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Three (For Now) Other Albums From ‘82
By Phil | February 22, 2008
There’s lots of hype right now around the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. OK, so the album sold gazillions, produced 800 top ten singles, including “Billy Jean”, “Beat It”, et al. Aside from the obvious and easy digs on Jackson’s tendency towards child diddling, let’s be realistic: this is nothing more than a last gasp effort by the quickly-becoming-irrelevant music industry to, quoting Morrissey, “reissue, repackage, repackage” an album that, despite your hardcore music snobbery, you probably have a copy of in one form or another lying around your house.
Before you rush out and buy your special edition double CD/DVD death machine box set, consider these other releases from 1982 that deserve your ducats:
The Cure- Pornography:
Admit it, people think of the Cure as some kind of bubblegum pop band, but the reality is that Robert Smith can be one morose motherfucker. No other album brings this truth to light like Pornography. From the opening lyric of “One Hundred Years “ (“Doesn’t Matter if we all die” ) to the close of the title track (“One more day like today and I’ll kill you”), Pornography had proto-goth kids jerking off over the harsh reality of our bleak existence. Say what you will about Bauhaus and Joy Division being the progenitors of Goth—Pornography remains the signpost.
Kate Bush- The Dreaming:
The Dreaming is a difficult album to listen to. Couple that with the fact that Kate Bush is viewed in this country as a shrill harpy, and you have an album that practically no one gives a shit about. The Dreaming challenged its audience to embrace the album as a whole, rather than a framework built around pop songs. The Dreaming broke ground in many ways—it was one of the first albums to feature instruments native to the Australian aborigines, and featured songs with narratives that forced the listener to embrace the stories within (I maintain that Kate Bush is one of the greatest story tellers of our time—listen to “Heads We’re Dancing” off of 1989’s The Sensual World and tell me otherwise). “Pull Out the Pin” is set during the Vietnam war, but tells the tale from the point of view of a North Vietnamese solider, sneaking up on the enemy, referencing how the American smells of “Yankee hash”; “Houdini” attempts to explain how the title character escaped from his entanglements (“with a kiss, I’ll pass the key”). “There Goes A Tenner” details a bank heist gone wrong. Each song is wrapped in off-kilter rhythms and challenging lyrics. The album could have been recorded yesterday and people still wouldn’t know how to pigeonhole it.
REM- Chronic Town:
Technically an EP, Chronic Town broke REM onto the burgeoning college radio scene. I can be like a certain unnamed Buffalo News music critic (cough Jeff Miers cough) and feign ultimate, encyclopedic musical taste, and claim that I alone, at age 12, despite my infatuation with Styx and Pat Benetar, embraced REM for all they could be back in 1982 when this album came out. The reality is this release was thrown in my face in 1986, when all of the upper classmen in my high school decried Life’s Rich Pageant as REM’s sell out album (if only they’d waited five years for Out of Time). However, hearing “Wolves, Lower” and “Carnival of Sorts” now, and placing it in context, I can’t help but see where they were coming from.
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March 4th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
I just discovered Kate Bush (yes, I know I’m a late bloomer) and have to agree with you. I picked up “The Dreaming” and am still trying to entirely understand it. But, I like it because it’s complex.
I always liked REM, too. Even “Out Of Time” with the exception of ‘Shiny Happy People’. (I have to enforce that point, just as I admit to enjoying ‘Automatic For The people’ if you take away ‘Everybody Hurts.) How do you feel about their more recent albums?
March 4th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
I don’t know much about their recent stuff, I lost track after “Monster”– but that has one of the greatest REM songs ever in “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth”. Give Kate a chance, she’ll grow on you. “Hounds of Love” is great place to start, just for the second “side” (I’m dating myself), which is a long concept piece about a survivor of a sunken ship who is going mad as she floats in the water– very Pink Floyd…