Now this is how it started: THE ILX 1980s ALBUM POLL RESULTS!!

http://www.retroist.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/a-different-world.jpg

Finally! The votes have been counted! The results will soon be revealed!

100. Robyn Hitchcock: I Often Dream of Trains (75 points, 5 votes)

http://vox2.cdn.amiestreet.com/album-art/I-Often-Dream-of-Trains-by-Robyn-Hitchcock_SbQSLqYDbhIx_full.jpg

I'm very fond of I Often Dream of Trains.

― Ian Riese-Moraine has been xeroxed into a conduit! (Eastern Mantra), 7. heinäkuuta 2005 3:09

Robyn was a streak of genuine weirdness on the alt pop charts in the eighties, his records definitely helped get through high school back then. The live shows were incredible, the improvised stories he'd spin between songs always made sense.

He's one of two people I ever asked for an autograph. Philip Glass was not in a good mood when I walked up, 15 years old & nervous, having spotted him in the lobby during the intermission to the Knee Plays... can't blame him for scowling at me. Robyn on the other hand was impossibly cool about the awkward situation, saying while signing my copy of Trains "well y'know it's no good having heroes, especially once you get to know them and realize they have all the same problems..." I assured him that was the point.

― milton parker (Jon L), 7. heinäkuuta 2005 9:23

Revive since I've now been relistening to the various solo albums and want to say that the echoed overdubbed wordless vocals at the end of "Autumn Is Your Last Chance" off I Often Dream of Trains is one of his most moving performances. Good stuff.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), 27. tammikuuta 2005

cool. do you have a rough schedule of how long you'll be rolling out results or how often you'll be posting entries or are you just gonna play it by ear?

I'll probably try to do 10 a day, but there's no schedule. Depends on when I have the time to sit down and post stuff. Will try to leave some time for discussion between every result.

Any chance of the occasional youtube? Robyn Hitchcock is an unknown unknown to me at least.

It's cool that 5 people who really like something can get it into the top 100.

98. (tie) Scraping Foetus off the Wheel - Hole (76 points, 5 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000NO1T26.jpg

'hole' is a total masterpiece. totally changed my life. 'ache' has actually aged really well, much better than i'd have thought it would.

― stirmonster, 4. marraskuuta 2004 16:02

Hole never gets old. What a record.

― onimo, 13. syyskuuta 2007 14:41

I probably won't have the time to go looking for Youtube links, put I have no problem with other people posting them here.

a song from that robyn hitchcock album performed at home?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo_dinxpotg

those finnish day names are really cool btw.

You're already doing more than enough, Tuomas. It'd be cool if a fan of the album could put up the odd representative track though. xp thanks Alex!

The Hitchcock was my number two album, good for 30 of those 75 points. Glad I put it that high just to see it make the list. There are youtube videos from the recent I Often Dream Of Trains In New York live concert, but it appears all the actual 80s clips have been pulled.

Here's the title track from that performance last year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U60yj35FmGs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmO5N5TVwpc
pretty far-out stuff. it seems to be about the beginning of wwii.

Oh cool, I like Robyn Hitchcock but didn't know that album well, so no vote from me but glad to see it in.

Foetus are one of those bands that I always feel I should probably attempt to get into but never have done.

98. (tie) Spacemen 3 - The Perfect Prescription (76 points, 5 votes

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/s/spacemen-3/album-the-perfect-prescription.jpg

I must say I've grown quite fond of 'Perfect Prescription'--it didn't necessarily blow me away at first, but I'll be damned if it's not one CHARMING-ass record, something you'd be hard-pressed to say about a Spz (ha!) album. Also, 'Playing With Fire' is awesome--better production, more psychedelic, maybe?--but a little less charming. (Note: "Ode to Street Hassle" is one of my current favorite songs.) The lyrics are a bit empty sometimes, but I guess that's not really the point. Well, discuss!

― Clarke B., 17. syyskuuta 2001 3:00

I don't have much to add other than 'The Perfect Prescription' rules the Universe (Performance, Playing With Fire and all their other stuff does too to a slightly lesser degrees). I wonder why nobody ever really talks about "fuzz" anymore (has it been subsumed by 'drones'). I just remember that the Spacemen had the textures right and then I fell in love with the bluesy and gospel-y melodies. I especially love their 17 minute cover of Rollercoaster which is barely 2 chords.

