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

threespires said:
Not only had I missed your fantastic news; I'd also missed the sad passing of Stephen Luscombe until I saw your comment in the write up. Him and Neil Arthur very underrated imo.
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The two of them were probably the least suited of anyone around that time for fame and performing. Neil still looks out of sorts on stage. It's a question I ask from time to time but he insists he enjoys it.
 
threespires said:
Lol. Do a couple of paras on the beginning of the evolution of DM post Vince Clarke and a few sentences on Happy Families and we'll fill the rest in! And you've got Talk Talk and your favourite album of all...Toto IV

George Strait's second album consolidated his position as the main man in the traditional country music revival if that helps :-)

Btw - can you please leave Upstairs at Eric's to me because you're a wrong 'un when it comes to that ;-)
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Love this reply!
 
hallsteve62 said:
Time for my second nomination. 'Town Called Malice' by the Jam. Motown-esque bass line by Bruce Foxton and another social reportage lyric by Paul!
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Haha second one I can cross off. If anyone needs a blindingly obvious lesson on how important Foxton was to The Jam then this late example is it. Incredible to remember that that was that, they were done. The Gift not a bad way to go out though.
 
hallsteve62 said:
Well I'm on a roll now so I might as well go with the one of the wife's funeral songs - 'Golden Brown' by the Stranglers. I am under strict instructions (should I outlive her) that the title of the song is the setting that the crem burners need to be set at ; )
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One of my Brothers favourite songs. Nice to see she is going out with a song about drugs!

Mine is Enjoy The Silence and has been chosen by my Wife! Not that I care, I'll be none the wiser.
 
hallsteve62 said:
Well I'm on a roll now so I might as well go with the one of the wife's funeral songs - 'Golden Brown' by the Stranglers. I am under strict instructions (should I outlive her) that the title of the song is the setting that the crem burners need to be set at ; )
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Always the Sun...

Nevermind, I'll just stick to adding the tracks as I'm still 4 years away time-wise from hearing this band.
 
hallsteve62 said:
And to finish my 4 nominations off early for 1982 let's go for 'Rock the Casbah' by the Clash. The last of their truly great singles imo.
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So of my 8 shortlist you've done 3, good man! This leaves the way open for me to maybe nominate what might be the first piece of lovers rock on the thread.
 
Black&White&BlueMoon Town said:
Didn't we already get Meatloaf in '77?
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Haha.

82 was an interesting year for reggae with some great albums.That said, the biggest hit was a pop remake of a Mighty Diamonds track by a bunch of young musicians who in fairness were better than they ever got credit for.

Yellowman with his debut album didn't invent dancehall but he did as much as anyone to make those of us outside of Jamaica aware of it's existence. In the same space, Eek-a-Mouse released his second album and the prolific Barrington Levy restricted himself to one album in a year for one of the few times in his career. Horace Andy made a classic album which included Spying Glass which he'd redo over a decade later with Massive Attack on Protection. Aswad went and dubbed up their previous album and to this day it's seen as a great example of dub. Probably the best overall album of the ones I know from this year was more roots, Black Uhuru's Chill Out which is an essential. But...

Bimbo's write up has put us all in the mood for love. So it has to be the title track from one of the great lovers rock albums. Backed by the legendary Roots Radics, Gregory Isaacs Night Nurse is a classic of the genre though tbh I've never been convinced he's actually talking about medical interventions here.

Gregory Isaacs - Night Nurse
 
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1982 holds some good albums and one great one.

Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen.

I remember getting the tape of his new album for Christmas and listening with anticipation expecting a continued progression from Born to Run and The River. Instead we got Nebraska. At the time i was a little non plussed as it was not what i ad expected at all. Stark and intense. Lacking in bombast. Certainly not written for a live performance.

In early 1982, Bruce Springsteen was living in a rented house in Colts Neck, New Jersey, recuperating from a year-long tour following his 1980 double album The River. His band played 140 marathon shows and were on their way to becoming one of the biggest rock acts in the world. During this period, Springsteen tasked his guitar tech, Mike Batlan, with buying a simple tape recorder so that he could tinker with some new songs and arrangements without having to bother with renting studio time. Batlan picked up a Teac Tascam 144 Portastudio, a then-new device that was the first piece of equipment to use a standard cassette tape for multi-track recording. The new machine arrived in Springsteen’s life at the perfect moment, during what was arguably the most fruitful songwriting period in his long career, one that would produce enough material for two albums (1982’s Nebraska and 1984’s Born in the U.S.A.) with dozens of additional songs to spare. On it, he would craft what is still the most singular album in his catalogue.

