30 Years, 30 Days: Day 2, 1981

After my verbal outpouring about 1980 (and I could have gone on, there are so many great records from that year), I'm finding 1981 quite a bit more difficult. According to my research (since I was one at the time and had no real access to media), it was a year where all of music seemed to be playing it safe, waiting to see what the new decade would bring forth as the next big musical trends. But there are a couple of things from 1981 that still echo with me, and here they are.

"Tempted" was the second single from Squeeze's East Side Story. It's an interesting track in that it never really charted well, but became the band's best known song. It's even more interesting to note that Glenn Tilbrook, the band's lead singer, did not sing the lead. Rather, it was their keyboardist Paul Carrack. Weird, right?

But aside from its trivial anecdotes, "Tempted" remains one of my favorite songs of all time. I love how the organ kicks in over a real nice mid-tempo Mersey beat, and how the melody is so full of hooks, you'd swear it was pored over by a roomful of "hit makers". It's the song that showed listeners (I imagine) that Squeeze was beyond just a new-wave pop group with Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe's stamp of approval, that they were honest to goodness phenomenal pop song writers. I'm still not sure if the song is about losing the girl because you were "tempted by the fruit of another", or if the girl had already left and now you find yourself "tempted by the fruit of another". I can, however, be quite dense when it comes to lyrical meaning.

In a completely opposing vein, my other pick for "1981 Music That Shaped Me" is Mob Rules by Black Sabbath. This is the second of their records to feature the far superior talent of Ronnie James Dio, and is an absolute killer from start to finish. I didn't grow up with a lot of Sabbath in the house. By 1981, my dad was definitely done buying new Sabbath records (or much of anything for himself, I imagine, being a new father and all). I do remember hearing some Ozzy-era stuff in my early teens played in the house, but it may have been the classic rock station. My point is, I didn't discover the wonders of Dio-era Sabbath until my freshman year of college, where my roommate schooled me on all things metal (I in turn schooled him on all things Phish, but that's for a later time).

I immediately loved it, it was just so much more bad ass than Ozzy. Dio, to me, had more in common with Rob Halford than with Osbourne, but his lyrics and themes tended more towards the fantastical. Being a huge nerd, this struck me as more relevant than super-stoner lyrics with veiled drug references. So much of 70s and 80s metal is absurd, be it the amazingly technical playing or the ridiculous stage shows and wardrobes of the genre. It made so much more sense to me that metal embrace fiction, and deal in iconic and mythical themes: dragons and beasts and warriors were something to get amped about, since they could not exist in reality. Drugs and girls just seemed overdone and formulaic, and my experiences with both by the time I was 18 were simultaneously awkward and disappointing. Better to dig on dragons, they would never let you down.

It was sad to meet people later who saw Dio as a huge joke, and "enjoyed" his music ironically, like Spinal Tap or Marky Mark. It has frequently been my litmus test to others: Ozzy or Dio (like many people's "Beatles or Stones"). Either answer can be correct (I have no dislike of Osbourne, and his era in Sabbath still rocks my socks), but the "why" is telling.

A few honorable mentions: Elvis Costello and the Attraction's Trust, which is one of his more roundly hated albums, still gets me every time (it's a combination of "Lover's Walk" and "From A Whisper To A Scream", among many other things). The Cars Shake It Up is one of those canonical classics that even I agree with, and Ocasek's palm-muted guitar is still a major influence on my own playing. And Damaged by Black Flag will always be in my heart as that record I put on instead of choking somebody after I've had "one of those days".

Wow. Writing about music you were not really conscious for while still trying to place it in your own context is tougher than I thought. Or maybe 1981 is just one of those years where much of it's music never ended up really affecting me. It was a year where a few bands that would become part of my psyche formed (Tears For Fears, Sonic Youth, Pantera, to name a few), and we'll get to them later. Thanks to people who have already started commenting on the project so far, it makes me happy to know a few are reading it.

-Dan