395. Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance (1978)
















Track Listing

1. Non-Alignment Pact
2. Modern Dance
3. Laughing
4. Street Waves
5. Chinese Radiation
6. Life Stinks
7. Real World
8. Over My Head
9. Sentimental Journey
10. Humor Me

Review

Sorry this review is a couple of hours late but this is all because I have been out all night listening to James Chance and Les Contortions at Cafe Saki in Rusholme and am also slightly drunk. So!

Pere Ubu, mondo excellente. Actually when I grow up I want to have a band just like this, the more I listen to it the more I like it. And frankly it shouldn't be anything easy to like in any way. It is distorted, weird, and challenging, but also, somehow, supremely catchy and interesting. Shit I can't get Nonalignment Pact out of my head for the last couple of days.

So even if you start by finding this hard to deal with please stick with it, it will definitely reward you with a lot more than you might expect. So now I need to go to bed, as my head is pounding hard. See you my lovelies.

Track Highlights

1. Nonalignment Pact
2. Chinese Radiation
3. The Modern Dance
4. Humor Me

Final Grade

10/10


Trivia

Quotes from Wikipedia:

* "Pere Ubu is not now nor has it ever been a viable commercial venture. We won't sleep on floors, we won't tour endlessly and we're embarrassed by self-promotion. Add to that a laissez-faire attitude to the mechanics of career advancement and a demanding artistic agenda and you've got a recipe for real failure. That has been our one significant success to this date: we are the longest-lasting, most disastrous commercial outfit to ever appear in rock 'n' roll. No one can come close to matching our loss to longevity ratio." – David Thomas

* "Rock music is mostly about moving big black boxes from one side of town to the other in the back of your car."

* "The Sex Pistols sang "No Future", but there is a future and we're trying to build one." - Allen Ravenstine

* "We, as a musical collective are a shower of tossers, when i look back on our career there are times that would have been better spent if i had kept my fat mouth shut" - David Thomas

The best I could get you, Laughing:

394. Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols (1977)















Track Listing

1. Holidays In The Sun
2. Bodies
3. No Feelings
4. Liar
5. God Save The Queen
6. Problems
7. Seventeen
8. Anarchy In The UK
9. Submission
10. Pretty Vacant
11. New York
12. EMI

Review

This is the last album on the list for 1977 and what a great year it was. Actually this should have been right at the beginning of the year. It is not only chronologically before most other albums of the year, but it is also what opened the door to most other punk bands to be published. So this is probably one of the most important albums in music history period.

That said... is it particularly good? Not really. It seems to relish in shock for shock's sake and you can perfectly well see McLaren in the back putting all the Situationist references in the songs and so forth which frankly I don't credit any of the band's members as being cultured enough to recognise or care. So it is a manufactured boy band, the manufactured boy band of punk.

The Sex Pistols were little more than a ploy by Malcolm McLaren to sell clothing, merchandise and put forward some of his ideas, he was at the time obsessed with Situationism and the first sentence of the album is taken from a graffiti in the walls of Paris in May '68. Hey, McLaren even references his earlier career in the lyrics, New York is clearly an 'homage' to the New York Dolls, reminding me and directly quoting from Looking For a Kiss.

So the Pistols are fake, none of them are particularly talented, although Rotten would do good things with Public Image Ltd., but this is still a mark in the history of music, this opened a door. So much like some other musicians which opened doors to crap music and that I like (Dave Brubeck, Zeppelin or Springsteen for example) the Pistols did the opposite, they opened a great door with a not so great band...

Still do listen to it, God Save The Queen and Anarchy In The UK are great fun, even though they sound incredibly silly.

