Half-amusing musings on my music collection - Part 8: The late-70s

 1977

1977 was a fork in the road.  The rock music world became partitioned between those who bought and loved the crude, spit-in-your-face brashness of "Never Mind the Bollocks" by The Sex Pistols and those who fell in love with the polished beauty of Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours".  It was a simple choice between nasty and nice.  Nice Fleetwood Mac spent 1976 in California, wasting 6 months of expensive recording studio time blowing a bottomless budget on excessive feasting, singing about the self-destruction of their relationships/marriages to each other as they simultaneously self-destructed, being served drugs like canapes at a wedding reception and snorting cocaine out of each other's bum holes.  Nasty Sex Pistols were touring clubs and colleges of the UK and swearing on TV.  On that basis, you'd take nasty over nice, but it's "Rumours" (10/10) that has always taken pride of place in my record rack.  I don't own and have never even listed to "Never Mind the Bollocks".  I imagine it's bollocks and so I'm not minding it.

The Sex Pistols and punk in its purest form have always been too raw and unimaginative for me.  It's like road rage on record. But undeniably, the whole punk movement - and by that I don't mean just the Pistols, I mean its influences as well, The Stooges in the US and elements of the UK pub-rock culture, like Dr Feelgood - influenced so many great bands in the late '70s and beyond, that we should take our hats off to it.  Not that they ever wore hats.  Except perhaps my favourite punk, whose individual style out-punked the punks.  Poly Styrene's band, X-Ray Spex, had something more than other punk bands of the era, partly down to her image (for example, the middle-aged woman's tweed jacket and skirt), partly down to her quirky lyrics and song subject matter ('Warrior in Woolworth'), partly down to her distinctive voice and partly down to their unusual inclusion of a sax player.  Their sole album, "Germ-Free Adolescents" just misses out on my 1977 top ten, but is well worthy of an honourable mention.  There are two albums on that list for 1977, which can claim a close affinity with the movement.  Ian Dury and the Blockheads released "New Boots and Panties" (8/10).  I haven't been able to test this claim, because my turntable doesn't work in this way, but if you set it to 45rpm and your needle arm automatically rises and lowers itself onto the record, then it will land on side 2 track 4 at the start of 'Plaistow Patricia'.  This song commences with Dury sing-shouting the opening words, "Arseholes, bastards, fucking cunts and pricks".  Not something you'd hear on a Fleetwood Mac record.  The second punk-related album is Talking Heads' debut "Talking Heads:77" (7/10), which is pure CBGB, pure 'psycho killer', pure not-Fleetwood Mac.

Even the dinosaurs found themselves taking notice of - and even demonstrating a thin slither of influence from - punk in 1977.  Queen attempted to get a bit punky on "News of the World" (7/10), about as punky as parents who are trying to use young people's slang.  Pink Floyd's "Animals" (9/10) certainly contained their first attempt to move from the melodic hippy (Gilmour voiced) lyrics to the unmelodic angst-ridden (Waters voiced) lyrics.  The songs 'Sheep', 'Dogs' and 'Pigs' on the LP are all angrily aimed at society's squares, including city bankers and Mary Whitehouse.  This was dinosaur rock doing a Sex Pistols on the Bill Grundy show.

Jethro Tull, however, easily managed to swat away any flies from the punk dung pile as they picnicked in the tranquil and antiquated idylls of pre-industrial English folk.  "Songs from the Wood" (7/10) sits resolutely in my list alongside Waylon Jenning's "Ol Waylon" (7/10) in eschewing urban modernity; unlike David Bowie, who existed on a plane above everybody else.  Much as he was a self-proclaimed magpie of artistic ideas from others, Bowie did this in order to create new styles, not to reflect current ones, like punk.  On "Low" (8/10) and "Heroes" (7/10), he helped create an early blueprint for 80's electronic pop music, albeit with significant help from Roxy Music's dodgy-haircut-afflicted former keyboardist, Brian Eno.  And completing 1977's top ten is Peter Gabriel, whose debut solo effort, affectionately named after himself (6/10), manages to hang off of Bowie's shirt-tails in his wise efforts to discard the prog rock self-indulgence that characterised his final record with Genesis (the overlong "Lamb lies down on Broadway") for something more akin to art rock.

