My french isn't strong enough to pick up the fact that this goovey song from Brel's final album is an offensive, anti-Flemish tirade. Guess I just like it for the atmosphere.
Brian Eno : R.A.F.
This B side to "Kings Lead Hat" anticipates the Eno/Byrne sound montage recordings of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by using sound elements from a Baader Meinhof ransom message made by public telephone at the time of the Lufthansa Flight 181 hijacking. You can find this on Eno's Vocal box set.
William Onyeabor : Ride On Baby
This one popped up on shuffle while I was driving today and I couldn't figure out what album this was from until I snuck a peek at my phone at a stop sign. It comes from the first album by Nigerian one man band synth master William Onyeabor, one of David Byrne's favorite musicians.
Eddie Hazel : I Want You ( She's So Heavy)
1977's greatest Beatles cover comes from Parliament-Funkadelic lead guitarist Eddie Hazel's Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs album. Nine minutes of bliss.
This was a brutal chore, cutting down my favorite songs of 1977 to just 25. In some cases (Wire, Television, Talking Heads, Ramones, Sex Pistols) , the songs I selected had to represent everything on the album. There were also some great singles on the R and B side that had to make the list. And then there were a handful of songs that didn't make a huge impression in 1977, but have stayed with me all these years ( Dwight Twilley, NRBQ, The Saints).
1. Donna Summer I Feel Love
2. David Bowie 'Heroes'
3. Dwight Twilley Band Looking for the Magic
4. The Clash Complete Control
5. Wire Three Girl Rhumba
6. Chic Everybody Dance
7. NRBQ Ridin in My Car
8. Elvis Costello Watching the Detectives
9. Television See No Evil
10. Ramones Sheena is a Punk Rocker
11. The Saints This Perfect Day
12. Sex Pistols God Save the Queen
13. Fleetwood Mac Dreams
14. Marvin Gaye Got to Give It Up
15. Parliament Flash Light
16. Heatwave Boogie Nights
17. Eddie and the Hot Rods Do Anything You Wanna Do
18. The Babys Isn't It Time
19. Electric Light Orchestra Mr Blue Sky
20. Talking Heads Psycho Killer
21. Richard Hell And the Voidoids Blank Generation
22. Metro Criminal World
23. The Jam Away From the Numbers
24. Cerrone Supernature
25. Ian Dury Sex and Drugs and Rock n Roll
Four tracks from 1977 that I must mention before the year is out.
The Big Man himself, Clarence Clemons, played sax on this Chicago power pop band's self-titled debut album. Patient listeners will hear Clemons at the end of this shoulda-been-a-smash that shouldn't be confused with the "rapey" Christmas classic.
An in house producer for Stiff Records, who once spent time in The Pink Fairies and as an early member of Motorhead, Larry Wallis released "Police Car"/"On Parole" produced by Nick Lowe, and backed by two members of Eddie And The Hot Rods; bassist Paul Gray, and drummer Steve Nicol. Like everything Lowe touched in 1977, it's a solid slice of pop.
Yes, I did a post about Hawkwind's surprisingly pleasing Quark, Strangeness and Charm already, but the single "Hassan I Sahba" deserves its own mention. The driving Eastern inspired number is an audience favorite during blissed out live shows. There are many people who say Quark is their favorite Hawkwind album.
From the highly regarded pairing of German electronic group Cluster and Brian Eno, in full ambient mode, comes this decidedly upbeat instrumental. Eno was everywhere in 1977 and he'd be everywhere in 1978. Only Bruce Springsteen is likely to get more mentions next year if I can convince myself to continue...
In 2000 Elvis Costello looked back on his own Class of '77 and put the following albums into a list he made for Vanity Fair of his 500 Favorite Albums. The song selections are his.
David Bowie Low, “Always Crashing in the Same Car” Heroes , “Joe the Lion.”
Ian Dury: New Boots and Panties!! , “Sweet Gene Vincent.”
