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

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 3, 1982

1982 was the year of Thriller. Everyone loves Thriller. I love Thriller. It's one of the few albums I can put on in the van with the band and everyone is happy. Thriller plays like a "Best Of", except it was a studio album. Which is awesome. That is the last that will be said about Thriller. I'll talk about a different "Jackson" in a minute.

This was also the year that a ton of great bands formed, including Concrete Blonde, Faith No More, The Smiths, They Might Be Giants, The Pogues, Public Enemy and the Melvins. All of these bands played a role in my musical upbringing.

But in terms of releases of 1982, it was a pretty darn good year. Again, I did not experience any of this at the time. I was too busy riding a tricycle down the front stairs, freaking the hell out of parents and resulting in one of my very rare trips to the ER, the night we moved from Philadelphia to Western New York. Perhaps if I had been quietly listening to records, all that could have been avoided. Moving on...

Night and Day by Joe Jackson holds a very high place in my personal canon, and I've only come around to it in the last five years. I heard a triple shot of it on WXPN in Philly, during one of their yearly countdowns (I believe it was "Real Men", "Cancer" and one other that I don't recall). I was immediately struck by the fact that if there had been no Night and Day, there would have been no Ben Folds. Folds definitely drank from Jackson's well of intricate piano work and pointed, darkly humorous lyrics. I was familliar with Jackson on Look Sharp!, which is an excellent late 70s Brit pub rock album. I thought that was all he was about, but it's sometimes so great to be dead wrong.

The two songs I love the most are "Breaking Us In Two" and "Real Men". I love the latter because it tackles the sexuality of the 80s in such a straightforward way, asking the question of what makes a man a "man" ("What's a man now?/ What's a man mean?/ Is he tough and is he rugged?/Is he cultural and clean?"). As someone who grew up never quite measuring up to whatever was considered "masculine" (didn't play sports, was into theater and music, went through a goth black eyeliner phase, didn't call other dudes 'faggot', etc.), this song resonates with me very strongly, and I feel I could do a whole essay on gender with the help of this song and a couple of other Jackson tunes.

"Breaking Us In Two" is a great sequel to "Happy Loving Couples" from Look Sharp!, and definitely echoes a lot of my cynicism against most romantic relationships (yet not my own marriage, which is the biggest exception that proves the rule in my life). There comes a point where you have to realize what is keeping you with someone, be it in marriage or just a very long relationship. And if it ends up like the two people in "Breaking Us In Two", then there are bound to be problems.

If Night and Day is a mature serving of pop arrangement and a well written lyric sheet, than nothing could be further away than Violent Femmes, one of the brattiest records I've ever heard (and I am familliar with works of Ryan Adams, ha ha...). It's what a debut from three young guys is bound to be: urgent, hormone-fueled and a huge rush. I first heard this record in 9th grade,

which I'm pretty sure is the absolute best time to discover Violent Femmes. Released in 1982, then released a year later with the addition of "Gimme The Car", this record just exudes teen angst and sexual frustration. This is the record for every gawky, nerdy, out-of-place, not-quite-developed-yet teen boy. (Not to exclude girls at all, but as I was not a teen girl, I don't really have a lot of context here. This may also be a record for them, too, but I don't want to presume.)

The first side alone is more than enough: "Blister In The Sun", "Kiss Off", "Please Do Not Go", "Add It Up", "Confessions". Good freakin' GOD, that's a lot of maladjusted teen catharsis right there! I was wholly convinced all these songs were about me. I barely understood the ins and outs of teen mating practices, and clearly neither did Gordon Gano at times. His high, cracking snarl of a voice is the voice in your head, and others have tried to copy his approach to the adolescent male (and in the case of things like the book series "Youth In Revolt", failed miserably), but no one has ever nailed it quite like him. It's not sappy or sullen, it's not wordy or dramtic, and it is definitely not intelligent at all. It's just blunt and messy and totally fucked up. It is everything that being a teenager is about.

And did I mention that most of this record is acoustic? Their drummer doesn't even use a full kit most of the record, the bassist has an acoustic bass for cryin' out loud! How non-macho can you get! I am literally saying hello to 9th grade Dan every time I hear this record, and while I'm still young enough to cringe at my 14 year old self, it's an appreciative cringe, because I know things are going to end up being alright, and that 14 is actually the year where things started their slow upswing. Many of the friends I still keep in touch with today I met when I was 14, and there's power in knowing that you still want to interact with people from those days. It makes you feel like you got it right in some ways, even back then.

Okay, that was fun. Until I started this project, I hadn't really delved back into what Violent Femmes meant to me. Being married to a beautiful, intelligent woman now, I want to go back in time and tell myself that it's going to be cool, that good things will happen to me in the lady department eventually. But to also keep cranking that record, because right now everything is going to pretty much suck and this is going to help get you through it.

I'd also like to throw out an honorable mention to Robyn Hitchcock's "The Cars She Used To Drive", which was on his 1982 album Groovy Decay. The record as a whole is pretty weak, but it's got that song on it and I love it. He operates under the metaphor that the "cars she used to drive" are his lover's exes. "I get run over by the cars she used to drive./They recognize me on the street./I glue my arms and legs back on so I survive./She giggles underneath the sheet." Branded early on as "quirky", Hitchcock makes quirky so amusing and well written, with great hooks and melodies. Rather than becoming annoying, he remains so gosh darn endearing. His later records will play a much bigger part in my life as we go on with this series.

Goodnight, and tomorrow will be very fun, as 1983 has some real gems. Til then...

-Dan

Me, circa 1995. Note the attempt at

"humor" to mask all self-consciousness

and inadequacy. It still serves me well today.