Re: It Was 40 Years Ago…

1983:

April 12 REM “Murmur”
April 13 “Violent Femmes”

were released. And lo, college rock was born.

aka alt-rock. No one could have known it at the time, but punk/Wave was settling down into a less gimmicky, more eclectic, less fashion-conscious, ostensibly more sincere form that would eventually conquer the ‘90s in ways the class of ‘77 never dreamed of.

Probably the two most defining albums of this new attitude, both released on practically the same day. That’s quite a coincidence.

Yeegads. I really would’ve guessed both came out earlier. I definitely remember seeing IRS’s ads for chromic town and murmur in TP magazine ( little did I know it would fold soon after).

Can’t argue your premise, Fab. The dawning of a new era. All of a sudden, gone were synths. And fancy clothes, like you mentioned. This was altogether different than the B-52s… or the New Romantics…or the ‘new pop’ acts being shown on mtv (culture club, haircut 100 etc). And nothing like LA punk, either.

About the same time or soon thereafter we’d get the paisley underground bands, Husker Minutemen and Mats getting bigger…..then Smiths… then Jesus and Mary Chain…. Sonic Youth…full proliferation of college rock!

Or am I remembering this all wrong?!?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2023 09:26AM by Bip.

And we're only a year away from the release of the Smiths' first album, which set the template for so much indie rock to follow.

And what were the other big album releases during that week in April 1983? According to the list in Wikipedia ...

Bonnie Tyler – Faster Than the Speed of Night
Flashdance (soundtrack)
David Bowie – Let's Dance

As much as I loved the Bowie album (and still do), it wasn't any sort of harbinger of the future of music. (But Bowie had done that a few times already in his career, so I don't see any reason to carp about that.) As for the other two, the only aspects of the future they affected were the royalty streams for Tyler, Irene Cara and Michael Sembello.

Yep, that all seems to be correct. Things were getting much less interesting to my ears by 1983. Though I was having boiling frog syndrome and didn't realize it at the time. I can say that 1982 was the first year since 1978-1981 where the amount of amazing music had slightly receded from the fulsome peaks of the holy 1981. By 1985 and Live Aid, it really seemed like "punk never happened." how prescient of Trouser Press to throw in the towel when they did! At the time I was heartbroken, but in the rear-view mirror it looks like near-impeccable timing.

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

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

Murmur is such a fantastic album. For some reason, I never bought the Violent Femmes disc, though I always respected them. I do own the 1993 Add It Up compilation.

1983 also marks the fortieth anniversary of The Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records. I distinctly remember buying the trade paperback edition at a now-long-gone local bookstore. I was so excited to have a copy in my hands; it was a real treasure. The store clerk was stunned when she scrutinized the price on the back cover. “Do you realize this book costs twelve dollars and ninety-five cents?” she demanded, as if she was addressing an eight-year-old, rather than the eighteen I was at the time. “Are you sure you want to spend that much money?” I informed her that it was worth every penny. (I also bought a copy of Popism: The Warhol Sixties on the same day, at a different, also long-gone, shop; I was completely obsessed with both books.)

I was stunned myself—pleasantly so—two years later when I discovered the second edition of the Guide on a beach trip. I had lamented the loss of TP when the magazine folded, never dreaming that there would be subsequent editions. Thank heaven for those volumes!

Middle C Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> For some
> reason, I never bought the Violent Femmes disc

you didn't need to buy it - We've joked on here before that some of us (myself included ) never owned a copy, yet have it memorized. If you were an alt-rock fan, it was seemingly everywhere: college radio played it constantly, every dorm room and party had that thing cranked thru-out the '80s. It did sell 3 million copies after all.

MrFab Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Middle C Wrote:
> -------------------------------------------------------
> > For some
> > reason, I never bought the Violent Femmes disc
>
> you didn't need to buy it - We've joked on here
> before that some of us (myself included ) never
> owned a copy, yet have it memorized. If you were
> an alt-rock fan, it was seemingly everywhere:
> college radio played it constantly, every dorm
> room and party had that thing cranked thru-out the
> '80s. It did sell 3 million copies after all.