Richard Hell and the Voidoids: Blank Generation , “New Pleasure.”
Iggy Pop: The Idiot, “Nightclubbin’” Lust for Life, “Some Weird Sin.”
The Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols , “Pretty Vacant.”
Here at last is my list of the 50 best albums of 1977. As you may know, I've spent the past year--musically at least --in the year the two sevens clashed. Many of the albums I've loved the longest survived the year. There were a few I did not really know ( Pacific Ocean Blue, The Belle Album, Heart of the Congos, Suicide, ) that made the list. Some sentimental favorites that I actually owned within a year of their release ( News of the World, The Stranger, I Robot, Deceptive Bends) probably took the place of something more deserving but it's my list so fuck off.
Wire Pink Flag
Television Marquee Moon
The Clash s/t
Brian Eno Before and After Science
Talking Heads '77
Elvis Costello : (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes
Elvis Costello My Aim Is True
David Bowie Low
Steely Dan Aja
Ramones Rocket To Russia
Bob Marley Exodus
Cheap Trick : Downed
Cheap Trick In Color
Fleetwood Mac Rumours
The Jam In the City
Sex Pistols Never Mind
The Saints Stranded
Dennis Wilson : Farewell My Friend
Dennis Wilson Pacific Ocean Blue
Al Green The Belle Album
David Bowie Heroes
Kraftwerk Trans Europe Express
Earth Wind and Fire All'n'All
The Ramones : Swallow My Pride
The Ramones Leave Home
James Taylor JT
Ian Dury New Boots
Culture Two Sevens Clash
Cheap Trick s/t
Iggy Pop : Lust for Life
Iggy Pop Lust for Life
Richard Hell and the Voidoids Blank Generation
The Damned Damned Damned Damned
Dwight Twilley Band Twilley Don't Mind
Billy Joel The Stranger
Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane : My Baby Gives It Away
Pete Townshend and Ronnie Lane Rough Mix
The Congos Heart of the Congos
Dead Boys Loud Young and Snotty
Ultravox! s/t
Queen News of the World
The Stranglers : Hanging Around
The Stranglers Rattus Norvegicus
Vibrators Pure Mania
Peter Gabriel s/t
Electric Light Orchestra Out of the Blue Iggy Pop The Idiot
Alan Parson Project : I Robot
Alan Parsons Project I Robot
Weather Report Heavy Weather
Dave Edmunds Get It
Suicide s/t
Parliament Funkentelechy Vs The Placebo Syndrome
Eddie and the Hot Rods : Quit This Town
Eddie and the Hot Rods Life On The Line
Garland Jeffreys Ghost Writer
Mink DeVille Cabretta
Townes Van Zandt Live at the Old Quarter
10cc Deceptive Bends
1. Heroes - David Bowie 2. New boots and Panties - Ian Dury
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Ian Dury : Wake Up and Make Love with Me
3. My aim is true - Elvis Costello
4. Never Mind the Bollocks - Sex Pistols
5. Marquee Moon - Television
6. Exodus - Bob Marley and the Wailers
7. The Clash - The Clash
8. Lust for life - Iggy Pop 9. Leave Home - The Ramones
The Ramones : Glad To See You Go
10. Rattus Norvegicus - The Stranglers
11. Rocket to Russia - The Ramones
12. Get It - Dave Edmunds
13. When two sevens clash -Culture 14. Before and after science - Brian Eno
Brian Eno : Kurt's Rejoinder
15. In the City - The Jam
16. Little Criminals - Randy Newman
17. Talking heads '77 - Talking Heads
18. In Colour - Cheap trick 19. Blank generation - Richard Hell
Richard Hell and the Voidoids : Another World
20. Aja - Steely Dan
21. One World - John Martyn
22. Live! - Burning Spear
23. Rock n' Roll with the Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers
24. Spectres - Blue Oyster Cult
25. Bad reputation - Thin Lizzy 26. Pink Flag - Wire
Wire : Champs
27. Low - David Bowie
28. Blondie - Blondie
29. Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel
30. Hard Again - Muddy Waters
Honourable Mentions to...