The only thing I didn't like about them was their bitchiness in interviews. They would dis Loop and then say things like the Jesus and Mary Chain weren't that special (since they had done the feedback thing too on their first album).

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), 17. tammikuuta 2003 23:49

Satan Place from that Foetus album recently came up on my ipod shuffle and blew my MIND

although Finely Honed Machine (a bonus track) is the real head-scrambler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2CK48l4GM
the 1st track of perfect prescription

I nominated & voted for that Robyn, my favorite thing he's done. He makes his eccentricities feel universal on that record. How the hell does he do that? Sick Man is my favorite Foetus moment; same goes for that whole Spacemen record. Very college-rock here at the bottom of the charts so far!

Sooner or later, this thread is going to get pretty slow and unweildly with all these youtube links. Maybe a separate youtube results thread would be better.

not that it matters but college-rock? i would have thought the feelies or the talking heads were college-rock but not british artists like hitchcock or spacemen 3. college-rock is an american concept, isn't it? in any case a very promising start i'd say.

97. Big Black - Atomizer (77 points, 8 votes)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Vktx95N7ra8/SJykVA3D48I/AAAAAAAAAZo/AzXK24FysLM/s400/R-368853-1181835194.jpeg

Passing Complexion and Bad Houses for their weirdo non punkdom

Or even "non-indiedom"! (in the old sense of the word indie) I mean in a way, Big Black weren't doing anything all that radically different from what a hell of a lot of other US indie bands were doing then, which is why I couldn't understand their appeal at first, being first and foremost an anglophile. But Passing Complexion was like their Smiths-How-Soon-Is-Now moment because they (or Albini) got a guitar sound there that is utterly unique as far as I know. I would be curious actually, if any ilxors could point to a piece of guitar music that sounds like that. Metal Machine Music?? But MMM didn't have an easy to swallow RIFF!

I find Big Black a really fun band to talk about because I don't think they've been talked about much on this board since I've been here. Or if they have, I've been away and out of the loop. I also think that in the end, at least for me, I tend to remember Albini more for his production jobs than BB. What he did for The Wedding Present and PJ Harvey was truly stunning.

Very much looking forward to hearing this Atomizer album again, though. I found myself able to visualize the details of the record sleeve with great clarity today.

― Soda Paint Cans (Bimble), 28. maaliskuuta 2009 5:00

This bloke on our local market persuaded me to buy Atomiser when it came out and I was completely blown away by it. Guitars that sound like machines imitating guitars is such a great sound. I can't think of another band whose sound is as conceptually perfect as Big Black's. And I love that Albini stopped it as soon as they'd said what they wanted to say.

― TV's Mr Noodle Vague (noodle vague), 6. toukokuuta 2005 20:40

"Passing Complexion" from Atomizer = my favorite guitar riff ever.

― latebloomer: But when the monkey die, people gonna cry. (latebloomer), 6. toukokuuta 2005 23:20

What the hell is up with the guitar necks on that Spacemen 3 cover? It's like a pre-Photoshop Photoshop disaster. Horrible.

(fucking great record though)

this thread is going to get pretty slow and unweildly with all these youtube links.

haha 2 of my top five in the first 4 results

thank you tuomas

well i for one am 100% certain that my #1 choice is not going to appear at all!

really need to hear big black. will arrange this some day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIn8e8-kXQ4
live. what a great time those 80s were, occasionally.

user comment from the kerosene clip:
"It's like their guitars are speaking another language than everyone else's."

i am not sure but i think the covers take at least as much bandwidth as the youtube stills.

― alex in mainhattan

not the point - inline images load quickly, but browsers have to load the relevant plugin every time they get to an embedded youtube

i mean, much as i hate sounding like a luddite, it does kind of shit the thread up for anyone on an out-of-date computer

well i for one am 100% certain that my #1 choice is not going to appear at all!

What was it? I'm 98% certain mine won't either (that being the Slapp Happy album, already discussed on the other thread).

not that it matters but college-rock? i would have thought the feelies or the talking heads were college-rock but not british artists like hitchcock or spacemen 3. college-rock is an american concept, isn't it? in any case a very promising start i'd say.

― alex in mainhattan, Monday, November 23, 2009 2:10 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

So far all of these were pretty landmark on college radio in my US college town, and Robyn & S3 were must-haves in the indie record store import bin. Not to defend the term college-rock, which is pretty execrable, though I've come to like it as a sort of precursor to the "knowledge worker in training" peg with which Carl Wilson nailed indie.

wahey! this is going great- albums i've never heard and would like to one day listen to. hoping it stays this way and doesn't go into canon-mode (except the canon albums i voted for of course.)