In the arc of Springsteen’s career, Nebraska is still a blip. He has returned twice to the general format of the record, releasing the mostly solo and mostly acoustic albums The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) and Devils & Dust (2005), but neither comes close to the alchemy of Nebraska. This one just happened. Springsteen covers the entire episode of the record in just a few pages in 'Born to Run', and there isn’t a lot to say. He wrote the songs, he put them down on a demo, and that demo became the record. It didn’t sell particularly well and got no airplay. “Life went on,” is how he ends the section of his book on the record. And so it does.

And yet...
It remains my favourite Bruce album. On paper, this is Springsteen at his most novelistic, trying to get into the heads of murderers and corrupt cops, or diaristic, revisiting detailed scenes from his childhood. One writer even turned the songs’ narratives into a book of short stories. But the record’s most lasting power comes not from its words or melodies but from its sound. As Bruce Springsteen songs go, these are all very good ones. For this playlist I will choose:

State Trooper - Bruce Springsteen.

But it could have been any one of the tracks.
 
Saddleworth2 said:
1982 holds some good albums and one great one.

Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen.

I remember getting the tape of his new album for Christmas and listening with anticipation expecting a continued progression from Born to Run and The River. Instead we got Nebraska. At the time i was a little non plussed as it was not what i ad expected at all. Stark and intense. Lacking in bombast. Certainly not written for a live performance.

In early 1982, Bruce Springsteen was living in a rented house in Colts Neck, New Jersey, recuperating from a year-long tour following his 1980 double album The River. His band played 140 marathon shows and were on their way to becoming one of the biggest rock acts in the world. During this period, Springsteen tasked his guitar tech, Mike Batlan, with buying a simple tape recorder so that he could tinker with some new songs and arrangements without having to bother with renting studio time. Batlan picked up a Teac Tascam 144 Portastudio, a then-new device that was the first piece of equipment to use a standard cassette tape for multi-track recording. The new machine arrived in Springsteen’s life at the perfect moment, during what was arguably the most fruitful songwriting period in his long career, one that would produce enough material for two albums (1982’s Nebraska and 1984’s Born in the U.S.A.) with dozens of additional songs to spare. On it, he would craft what is still the most singular album in his catalogue.

In the arc of Springsteen’s career, Nebraska is still a blip. He has returned twice to the general format of the record, releasing the mostly solo and mostly acoustic albums The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) and Devils & Dust (2005), but neither comes close to the alchemy of Nebraska. This one just happened. Springsteen covers the entire episode of the record in just a few pages in 'Born to Run', and there isn’t a lot to say. He wrote the songs, he put them down on a demo, and that demo became the record. It didn’t sell particularly well and got no airplay. “Life went on,” is how he ends the section of his book on the record. And so it does.

And yet...
It remains my favourite Bruce album. On paper, this is Springsteen at his most novelistic, trying to get into the heads of murderers and corrupt cops, or diaristic, revisiting detailed scenes from his childhood. One writer even turned the songs’ narratives into a book of short stories. But the record’s most lasting power comes not from its words or melodies but from its sound. As Bruce Springsteen songs go, these are all very good ones. For this playlist I will choose:

State Trooper - Bruce Springsteen.

But it could have been any one of the tracks.
Click to expand...

Of the Springsteen albums I know this is by some margin my favourite and an album that I will pull out out and play on a pretty regular basis.

The Springsteen film that's just about to come out is based on the recording of this I think?
 
Summer 1982 was not exactly memorable for me - I was 18, had travelled all over the world and thought everywhere I went would lead to new and exciting discoveries - how wrong I was, spending two boring months drifting 20 miles off the Ivory Coast.

The only company, apart from my motley crew mates, were regular small groups of humpback whales, with their impressive breaching displays, and pods of bottlenose dolphins. We had to send in daily sightings of cetaceans as part of some scientific project and I've never forgotten their latin binomial names - Megaptera novaeangliae and Tursiops truncatus.

Music was especially important to help while away the hours and while in Wilhelmshaven, waiting to join this particular ship, I bought the albums Toto IV and Magnum's Chase the Dragon.

Drummer Jeff Porcaro's shuffle on Rosanna is legendary, becoming much admired and imitated, while Soldier of the Line remains one of Tony Clarkin's (who died in 2024, RIP) best songs.
 
Saddleworth2 said:
1982 holds some good albums and one great one.

Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen.

I remember getting the tape of his new album for Christmas and listening with anticipation expecting a continued progression from Born to Run and The River. Instead we got Nebraska. At the time i was a little non plussed as it was not what i ad expected at all. Stark and intense. Lacking in bombast. Certainly not written for a live performance.

