Tuesday, March 31, 2020

March 1980: The Albums We Missed


Billy Joel: You May Be Right


Wanting to rock out in concerts and inspired by punk and new wave music, Billy Joel writes harder edged songs. "This was probably the most fun album that I ever made," Joel says. "It happened fairly quickly. The band loved playing. Audiences loved the material and we were on a roll." The cover features Joel's own house. Glass Houses would top the album charts for four weeks, selling more than 7 million copies.




Genesis : Misunderstanding


The band's breakthrough album, Duke tones down some of the band's far out prog rock tendencies while providing radio programmers with singles like UK#8 "Turn It On Again",UK#48 "Duchess" and US#14 "Misunderstanding", which must have been inspired by the failure of Collins' marriage.  Perhaps the best of the trio era, though not comparable to the Gabriel led albums.




Warren Zevon : Gorilla You're A Desperado


Bad Luck in Dancing School, Zevon's follow-up to Excitable Boy lands flat. His life is pretty much out of control at this point,  but he'd make up for it before the year is out with a powerful live album.



10cc : Welcome to the World


The follow-up to Bloody Tourists and the last 10cc album I ever bought, Look Hear sounds nothing like the band that excited me so much in the mid-70's.  Eric Stewart may have still been recovering from the auto accident that damaged his eyes. Graham Gouldman couldn't carry the rest of the band. Rick Fenn even contributes a pair of songs. Mostly banal, sometimes awful.



Stiff Little Fingers : Nobody's Heroes


Is Nobody's Heroes the last straight punk album? Though they moved out of Belfast, the Irish rockers are still one of the most passionate bands playing. "At the Edge" is a UK#15 hit. The title track would be another single backed with "Tin Soldiers".



The Pop Group: We Are All Prostitutes


The cover of The Pop Group's How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder looks like a newspaper and it is indeed a document of its times, profiling Thatcher's England and the crisis in Northern Ireland. Upon the re-release of this risky, funky, jolting album Mark Stewart told Fact.com “Our stance is shared across the globe,” says Mark Stewart. “I just feel that millions are asking the same question. What gives the one per cent the right to disrupt, exploit and take vast amounts of cash from the chaos and smokescreens they create? Now in this time of proxy wars and false flag attacks, now more than ever I say, for how much longer do we tolerate mass murder?”


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