96. Associates - Sulk (79 points, 6 votes)

http://whathappnednext.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/associates-sulk2.jpg

I'd go against the grain of the good Doctor - I find the first two CDs much harder going than "Sulk" - rewarding to be sure but still tough ("White Car In Germany" though is tremendous with no equivocation). "Sulk" though sparkles - I love the 'glacial' production and the hysteria of it all. And "Party Fears Two" is one of those handful of singles I occasionally get worked up about and pronounce "THIS IS THE GREATEST SINGLE OF ALL TIME" which means in that instant it least, it is.

― Tom, 3. tammikuuta 2001 3:00

I was 18 in the summer of 1982. "Party Fears Two" was part of the soundtrack of that summer. And I was living it in DUNDEE. I've had some unhappy times since then, but I'll remember that wonderful year and the part that the music of the Associates played in it forever. Whenever I listen to Sulk I'm 18 again and the world is full of opportunities that I never eventually took up

The Associates WILL be remembered long after some of today's POPSTARS are long forgotten.

― Big Al, 1. huhtikuuta 2001 3:00

i pulled out sulk yesterday after reading the scotland chapter in sr's p-punk book, and good god i can't believe this EVER charted, however briefly. the whole album is on overload.

It's absolutely astounding. Björk being a massive fan of Mackenzie's makes sense but in the Sugarcubes or solo I've never sensed her work to be quite as...*searches for the word*...careening, shall we say.

It's also a case where all the stories about the recording and the run up to it, what went into it, what they tried, etc. all make sense. You read PR guff all the time about how some band's third album (which Sulk sorta was if you count Fourth Drawer Down's singles comp as the second) is going to be the Experimental Shift in Style What Is Different or soundbites about 'there were no rules in the studio, we decided to come in fresh' or whatever and they create something with a boring drum loop and keyboard part. Then there's this.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), 25. huhtikuuta 2005 2:08

it does kind of shit the thread up for anyone on an out-of-date computer

Associates are one of those bands that I didn't find out about until 15 years or so after the fact, so I didn't feel right about including them on my list. Great album, though.

This thread is mapping out an alternate history of 80s music that I was mostly unaware of.

And I mean that in a good way. Thanks for this list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTyb9Jl8y1k
yes, one of the greatest singles of all time. sometimes i can agree to what tom says. are there others who have problems with the loading of the clips? i'll stop immediatley posting them if you wish.

95. Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking (79 points, 7 votes)

http://www.ugo.com/music/top-11-rock-album-covers/images/entries/Nothings-shocking.jpg

Nothing's Shocking, however, upon re-appraisal is -- to my ears -- a virutally flawless record! There is literally not a duff track herein. I remember buying the LP based solely on the bizarre-o cover art and buzz that surrounded the band, and in a rare fluke, ended up loving every nanosecond of it....forcing it into constant rotation on the collectively-commandeered stereo of my off-campus hovel in my senior year of college. Paring a massive, Zeppelinesque sound while deftly retaining to credibly Punk edge, Jane's Addiction seemed like the perfect band. My mookish metal pals enjoyed Navarro's thick guitar crunch, while the waifish Bauhausfraus dug Perry's junkie-Raggedy-Andy aesthetic and singularly cryptic lyrical fixations. They were at once heavy, funky, weird, austere, funny, scary, melodic, loud, sensual, spooky....I mean, what's not to love?

For "Ocean Size" and "Ted, Just Admit It" alone, this band should be cannonized into the pantheon of untouchable coolness, and if you disagree with me on that point, you're just wallowing in a viscous mudslick of WRONG! I'd completely forgotten about the rude, horn-driven punch of "Idiots Rule" and the trippy gentility of "Summertime Rolls" (not, as it turned out, an ode to seasonal baked goods). The lilting, use-frienly, acoustic & steel drum "Jane Says" being the track that made the girls actually appreciate the record (my friend Sara bought it based on this song alone, only to be scared by the rest of the album's electric tsunami). "Pigs In Zen" being a big, fat, chunky fuck-you of a track, despite Perry's oddballish off-the-cuff commentary in the bridge (no David Lee Roth, he). Once again, not a single bad track. Everyone wins.

