Pretty sure you're going to love it! Reminds me of prime mid-'80s Yngwie Malmsteen!
I'd say yes and no and there's certainly some shredding involved, but all in all I lack a bit of real inspiration something I also lack in the music of Yngwie Malmsteen. But I added it to my year chart so at least a good album.
Ah! Interesting. Thanks for trying it! Glad it made your year chart at least! 😊
First an album I already own/know:
Tonight's The Night (1975) by Neil Young
At first view a bit too country-ish for me but many of those tracks like Roll Another Number and Albuquerque are so good you can't go wrong. And the highlight by far is the title track. The album remains at the 15th rank.
And an album from my wishlist:
The Best Years Of Our Lives (1975) by Steve Harley And Cockney Rebel
Another Steve Harley album and one of the most consistent (and also the best of three "classics" with of course the great (Come Up And See Me) Make Me Smile as the highlight with also The Mad Mad Moonlight and Mr. Raffles Avery good. The album enters my year chart at the 19th rank.
First an album I already own/know:
Coney Island Baby (1976) by Lou Reed
One of the iconic Lou Reed albums with a few iconic tracks like the title track, She's My Best Friend and in my view especially that special track Kicks. Overall this album doesn't contain one average track so it's normal that it goes from the 6th to the 5th rank of 1976.
And in this year Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel released two albums so I listened to both of them:
Timeless Flight (1976) by Steve Harley And Cockney Rebel
Overall not a bad album but it lacks some real outliers and just good enough to enter my year chart at the 40th rank of the year.
And:
Love's A Prima Donna (1976) by Steve Harley And Cockney Rebel
This album contains two good tracks: the title tracks and a great cover of the Beatles' Here Comes The Sun. But besides that this album only contains in my view absolute mediocre tracks. Which makes me conclude that a nice hit and a cover song are not enough to make this a good overall album so I decided not to include this album in my year chart.
So all in all I should maybe conclude that this band had some really good hits but nothing much more so it suffices to stick with the greatest hits album.
After that the band broke up and Steve Harley started a solo career. From what I'm reading he continued in the main direction he took with his last album so I don't think I will do the effort to follow the rest of his career. If somebody thinks there is a worthwhile solo album which deserves to be listened to please let me know.
First an album I already own/know:
Talking Heads: 77 (1977) by Talking Heads
I would call this one of the greatest debut albums better. The signature sound that the band obviously had was already fully formed with this album and already had the fantastic songs and the great rhythm that would be developed more in their latter albums.
To sum up:
Psycho Killer is one of their greatest classics and will live on for ever
Pulled Up and The Book I Read are near classics
New Feeling, Tentative Decisions, No Compassion and Don't Worry About the Government are also highlights
And the rest of the album is also great.
So with this first album they already topped most of the competition so no wonder that it moves up from the 14th to the 5th rank of this for me one of the most important and pivotal years in rock music.
And an album from my wishlist:
Rock City (1977) by Riot
This is the debut album by this band which was somehow influential in the hardrock metal scene and also formed somewhat of a bridge between the two scenes. There's clearly still a big influence from bands like UFO or Boston (although the guitars are good but not as fantastic as the ones in Boston but the twin guitar attack here does appeal) while songs like Warrior or Overdrive already shows the beginnings after what would later be called speed metal. I don't really find excellent tracks here but overall this is a very solid debut which enters my year chart at the 38th rank of the year.
These are the albums of 1978 I listened to:
Two albums I already own/know:
Why 2 albums? Because it's good to have a competition between two debut albums that are linked an which are both contender for best album of the year and they are:
Another Music In A Different Kitchen (1978) by Buzzcocks
and
Real Life (1978) by Magazine
So this all started with The Buzzcocks being formed as a punk band in the middle of the start of the punk wave by three names to remember: Pete Shelley who had his roots in the metal scene, Howard Devoto and joined a bit late by the bass player Steve Diggle whom they met a Sex Pistols show.
So they started as a punk band but even before the above first full album was released Howard Devoto left the band because he didn't like the way in which The Buzzcocks were moving to form Magazine which was more post punk/art rock and more centered on keyboards although the guitar sound was still there. Many things happed to the two bands in-between but where I want to come to is that Pete Shelley became the main leader of The Buzzcocks wit lots of up and downs (including splits and reunions) but unfortunately died in 2018. After that Steve Diggle became the front man and they still released a number of good albums. And that's how I saw them live a week ago in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium.
And somehow, I don't know exactly why, I didn't really like the show. Diggle and his surrounding younger band members showed a lot of energy but somehow they gave a tired impression. They played a lot of tracks from their more recent albums but it was only when they played (and there were not enough of those) their older songs that the concert really exploded.
This all to say that I love the two albums to pieces (The Buzzcocks also released Love Bites that year but that one will be for later) and before I relistened to both, Another Music was at the 2nd rank and Real Life at the 4th.
First Another Music:
The big hit on this album was Fast Cars (not even played at the concert) and what a good and fast song that is. The other major hit at the time but not on the original version of the album was Orgasm Addict, another punk anthem. But the number of punk classics on this album is countless and I consider it as one of the major punk classics.
And then Real Life also with one signature song: Shot By Both Sides but also Motorcade, Light Pours out of Me and Parade are classics. Especially the latter is special as it is very slow and contains all the synth bleeps that in other songs would be considered wrong but here they absolutely work.
And you know what, both albums have about the same score but Real Life wins by a small margin and ends up as the best album of the year and Another Music as the second.
