Rock Evolution – The History of Rock & Roll - 1984 - (page 198)

threespires said:
Thought I'd wait a day or two to see if Bimbo did a Talk Talk and Sadds a Blue Nile - :-)

Despite me probably not having played it since they were born, both of my kids can sing most of Diamond Life so for all it's very 80's sounding, it's obviously endured.

There should be a dedicated speaker thread where you fancy types can discuss Monitor Audio and Mission and scutters like me can argue about the virtues of Kef Codas vs Wharfedale Diamonds ;-)
Click to expand...
I think Diamond Life and most of Sade's music is pretty timeless albeit that may be more about me stuck in the past.

I couldn't resist posting this from 'Stop Making Sense', the Jonathan Demme film of the Talking Heads concert. Arguably the greatest concert film ever made. I discovered it relatively recently thanks to @mancity2012_eamo It is a work of genius from both band and director and deserves to be recognised in this year. Check out the dance moves and groove.



Talking Heads - Life During Wartime
 
1984 saw the release of the first major label album from "just another band from East LA." How Will the Wolf Survive? had a number of great songs such as Evangeline, Don't Worry Baby, A Matter of Time, and more. Los Lobos sound had so many influences - rock, country, folk, Tex Mex, traditional Mexican music, etc., but their music was their own. Great band that is still going decades later.

Will the Wolf Survive? - Los Lobos
 
RandolphMABlue said:
1984 saw the release of the first major label album from "just another band from East LA." How Will the Wolf Survive? had a number of great songs such as Evangeline, Don't Worry Baby, A Matter of Time, and more. Los Lobos sound had so many influences - rock, country, folk, Tex Mex, traditional Mexican music, etc., but their music was their own. Great band that is still going decades later.

Will the Wolf Survive? - Los Lobos
Click to expand...
Superb choice, it was on my shortlist for the initial playlist.
 
Sooo many choices, I could pick at least 4 more from Bruce, The Unforgettable Fire, and The Scorpions "Still Loving You" as an album closer, the best Thompson Twins song "Hold Me Now", "Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)" from The Icicle Works, and so many more...

But I'm going to go with my final selection for a lyrical two-fer song combo that I think is the best and least appreciated part of Don Henley's landmark album.

On the closer from Hotel California, (mostly) Don Henley and Glenn Frey write about industry and commerce inevitably destroying beautiful places in "The Last Resort".

Don Henley takes it up a notch with this beautiful combo that initially reflects on the passing of time and the bittersweet feelings of growing older, particularly focusing on the displacement of an older, traditional way of life by modern, faster-paced society.

My grandson, he comes home from college
He says, "We get the government we deserve."
My son-in-law just shakes his head and says,
"That little punk, he never had to serve."
And I sit here in the shadow of suburbia
and look out across these empty fields
...
and I wonder when I'll see my companion again

This all blends in and leads perfectly into the 2nd part of the song combo that pays tribute to a real hamburger joint on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood that has since been demolished. The song uses the grill as a metaphor to comment on the changing nature of American cityscapes, the loss of family-owned businesses, urban sprawl, and the vapid commercialism of Hollywood.

These days a man makes you somethin'
And you never see his face
But there is no hiding place
Down at the Sunset Grill

"A Month Of Sundays / Sunset Grill" - Don Henley

1762610142485.png
 
Black&White&BlueMoon Town said:
Sooo many choices, I could pick at least 4 more from Bruce, The Unforgettable Fire, and The Scorpions "Still Loving You" as an album closer, the best Thompson Twins song "Hold Me Now", "Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)" from The Icicle Works, and so many more...

But I'm going to go with my final selection for a lyrical two-fer song combo that I think is the best and least appreciated part of Don Henley's landmark album.

On the closer from Hotel California, (mostly) Don Henley and Glenn Frey write about industry and commerce inevitably destroying beautiful places in "The Last Resort".