Eric A's bass playing is masterfully restrained (in sharp contrast to Dave's flashy, effect-laden guitar antics, Stephen Perkins busy battery and Perry's pipey screech). The cover art (flanked mysteriously by cowhide?) is strange enough to be completely compelling. It's a mastepiece from end to end.

What sayeth ye?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), 4. elokuuta 2003 19:08

halfway through the album, haven't listened to it in years. It IS flawless, thank god I had this album when I was fifteen or sixteen or whatever, what else could I have listened to that would have matched all the awfulness and rage that was in me at that time?

I can't decide what is best, the great basswork, the beer-keg drumming, perry's yowl? Fuckin' Navarro just makes me laugh now, what a character, the guitar on this album is five inches away from cheese but it works so well; listening back to this it strikes me as such a completely radio-friendly album, Navarro borrows so many little motifs and progressions from metal.

god it's serious as serious can be.

― teeny (teeny), 19. kesäkuuta 2004 17:00

Just post them judiciously. Even though I generally don't have trouble with threads that are youtube embed heavy, a constant stream of them will tax anyone's cpu. xp

How many ballots did you get, Tuomas?

Sorry, this was my request screwing things up. I sometimes have problems with the youtubes but the Clash thread has been working fine so I assumed whatever the problem is had been cleared up. I know most about these things though - I just remember it spicing the end-of-2008 lists.

Sulk was my number three. Party Fears two is still my favourite song of all time but there's so many great moments on there.

I considered casting for Nothing's Shocking, but I got into Ritual first and it massively overshadows it for me.

I probably didn't vote for it, but I'm glad it's here. Nothing's Shocking blaring out of a boombox and me standing around while my friends skated a half-pipe = my 1988.

I have this on cassette somewhere.

Def Leppard - Pyromania (80 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://www.rocknrollhell.com/defleppard/pyromania.jpg

The only Def Leppard album I still listen to consistently, this album sizzles with poetic darkness in a rock and roll pop sensibility. Call it a metal record if you must, but its carries a lot less heaviness and a lot more depth than meets the eye. Disregard "Photograph" because its the odd one out on this record. But look at some of the excellent tracks like "Too Late for Love", the ever-famous "Foolin", "Comin'Under Fire", "Billy's Got a Gun", and my personal favorite "Die Hard the Hunted" which has very interesting lyrics. The whole record also carries the quintessential element of a large chorus. So am I right, or am I just full of shit in my early 80s metal nostalgia?

― Luptune Pitman, 13. lokakuuta 2001 3:00

Luptune can I call you Chuck? My French friend was into Def Leppard, she did a gymnastics routine to "Pour Some Sugar On Me." She had a badge of Def Leppard on her army bag. She had Das Kapital in her house. And in late breaking news, today I saw some 18 year olds in a late model Ford Escort unfitted with a big bass speaker listening to Def Leppard quite loudly.

― maryann, 15. lokakuuta 2001 3:00

Hysteria was the betrayal album. Pyromania was hybrid. Pyromania was where the Leps managed to take the screaming Gibsons and football terrance chants and deftly fuse them with honest-to-goodness pop songs, forging a guilded ladder from the barbed-wire dungeon of the N.W.O.B.H.M. to :::gasp::: radio/video airplay. Hysteria was the Leps after they'd been uprooted, de-fanged, neutered and hollowed out, leaving only their sickly candy shell....their metal meat extracted and discarded. Pyromania had them scoring hits without sacrificing their bite. Hysteria had them jettisoning bite in search of further hits (which, unfortunatley, worked). Pyromania is Def Lppard's Night Time. Hysteria is their Brighter Than a Thousand Suns.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), 11. kesäkuuta 2005 10:38

Whoops, sorry, that should read:

94. Def Leppard - Pyromania (80 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote)

Assuming this is #94?

okay.

I feel the lack of autogoon involvement is going to severely hurt this poll. Also who are the people in the first picture Tuomas? I don't get 80s sitcom references.

What's an autogoon?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092339/

In Finland this series was called "Crazy College".

Crazy College? lol

Better than the U.S. title.

I'm also curious about whether the #1 vote for Pyromania was sincere or tactical. I wonder which record, among those that got a #1 vote, had the lowest total score?

Pyromania could conceivably be someone's favorite 80s record. I buy it.

