Red Mosquito

Joe Jackson - Night and Day

Up to this point, Joe Jackson had been a bit of a revelation for me. Those first I think 3 albums were all fantastic surprises. This one felt a bit awkward by comparison. I obviously knew the hit song, Steppin’ Out, and Breaking Us in Two - both songs I would recognize on the radio but would never be able to tell you who made them or anything. The highlights for me were the bookends, Another World and Slow Song. The rest felt weird, like something was just barely off.

The Essential Track: Steppin’ Out

Up Next: Stray Cats - Built For Speed

Stray Cats - Built For Speed

One of the few genres we haven’t really hit in this long march is rockabilly. If you just flat told me that Rock This Town was from 1982, and not 1952, you would have had me. Really much of this album feels vintage, a resurrection of the ghosts of 1950s rock & roll, and yet it sounds fresh (even if it’s a compilation split between two other albums and the difference I think can be pretty well ascertained). Stray Cat Strut, Rumble in Brighton, and Built For Speed are all good fun, but if Brian Setzer has an all-time classic, it’s Rock This Town.

The Essential Track: Rock This Town

Up Next: The English Beat - Special Beat Service

I could put Steppin Out on repeat and listen for hours. And almost the same with Rock This Town. Two fucking perfect songs.

wease wrote:I could put Steppin Out on repeat and listen for hours. And almost the same with Rock This Town. Two fucking perfect songs.

Steppin Out is indeed a fucking perfect song.

The English Beat - Special Beat Service

I only really ever associated this band with Save It for Later since I had heard Eddie Vedder cover that song countless times. What I didn’t realize was they were also behind Rotating Head, which I had to think hard which movie that was featured on (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I think). Both songs stand out as highlights, and this ska/rock/dancehall mashup is fun and easy - a quite solid album of nearly all real good material that leans pretty hard on that ska foundation.

The Essential Track: Rotating Head

Up Next: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Long After Dark

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Long After Dark

This album always sort of seems forgotten to me. Sandwiched in between the unstoppable duo of Damn the Torpedoes and Hard Promises, and what’s to follow with Southern Accents, Long After Dark always felt like an afterthought. It does contain a ton of great material, and may live as the underrated Tom Petty album. You Got Lucky, Change of Heart, and Straight Into Darkness jump out of the speakers in just the way Tom Petty’s earlier material tended to do in its best moments. Deliver Me, The Same Old You, and A Wasted Life are deeper gems here that show a bit more range. It’s really yet another Tom Petty album full of killer riffs and undeniable choruses.

The Essential Track: You Got Lucky

Up Next: ABC - The Lexicon of Love

liebzz wrote:

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Long After Dark

This album always sort of seems forgotten to me. Sandwiched in between the unstoppable duo of Damn the Torpedoes and Hard Promises, and what’s to follow with Southern Accents, Long After Dark always felt like an afterthought. It does contain a ton of great material, and may live as the underrated Tom Petty album. You Got Lucky, Change of Heart, and Straight Into Darkness jump out of the speakers in just the way Tom Petty’s earlier material tended to do in its best moments. Deliver Me, The Same Old You, and A Wasted Life are deeper gems here that show a bit more range. It’s really yet another Tom Petty album full of killer riffs and undeniable choruses.

The Essential Track: You Got Lucky

Up Next: ABC - The Lexicon of Love

Oh yeah, always loved this one

Straight Into Darkness

wease wrote:Straight Into Darkness

Yeah, that is a great song. That, You Got Lucky, and Change of Heart are all-timers on this album.

This thread is kind of a big deal.

Leatherhead wrote:This thread is kind of a big deal.

We’re creeping up on this thread being alive for a full year. And yet there’s so much more left…I mean we’re focusing on 1982 right now.

ABC - The Lexicon of Love

This is a good faith attempt to take dance music in a more rock direction. It’s far more rooted in dance music with lush arrangements, less overt a mash up than say Beat It, but the goal seems pretty clear. It does a good job of this, and really seems to be in a sense an amalgam of disco that was, and new wave that is. This won’t ever dominate my stereo, but it’s certainly a fascinating and well crafted dance album.

The Essential Track: Tears Are Not Enough

Up Next: Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five - The Message

Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five - The Message

This is the first hip hop album we are hitting on this journey. This album brings the dance and funk of Kool and the Gang’s prime output, and Parliament/Funkadelic’s prime output together, all the while turning the turntable into the equivalent of a guitar, with hooks and riffs playing off those sounds - so really a revolutionary moment in music. All this is really wrapped up in 4 of the tracks here - She’s Fresh, It’s Nasty, It’s a Shame, and The Message - all classic and phenomenal moments of brilliance. Scorpio is quite an experiment and has its place as well, and if it were not for Dreamin’ and You Are, this would be a near perfect album. The grooves, the accents, and what feels like a jump off point for an entire genre, not unlike what Black Sabbath did for metal.