Don Henley takes it up a notch with this beautiful combo that initially reflects on the passing of time and the bittersweet feelings of growing older, particularly focusing on the displacement of an older, traditional way of life by modern, faster-paced society.

My grandson, he comes home from college
He says, "We get the government we deserve."
My son-in-law just shakes his head and says,
"That little punk, he never had to serve."
And I sit here in the shadow of suburbia
and look out across these empty fields
...
and I wonder when I'll see my companion again

This all blends in and leads perfectly into the 2nd part of the song combo that pays tribute to a real hamburger joint on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood that has since been demolished. The song uses the grill as a metaphor to comment on the changing nature of American cityscapes, the loss of family-owned businesses, urban sprawl, and the vapid commercialism of Hollywood.

These days a man makes you somethin'
And you never see his face
But there is no hiding place
Down at the Sunset Grill

"A Month Of Sundays / Sunset Grill" - Don Henley

View attachment 174246
Click to expand...
“Sunset Grill” features an amazing keyboard piece partway through.
 
This is probably my last year that I will wirite-up so got to go out with a bang and I have started a coda. There's some big tracks from the year I think need adding plus some of the big albums have so many great tracks.

First set of additions are:

Prince: When doves Cry
Bruce Springsteen: Dancing in the Dark
Bryan Adams: Summer of 69
VH: Panama
Tina Turner: What's Love Got to Do With it?
Madonna: Like a Virgin
Nena: 99 Luftballons
Tommy Shaw: Girls With Guns
 
threespires said:
Thought I'd wait a day or two to see if Bimbo did a Talk Talk and Sadds a Blue Nile - :-)

Despite me probably not having played it since they were born, both of my kids can sing most of Diamond Life so for all it's very 80's sounding, it's obviously endured.

There should be a dedicated speaker thread where you fancy types can discuss Monitor Audio and Mission and scutters like me can argue about the virtues of Kef Codas vs Wharfedale Diamonds ;-)
Click to expand...
Although I do have some Diamonds, very good by the way, I also have some rather nice Prodigy 5's for when I want to crank it up. A mute point though as a lot of the time I either pump vinyl out around the house via my Sonos speakers or use my headphones. But when they are on...boy are they on!
 
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Saddleworth2 said:
I think Diamond Life and most of Sade's music is pretty timeless albeit that may be more about me stuck in the past.

I couldn't resist posting this from 'Stop Making Sense', the Jonathan Demme film of the Talking Heads concert. Arguably the greatest concert film ever made. I discovered it relatively recently thanks to @mancity2012_eamo It is a work of genius from both band and director and deserves to be recognised in this year. Check out the dance moves and groove.



Talking Heads - Life During Wartime
Click to expand...

Most of us also on the Album Review thread listened to this when this concert album was reviewed. if you are a big fan of that, I'd recommend revisiting that week if you are so inclined. @LGWIO nominated that selection, and while he and many of us may not have the same interests on the field today, we both agreed this album and film was quite the experience!

(this link goes direct to page 860 when the album was discussed, just ignore the current thread title. ;-) )

forums.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk

The Album Review Club - Week #191 (page 1286) - Harlequin Dream - Boy & Bear

Gimme a min for the write up... bloody work getting in way Nice pick. There's a 2023 remaster that has a couple of extra tracks that I've not yet listened to so I might go for that version. (Did the other album thread do Remain In Light or have I imagined that?)
forums.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk forums.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk
 
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RobMCFC said:
I didn’t get into them until later, but I was surprised to find out that The Alarm’s debut album was as late as 1984.

“Where Were You Hiding When The Storm Broke” - The Alarm
Click to expand...
Same here on not yet hearing The Alarm in '84, but I have a certain person with a UK background to thank for that intro later, but we're just not quite there yet in the timeline... ;-)

That band is going to get some more justified nominations pretty soon, I'll predict.
 