Track Highlights

1. God Save The Queen
2. Anarchy In The UK
3. Pretty Vacant
4. Bodies

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Never Mind the Bollocks was met by a hail of controversy in the UK upon its release. The first documented legal problems involved the allegedly 'obscene' name of the album, and the prosecution (under Section 28 of the Town Police Clauses Act 1847, since replaced by the Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981) of the owner of a Nottingham record shop (and label owner Richard Branson) for having displayed it in a window. However, at Nottingham Magistrates' Court on 24 November 1977, defending Queen's Counsel John Mortimer produced expert witnesses who were able to demonstrate that the word "bollocks" was actually a legitimate Old English term originally used to refer to a priest, and which, in the context of the title, meant "nonsense". The chairman of the hearing was forced to conclude:

Much as my colleagues and I wholeheartedly deplore the vulgar exploitation of the worst instincts of human nature for the purchases of commercial profits by both you and your company, we must reluctantly find you not guilty of each of the four charges.

Far more intense outrage was sparked by the lyrics of the songs "God Save the Queen" and "Anarchy in the UK", as well as Jamie Reid's cover art for the single of "God Save the Queen". Both were perceived as musical assaults on the monarchy and civil society. In particular, "God Save the Queen" was viewed as a direct personal attack on Queen Elizabeth II. Guitarist Steve Jones, and singer Johnny Rotten, have both insisted that it was not the Queen that the band directed their animus towards, but other members of the royal house and the British government in general. In either case, the notoriety did little to harm the record's sales in the UK.

Another standard from the album, "Pretty Vacant" also earned the ire of the British music industry. In his delivery of the song's title in the chorus, Johnny Rotten heavily accents the second syllable of the word "vacant", and clips it very short in stark contrast to his drawn out delivery of the first syllable. Critics and fans alike have noted that it actually sounds like "cunt". Some allege it was deliberate; others counter that it's actually Rotten's accent leading people to the misinterpretation. It does seem unlikely the sharp-witted Rotten would have failed to notice (and savor) the implicit wordplay.

Rotten's bitten, over-articulated, angry vocals and his intentional avoidance of "good" singing were startlingly original in style, at that time, and his use of profanity and deliberately inflammatory language seemed downright shocking. He alternately screams and whines about corporate control, intellectual vacuity, and political hypocrisy, while guitarist Jones' multi-layered guitar tracks create a "wall of noise" to counter him.

God Save The Queen:

393. Ian Dury - New Boots And Panties!! (1977)















Track Listing

1. Wake Up And Make Love With Me
2. Sweet Gene Vincent
3. I'm Partial To Your Abracadabra
4. My Old Man
5. Billericay Dickie
6. Clevor Trever
7. If I Was With A Woman
8. Blockheads
9. Plaistow Patricia
10. Blackmail Man

Review

This is one of those albums that most people will be split between loving it and hating it. I kind of like it, but my wife finds it lecherous. And so it is, but I like lecherous, she just doesn't like to imagine sex with Ian Dury. It might also have something to do with his accent and the whole music hall influence. It does make it sound at times like a Carry On film.

Still I think Dury is a bit smarter than that, his lyrics are pretty amazingly written, even if they irk you, that was probably his objective. This is one of the mos British of albums on the list, probably side by side with The Kinks in its Britishness. All the references, the cockney rhyming slang, the imagery. It is all from this green and pleasant land. But it is not green or pleasant in his view.

Dury old up a mirror to the ugliest side of this country, which really is more representative than crap about cottages and sheep and men in Bowler hats. Much like the US is more like a Spike Lee film than Pleasantville. The music is also interesting here, getting progressively harder as it goes on with the last three songs quite squarely in the punk field. This was more an album that I found interesting than something I'd like to hear again very often, but it is recommended for at least a listen through, with special attention to the lyrics.

Track Highlights

1. Billericay Dickie
2. Clevor Trever
3. Plaistow Patricia
4. Wake Up And Make Love With Me

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:
New Boots And Panties!! was released on September 30 1977, following the release of Dury's iconic single Sex And Drugs And Rock And Roll. The single was not a commercial success and nor was it included on the album's original press (Dury expressed a strong desire for singles not to be included on the album and as such the song and its b-side were omitted). This did not affect people's reaction to the album however (at the time it was not as uncommon to produce 'stand alone singles' as it is today) and was given rave reviews not only in the music press, but in broadsheet newspapers' art columns and other highbrow publications: Robin Denselow, for instance, reviewed it for The Guardian (October 11, 1977). The album did not enter the top of the British charts but it did go platinum, and its (much softer) follow-up album Do It Yourself would reach number 2.

