882.
XTC - this is pop?
Note the question mark. It was inconceivable at the time that
something so dissonant could be considered pop. But if it wasn't pop, what was it? It wasn't PUNK.
Maybe it was this new thing that people were trying to call New Wave,
but what the hell did that mean?
New Wave wasn't a sound. It
was a way of marketing stuff that may have had PUNK in its blood, but was a
little more ambitious than just three chords and a pile of rage. It was pop!
879.
Sonic Youth - Hey Joni
Hey Joni's about Joni Mitchell apparently. But I always imagined something more
cosmic than that, expansive. Like
the rest of Daydream Nation, it was really about everything. It may have been 1988, the Winter of
Hate, raining all the time, the nights long and desperate. But here was the
future kicking through, full of cool white light, and like the guitar tunings
Sonic Youth used, infinitely complex, and ultimately quite hopeful.
878.
Undertones - you've got my number
A great single by one of the great singles
bands ever. But I'll be
honest. I never really liked them
much at the time. Blame Eric. One of those obsessive assholes who
can't let a good thing speak for itself – he has to evangelize it, until you
come to HATE it, even if you don't, anything to get under the guy's skin.
877.
Cure - caterpillar
Early 90s. I remember these two drunk guys arguing about Goth and its
relative merits. One of them hated
it outright. All of it. Oh yeah, said the other, what about the
Cure? You like them. The Cure are a pop band, said the
first, and a fucking good one.
Which is certainly true of Caterpillar, from the mid-80s sometime, a
nifty and successful piece of pop experimentation indeed. Nothing does what you expect it to, but
it always works, keeps the foot tapping, the head nodding, the earworm
slithering.
876.
Aphrodite's Child - you always stand in
my way
Aphrodite's Child are a
weird one, coming out of Greece in the late 60s, a sort of pop-psychedelic
outfit that managed to be both sonically extreme and sentimentally cloying,
sometimes in the same song. But You
Always Stand In My Way goes mostly for the extreme edge, singer Demis Rousos
giving his WAILING all while keyboardist Vangelis tears things up on lead
melotron. I actually found this
one in a yard sale sometime in the early 90s, paid a buck for it. I remember the guy who sold it to me
sort of scratching his head and mumbling, "Oh yeah. This record."
874.
Waterboys - a girl called Johnny
From before they'd really
committed to the BIG MUSIC, a catchy pop gem about a girl with a boy's
name. Why didn't we get to hear
this on commercial radio again? Oh
yeah. Satan had everything tied
down in 1983.
870.
Cosmic Jokers - kinder des alls galactic
[randoEDIT]
It's Germany 1973. A guy named Dieter Dierks is throwing
acid parties in his studio, all musicians welcome. Just show up, gobble some acid, lay down tracks. And he gets
some top players throwing in, Members of Ash Ra Tempel, Wallenstein. Later, Dierks would do more drugs, muck around with the
tapes, get his girlfriend to throw some vocals down, and call the whole thing
Cosmic Jokers. Then he'd release
it without telling anybody, or cutting them in on any royalties. Which got
lawyers involved, and Cosmic Jokers relegated to the extremely rare category. But good.
868.
Beatles - hey bulldog
Even at their least essential, the Beatles
couldn't help being a great fucking rock and roll band, particularly if John
Lennon was unleashed, and allowed to snarl.
867.
Doors - L'America
Jimbo the Lizard King was already dead when
this one came out (or successful in his disappearance). Either way, LA Woman is exactly the
kind of album every dead (or disappeared) poet, sexgod, asshole rockstar should
leave in his wake. Full of grit,
mystery, and kickass songs like L'America.
865.
Link Wray - Batman theme
As far as I'm concerned, there's still only
one Batman worth talking about, and that's the 1960s TV Batman, the Adam West
Batman, the laugh-along silly Batman, the mod-pop technicolour Batman. Everybody was doing versions of the
main theme at the time. Link
Wray's wins because it's just so dirty (the guitar that is), and straight up
FUN.
864.
Cocteau Twins - Ivo
I didn't pay that much attention to the
Cocteau Twins back in the 80s when they were first doing their thing. Not that I didn't at least like pretty
much everything I heard, it just never found me that often. But Treasure was an exception. An album full of it. Treasure, that is – dense, ethereal,
yet surprisingly tough.
863.
Love + Rockets - all in my mind
[electric]
Love and Rockets never got the respect they
deserved in the mid-80s. Fans of
Bauhaus (the band they'd split from) were huddled together in dark rooms
awaiting the resurrection of their main man, Peter Murphy (which never really
came). Edgy psyche-types were busy
getting their ears abused by the likes of The Jesus + Mary Chain. Meanwhile David Jay, Kevin Haskins and
Daniel Ash were slipping on the shades and cranking out some of the smoothest,
most artful, BEST psychedelic sounds since the 60s – always delivered with a
cool hint of 80s snarl.
862.
Guess Who - key [randoEDIT]
Not the
key. Simply (significantly)
Key. In which Canada's biggest
band ever, at the verge of conquering the world (they'd outsell the Beatles in
1970), smell the wheat and get cosmic, reference the Bible and otherwise lay
down the elusive psychedelic TRUTH for all god's children. With prolonged drum solo toward the end
which the Randophonic edit-team has seen fit to remedy somewhat.
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