hunter = award, from somewhere).



Post Edited (12-31-16 07:15)

Exile "Dragonfly," "War Child," "Little Caesar" and "The Beast" to the bowels of Hell and The Hunter reaches mostly harmless status with millimeters to spare, though "Orchid Club" and "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game" should both be put on notice that they're kept around merely at the listener's indulgence and are outta here the moment they misbehave.

A better solution, though, would be to just retroactively drop "Danceway" and "English Boys" onto AutoAmerican - they'd fit just fine on that stylistic mishmash of an album and it wouldn't be harmed in the least by the infusion of a couple more decent songs - and send "For Your Eyes Only" to the soundtrack of the Bond film it was intended for and pry Sheena Easton out of the opening credits.

Then Blondie coud break up a couple years earlier with the world surrendering nothing much of value in the bargain, except for a group of sad bastard nerds in exurban Illinois having to give up a D&D character based on Debbie Harry's appearance on the album cover.

That would leave "Island of Lost Souls" out in the cold, but I suppose me and the twelve other people worldwide who like the song would get over it. As long as "The Tide is High" is still around, it would be akin to losing Half Wits Holiday but getting to keep Hoi Polloi.



Post Edited (12-31-16 08:07)

I swear it seems like Modern English comes to Austin every 6 months. I even had to write a short show preview about one of them this year. I've always wondered if After the Snow was worth more than just its hit single (which I found annoying when I first heard it, then got to like it, and now it's back to annoying). This post has inspired me to find out.

After the Snow and Ricochet Days both hold up very well. We did lights for Modern English in '83; they were a very good live act. Robbie Grey was a surprisingly animated stage presence.

> I think it started with the lame album cover. The first one without the band on it.



My main man Chi Chi Rodriguez (or his goofy-ass doppelganger) would take issue with that.

Delvin wrote:

> > I think it started with the lame album cover. The first one
> without the band on it.
>
>
>
> My main man Chi Chi Rodriguez (or his goofy-ass doppelganger)
> would take issue with that.
>

Gah! How could I forget that? I guess I'm not just a spudboy.

Quote

goofy-ass doppelganger

today's Phrase Of The Day!

Methinks I'm the only one left who'll admit to actually liking "The Lebanon". Though that and "I Want You Back" are the only songs I taped off Hysteria before sacrificing it to the Used Record Store gods.