In early 1982, Bruce Springsteen was living in a rented house in Colts Neck, New Jersey, recuperating from a year-long tour following his 1980 double album The River. His band played 140 marathon shows and were on their way to becoming one of the biggest rock acts in the world. During this period, Springsteen tasked his guitar tech, Mike Batlan, with buying a simple tape recorder so that he could tinker with some new songs and arrangements without having to bother with renting studio time. Batlan picked up a Teac Tascam 144 Portastudio, a then-new device that was the first piece of equipment to use a standard cassette tape for multi-track recording. The new machine arrived in Springsteen’s life at the perfect moment, during what was arguably the most fruitful songwriting period in his long career, one that would produce enough material for two albums (1982’s Nebraska and 1984’s Born in the U.S.A.) with dozens of additional songs to spare. On it, he would craft what is still the most singular album in his catalogue.

In the arc of Springsteen’s career, Nebraska is still a blip. He has returned twice to the general format of the record, releasing the mostly solo and mostly acoustic albums The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) and Devils & Dust (2005), but neither comes close to the alchemy of Nebraska. This one just happened. Springsteen covers the entire episode of the record in just a few pages in 'Born to Run', and there isn’t a lot to say. He wrote the songs, he put them down on a demo, and that demo became the record. It didn’t sell particularly well and got no airplay. “Life went on,” is how he ends the section of his book on the record. And so it does.

And yet...
It remains my favourite Bruce album. On paper, this is Springsteen at his most novelistic, trying to get into the heads of murderers and corrupt cops, or diaristic, revisiting detailed scenes from his childhood. One writer even turned the songs’ narratives into a book of short stories. But the record’s most lasting power comes not from its words or melodies but from its sound. As Bruce Springsteen songs go, these are all very good ones. For this playlist I will choose:

State Trooper - Bruce Springsteen.

But it could have been any one of the tracks.
Click to expand...
Not content with releasing Tracks II earlier this year (I've still only listened to 2 of the 7 unreleased albums included), only a couple of weeks ago I discovered that Nebraska 82 is slated for release next Friday.

In addition to the original album, remastered, it also includes some outtakes and the fabled electric recordings of the songs that Bruce recorded with the band. A three-piece rockabilly version of "Born in the USA" is already available on Spotify.

threespires said:
Of the Springsteen albums I know this is by some margin my favourite and an album that I will pull out out and play on a pretty regular basis.

The Springsteen film that's just about to come out is based on the recording of this I think?
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Correct - Deliver Me From Nowhere, out in a couple of weeks.

Seems our trip back to 1982 has happened at just the right time.
 
homerdog said:
Summer 1982 was not exactly memorable for me - I was 18, had travelled all over the world and thought everywhere I went would lead to new and exciting discoveries - how wrong I was, spending two boring months drifting 20 miles off the Ivory Coast.

The only company, apart from my motley crew mates, were regular small groups of humpback whales, with their impressive breaching displays, and pods of bottlenose dolphins. We had to send in daily sightings of cetaceans as part of some scientific project and ver forgotten their latin binomial names - Megaptera novaeangliae and Tursiops truncatus.

Music was especially important to help while away the hours and while in Wilhelmshaven, waiting to join this particular ship, I bought the albums Toto IV and Magnum's Chase the Dragon.

Drummer Jeff Porcaro's shuffle on Rosanna is legendary, becoming much admired and imitated, while Soldier of the Line remains one of Tony Clarkin's (who died in 2024, RIP) best songs.
Click to expand...

Everything is relative. Try replacing watching whales and dolphins off the coast of west Africa with trudging down Greenbrow Rd after failing to get served in The Newall Green ;-)
 
Not my favourite year, musically or personally.
I was made redundant from my first job and my childhood sweetheart finally departed from my life. At nineteen it was hard to adjust from what had been the norm for three years.

Musically there was no Yes, Rush were veering more to the sound of synths and I was struggling to find a new or existing musical direction.

On my 19th birthday, a couple of us travelled to London in the hope of snagging some tout tickets for Iron Maiden at Hammersmith Odeon— no chance. NWOBHM was the place to be so Run to the Hills is my first choice.
 
1982 was the year I was introduced to a mate of my brothers who was very into his West Coast music and we used to swap albums as my brothers taste was different.

It was also the year a number of artists from very successful bands released their debut solo albums, we’ve already had Don Henley .
My picks are related, Michael McDonald who transformed the Doobie Brothers sound
was also in Steely Dan for a while and in the Super Group The Dukes Of September.His debut solo album is the best of his output in my opinion and I love a break up record.
‘I KEEP FORGETTIN’

My next pick is of course Donald Fagan from his debut solo album ‘The Nightfly’
which I consider as good as anything SD released.
I could have picked any track but this was the first one I heard.
‘International Geophysical Year’ or I.G.Y to the rest of us.
 
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