In 2000 Q magazine placed it at number 66 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever.

Billericay Dickie:

392. Iggy Pop - Lust For Life (1977)

















Track Listing

1. Lust For Life
2. Sixteen
3. Some Weird Sin
4. Passenger
5. Tonight
6. Success
7. Turn Blue
8. Neighbourhood Threat
9. Fall In Love With Me

Review

So if Iggy made a big change from his Stooges days with The Idiot, he seems to be balancing the shift with this album. This is definitely half-way between the Bowieness of The Idiot and the raw power of Raw Power. This makes this a very Bowie influenced album but very recognizably an Iggy Pop album. You get more the sense of Bowie helping as opposed to masterminding this.

This makes Lust For Life an even better album than The Idiot, each single track is great showing a new focus from Iggy, which is kind of represented by the picture on the cover of the album. The kid is clean, but he is definitely the same old devil.

The songs here are harder and catchier than in The Idiot and probably than any other Iggy album, just the title track and The Passenger are definitely worth the price of admission and everything else is high quality topping in a great cake. If you like Iggy this is the essential album for you to get, and you definitely will not regret it. Now we say goodbye to Iggy Pop (and Bowie which is here as a producer) for ever. I get teary eyed.

Track Highlights

1. The Passenger
2. Lust For Life
3. Some Weird Sin
4. Sixteen

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

David Bowie, Iggy Pop and engineer Colin Thurston produced the album under the pseudonym "Bewlay Bros." (name via the final track on Bowie’s Hunky Dory). Recording took place at Hansa Studios in Berlin and featured Ricky Gardiner and Carlos Alomar on guitars with Hunt and Tony Sales on drums and bass, respectively. Trivia buffs have noted that, with Bowie’s presence on keyboards and backing vocals, the band included three-quarters of the future Tin Machine line-up, missing only Reeves Gabrels; in fact it was the Sales brothers’ hard-rocking contribution to this album that led Bowie to invite them to join Tin Machine twelve years later ("Check out Lust For Life," Bowie told Gabrels, "I’ve found the rhythm section!").

Here you go 7.30 minutes of The Passager live at the Manchester Apollo in 77:

391. Elvis Costello - My Aim Is True (1977)
















Track Listing

1. Welcome to the Working Week
2. Miracle Man
3. No Dancing
4. Blame It on Cain
5. Alison
6. Sneaky Feelings
7. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes
8. Less Than Zero
9. Mystery Dance
10. Pay It Back
11. I'm Not Angry
12. Waiting for the End of the World

Review

This album is usually filed under punk, but it must be one of the least punkish punk albums ever. Of course there are elements, this is the UK in 77 after all, Elvis has the lyrics, which are actually better and smarter than the average punk, and he has some of the delivery, but musically it is very much inspired in 50's music. So you'd consider it punk because of the lyrics and the sparseness of production, and that is about it.

All that said an album doesn't need to be punk to be good. And this is pretty great, of course Elvis would continue to explore this sound to exhaustion and he really hasn't made much of it for a few years now, but here it is fresh and it sounds fresh while still sounding like 50's inspired.

It sounds kind of like the music from a bizarro world 50's diner. Covering right-wing politics, sex and frustration with very sparse production so it reminds me more of stuff like The Sonics (although not as raucous) than anything else in the punk scene at this time. That actually makes it good. So definitely recommended.

Track Highlights

1. I'm Not Angry
2. Welcome To The Working Week
3. Alison
4. Blame It On Cain

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Costello called in sick to his day job (as a data-entry clerk) in order to rehearse and record the album with Clover, which was cut in a series of six four-hour sessions for about £1,000.

Costello stayed at his day job as the first two singles, "Less Than Zero" and "Alison", were pre-released without much success. Finally, the label decided to release the album in the summer of 1977, and he was asked to quit his job and become a professional musician.

Costello's first TV appearence with Alison :