Stick to me - Graham Parker and The Rumour
Out of our skulls - The Pirates
Feelin’ bitchy - Millie Jackson
Music to kill by - Afrika korps
Listen now - 801
American stars and bars - Neil young
Heavy weather - Weather report
Live at the Hollywood bowl - The Beatles Twilley don’t mind - Dwight Twilley
Dwight Twilley Band : That I Remember
Trans-Europe express - Kraftwerk
Joe Ely - Joe Ely
Police and thieves - Junior Murvin
Rumours - Fleetwood Mac Greg Kihn Again - Greg Kihn
Greg Kihn : For You
Ahh, The name Bootsy, Baby - Bootsy’s rubber band
African dub - Joe Gibbs
LESTER BANGS ( with the points he awarded to his entries in the Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll)
Richard Hell and the Voidoids: Blank Generation 30;
Peter Tosh: Equal Rights 15;
Ramones: Rocket to Russia 10;
Iggy and the Stooges: Metallic K.O. 10;
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols 5;
Ramones Leave Home 5;
The Persuasions: Chirpin' 5;
Ornette Coleman: Dancing in Your Head 5;
The Saints: I'm Stranded 5;
Suicide 5.
Now living in New York City as a freelance rock critic, the legendary Lester Bangs did what every critic has always dreamed of: fronting a band with the Voidoids Robert Quine on guitar, along with Jody Harris of the Contortions, jazzman David Hofstra on Bass and Jay Dee Daugherty of the Patti Smith Group on drums. On his 1977 John Cale produced single, "Let It Blurt", Lester sounds like a cross between Richard Hell and Captain Beefheart.
Music is personal.
That explains Blank Generation's earning the top spot on his year end list. He's a bit of a homer with five NYC entries making his Top 10 list ( Hell, The Ramones, The Persuasions and Suicide). Bangs visited Jamaica--the island, not the borough-- with a pal who was trying to sign Peter Tosh, catching a glimpse of the reggae artist dressed in " a navy blue tracksuit and militant black beret, (yelling) as he practiced high flying karate kicks in the parking lot". Coleman and Suicide provide the dissonance Bangs enjoyed --that bit of mad rage in all of us.
The 1977 Village Voice PAZZ AND JOP poll is a good contemporaneous look at what rocked the world for American rock critics who, for the most part, missed U.K. only releases like The Clash debut, Wire's Pink Flag, Ian Dury's New Boots and Brian Eno's Before And After Science. It would take time before many would recognize albums we now take for granted like David Bowie's Low, Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue, the Bee Gees side of Saturday Night Fever and any of the three Iggy Pop albums released in 1977, The Idiot, Lust For Life or Kill City.
1. Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (Warner Bros.) 412 (32)
2. Elvis Costello: My Aim Is True (Columbia) 367 (33)
3. Television: Marquee Moon (Elektra) 327 (26)
Television : Torn Curtain
4. Fleetwood Mac: Rumours (Warner Bros.) 318 (26)
5. Steely Dan: Aja (ABC) 266 (23)
6. Ramones: Rocket to Russia (Sire) 238 (23)
7. Talking Heads: Talking Heads: 77 (Sire) 170 (17)
8. Randy Newman: Little Criminals (Warner Bros.) 160 (16)
9. Garland Jeffreys: Ghost Writer (AM) 153 (15)
Garland Jeffreys : Lift Me Up
10. Cheap Trick: In Color (Epic) 121 (11)
11. Jackson Browne: Running on Empty (Asylum) 113 (9)
12. Pete Townshend & Ronnie Lane: Rough Mix (MCA) 105 (10)
13. Kate andAnna McGarrigle: Dancer with Bruised Knees (Warner Bros.) 104 (12)
14. Al Green: The Belle Album (Hi) 89 (10)
Al Green : All n All
15. Ornette Coleman: Dancing in Your Head (Horizon) 83 (8)
16. Bryan Ferry: In Your Mind (Atlantic) 80 (9)
17. Peter Gabriel: Peter Gabriel (Atco) 75 (6)
18. The Kinks: Sleepwalker (Arista) 74 (8)
19. Graham Parker and the Rumour: Stick to Me (Mercury) 72 (10)
20. Neil Young: American Stars 'n Bars (Reprise) 69 (8)
21. David Bowie: Heroes (RCA) 66 (7)
David Bowie : Joe the Lion
22. The Persuasions: Chirpin' (Elektra) 63 (7)
23. James Taylor: JT (Columbia) 61 (7)
24. The Jam: In the City (Polydor) 61 (6)
25. Ramones: Ramones Leave Home (Sire) 60 (8)
26. The Beatles: The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl (Capitol) 60 (7)
27. Linda Ronstadt: Simple Dreams (Asylum) 59 (7)
28. The Beach Boys: Love You (Brother/Reprise) 59 (6)
Said poll organizer Robert Christgau of his fellow critics:
This year, the critics rejected albums by Mitchell, Stewart, the Cult, Scaggs, Thin Lizzy and Dylan while Bowie ceased to bust blocks, leaving only seven best-sellers: Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, Randy Newman (heavy sales among leprechauns), Jackson Browne, James Taylor, the Beatles and Linda Ronstadt (who with the failure of Eno's Discreet Music is now the only artist to have made the last four Pazz and Jop polls, usually in the bottom five). And barring a punk breakthrough of proportions much larger than I think likely--although every night I gaze at the image of Maureen Tucker over my bedroom door and pray that I'm wrong--the only potential 1978 biggie I spy lurking amid this year's works of art is this year's sleeper, Cheap Trick. More and more, rock critics see themselves as guardians of an aesthetic of insurrection, and fuck what people are going to buy.
Neil Young handpicked the songs on this three disc classic, which begins with Buffalo Springfield's "Down to the Wire" and goes up to the minor Stills Young hit "Long May You Run". Best of all are some previously unreleased tracks like the Tonight's The Night era "Winterlong", "Deep Forbidden Lake" and "Campaigner" which has the memorable line "Even Richard Nixon has got soul".
This is how I--and many fabs--first discovered Roxy Music. The greatest hits collection, released during the band's hiatus, gives short shrift to Siren but adds the For Your Pleasure era single "Pyjamarama". Not available on CD
A collection of indisputable classic country hits by George Jones, aka The Greatest Country Music Singer. Jones considered "The Window Up Above" the best song he ever wrote. He hit #2 in 1960 with the song. Mickey Gilley knocked John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" out of the top spot with his 1975 cover.
Flight Log came with a 12 page booklet and a few bizarre choices of songs by and related to Jefferson Airplane. The Worst of Jefferson Airplane is where I discovered most of my faves.
On December 17, 1977 Elvis Costello interrupted his own performance of "Less Than Zero" to perform "Radio, Radio" on Saturday Night Live. Costello waved his hands at his bandmates and announced to the audience "I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, there's no reason to do this song here."
Actually there was a reason. Record company reps wanted Costello to play the catchy tune to helps sell copies of My Aim is True. But for Costello, that was already the old record and besides, the song is about former British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley. Nobody in America knew who Mosley was.
But they might understand the point of "Radio, Radio", a protest song about corrupt commercial radio stations whose playlists rarely included punk rock songs or anything that wasn't paid for by a major label.
