March 1980: The Albums We Missed

Billy Joel: You May Be Right

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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?”

No Fear of Tomorrow

The Pop Group : We Are Time

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On April 20, 1979 The Pop Group released Y, an album that went mostly unnoticed in America but is now regarded as one of the most important albums ever made by the likes of Pitchfork (Top 100 Albums of the 1970s) , The Wire (The 100 Most Important Records Ever Made) and Uncut (The 100 Greatest Debut Albums). At the time of its release NME described the album as "a brave failure. Exciting but exasperating." 

To me this album sounds like what happens when you tell every talented member of a band they should play their instruments the way Mike Garson played his avant-garde piano solo on David Bowie's "Aladdin Sane".

Since 1996 the album has started with their previously discussed  breakthrough single "She is Beyond Good and Evil". The most memorable of the tracks on the original debut album is "We Are Time". You wouldn't want to walk into a dark empty farm house with this playing on your headphones but it's catchy as hell. 

The album came out at a time when critics and music fans were wondering what would be the next step after punk. The older critics heard he influences of Captain Beefheart, Kratutrock, dub reggae, and Albert Ayler . They helped hype the band which landed supporting roles on tours with Pere Ubu and Patti Smith.

What you may miss the first few times you listen to Y is the radical political views of the band. In an interview with Simon Reynolds for his book of post-punk interviews called Totally Wired, leader Mark Stewart says they were questioning everything.

When we were ranting, we meant it from the heart – it was all coming out in a mad rush. But we were questioning so many things, and that questioning came out of punk. When I first heard the Pistols and Clash, I really thought they were questioning the value of everything. We felt we had to challenge with the music as much as through the lyrics. And really go for it. Talking to people, the power of some of those Pop Group shows . . . I still meet people to this day who say it gave them a shared fiery feeling. That there were other people who felt as frustrated as they did.

Zero Reasons For Living

The Pop Group : She Is Beyond Good and Evil 

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On March 2, 1979 The Pop Group released their debut single "She Is Beyond Good and Evil". There's a good chance you're going to hate it the first time you hear it. The Bristol band incorporates elements of funk, dub, free jazz and Mark Stewart;s hysteric vocals about the power of unconditional love. All in three and a half minutes. Someone said The Pop Group is the missing link between Talking Heads and The Butthole Surfers, and I do hear that. Here's the deal. If you put this song on a playlist and it randomly comes up while you're driving down a busy highway late at night, you're likely to believe it's one of the greatest songs you've ever heard.  Ranking #19 in NME's list of the singles of the years, "She is Beyond Good and Evil" has grown in legend.