The Essential Track: The Message

Up Next: Brian Eno - Ambient 4: On Land

Brian Eno - Ambient 4: On Land

I’ll start this off by saying the most striking thing I am going to say about this album: I didn’t like it. So that’s not to say I didn’t appreciate it or that I don’t appreciate Brian Eno. His collaborations are all over the listening I have been doing on this thread for a decade’s worth of material from Roxy Music to Talking Heads and his own solo work. This ambient album is reminiscent to me of the background music in a movie scene where someone is wandering into unfamiliar territory - as if it was part of a sci fi movie where someone is walking around in the dark on a strange planet. That’s got its place of course, and can be impactful in certain settings, but isn’t really for my casual listening. For an essential track, I’ll go with Tal Coat, the moment where this album starts to feel like it’s getting at least some shape.

The Essential Track: Tal Coat

Up Next: Roxy Music - Avalon

liebzz wrote:This ambient album is reminiscent to me of the background music in a movie scene where someone is wandering into unfamiliar territory - as if it was part of a sci fi movie where someone is walking around in the dark on a strange planet.

For an album you flat out didn't like, this is a great description!

Birds in Hell wrote:

liebzz wrote:This ambient album is reminiscent to me of the background music in a movie scene where someone is wandering into unfamiliar territory - as if it was part of a sci fi movie where someone is walking around in the dark on a strange planet.

For an album you flat out didn't like, this is a great description!

Ha! I paid attention even if I didn’t particularly like it.

Roxy Music - Avalon

How times have changed. From experimental and edgy glam rock to something much more chilled out, though it’s got its foreboding vibe. More Than This is quite fascinating because I can definitely place the verses, but less so the chorus. Pretty wild that the verses were more memorable. Still a very good song. The end of this album was really the big highlight for me, as if investing the time is needed to get to the finish here with To Turn You On and True to Life. This is one of those that needs repeat listens because there is indeed a lot going on under the surface - lots of layers of sound to uncover.

The Essential Track: True to Life

Up Next: Asia

Asia

We all know Heat of the Moment; and probably most of us know Only Time Will Tell. Beyond those two track, this is a confusing mess of an attempt to form a prog rock supergroup that plays Journey style arena rock. Both approaches suck the life of the other, as the prog is washed out by the over the top effects of the arena rock, which is in turn confused by half baked attempts at arty prog. You don’t necessarily ever have to pick a lane, but outside of the noted tracks, which lean heavily on the arena side, there’s got to be better chemistry.

The Essential Track: Heat of the Moment

Up Next: Dire Straits - Love Over Gold

Dire Straits - Love Over Gold

If I noted Long After Dark being an overlooked album sandwiched between classics, then this one is downright forgotten. Sandwiched between the undeniably great Making Movies and the massive selling Brothers in Arms, I didn’t even know Love Over Gold even existed until now. It’s an album that is shockingly great at that, an almost Dylan-esque album where the song structures are reminiscent of Dylan’s most straight forward rock period, while the songs really extend out resulting in some wonderful guitar moments that are vintage Knopfler. Yet, it’s not at all one dimensional, and takes on a near Pink Floyd like feel in some of the more extended moments - really two things that seem incongruous but Dire Straits thrive in this space.

The Essential Track: Telegraph Road

Up Next: Fleetwood Mac - Mirage

Fleetwood Mac - Mirage

In the Fall of 1994, my older brother, who had a turntable, double cassette deck, and CD player in one of those impressive stacks had done me the favor of taking Vitalogy, which at that point had the advance release on vinyl for two weeks before the CD was released, and recorded it on a blank cassette for me. In those two weeks, I felt like I had won something, an incredible album that felt like it was just mine for two weeks, and I wore the hell out of this thing and told friends how good it was. Come December 6th and soon after, I was disappointed to find that all I heard in that album wasn’t shared by friends who thought the album was too uneven and whined the refrain I grappled with friends through the end of that decade: “why can’t they just make another Ten!?”

I didn’t know it then, but I could have just pointed them to the lesson learned through Fleetwood Mac. Not so dissimilar to what happened to Ten, Rumours was an album that transcended the band, a highly impactful statement tied up in several conflicts that poured out into the music. It was a once in a lifetime confluence of the individual anguish of these band members exploding into the music but creating a force that had a universality to it that created an all-time classic. Their follow up, Tusk, didn’t try to replicate that moment but instead insisted that they shouldn’t even try to. It was an experimental gem that I think time has been kind to, even if it wasn’t the next Rumours. Mirage then comes along, almost like an about face, as if they should have given it their best shot to replicate Rumours, and questioning that decision, they went back and gave this their best go.

Don’t get me wrong, Gypsy, Straight Back, Hold Me, Eyes of the World, and Wish You Were Here are all excellent tracks in their own right. Book of Love is also pretty good and Empire State is the song that comes closest to replanting their flag in that Tusk hill. But even with all of that, in the larger sense, this album still feels like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of Rumours, and as Lindsay Buckingham would have predicted while recording Tusk, it makes much of this album pretty forgettable. They were that band on Rumours, but that album, and Tusk that followed, changed them in ways perhaps they weren’t quite ready to embrace. It serves as notice to that future band, who never did quite try to reclaim the space they’d already been and moved past - landmarks have their time and place.

The Essential Track: Gypsy

Up Next: The Who - It’s Hard