There's one album that got one #1 vote and no other votes. So the lowest score is 40.

yay tuomas! a god among finns.

am super proud of myself (not unusual no) cuz 3 of the bottom 4 placed high in my list - they are my heroes and i have now saved them from obscurity and perpetual darkness. hope the 2-way foetus didn't split the vote too bad, cuz i put all my money on nail probably just for throne of agony which is so worth it but hole has sickman and water torture so gah.

and i expected big plack to place higher for some reason. an aura of almost holy dread was attached to themselves in indie crit/college rock circles back in those days, even in the uk what with blast first an all, but maybe it's faded a bit? more than a bit? i guess they weren't ever out to make friends...

Disregard "Photograph" because its the odd one out on this record. But look at some of the excellent tracks like "Too Late for Love", the ever-famous "Foolin", "Comin'Under Fire", "Billy's Got a Gun", and my personal favorite "Die Hard the Hunted" which has very interesting lyrics. The whole record also carries the quintessential element of a large chorus. So am I right, or am I just full of shit in my early 80s metal nostalgia?

Totally true, except there's no reason to exclude Photograph, which was one of the album's best examples of that "quintessential . . . large chorus" the poster (correctly) mentioned. I also think Alex is right about Hysteria being a "betrayal" album. The melodies were strong, but the production sucked all the emotion and raw energy out of the disc. It's still a very good album, but a tremendous missed opportunity that Def Leppard would never get back.

I still wanna know how many ballots!

About 100, I think.

93. Thomas Dolby - The Golden Age of Wireless (80 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://www.destroyrockandroll.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/the_golden_age_of_wireless.jpg

Funny, just last night my housemate played (my copy of) Akufen's "One of Our Submarines" remix... I'm surprised that this record -- including mixes from Ricardo Villalobos and Hardfloor (!) -- isn't discussed more often.

I will also rate as a classic The Flat Earth, though I may be alone in my assessments there... The production -- veering dangerously close to overproduction -- on this record never fails to make the hairs on my neck stand up, and despite the damn near cheesy "jazziness" of some of the tracks, there's something really compelling about them. I still play out "I Scare Myself" (mixed with Metro Area's "Piña") pretty frequently... it's a lovely tune to close out a night.

― philip sherburne (philip sherburne), 19. elokuuta 2003 14:31

Age of Wireless is like a more innocent John Foxx. I think it's a great shame Dolby didn't continue down the path of this record, as it's a fertile one. Unfinished business - no-one has dared make music like this since about 1983.

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), 19. elokuuta 2003 23:44

Mad downloading in progress. The deep blue sea of "Submarines" haunts me to this very moment. I saw the "Aliens" tour and am glad that I picked up a stranger and got laid so that I can look back fondly at something. Back-flips and berets. Woof. But God, the depth of "...we'll be the pirate twins, again." I'm going to wake up my girlfriend for some pot smoking and a little costume party. I want to play her back like a violin.

― Speedy Gonzalas (Speedy Gonzalas), 22. elokuuta 2003 8:08

a thread for the video clips

For some reason I was a huge detractor of "She Blinded Me With Science" when I was in 6th grade. Given what else I liked (Dungeons and Dragons, the Tubes) I don't really see what I could have had against it. Anyway, I've come around. Didn't realize the big hit wasn't on the original release of this record.

Growing up a church kid, shielded from any kind of secular popular music until I was in middle school, I remember having a friend stay the night and listening to a tape he brought over full of things he'd recorded off the local AOR station. Since neither of us were experts, and his mental note-taking skills left something to be desired, when "She Blinded Me With Science" came on he told me it was by AC/DC.

Imagine my surprise not too long after when I finally did hear AC/DC.

92. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Dazzle Ships (80 points, 9 votes)

http://991.com/newGallery/OMD-Dazzle-Ships-427781.jpg

I don't understand how such a hodgepodge of an album stands up so well. It's definitely in my top 5 or 10 albums

is OTM, although I'd arguably say my top 1 albums. I have adored everything about this since I first heard it (which would have been summer of either 1989 or 1990, I'm guessing).

The Romance of the Telescope is my pick-without-even-having-to-think-about-it here; I really don't have the words for that song. But, really, there's not a second of the rest of it that doesn't move me in some way. Artistic failure? Maybe, but a glorious one. The sound of a band taking themselves way too fucking seriously has never been so sweet.

― a tiny, faltering megaphone (grimly fiendish), 19. maaliskuuta 2009 15:24

Have to agree with the praise for this record.