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1984
Well I guess the main place to start is my 21st birthday in February.
I asked my brother to get me The Smiths debut album on the basis of having bought This Charming Man (which wasn't on the album, though it was on the cassette) and liked the follow up single What Difference Does It Make?
At my party, I had a pre-prepared tape blasting out the best punk / new wave / electro pop tunes. I opened my present from my brother and sat there reading the lyrics on the inside sleeve and was blown away by how many songs I could have said were written for me. I wanted to stop the tape and put the album on, but at the same time wanted the first listen to be a personal listen, which it was the next afternoon after I had recovered.

I was blown away. Punk had instilled in me an attitude and shaped me politically. But here was a band that was reflecting what I was feeling inside, with all the late teen / early 20's insecurities and questioning one's self packed into 10 songs. This was a band for me.
The gig in March at the Free Trade Hall was sold out so I had missed out on the tour - or so I thought..... City played away at Brighton March 10th and on our way down on the Special, I noted in the NME's gig guide that The Smiths were playing at Coventry Polytechnic that evening AND the Special was stopping at Coventry to pick up / drop off the Leicester & Rugby supporters club.
A quick phone call from a phone box in Brighton to my mum / dad in Coventry, saying "leave the key under the plant pot, I'll be there 11pm" and I got off at Cov and walked to the Poly (Lanchester Poly). I arrive and the gig has sold out but this lad is next to the door with a spare ticket, face value and I am in. City and The Smiths all on the same day! What a day!
The Smiths also had the collaboration with Sandie Shaw as well as "Heaven knows...." and "William it was really nothing" as well as the great compilation of Peel sessions and outtakes "Hatfull Of Hollow" at the end of the year. Crazy to think this, but "How Soon Is Now?" was originally released as a B side to "William...." late 1984 before being released as a single in its own right the following year.

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions also hit the charts with singles "Perfect Skin and the glorious "Forest Fire", topping it with the album "Rattlesnakes", with the great "Are you ready to be heartbroken?"

Another band to break through was Bronski Beat. Sure there had always been gay artists around but apart from songs like Walk On The Wild Side or The Killing of George, not many artists actually covered the topic of homosexuality. "Smalltown Boy" haunting keyboard intro that runs through the song and subsequent video highlighting problems at home and violence on the streets became an anthem, not just for gay people, but also disaffected youth / young adults trying to make their own way in the world who just didn’t feel that they “fitted in.”

More gigs in the year saw two trips to the Apollo to see (again) Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Psychedelic Furs.

While The Smiths were on the record player repeatedly, one other album was released that was my album of the year and my 4th favourite all time album!
Echo & The Bunnymen unleashed "Ocean Rain" with the singles "The Killing Moon", "Silver" and "Seven Seas". From the stunning front cover the album has no duff tracks and still plays regularly in my car 41 years on.

Other tunes of the year, The Banshees "Dazzle" and "Swimming Horses", from the "Hyaena" album, Killing Joke "Eighties", The Cure "Caterpillar" Psychedelic Furs "Ghost In You" and "Heaven" and New Order, who were albumless during the year but still came out with "Thieves Like Us"

Over all a great year!

Three songs for the playlist?

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions - Forest Fire
Echo & The Bunnymen - Ocean Rain
The Smiths - Please Please Please Let me get What I want

IMG_5949.jpeg
 
Mad Eyed Screamer said:
1984
Well I guess the main place to start is my 21st birthday in February.
I asked my brother to get me The Smiths debut album on the basis of having bought This Charming Man (which wasn't on the album, though it was on the cassette) and liked the follow up single What Difference Does It Make?
At my party, I had a pre-prepared tape blasting out the best punk / new wave / electro pop tunes. I opened my present from my brother and sat there reading the lyrics on the inside sleeve and was blown away by how many songs I could have said were written for me. I wanted to stop the tape and put the album on, but at the same time wanted the first listen to be a personal listen, which it was the next afternoon after I had recovered.

