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Post by DayoRemix on Mar 6, 2023 22:19:33 GMT
With THAT Ubu on the board, makes things a little easier..That was one of the final five..
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Post by DayoRemix on Mar 6, 2023 22:25:13 GMT
1978
"Uncontrollable Urge" Devo
Saving my Cramps pick for a later year and going with landmark Devo..Sadly, Lena Lovich,X Ray Spex, Tubeway Army, Residents,Ultravox and the No Wave New York bands will need to join "Human Fly" in the painful omissions section..
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Mar 7, 2023 10:51:42 GMT
1978
Carrying on my tradition of picking the most Obvious thing.
I know from my own experience that when you are you young and living through a cultural moment it’s impossible to imagine things will ever be any different. This thought especially crosses my mind when I hear songs from the Golden Age like Wuthering Heights, a debut single, and an extraordinary one that topped the UK charts for 4 weeks. It was if course written by an 18-year old woman called Kate Bush. The past is a foreign country huh?
There are some songs that are so odd and memorable it’s like they demand to be huge hits: a song about an Emily Bronte novel for crying out loud, sung by a young woman with a voice that was easy to wryly parody and featuring a memorable video where she dances around in a red dress with the freedom and sincerity of a young girl dancing alone in a bedroom (or maybe a field). It’s no wonder of course that people parodied it but then it’s also no wonder that such a refreshing and powerfully no-fucks-given, feminine performance would connect so powerfully with many young woman. 40+ years later middle aged ladies are still recreating it and that tells you something. It’s a record of panoramic grandeur, possessed by an eccentric English intensity and a windswept romanticism redolent of the Yorkshire moors so tangible and powerful that it’s impossible not to be swept along and moved by its purity and candour. I mean, you’ve tried doing the dance, right? The “pushing someone away” move, yes? Is it just me? I mean there’s something in Bush’s gaucheness that is actually quite liberating, huh? "Rock n roll" in its own unique, beautiful, bucolic English way.
There have been some wonderful debut singles of course but if I was putting my Mr Objective hat on I would argue that Wuthering Heights is maybe the greatest. Not just for its combination of weirdness and accessibility but for its scope, its intensity and its remarkable completeness of romantic vision. Stating the obvious but for an 18 year to produce something like this is quite remarkable.
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Mar 7, 2023 10:52:55 GMT
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Post by Stacy Heydon on Mar 7, 2023 12:46:10 GMT
I'm having a lot of issues deciding on a track from '78. Lots of stuff I love, but the one undeniable track is just not making itself known to me. A lot of 'problematic 2nd albums' that year - or post-punk bands still finding themselves. The year before or after seems so much easier to me. Oh well, I'll decide soon. You may not like it. There's so many great tracks. Even if I just confined myself to punk/new wave and disco, I could easily get 20. Perhaps you are overthinking things.
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Post by oh oooh on Mar 7, 2023 12:50:24 GMT
Yeah, I think 1978 is one of THEE great years.
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Post by fearlessfreap on Mar 7, 2023 13:24:44 GMT
As I mentioned with my pick, I had a hard time choosing. I could come up with 100 songs from 1978 that I at the very least, like, and that's just counting singles.
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loveless
god
Bringing ballet to the masses. Sticking to the funk.
Posts: 2,805
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Post by loveless on Mar 7, 2023 15:36:48 GMT
I'm having a lot of issues deciding on a track from '78. Lots of stuff I love, but the one undeniable track is just not making itself known to me. A lot of 'problematic 2nd albums' that year - or post-punk bands still finding themselves. The year before or after seems so much easier to me. Oh well, I'll decide soon. You may not like it. There's so many great tracks. Even if I just confined myself to punk/new wave and disco, I could easily get 20. Perhaps you are overthinking things. I'll say (and this is me and all my inherent biases talking) that...had 1978 not been the year in which one of my favorite bands released FIVE of their greatest singles (including the one I nominated), I'd have GLADY broken up the "white boys with guitars" homogeny even further with some killer AM Gold/soft rock. And I'd have been absolutely spoiled for choice.