I find the whole timing aspect of this album quite freaky, it's well known that they were short of material which left them scrabbling about for songs, but it's so unapologetically uncommercial, even when they are exploring the more poppy end of things, the songwriting or sounds are all bent somehow.

I can't help but think that they were revisiting Kraftwerk's Radio Activity, even apart from the obvious time zones type stuff.

― MaresNest, 19. maaliskuuta 2009 15:37

I bought it last week and had been thinking of starting the very same thread. Absolutely loved it when it first came out (loved A&M and Junk Culture too) and still love it now. All the more fantastic for not having heard it for well over a decade. Genetic Engineering, This is Helena...energetic, naive, ahead of their time and great. Did anyone else nearly shit themselves the first time they heard the title track? You know, that bit where you're settling down with the radar blips and all of a sudden that massive industrial REEOORR!! jumps out at you like you're in a rowing boat and the Titanic's just appeared thirty yards away out of the fog?

― dan, 1. huhtikuuta 2002 3:00

contenderizer, i'm thinking that songs about fucking is going to place higher than atomizer, so not all is lost for big black. Also, im confident that nail is still to come (which is good because it is prob my favorite album of all time.)

pretty sure my high placed vote for nurse with wound isnt going to get them in tho ;_;

91. Run-D.M.C. - Raising Hell (80 points, 10 votes)

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OYwl0HsJtPc/SrjSY5EC8MI/AAAAAAAAADc/__npQdaaMHo/s400/RUN+DMC+RAISING+HELL+Cover.jpg

All of Raising Hell ... the Exile on Main Street of pop rap. Rocks in the corny charming way.

― Chris O., 8. maaliskuuta 2006 6:40

I was listening to "Peter Piper" in the car the other day v loudly when a dude on a motorcycle rode by blasting it at the exact same moment in the song. It was sorta magical.

― ENBB, 28. huhtikuuta 2009 5:38

I voted for Reign In Blood, but now that I think about it I like Raising Hell a lot more.

― fritz, 5. syyskuuta 2007 19:57

(For some reason there doesn't seem to be too many good posts about that album on ILM.)

Isn't Dazzle Ships kind of an odds-and-ends collection?

I'm not sure if I have much time to do this tomorrow, so I think I'll post 90-86 tonight too.

(x-post)

Compilations were allowed in the poll.

waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too low.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzuZtOvzoQ8 for gods sake

90. Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II (81 points, 9 votes)

http://i37.tinypic.com/1490efl.jpg

Search/Classic: Whichever album(s) have "Plateau" and "Lake of Fire." Worth it just for those songs. I'd remember the album name(s) and whether or not they're on the same album or not (I want to say they are, but that may be because Nirvana covers them both on Unplugged), but I'm on cold medication and it's all I can do to type this much with minimal interruptions of "meat puppets -- heheh, that would be funny," and then mentally assigning different kinds of meat to the various muppets.

Like Miss Piggy would have to be made of baloney, obviously. And Kermit wouldn't be meat at all, but rather those "sandwich stacker" pickles which are already sliced, neatly arranged and knitting-needled together into a more-or-less froggic shape.

So "Plateau" and "Lake of Fire," then.

― Tep (ktepi), 19. marraskuuta 2002 14:15

II is the best. "Lost" "Climbing" excellent. I talked to Curt Kirkwood a while ago, when that Eyes Adrift came out and he said that as far as he knows, II was the first record anyone made on MDMA, which would later be known as Ecstasy, for reasons still lost to me.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), 24. maaliskuuta 2003 17:53

89. Prince and the Revolution - Parade (83 points, 10 votes)

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/41/51/3589228348a088afa29d0110.L.jpg

"Mountains" was so stunning to hear on the radio back then - just utter majesty in the chorus rising up so naturally from the verses

however e'eybody otm on how Prince is mental about snow in April, when is there not at least a dusting of snow in the upper Midwest in April - April is like the month when you go "Jesus fuckin' Christ if these cold gusts don't stop frosting my nuts at the bus stop I am going to fucking kill myself" though admittedly that'd make for a much less singable chorus

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), 18. huhtikuuta 2006 16:45

that's why it's SOMETIMES it snows in april, not IT RARELY snows in april, or WOW AM I BUMMED OUT ABOUT THE FACT THAT IT snows in april. dude's just like all 'hey that's life, deal with it by painting all yr shit purple and lighting a million candles and doing kim basinger'.