I was blown away. Punk had instilled in me an attitude and shaped me politically. But here was a band that was reflecting what I was feeling inside, with all the late teen / early 20's insecurities and questioning one's self packed into 10 songs. This was a band for me.
The gig in March at the Free Trade Hall was sold out so I had missed out on the tour - or so I thought..... City played away at Brighton March 10th and on our way down on the Special, I noted in the NME's gig guide that The Smiths were playing at Coventry Polytechnic that evening AND the Special was stopping at Coventry to pick up / drop off the Leicester & Rugby supporters club.
A quick phone call from a phone box in Brighton to my mum / dad in Coventry, saying "leave the key under the plant pot, I'll be there 11pm" and I got off at Cov and walked to the Poly (Lanchester Poly). I arrive and the gig has sold out but this lad is next to the door with a spare ticket, face value and I am in. City and The Smiths all on the same day! What a day!
The Smiths also had the collaboration with Sandie Shaw as well as "Heaven knows...." and "William it was really nothing" as well as the great compilation of Peel sessions and outtakes "Hatfull Of Hollow" at the end of the year. Crazy to think this, but "How Soon Is Now?" was originally released as a B side to "William...." late 1984 before being released as a single in its own right the following year.

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions also hit the charts with singles "Perfect Skin and the glorious "Forest Fire", topping it with the album "Rattlesnakes", with the great "Are you ready to be heartbroken?"

Another band to break through was Bronski Beat. Sure there had always been gay artists around but apart from songs like Walk On The Wild Side or The Killing of George, not many artists actually covered the topic of homosexuality. "Smalltown Boy" haunting keyboard intro that runs through the song and subsequent video highlighting problems at home and violence on the streets became an anthem, not just for gay people, but also disaffected youth / young adults trying to make their own way in the world who just didn’t feel that they “fitted in.”

More gigs in the year saw two trips to the Apollo to see (again) Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Psychedelic Furs.

While The Smiths were on the record player repeatedly, one other album was released that was my album of the year and my 4th favourite all time album!
Echo & The Bunnymen unleashed "Ocean Rain" with the singles "The Killing Moon", "Silver" and "Seven Seas". From the stunning front cover the album has no duff tracks and still plays regularly in my car 41 years on.

Other tunes of the year, The Banshees "Dazzle" and "Swimming Horses", from the "Hyaena" album, Killing Joke "Eighties", The Cure "Caterpillar" Psychedelic Furs "Ghost In You" and "Heaven" and New Order, who were albumless during the year but still came out with "Thieves Like Us"

Over all a great year!

Three songs for the playlist?

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions - Forest Fire
Echo & The Bunnymen - Ocean Rain
The Smiths - Please Please Please Let me get What I want

View attachment 174380
Click to expand...
All 3 are some of my favourite albums of that year.
 
On the album review thread, I’ve previously written how Billy Bragg helped a slightly lost teenager find his feet at University. I chose his third album for that thread, but it was his 1984 second album Brewing Up With Billy Bragg which was the one that helped me settle. Whilst the vicar’s sons on the engineering courses blasted out Script and Fugazi from their rooms, myself and a few others could be heard singing the classic line “the time that it takes to make a baby, can be the time it takes to make a cup of tea” from this album.

I could easily have picked half a dozen songs from this album, and I nearly picked the song Island of No Return with its simple but searing last verse.

I wish Kipling and the Captain were here
To record our feats for posterity,
Me and the Corporal out on a spree,
Damned from here to eternity.

But I’ve gone with The Saturday Boy because, unlike many of the evident lotharios on this thread, it’s a tale of teenage emotional ineptness that I can easily relate to. The other reason I picked this track is because Dave Thompson's plaintive brass indirectly reminds me of another indelible memory from this (and the following) year, the miners’ strike. This is the wrong thread to go into that other than to say it was a bit of a loss of innocence for me; but it's an opportunity to go on a musical tangent that I don't think we've done on the thread so far...