There was panic on the studio floor. We were not even certain if we were still on the air, but the light on the central camera stayed on through the first verse, and my eyes darted around looking for signs that someone was still calling the shots. The Attractions drove on through the song and I sang it for all I was worth. It felt good, but it was hardly a revolutionary act. I took a full bow at the waist, the way The Beatles had on Thank Your Lucky Stars, unplugged, and walked straight off the set past the cameras before the applause ended, followed by various scampering Attractions. Then it was over.
Only later did Costello learn from Bill Murray that producer Lorne Michaels has been giving Costello the finger during the performance.
It would be more than ten years before Costello was invited back to Saturday Night Live.
On this very same night, in this very same city, David Bowie went onstage at Max's Kansas City to introduce a band he helped get signed with Warner Brothers: Devo. Original plans were to have Bowie produced the debut album. Instead the honors went to Brian Eno.
Still, there are rumors of a jam session involving Devo, Bowie and Eno and there may even be a tape somewhere.
On December 13, 1977 Robert Flack released her sixth album, Blue Lights in the Basement. It's a beautiful album that went gold in the US thanks to her hit single with her Howard University friend Donny Hathaway, "The Closer I Get To You". Hathaway had been suffering from clinical depression when Flack tracked down Hathaway in a hospital:
"I tried to reach out to Donny. That's how we managed to do the song we did last year. I felt this need because I didn't know what to do. I couldn't save him, I knew he was sick. But I knew when he sat down at that piano and sang for me it was like it was eight or nine years ago because he sang and played his ass off."
In January of 1979, Hathaway leaped to his death from the 15th floor of the Essex Hotel in New York City. Flack announced that "The Closer I Get to You" would forever be a dedication to Hathaway, and that all money made from the song would be donated to Hathaway's widow and two children
In December of 1977, Suicide released its debut album. For six years the duo of Alan Vega and synth-man Martin Rev performed for baffled, often hostile audiences in New York City's Lower East Side. While Rev made the most out of a $10 Japanese keyboard, Vega sang songs of doom with an echoey rockabilly voice.
You've truly got to be in the right mood to listen to this album, a bright, sunny day at the beach may not be the best location. The highlight, if you will, is a ten minute epic called "Frankie Teardrop"which ahas been called the most terrifying song ever. It's about a factory worker who, despite working ten hour days, can't make ends meet and is facing eviction. He snaps, killing his six month old son and his wife before turning the him on himself. Vega's screams may be may the most blood curdling thing you ever hear.
"Oh, my God! That's one of the most amazing records I think I ever heard. I love that record," Bruce Spingsteen told Rolling Stone.
"23 Minutes Over Brussels," included as a bonus on the CD reissue of Suicide's classic, eponymous debut album, gives some indication of the public's reaction to this confrontational duo in their heyday. Recorded on June 16, 1978, when Suicide were supporting Elvis Costello at the L'Ancienne Belgique ballroom, it shows a riotous crowd pelting the duo with chairs and bottles.
Utilizing a primitive drum machine, Martin Rev's mutant fuzz organ, and Alan Vega's blues holler, Suicide had been performing for six years before unleashing their debut at the height of punk. With their roots in the New York art scene, their provocative name, nihilistic attitude, and the lack of rock 'n' roll accoutrements such as a drummer or guitarist, they often aroused violent reactions in their bewildered audiences.
Arriving in a sleeve full of slash-and-blood imagery, and sounding like a nightmarish netherworld, Suicide's technical and musical innovations make it sound almost contemporary today. "Cheree," lifted as a single, is a piece of sweet electronica, while the manic electro-billy of "Ghost Rider" proved to be a massive influence on the likes of 50ft Cell and The Sisters of Mercy. Psycho- monologue "Frankie Teardrop" is unnervingly intense and features the most spine-chilling scream committed to vinyl, while the album concludes with the icy mechanized cellos and haunting vocals of "Che."
Suicide's harrowing vision of 1970s America has won praise from acts as diverse as Spiritualized, Nick Cave,and Bruce Springsteen.