I felt that way [even moreso] about "Murmur." Hell, the Hib-Tone "Radio Free Europe" would be playing constantly at every record store I went back in late 1981! So much so, that I never bothered buying a copy. I got "Chronic Town" and "Murmur" but really, by the time I bought "Murmur" I was getting sick of having R.E.M. saturation in Orlando. I went off of R.E.M. shortly afterward as they were vastly overplayed in the public space for me. Though I once went to an R.E.M. concert in St. Petersburg in 1986 just to see Let's Active open for them! As it was their "Big Plans For Everybody" tour, it was worth it! They encored with the Deep Purple version of "Hush!" I actually slept during R.E.M.

The album from 1983 that has had the biggest impact on me was The Crossing. I was 11 years old and got it on cassette for Christmas that year (it was released in Aug). Albums and bands I "love" come and go over time, but that one has been a favorite longer than any other.

As for Violent Femmes, no thanks...was never a fan. And though I came to love REM, I never owned a copy of Murmur (but did every other album through New Adventures in Hi-Fi).

I absolutely love The Crossing. That disc and Eno's Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks are my two favorite albums from 1983.

Wow ... it's strange for me to think of living in a town, neighborhood, or just a general realm where the Violent Femmes and R.E.M. are ubiquitous.

I don't recall hearing either Murmur or Violent Femmes in any record store before I bought either album. I probably heard them on KRCC's late-night shows, but if I did, I don't remember suddenly sitting up and taking notice. I think I bought Murmur on the strength of the reviews I read (not to mention the article in TP #88).

As for Violent Femmes, I must've bought that one after hearing a couple of our cooler local bands cover its stand-out songs. That band also was profiled in that same issue of TP, but I don't remember that article compelling me to seek out the album. I did eventually buy it, though. It must've been in 1984, because by 1985, I was enough of a fan to go see the Femmes at the Rainbow Music Hall in Denver, with Fishbone opening the show. That turned out to be one of the best concerts I've ever seen.

If anyone's seen AIR, it plays "Blister on the Sun" after "Money For Nothing," with a choice of '80s music that seems really odd to someone who lived through that period. Maybe now people are just nostalgic for all " '80s music," but back then, almost no one embraced Dire Straits, the Violent Femmes, Grandmaster Flash, George Clinton, REO Speedwagon, Big Country and Mike + the Mechanics, and all this music came out of different subcultures.

Murmur really is amazing, and at least to my ears, completely timeless. I was already an R.E.M. fan early on, one of the first rock groups I really loved as a kid, but it was mostly through their WB albums. Eponymous was the one I.R.S.-era release I had listened to when a friend of mine bought Murmur sometime during the lull between New Adventures and what eventually turned out to be Up, thinking it was a new R.E.M. album.* He was nice enough to lend it to me for a week or so, and it was revelatory - like everything I loved about R.E.M. but with all these great and different dimensions to it.

For the past month or two, I've been exposed to a lot of '80s pop and I've gone deeper into it myself, just to give it a fair shake. I feel like a lot of '80s pop has been experiencing a re-evaluation spurred on by nostalgia. (To be fair, the influence can be felt in a lot of pop on the charts right now, but those particular acts don't do anything for me.) I'm a massive Prince fan, so at minimum something like George Michael's Faith does sound like a commendable record from a Prince acolyte, but I haven't been all that moved by Wham!, Culture Club or Whitney Houston. I bring this up because I hadn't played Murmur in quite a while, possibly in a few years, and when I put it on yesterday, it really was a breath of fresh air. Even though most of the pop records I had been listening to came a few years after, I got the impression this is what it was like to hear Murmur back in the '80s, and it just made so much of the other stuff I was trying to get into seem all the more thin and inconsequential.

*(Even though I hadn't listened to Murmur before, I did know it was their debut and told him - he was massively disappointed, which is amusing in retrospect. It reminds me of Peter Bogdanovich's old quote about how there are no new movies or old movies, just movies he hasn't seen before. Remembering my friend's disappointment makes it understandable why someone like Bogdanovich felt the need to justify seeing or discussing anything "old.")

> I haven't been all that moved by Wham!, Culture Club or Whitney Houston.

That's because none of those artists are all that moving.

> It reminds me of Peter Bogdanovich's old quote about how there are no new
> movies or old movies, just movies he hasn't seen before.

Pete had a great point. Not too long ago, as my wife was flipping through the offerings of one of the TV streaming services, I noticed The Sting. And as it turned out, to my amazement, she never had seen it. So our selection was made. By the end of it, she agreed, it was worth every bit of its reputation as a great film.