In 85 when the miners went back, not everywhere but in many places, they marched behind a brass band and in doing so said something important imo. They were bloodied and bowed and, having been demonised and dehumanised in some quarters, in defeat they were trying to retain/reclaim some dignity and hold on to a sense of identity as people and as a community. It's a testimony to the cultural importance and power of music that in such a moment music was one of the ways they chose to try and do that. Unsurprisingly most pit bands struggled to keep going during the strike as it probably seemed the least of their worries, but some managed it and then managed to survive the closures that subsequently followed. In the years after the strike the famous Frickley Colliery band were down to something like 8 members at one point, but people from out of town who'd never been near a pit in their lives drove from miles away to participate and keep it going and albeit in a different form it thrives to this day. The brass brands were living and breathing history and that people still continue to want their story to be told is important I think. We've concentrated heavily on music as an entertainment industry and in fairness that is the raison d'etre of the thread but it's only part of the story. How we choose to both create and consume music says much about us a society and is an important part of and signifier of our history and culture. Brass bands are intimately tied to and invoke specific geographies and groups of people; they are the industrial counterparts to our, very different, rural folk traditions.

Though brass bands are associated with mining communities, their origins date back to the end of the Napoleonic wars and in the same way that the end of the Civil War in the US resulted in recreational marching bands that would in turn go on to help give birth to jazz, the desire of the returning soldiers to continue to play gave birth to community or civic bands in Britain. They weren't exclusively brass based at first but a combination of the invention of valved instruments and the industrial revolution meant that by the 1890s there were literally thousands of brass bands. As mining and other heavy industries boomed and became the critical part of community life, village bands were adopted by the local mine. Banding also became more competitive and took on the look of a sport, 'Learner' bands acted as the 'feeder clubs' for the Championship bands, and indeed they were the cultural equivalent of the local football club in many places. At the turn of the 20th century Belle Vue was holding brass band competitions that had 40,000+ spectators. Many of the band names are carved in history, Besses o’ th’ Barn, Black Dyke Mills, Dyke Temperance, and Foden’s Motor Works.

Though by the time of the miners’ strike the brass band had long since seen its early 20th century zenith (as Britain’s industrial decline had already taken its toll) the impact of the strike was to deal an even bigger blow. Many bands were still intimately tied into the mining community and most importantly, financially the brass band ecosystem relied heavily on funding tied directly and indirectly into the coal industry. In the closure years that followed afterwards many bands were lost but the brass band didn’t die; it mutated. They are no longer the beating heart of communities; instead, they now act as storytellers of who we once were. In this they are hugely important and long may they survive.

Though the colliery bands often participated in rallies and benefit concerts at the time, unsurprisingly there’s no big brass band recordings from 84/85 so we’ll have to wait till a later year for a blast of something like Rodriguez’s Concerto de Orange Juice as Pete Postlethwaite would have said. On the subject of which, as much as I'm a fan of the film Brassed Off, when his character Danny says at the end of the film "oh aye, they can knock out a bloody good tune, but what the fuck does that matter?", at one level, when it comes to sustenance of flesh and bones, he's entirely right but at another when it comes to the soul and what it means to be human he's dead wrong imo.

Anyway, back to Billy and Dave Thompson’s trumpet (and yes, I know that brass bands famously use the more lyrical and harmonious cornet rather than trumpets, but Thompson’s an adept player who can invoke some of those lyrical qualities even with a brutish trumpet).

Billy Bragg – The Saturday Boy
 
My next pick is from an album that is a testament to one of the most resilient women in the music industry. I wonder what the majority of people would do if:
  • you'd lost two bandmates and friends to drugs
  • one of them was your chief collaborator and the heart and soul of the bands sound who died two days after you'd fired the bassist who would also die a short time later
  • you were several months pregnant
  • your personal life was going down the toilet as your relationship with your childs father disintegrated
You could probably be excused for just curling up in a ball and calling it a day. But if you were Chrissie Hynde you'd go into a studio and record what would become the opener to a new album and your biggest hit in the US to date. Despite not actually having a band as such that's pretty much what she did; famously 'borrowing' bassist Tony Butler from Big Country who happened to be in one of the other rooms at Air Studios that day. This was in 1982 but Back on The Chain Gang was also the opener for the 84 album Learning to Crawl, the title referring to both her young daughter and the new incarnation of the band. I know some people feel the third album didn't match the heights of the first two and the loss particularly of Honeyman-Scott meant they were never the same; but the fact that the album exists at all, let alone how good it is, is somewhat miraculous.