What do you think is the best of the two or do you think the two bands have better albums.-?
And there is also an album from my wishlist I listened to:
Ace Frehley (1978) by Ace Frehley
At this moment in their career the four members of Kiss decided to each do a solo album and the general consensus is that this is the best of the four. I must say I'm not a big fan of Kiss and their juvenile lyrics are also to heard on this solo album. The guitars are ok but not very original and the songs can be compared with the general Kiss fodder. So all in all not a great album in my view but it still ends up at the 55th rank of the year.
So this all started with The Buzzcocks being formed as a punk band in the middle of the start of the punk wave by three names to remember: Pete Shelley who had his roots in the metal scene, Howard Devoto and joined a bit late by the bass player Steve Diggle whom they met a Sex Pistols show.
This is actually a slight problem, data-wise. Diggle did play bass on the Spiral Scratch EP before they hired Garth Smith, at which point Diggle moved to the guitar. That lineup recorded the "Orgasm Addict" single, but then Garth quit (probably due to withdrawal symptoms), so then they brought in Barry Adamson (who at that point was already in Magazine) to fill in for a few gigs. Adamson doesn't appear on any Buzzcocks recordings at all. Then they hired Steve Garvey, and that became their "classic" lineup despite Garvey having to split time between the band and playing first base for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Discogs page goes into even more detail about this... 🤔
The problem here is that we've got Barry Adamson listed as a Buzzcocks member on BEA's Buzzcocks page, which seems wrong because he was only a temporary fill-in guy. (Devoto is listed too, but at least he was on that first EP.) I don't know what the rules are for this, but personally, I'd remove Adamson from the list.
Quote:
Pete Shelley became the main leader of The Buzzcocks wit lots of up and downs (including splits and reunions) but unfortunately died in 2018. After that Steve Diggle became the front man and they still released a number of good albums.
Well... they only made one, Sonics In The Soul, prior to the new one they released a couple of weeks ago. The new one is pretty good, but Sonics In The Soul is... well, I won't say "terrible," but it should really be their lowest-ranked album.
Quote:
What do you think is the best of the two or do you think the two bands have better albums.-?
I'm more of a Different Kind of Tension guy, myself. But as for the Magazine albums, the first three are all equally great if you ask me. After that they fell off a cliff and never recovered! It was actually kind of heartbreaking at the time, since they'd been one of my favorite bands. 😢
The Buzzcocks are easily one of my favorite Punk Rock bands. I worship their first three albums & of course that singles comp. My favorite is AMIADK. "Fiction Romance" is my jam and a desert island single for me. I bought their box set Product the week it came out and just adored it the packaging. Probably one of the best Box Sets ever released.
What's weird considering how much I love Post-Punk, is that I never could really get into Magazine. 🤷♂️
Is there a truly GREAT Buzzcocks album after the first three?!?! 🤔 I've never heard anything even close to the the quality of their '70s stuff, but tbh I don't think I've tried that hard.
Thx for the reactions MadhattanJack and Repo. MJ, I agree that I made a lot of shortcuts in describing the careers of the two bands but I tried to focus on the three people I wanted to highlight: Pete Shelley, Howard Devoto and Steve Diggle. Of course I agree with you on the quality of first three Magazine albums but I admit I still have to listed to Magic, Murder and The Weather and No Thyself to form my own opinion on their other albums. And not to be forgotten Shelley and Devoto also made an album together under the fantastic band name ShelleyDevoto and released the album BuzzKunst in 2002, also still on my wishlist.
And @Repo, of course Fiction Romance is one of the greatest punk songs ever. I both adore The Buzzcocks and Magazine (at least their first three albums) and I'm sure that you'd like Magazine as well: it's a bit more relying on synthesizers but to me they do have the punk spirit as well but flavored with a bit of artrock (hence the part Kunst in the aforementioned collaboration album).
First an album I already own/know:
Communiqué (1979) by Dire Straits
One of those great Dire Straits albums maybe with less hits (with the exception of Lady Writer) than on their other albums but to me again a top album. Apart from Lady Writer the absolute highlight on this album is Where Do You Think You're Going? which has a fantastic groovy ending. For me as much as a classic as their other classic albums and it goes from the 9th to the 3rd rank of the year.
And an album from my wishlist:
New Values (1979) by Iggy Pop
Released as a real solo album after his great collaborations with David Bowie. And however much I like the rest of his ongoing solo career, this album does absolutely nothing for me. I just don't find any memorable songs (maybe the title song is the best). So all in all: no, nothing for my 1979 year chart.
First an album I already own/know:
Kaleidoscope (1980) by Siouxsie And The Banshees
Siouxie and The Banshees were one of those punk band which weren't really punk. You could call them goth but their music goes beyond that and just represents its own (dark) style which is the best thing you can aim for as a band. This album doesn't have anything to do anymore with punk and a song like Happy House just shows how stylish they could be. The other classic on this album is Christine (to which you immediately connect The Strawberry Girl) and also the rest of the album is good so it moves up from the 34th to the 23rd rank.
And an album from my wishlist:
Beat Crazy (1980) by Joe Jackson Band
Another very enjoyable album by Joe Jackson whose music style ranges from punk to dance hall but always in the typical Joe Jackson style which can't be compared to someone else's. On this album there isn't much punk any more but a song like Beat Crazy still shows a lot of energy. But Joe Jackson has a knack for wonderful ballads and there is also one on in this album: One To One and easily the best track of the album. As a whole it enters my year chart at the 41st rank.
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Repo
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MadhattanJack