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Post by DarknessFish on Mar 8, 2023 9:50:32 GMT
1978
I think 1978 has been the toughest year so far, by a long way. Even with some sublime choices already made, I'm struggling to make a decision, and in the end I've plumped for something kinda obvious, but kinda not. Ultravox's "Just for a Moment". Seems like a fitting end to a phase of a band's existence, while also pointing to the way forward that they'd find in a few years time. Synth-pop was in its nascent years, but this feels like it's the full realisation, a completion of sorts. The minimal epic, quiet bombast, distant but intimate.
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Post by Stacy Heydon on Mar 8, 2023 10:25:25 GMT
I'd completely forgotten about that track, but I was a big fan of it (as I was generally of mk1 Ultravox) as a teenager. I do think they continue to be underrated, maybe because they were hard to pigeonhole into one scene or genre.
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Post by DarknessFish on Mar 8, 2023 11:14:46 GMT
I'd completely forgotten about that track, but I was a big fan of it (as I was generally of mk1 Ultravox) as a teenager. I do think they continue to be underrated, maybe because they were hard to pigeonhole into one scene or genre. Yeah, they never really had a cohesive sound on any one album, I think they kinda flirted between Roxy/Bowie glam, punk, and experimenting with synthesizers and the whole kraut/Kraftwerk influence. A real mixed bag, which I like, but it doesn't make 'em that accessible, and I think critics tend to dislike albums that aren't just in one specific style. It makes their jobs harder.
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Post by Stacy Heydon on Mar 8, 2023 12:02:29 GMT
I'd completely forgotten about that track, but I was a big fan of it (as I was generally of mk1 Ultravox) as a teenager. I do think they continue to be underrated, maybe because they were hard to pigeonhole into one scene or genre. Yeah, they never really had a cohesive sound on any one album, I think they kinda flirted between Roxy/Bowie glam, punk, and experimenting with synthesizers and the whole kraut/Kraftwerk influence. A real mixed bag, which I like, but it doesn't make 'em that accessible, and I think critics tend to dislike albums that aren't just in one specific style. It makes their jobs harder. Yes and the music press were particularly narrow minded then of course. Ultravox were older and had all sorts of pre-punk backgrounds in prog and art rock, which made the music press suspicious of them.
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rayge
Administrator
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Posts: 8,797
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Post by rayge on Mar 8, 2023 14:05:10 GMT
So many great singles unchosen - various Buzzcocks, Rock Lobster, Another Girl Another Planet, Down in the Tube Station at Midnight, Being Boiled, Ambition, Destination Venus, Jilted John, YMCA, We are Family, Street Hassle, the mighty O Level's East Sheen...
Unable to choose, so rectifying a glaring omission of artists featured with a track from Shiny Beast that just happens to be, along with Harry Irene, my favourite from the second coming of the Captain, with the truly great visual overload imagery couplet, 'Tropical hot dog night/ Like two flamingos in a food fight.'
Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band - Tropical Hot Dog Night
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Post by DarknessFish on Mar 8, 2023 16:44:42 GMT
Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band - Tropical Hot Dog Night "Bat Chain Puller" was one of my serious contenders for the top slot, I actually wrote some text about it a couple of days ago, then changed my mind and didn't post. I reckon Shiny Beast is probably his best album, too.
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toomanyhatz
god
I've met him/her. He/she's great!!
Posts: 3,243
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Post by toomanyhatz on Mar 8, 2023 18:47:36 GMT
OK, fine. I'll stop 'overthinking' (which I don't really think I'm doing).
It was the Bee Gees' biggest year - though my favorite 'disco era' stuff by them comes mostly in the three years before.
Adventure is an extremely underrated album imo - almost as good as MM - but with the lack of a definitive track to pick (though I did consider both "Glory" and "Days.")
There's even a couple left-field choices that I would have been roundly lambasted for, some of which you might see soon in the other thread. Fire away!
But the more I thought about it (and thanks to JSJ for reminding me) the more I realized none give me more pleasure than this one.
I was a little slow on the uptake with punk rock, because all I heard was the "Year Zero" rhetoric (which both now and then I read as class-A bullshit) and decried the new music as having 'no pop sense.' Little did I know it was already there - hooks galore paired with plenty of aggressive forward-thrust, and all the poetic romantic regret of the best singer-songwriters of the era. It's the chords, the lyrics, the hooks, the passionate singing with pop harmonies up top. It's all of it. It's their greatest song. I regret not 'getting it' in real time, but at least it found me later.
Anyway, to quote Rob Reiner, enough of my yakkin'.
1978
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