Back on the Chain Gang was a tribute to Honeyman-Scott but an oblique one and like the album itself acknowledged and processed the loss without becoming maudlin or exploitative. The album was bookended by another song also written about Honeyman-Scott. As we're already at the time of year where the shops are blasting out a loop of Christmas songs that are enough to send shop-workers on a William Foster-esque rampage, I'm going to pick that song which was a Christmas hit but is really about loss and trying to bridge the distance.

The Pretenders -2000 Miles
 
Saddleworth2 said:
Funnily enough, I have MA floorstanders in my media room with a MA sound bar and rear speakers with a REL subwoofer. Since I went deaf in one ear they are somewhat wasted on me but I couldn't bear to part with any of my HiFi kit. Btw I always thought KEF over Wharfedale.
Click to expand...
I had 100W Monitor Audio speakers, JVC QLF4 turntable but can't remember the model of the JVC amplifier or cassette deck. I do remember it was an Ortofon VMS20E MkII stylus though.
 
Mad Eyed Screamer said:
1984
Well I guess the main place to start is my 21st birthday in February.
I asked my brother to get me The Smiths debut album on the basis of having bought This Charming Man (which wasn't on the album, though it was on the cassette) and liked the follow up single What Difference Does It Make?
At my party, I had a pre-prepared tape blasting out the best punk / new wave / electro pop tunes. I opened my present from my brother and sat there reading the lyrics on the inside sleeve and was blown away by how many songs I could have said were written for me. I wanted to stop the tape and put the album on, but at the same time wanted the first listen to be a personal listen, which it was the next afternoon after I had recovered.

I was blown away. Punk had instilled in me an attitude and shaped me politically. But here was a band that was reflecting what I was feeling inside, with all the late teen / early 20's insecurities and questioning one's self packed into 10 songs. This was a band for me.
The gig in March at the Free Trade Hall was sold out so I had missed out on the tour - or so I thought..... City played away at Brighton March 10th and on our way down on the Special, I noted in the NME's gig guide that The Smiths were playing at Coventry Polytechnic that evening AND the Special was stopping at Coventry to pick up / drop off the Leicester & Rugby supporters club.
A quick phone call from a phone box in Brighton to my mum / dad in Coventry, saying "leave the key under the plant pot, I'll be there 11pm" and I got off at Cov and walked to the Poly (Lanchester Poly). I arrive and the gig has sold out but this lad is next to the door with a spare ticket, face value and I am in. City and The Smiths all on the same day! What a day!
The Smiths also had the collaboration with Sandie Shaw as well as "Heaven knows...." and "William it was really nothing" as well as the great compilation of Peel sessions and outtakes "Hatfull Of Hollow" at the end of the year. Crazy to think this, but "How Soon Is Now?" was originally released as a B side to "William...." late 1984 before being released as a single in its own right the following year.

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions also hit the charts with singles "Perfect Skin and the glorious "Forest Fire", topping it with the album "Rattlesnakes", with the great "Are you ready to be heartbroken?"

Another band to break through was Bronski Beat. Sure there had always been gay artists around but apart from songs like Walk On The Wild Side or The Killing of George, not many artists actually covered the topic of homosexuality. "Smalltown Boy" haunting keyboard intro that runs through the song and subsequent video highlighting problems at home and violence on the streets became an anthem, not just for gay people, but also disaffected youth / young adults trying to make their own way in the world who just didn’t feel that they “fitted in.”

More gigs in the year saw two trips to the Apollo to see (again) Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Psychedelic Furs.