The most reckless thing about Joni Mitchell's Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, released December 13, 1977, is her appearance in blackface on the cover, reprising a Halloween costume she wore earlier in the year, going as a black man who complemented her on an L.A. street
“As he went by me he turned around and said, ‘Ummmm, mmm... looking good, sister, lookin’ good!’ Well I just felt so good after he said that. It was as if this spirit went into me. So I started walking like him,” Mitchell said. “I bought a black wig. I bought sideburns, a moustache. I bought some pan-
cake makeup. It was like ‘I’m goin’ as him!’”
The double album has enough jazz inflected moments to please fans of Court and Spark and Hissing of Summer Lawns, and the album did sell enough to go gold. But the reviews were not kind, including the one below by Rolling Stone's Janet Maslin who called it "an instructive failure".
In retrospect, Blue turns out to have been the album that displayed Joni Mitchell at her most buoyant and comfortable — with herself, with the nature of her talents, and with the conventions of pop songwriting. From that happy juncture, she has moved on to more graceful and sober self-scrutiny (For the Roses and Court and Spark), to dramatic musical experimentation mixed with failed social commentary (The Hissing of Summer Lawns), to ever-more-seductive singing (Miles of Aisles) and to rambling, hypnotic flights of fancy (Hejira). She has dabbled with jazz and African tribal music, ventured deep inside herself and fled far away. But, always, the unpredictable caliber of her work has been as exciting as it is frustrating. Now, for once, she has gambled and lost. The best that can be said for Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is that it is an instructive failure.
Since Blue, Mitchell has demonstrated an increasing fondness for formats that don't suit her. Not that this awkwardness can't be occasionally successful: on Hejira, she clung so resolutely to even the stray flat notes that the impression was an attractive one of stubbornness and strength. But, increasingly, Mitchell's pretensions have shaped her appraisal of her own gifts. At her best, she is a keen observer but not a particularly original one, and she has never been an interesting chronicler of experience other than her own, though the new LP finds her trying. Instead, she has been inexplicably inclined to let her music become shapeless as she tries to incorporate jazz and calypso rhythms that eventually overpower her. Her most resonant lyrics have been simple and concise, spinning out images rather than overburdening them, but lately the endearing modesty of "California" or "Just like This Train" seems far behind her. These days, Mitchell appears bent on repudiating her own flair for popular songwriting, and on staking her claim to the kind of artistry that, when it's real, doesn't need to announce itself so stridently.
Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is a double album that should have been a single album. It's sapped of emotion and full of ideas that should have remained whims, melodies that should have been riffs, songs that should have been fragments. At its worst, it is a painful illustration of how different the standards that govern poetry and song lyrics can be, and an indication that Joni Mitchell's talents, stretched here to the breaking point, lend themselves much more naturally to the latter form. Her writing works best when it's compact, yet the record's expansive mood forces her to belabor, in the title song, the precious contrast between a snake (or a train, as well as the author's baser instincts) and an eagle (or an airplane, plus a longing for "clarity") for nearly seven minutes. Mitchell's music has evolved into a kind of neutral background, rolling on endlessly in either a languid spirit ("Jericho") or a nervous one ("Dreamland"). Somehow, she has chosen to abandon melody at a time when she needs it urgently.
The painful banality of Mitchell's lyrics — there is nothing said here that she hasn't said better before, except those things she should have kept to herself — is almost the least of her problems. Behind a treacly title like "The Silky Veils of Ardor" lurks an even treaclier notion: that the romantic visions of love put forth by certain folk songs are one thing, that reality is another, and that the singer apparently yearns for both. "It's just in my dreams we fly," the song concludes, with a reference to "The Water Is Wide." Or, as a dialogue balloon on one of the inner sleeves puts it, "In my dweems we fwy." The album offers what is, one can only hope, the ultimate in cute cover art.
