Rock Evolution – The History of Rock & Roll - 1985 - (page 203)

threespires said:
Nice write up too, all your own work or was an LLM involved ? :-)
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just googled. I use chatGPT, wiki and music websites for research. I then try and personalise it into my own language. It speeds things up and I can now produce in hours rather than days. Kate was 90% me. Mind you where the language gets a bit verbose thats probably bits I have missed editing. :-)
 
Saddleworth2 said:
just googled. I use chatGPT, wiki and music websites for research. I then try and personalise it into my own language. It speeds things up and I can now produce in hours rather than days. Kate was 90% me. Mind you where the language gets a bit verbose thats probably bits I have missed editing. :-)
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Rather worryingly I'm way more verbose than the average LLM output. I'll occasionally use them for tightening up work related stuff but for leisure I'm afraid you get the authentic rambling me.

I sometimes use them for research too, but I never take the output on face value. I recently did a healthcare project where we used them to generate first pass content to then be refined for accuracy and efficacy. The output was somewhere in the region of 70-80% usable depending on the quality of the prompts so def worth using, but absolutely needed real expertise to correct the unsafe/illegal content!
 
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threespires said:
Rather worryingly I'm way more verbose than the average LLM output. I'll occasionally use them for tightening up work related stuff but for leisure I'm afraid you get the authentic rambling me.

I sometimes use them for research too, but I never take the output on face value. I recently did a healthcare project where we used them to generate first pass content to then be refined for accuracy and efficacy. The output was somewhere in the region of 70-80% usable depending on the quality of the prompts so def worth using, but absolutely needed real expertise to correct the unsafe/illegal content!
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Yes you do need to double check and sometimes it makes outrageous mistakes. I try and tell it not to be so bloody verbose and to respond in the manner of a grumpy 68 year old Scotsman but it often doesn’t listen. :-)
 
Saddleworth2 said:
wow both of us working in bars around the same time. Who would a thunk it?
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When we get to 86 I'll be nominating a pair of eejits I had to throw out of the pub, but who were very nice lads and came back the next day to apologise! The song in question also prompted the only time my wife resorted to physical violence with me :-)
 
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I'm traveling this week, so in the end, it was good that @Saddleworth2 could take this year. Since, I've fallen back in love with the songs that were in the next year that I will soon run with. Well done to Sadds on the initial write-up too!

I'm going to get my first artist selection in with one that helped usher in a new musical direction I really got into starting this year.

I mentioned in my '84 notes that my tastes in music were changing, and 1985 brought that in change that was to come during my college years more than any other to start it all.

It was early in February when this band's amazing album would be released, and I would hear this for the first time thanks to my new next door neighbors. They had a new wave and alternative leanings than the heavy AOR I had been listening to mostly over my high school years. By the time I was washing the car in May for Senior Prom (with a nod to Marty McFly), this album was playing non-stop for me and I was totally hooked.

This track wasn’t a single, but given the album’s overall popularity that year, it would be hard to miss. From those early sax and dreamy synth notes, this was a favourite of mine and music from that point on didn’t feel like it would be the same going forward.

Find out, find out
What this fear is about
Find out, find out
What this fear is about

The Working Hour – Tears For Fears
 
1985, the year pop music died. At leas that's what I tell my A-ha loving missus.

In truth, it was heading that way. Less innovation and more middle of the Atlantic music. A few notable exceptions stood out, Tears For Fears seminal album, Songs From The Big Chair, being one. With two tracks already being picked from it you'd think that another would be overkill...but no...it's a doozy and goes to show how good that album was/ is.

Tears For Fears - Head Over Heels
 
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MCFCTrick said:
Live Aid ... was lucky to get tickets to go to it. But then realised it fell on my mum's birthday, and we already knew it would be her last, so gave them to then girlfriend's brother and other half.

Took mum for a family meal (Barnaby Rudge in town) and went in a pub for a drink after it. Live Aid was on the TV in it, and mum says 'I'm suprised you two aren't at that' ... 40 years gone today funnily. :-(
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I could easily have got tickets for Live Aid because the ticket agency at Piccadilly Records had an allocation and Barry Ancill who ran it was a childhood friend of my father's so he would save me tickets for any gigs he covered, which included The Apollo, Bingley, NEC, Wembley Stadium.

I'm sure I've mentioned this on here before but I didn't get Live Aid tickets because I had promised to take some friends to my family's chalet in Abersoch. Watched the whole thing on the TV there. I would have gone otherwise: I was living in North London at the time, having moved down to Highgate for a job in central London.
 
Here we go with my 1985 choices. First up:

'Singing Rule Britannia (While The Walls Close In)' by The Chameleons
 
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1985 was a great year for new releases
Including Top Petty, John Mellancamp The Smiths, New Order and loads more not already mentioned yet or in Sadds great initial list.

I’ll leave those for others to pick as I prefer to go a bit more left field in my
choice.

I’ve been waiting for 1985 to pick one of my favourite songs from one of my favourite bands, from their album ‘Tim’ written by the great Paul Westerberg , The Replacements


‘BASTARDS OF YOUNG’
 
Great write-up as ever @Saddleworth2

The first song I’m nominating is from an album I had to go to unusual lengths to buy. There was no way I was going to find it in the rack at HMV. After hearing some of the songs on a BBC Radio 1 concert broadcast, having already seen the band live early in 1988 (yes, I was still playing catch-up with music I’d missed) what I really needed was somebody who was going to America and might find the CD for me there.

Step forward Mr Ian Cheeseman, who I worked with at Oldham’s hospital radio station in the late 80s, and he duly delivered.

The Hooters were probably the least known band on stage for the Philadelphia leg of Live Aid, but that year they’d released their major label debut, Nervous Night, and given that Philly was their hometown, they got to play the gig of their life.

Hard to know what song to go for, but let’s go for the brooding Floyd-esque “All You Zombies”

“All You Zombies” - The Hooters
 
1985 was a bit of a strange year for me, because I unexpectedly got a job on a cargo ship on a voyage to the South Pacific; I gave my Foreigner and Live Aid tickets to my girlfriend and set sail from Hull in June. She, understandably, got fed-up awaiting my return, so I received a Dear John several months later on arrival in Papua New Guinea - but at least she can say she was at Live Aid!

My music memories are, therefore, mostly of songs that were released in the first half of the year and my first choice is somewhat prescient, as it's about the collapse of the shipping industry in the United Kingdom; 1985 ended up being my last year at sea for this exact reason. Dedicated to the late, great Nick Drake and produced by Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, my first choice is Life In A Northern Town, by The Dream Academy.
 
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Mancitydoogle said:
1985 was a great year for new releases
Including Top Petty, John Mellancamp The Smiths, New Order and loads more not already mentioned yet or in Sadds great initial list.

I’ll leave those for others to pick as I prefer to go a bit more left field in my
choice.

I’ve been waiting for 1985 to pick one of my favourite songs from one of my favourite bands, from their album ‘Tim’ written by the great Paul Westerberg , The Replacements


‘BASTARDS OF YOUNG’
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Disgraceful omission to exclude Meat Is Murder and Lowlife - I should ban Saddleworth for those two crimes alone ;)

I shall duly mention both in a day or two when I jot my memoirs down :)
 
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