1978

Talking of art rock, 1978 was the break-through year for the most unique female music artist of her time, Kate Bush.  She had grown up taking inspiration from Bowie and Roxy Music and probably even Genesis, but her remarkable originality, engrossing execution and popular appeal all warrant the use of that oft-misapplied term, 'genius'.  Her first two albums top my 1978 list - "The Kick Inside" (10/10) and "Lionheart" (10/10) - alongside Blondie's "Parallel Lines" (10/10) and "Plastic Letters (9/10).  Debbie Harry was the first woman to front (and write songs for) a chart-topping band and Kate Bush was the first female singer-songwriter in the UK to reach number one.  Another legendary debut in 1978 came from Dire Straits with their eponymous debut album (9/10) which spawned Knopfler-esque singing and guitar work on a plethora of rock songs for the next decade, from the likes of Dylan and Tull to that Geordie bloke who sang the theme tune to 'Auf Wiedersehen, Pet'.

Tull, meanwhile, made no efforts to get down with the kids and remained ensconced in their namesake's historical era, the agricultural revolution, with "Heavy Horses" (8/10); while Dylan roped in some backing singers for a hastily recorded "Street Legal" (8/10) which sounds great despite them missing their cues and the band generally not knowing what  Bob wanted them to do, which is fairly typical.  The Rolling Stones managed to knock out the best album ever to contain both a bona fide disco song ('Miss You') and an authentic country song ('Faraway Eyes'), without it sounding like a jumble, on "Some Girls" (8/10).  And finally, The Jam, moved beyond being a post-punk band to embracing enough melody and variety to win popular appeal on their best LP, "All Mod Cons" (8/10).

1979

The decade ends with more debuts, more new wave and more tenacious plying of their trade from the dinosaurs of rock.  

Pink Floyd's "The Wall" (9/10) is, as my brother once described after I played it in its entirety on a car journey while he tried to sleep, "an hour and a half of a psychotic having a moan."  I fully understand people hating this album, it's the most egocentric, navel-gazing, gloomy example of adolescent wallowing in one's own self-styled victimhood, that it stands to reason that it appealed to university students for the next decade or more.  Made worse that Roger Waters was nearer his mid-30s than his adolescence as he indulged in a mire of unsubtle self-pity; but I still like a lot, thanks in part to Gilmour adding some unforgettable musicality and partly due to the nostalgia of being a self-pitying adolescent when I first listened to it.

While one rock dinosaur introspectively disappeared up his own arsehole, another disappeared off his own scale of reinvention and surprise.  Bob Dylan found Jesus!  A proper, full-on, genuine conversion to Christianity was so intense for Bob, that it turned him into an evangelical zealot.  "Slow Train Coming" (9/10) contains lyrics of such fundamentalist, intolerant preaching, such apocalyptic fire-and-brimstone damnation of mankind, that you'd assume the whole thing was some kind satirical parody.  It wasn't.  But musically, with Bob on top form and enhanced by Mark Knopfler's session guitar work and Jerry Wexler's production, it's one of his best.

Knopfler was much in demand in the late 70's and Dire Straits' second album, "Communique" (9/10) matched the crisp quality and unforgettable hooks of their debut. Meanwhile, Neil Young toured "Rust Never Sleeps" (7/10) with roadies dressed as jawas from Star Wars and the album's opening track providing Kurt Cobain's suicide note over a decade later, claiming that 'it's better to burn out than to fade away'.  Bands still burning in 1979 included more new wave/ post-punk groups, The Police ("Regatta de Blanc" 8/10), Blondie ("Eat to the Beat" 8/10) and Talking Heads ("Fear of Music 7/10).  And cheesy not-quite-prog-rock pop rockers, Supertramp, reached their artistic zenith on "Breakfast in America" (9/10).

But 1979's two best debuts burst from different directions from two of the most unique English bands of all time.  One tragically lasted only until the suicide of its lead singer after two albums, but created a cult legacy that has endured; the other has (with lengthy breaks in between) continued to record new material and tour in the 40+ years since, becoming generation-spanning musical icons, epitomising British popular culture and performing on the roof of Buckingham Palace and at the London Olympics.  This could never have happened the other way around.  The former is Joy Division, whose beautifully gloomy debut was "Unknown Pleasures" (9/10); the latter is Madness, who managed to squeeze onto their first album (10/10) the title track 'One Step Beyond', 'My Girl', 'Bed and Breakfast Man', 'The Prince' and 'Night Boat Cairo'.  That's like releasing a greatest hits volume 1 as your first LP.

Thus, after a mid-70s lull when the decade's early kings were sometimes struggling to maintain momentum, the late 70s saw their resurgence and the birth of a new generation of kings and queens who would cement their places in pop's most unforgettable history for decades to come.  I would never have guessed at that time or for many years afterwards that almost 20 years into the 21st century I would take my daughter to see Blondie and Madness at London's Roundhouse for what was to become two of our favourite concert experiences ever.