30 Years, 30 Days: Day 5, 1984

A happy Labor Day Eve to everyone. I hope tomorrow finds you shirking whatever labor is thrust upon you on a daily basis, and instead hoisting your favorite adult beverage of choice in front of meat being cooked over fire. But I will be hard at work, continuing to document years in music that I was still to young to appreciate firsthand. Just wait until we get to the 90s.

As a bit of historical context, 1984 was the year that a few bored wives of politicians decided they didn't want their daughters listening to Purple Rain, so they formed the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center). I never really questioned why a lot of the records I bought in the 90s had those "Parental Advisory" labels on them, by that time it seemed like a real badge of honor on a recording. If it had the sticker, I was so intrigued about what could be on it that was so "offensive" that you had to be "warned" before buying it. So really, what did these people accomplish?

None of the records I can think of from 1984 that have affected me bear these labels, which goes to show you don't have to be right-out edgy and crass to be relevant.

I Often Dream Of Trains by Robyn Hitchcock is one of my favorite records by one of my

absolute favorite people. I discovered Hitchcock amidst the stacks of my college radio library, and I never looked back. He was so amazingly quirky, and yet so very earnest and capable of writing beautiful songs. He has an amazing sense of humor combined with a dry British wit, I couldn't help but be drawn to him in the same way I was drawn to Monty Python and the Beatles' films of the mid 60s.

Bookended by two very haunting piano pieces, Trains is full of off-kilter imagery, pointed sarcasm and brilliant songwriting. The second track on the album, "Sometimes I Wish i Was A Pretty Girl", is a stomper of a track, designed to be slightly repulsive while being a real sing-along number (I get it in my head regularly). "Uncorrected Personality Traits" is a hillarious acapella number about the dangers of indulging children, as they will grow into maladjusted adults:

"If you give into them every time they cry,

They will become little tyrants, but they won't know why.

Then when they are thwarted by people in later life,

They will become psychotic

And they won't make an ideal husband of wife."

Brilliant, just brilliant. The title track is a lovely song about the never ending shuffle of the train systems in London, making it a very surreal love song/lullaby if you're in the right mood. I didn't come across the record until after 1997, when it was reissued (it's since been reissued in 2007 as well), and the reissue contained two of my favorite Hitchcock songs that never saw the light of day on an album: "My Favourite Buildings", about London losing it's identity amidst Thatcher and "I Used To Say I Love You", one of the best "love songs" Hitchcock's ever written ("I used to say I love you/ I meant it as a threat/ Or maybe as a promise/ To see what I could get").

The joy of a live album is that it can act as the best introduction to a band you could possibly get. It's usually packed with the "hits", and it's delivered in what is hopefully the truest and most dynamic manner a band can present itself: live on stage. Stop Making Sense by Talking Heads was my first introduction to the band, and it's where I always send new converts. All the early 80s classics are there: "Burning Down The House", "Psycho Killer", "Once In A Lifetime", "Girlfriend Is Better", the list goes on and on. I don't know if at 16 I would have embraced the angular, jerky rhythms of their early work. Instead I needed to hear it a bit poppier and a hell of a lot larger than those early records (I shortly came to love all their material, don't you fret).

I mean, you could just feel the giant, sold out crowds on that record, and feel the intensity and excitement of the tour, which was as much a giant, walking, talking modern art installation as well as a rock show. "Psycho Killer" was my favorite song up until about 17, and one of the first songs I ever performed live by myself in front of an audience (my best friend James and I hijacked the musical act at our senior year send-off and performed our own version to our classmates). The whole record has all the elements of a great live record: new, dynamic arrangements of old hits with a couple of newer tunes sprinkled in, while capturing the intensity of what it was like to be there. And Bernie Worrell's keys are a huge addition, as well as Adrian Belew on guitar to help make the zealous production of their last record come to life on stage. When I was in college, the record was re-released with a handful of extra songs that were in the film, but I always felt the newer version was too long and cluttered. Stop Making Sense was always fine the way it was, as a phenomenal introduction to one of my favorite bands.

We're going to stop at two tonight. Many other great things came out in 1984 (Reckoning, Ocean Rain, The Smiths, The Unforgettable Fire, This Is Spinal Tap), and they all live in my collection on my shelves (that I can peer at just over the top of the laptop). But in the case of REM, Echo and the Bunnymen and The Smiths, they all come into play in the long run, so be patient.

A couple of people have noted to me that I seem to be very Brit-heavy in a lot of my selections. I don't really have an answer (or an apology) for that. English music has been huge in America for decades, and who am I to resist it's well-mannered charms? My only real reason I can come up with is that as a teenager, you're yearning to escape your current situation and if you can do that with music from across an ocean and not have to leave your room, so much the better. British teens have been doing it with our records as well. And the most influential music you will ever hear in you life comes through your ears before you're 21, so embrace the fact that you pretty much developed your taste in music long before you developed your taste for beer.

-Dan