It also offers the ultimate in potshots: "Otis and Marlena," a facile, snidely sung song about tourists who come to Miami "for fun and sun While Muslims stick up Washington." This leads into "The Tenth World," a mostly instrumental percussion track featuring Jaco Pastorius (who plays on a majority of the record with distinction, but without much helpful influence), Airto and Chaka Khan (who hums). Here and elsewhere, there seems to be the notion that blacks and Third World people have more rhythm, more fun and a secret, mischievous viewpoint that the author, dressed as a black man in one of the photos on the front jacket, presumes to share. On the numbing, sixteen-minute "Paprika Plains," we also learn about Indians, who "cut off their braids/And lost some link with nature." "Talk to Me" is the LP's most enduring number: as a terrible, embarrassing song about feeling terribly embarrassed, it has a scary appropriateness. But even though there are no real solutions to the album's mysteries or explanations for its lapses, Joni Mitchell's resilience has been demonstrated often enough to make speculation about such things appear superfluous. She's bound to be back when the time is right and her mood is less drowsy, less disengaged than it seems here. Until then, we're left with Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, in all its recklessness.
In December of 1977, Brian Eno released his most diverse album of the 1970's, Before And After Science. Having collaborated with David Bowie on two albums recorded in Berlin, Eno was stepping out on his own with an album he wasn't completely satisfied with.
Side One offers Eno's last foray into rock music of the decade, including the single "King's Lead Hat", an anagram of Talking Heads with whom he had originally hoped to record the song. You can easily imagine David Byrne singing this song. Phil Manzanera is playing the frenetic guitar.
The opening track is a funky Bowiesque number with two bass players and Phil Collins playing drums. Yes, that Phil Collins.
"Kurt's Rejoinder" makes history by sampling a 1930s recording of ‘Sonate in Urlauten’ (or ‘The Ursonate’)– a phonetic poem by Dada affiliate Kurt Schwitters .
Side Two is mostly instrumental, a return to the spacious sounds of Another Green World. Though Eno questioned the quality of the album, Before And After Science got very good reviews. 'Heroes' may have topped the NME chart, but Eno's album finished at No. 14, just ahead of the Jam’s In the City. Eno would have to wait until the following year to learn the album, released in the Spring of '78 in the States, had finished No 12.
On December 10, 1977, Dr Feelgood were filmed performing at Queen Mary College in London. Guitarist John "Gypie" Mayo is now completely comfortable in his role as guitarist, having replaced Wilko Johnson earlier in the year. The Nick Lowe penned "That's It, I Quit" is from the September 1977 release Be Seeing You, produced by Mr Lowe himself. ( Nick Lowe recorded the Feelgood's "Keep It Out of Sight" a year earlier).
In December of 1977, Wire released Pink Flag, my favorite album of the entire year.
Wire had one foot planted firmly in the punk rock gutter. But the other foot was in the college educated, art rock. On Pink Flag, they play with the basic concepts of songs, how they should start, how they should end and how long they should be.
The second track on Pink Flag is "Field Day for the Sundays". It is 28 seconds long.
"The shorter songs developed naturally," Graham Lewis told Rolling Stone. "When the words ran out, Colin said, 'That's it.' We went, 'Yes, why not?' It used to drive the punks nuts. They'd sort of get pogoing, and then it would stop. We always thought it was really funny."
Humor played a large role in what Wire were up to. ("Brazil" got its title because some members thought it had a rhythm that sounded like something off a Sergio Mendes record).
"As we played, our skill level was going up and we were getting tighter, and the tighter we got, the funnier it was with the stopping and starting," said Lewis.
"As we played, our skill level was going up and we were getting tighter, and the tighter we got, the funnier it was with the stopping and starting," said Lewis.
Wire could do it all. Is there a faster punk song on record than "Surgeon's Girl"? Or a more melodic bit of power pop punk than the love song "Fragile"?
Called a punk suite by Robert Christgau, this 21 song album clocks in at under 36 minutes. It's the best 36 minutes of 1977.