While The Smiths were on the record player repeatedly, one other album was released that was my album of the year and my 4th favourite all time album!
Echo & The Bunnymen unleashed "Ocean Rain" with the singles "The Killing Moon", "Silver" and "Seven Seas". From the stunning front cover the album has no duff tracks and still plays regularly in my car 41 years on.

Other tunes of the year, The Banshees "Dazzle" and "Swimming Horses", from the "Hyaena" album, Killing Joke "Eighties", The Cure "Caterpillar" Psychedelic Furs "Ghost In You" and "Heaven" and New Order, who were albumless during the year but still came out with "Thieves Like Us"

Over all a great year!

Three songs for the playlist?

Lloyd Cole & The Commotions - Forest Fire
Echo & The Bunnymen - Ocean Rain
The Smiths - Please Please Please Let me get What I want

View attachment 174380
Click to expand...
You can have four song picks.
 
threespires said:
On the album review thread, I’ve previously written how Billy Bragg helped a slightly lost teenager find his feet at University. I chose his third album for that thread, but it was his 1984 second album Brewing Up With Billy Bragg which was the one that helped me settle. Whilst the vicar’s sons on the engineering courses blasted out Script and Fugazi from their rooms, myself and a few others could be heard singing the classic line “the time that it takes to make a baby, can be the time it takes to make a cup of tea” from this album.

I could easily have picked half a dozen songs from this album, and I nearly picked the song Island of No Return with its simple but searing last verse.

I wish Kipling and the Captain were here
To record our feats for posterity,
Me and the Corporal out on a spree,
Damned from here to eternity.

But I’ve gone with The Saturday Boy because, unlike many of the evident lotharios on this thread, it’s a tale of teenage emotional ineptness that I can easily relate to. The other reason I picked this track is because Dave Thompson's plaintive brass indirectly reminds me of another indelible memory from this (and the following) year, the miners’ strike. This is the wrong thread to go into that other than to say it was a bit of a loss of innocence for me; but it's an opportunity to go on a musical tangent that I don't think we've done on the thread so far...

In 85 when the miners went back, not everywhere but in many places, they marched behind a brass band and in doing so said something important imo. They were bloodied and bowed and, having been demonised and dehumanised in some quarters, in defeat they were trying to retain/reclaim some dignity and hold on to a sense of identity as people and as a community. It's a testimony to the cultural importance and power of music that in such a moment music was one of the ways they chose to try and do that. Unsurprisingly most pit bands struggled to keep going during the strike as it probably seemed the least of their worries, but some managed it and then managed to survive the closures that subsequently followed. In the years after the strike the famous Frickley Colliery band were down to something like 8 members at one point, but people from out of town who'd never been near a pit in their lives drove from miles away to participate and keep it going and albeit in a different form it thrives to this day. The brass brands were living and breathing history and that people still continue to want their story to be told is important I think. We've concentrated heavily on music as an entertainment industry and in fairness that is the raison d'etre of the thread but it's only part of the story. How we choose to both create and consume music says much about us a society and is an important part of and signifier of our history and culture. Brass bands are intimately tied to and invoke specific geographies and groups of people; they are the industrial counterparts to our, very different, rural folk traditions.

Though brass bands are associated with mining communities, their origins date back to the end of the Napoleonic wars and in the same way that the end of the Civil War in the US resulted in recreational marching bands that would in turn go on to help give birth to jazz, the desire of the returning soldiers to continue to play gave birth to community or civic bands in Britain. They weren't exclusively brass based at first but a combination of the invention of valved instruments and the industrial revolution meant that by the 1890s there were literally thousands of brass bands. As mining and other heavy industries boomed and became the critical part of community life, village bands were adopted by the local mine. Banding also became more competitive and took on the look of a sport, 'Learner' bands acted as the 'feeder clubs' for the Championship bands, and indeed they were the cultural equivalent of the local football club in many places. At the turn of the 20th century Belle Vue was holding brass band competitions that had 40,000+ spectators. Many of the band names are carved in history, Besses o’ th’ Barn, Black Dyke Mills, Dyke Temperance, and Foden’s Motor Works.

Though by the time of the miners’ strike the brass band had long since seen its early 20th century zenith (as Britain’s industrial decline had already taken its toll) the impact of the strike was to deal an even bigger blow. Many bands were still intimately tied into the mining community and most importantly, financially the brass band ecosystem relied heavily on funding tied directly and indirectly into the coal industry. In the closure years that followed afterwards many bands were lost but the brass band didn’t die; it mutated. They are no longer the beating heart of communities; instead, they now act as storytellers of who we once were. In this they are hugely important and long may they survive.

Though the colliery bands often participated in rallies and benefit concerts at the time, unsurprisingly there’s no big brass band recordings from 84/85 so we’ll have to wait till a later year for a blast of something like Rodriguez’s Concerto de Orange Juice as Pete Postlethwaite would have said. On the subject of which, as much as I'm a fan of the film Brassed Off, when his character Danny says at the end of the film "oh aye, they can knock out a bloody good tune, but what the fuck does that matter?", at one level, when it comes to sustenance of flesh and bones, he's entirely right but at another when it comes to the soul and what it means to be human he's dead wrong imo.

Anyway, back to Billy and Dave Thompson’s trumpet (and yes, I know that brass bands famously use the more lyrical and harmonious cornet rather than trumpets, but Thompson’s an adept player who can invoke some of those lyrical qualities even with a brutish trumpet).

Billy Bragg – The Saturday Boy
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One of the most vivid memories of my early childhood was the Brass Band completion following the Whit Walk in Uppermill. All the churches from the neighbouring villages were involved and I remember each of the Sunday schools involved having running pea shooter battles during the day. At the conclusion we would all listen to the Brass Bands in a park/ green in the village centre. It was marvellous and I believe it has since gone from strength to strength attracting bands from overseas.
It gave me a lifelong love of brass bands in a warm nostalgic way.
My memories of the end of the strike were of the miners being completely deflated and resigned to what was going to happen next. Over the 8os and into the 90s we lost Lady Victoria ( now a mining museum), Bilston Glen, monktonhall and Lingerwood. The closures left an indelible mark on the communities who had relied on coal mining for their livelihood and the service industries that in turn served them. Whilst it was a sad time the resilience shown by that community was incredible and is my abiding memory.
I would put forward another Billy Bragg song about the strike but that will need to wait for 85.
 
Saddleworth2 said:
One of the most vivid memories of my early childhood was the Brass Band completion following the Whit Walk in Uppermill. All the churches from the neighbouring villages were involved and I remember each of the Sunday schools involved having running pea shooter battles during the day. At the conclusion we would all listen to the Brass Bands in a park/ green in the village centre. It was marvellous and I believe it has since gone from strength to strength attracting bands from overseas.
It gave me a lifelong love of brass bands in a warm nostalgic way.
My memories of the end of the strike were of the miners being completely deflated and resigned to what was going to happen next. Over the 8os and into the 90s we lost Lady Victoria ( now a mining museum), Bilston Glen, monktonhall and Lingerwood. The closures left an indelible mark on the communities who had relied on coal mining for their livelihood and the service industries that in turn served them. Whilst it was a sad time the resilience shown by that community was incredible and is my abiding memory.
I would put forward another Billy Bragg song about the strike but that will need to wait for 85.
Click to expand...

That was my point really about the symbolism of the bands, no one was under any illusion what would happen next but even in the depths people wanted to retain some dignity and pride in 'defeat' and returning to work behind the band in some areas was an attempt to do this. It's for another thread really but the extent to which communities managed to recover varied widely.

Which Side are You On was an option for my pick here as it's on this album as well as being on the Between The Wars ep, which will be getting a reference next year!

As a youngster i was in a windband that used to compete but it would be fair to say it was nowhere near as hardcore or taken as seriously as the brass band competitions. It's understandable that places like Australia and New Zealand would 'inherit' the tradition but apparently the low countries are a bit of a modern hotbed too!
 
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