― Haikunym (Haikunym), 18. huhtikuuta 2006 16:58

Guys, this is maybe the greatest album ever recorded. "Sometimes It Snows In April" is the only piece of music that has ever made me cry (lots of personal baggage attached to that) and even though I'm a massive "Alphabet St" booster, it's hard to maintain my controversial stance that "AS" is secretly the best Prince single when looking at "Kiss" and especially "Mountains".

"New Position" rocks the balls off the walls, too. Really this entire album is flawless from top to bottom, including the flaws.

― Dan (Haters Beware) Perry (Dan Perry), 18. huhtikuuta 2006 23:34

I was surprised to see Parade place so low, I though folks of ILX had lots of love for it. Personally I've always felt kinda confused by Parade: half of it is brilliant, half of it is just a bunch of undeveloped ideas. Also, I don't really like the dry sound of it, except on "Kiss", where it of course makes the song.

"Sometimes it Snows on April" is Prince's best ballad though; probably the only one of his songs that I've cried to.

'Alphabet Street' is the best Prince single!

I'm dying to know what's the album that got one #1 vote and no other votes.

Prince is going to be the Radiohead of this poll but with like 10 more albums and people being comfortable with admitting voting for him. So not Radiohead at all then. Anyway, I predict vote splitting stops Prince making the top 10.

"New Position"
"I Wonder U"
"Girls & Boys"
"Life Can Be So Nice"
"Mountains"
"Do U Lie?"
"Kiss"
"Anotherloverholenyohead"

are all jams imho.

88. Bruce Springsteen - Tunnel of Love (86 points, 7 votes)

http://images.coveralia.com/audio/b/Bruce_Springsteen-Tunnel_Of_Love-Frontal.jpg

This Springsteen album is an undeniable classic. If for no other reason than he canned the B.S., self-mythologizing and the bombast of Born in the USA and actually made some first- rate pop tunes. It's sorta the Springsteen equivalent to David Bowie's Station to Station (another after-cutting-the- crap classic).

Tunnel of Love and E-Street Shuffle are the only 2 Springsteen albums I can listen to all the way through.

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, 30. toukokuuta 2001 3:00

Apart from "Nebraska" and "....Tom Joad", "Tunnel Of Love" is the closest Bruce Springsteen ever came to a true dud.

From "Tunnel Of Love" onwards, he has sounded a bit old and tired, seemingly not any more willing to rock like he did on "Born In The USA".

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), 9. maaliskuuta 2003

I have actually changed my mind somewhat about this album. I still prefer Bruce Springsteen when he rocks, but at least some of the songs on this album are quite good. There are 2-3 exaggaratedly bluesy ones that I don't like at all, but tracks like "One Step Up" and "Where You're Alone" are really beautiful.

― Geir Hongro, 12. helmikuuta 2009 0:36

I played this album on the night before my wedding, much to the consternation of my groomsmen.

― Euler, 12. helmikuuta 2009 0:44

Yea, ILX for putting this album on the list.

Good work Tuomas, thanks for this. I'm glad to see my high placing of the Foetus and Big Black albums helped them scrape into the top 100.

87. Pet Shop Boys - Actually (86 points, 8 votes)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8Sc1JvrfFRA/SkcOeMJllpI/AAAAAAAACRU/U7CQwACt4pM/s400/pet+shop+boys-actuallyfront.JPG

Recently put on Please and Actually for nostalgia's sake (I DID grow up in the 80s) and was surprised by how well they held up! Why do New Order get so much indie love while the Pet Shop Boys - a far better band - are comparatively ignored?

― Manalishi, 20. toukokuuta 2007 8:07

Actually is fucking brilliant. Even the songs that shouldn't work ("Shopping", "Hit Music") do.

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), 5. heinäkuuta 2005 16:22

Ik stond laatst bij een concert van Miki Mikron, en die liet de naam Pet Shop Boys ergens bij een introductie vallen. En toen dacht ik: Die moet ik eens een keer live gaan zien.

Disco, Actually en Perspective zijn hele mooie popplaten, en daarna maakten ze me nog vaak aan het lachen.

― Dwars (dwars), 30. toukokuuta 2006 16:05

They were very much thought of as a 'pop group' by people when I went to school. During the year or so when I tried not to like pop music and listen to proper stuff ('87 or thereabouts) the PSBs were very much on the no-go side of the divide. Then Actually came out and I had to admit it was ace and I pretty much gave up on the whole pop-is-bad concept. I think critics started liking them because they were 'intelligent pop' at around that point. Also of course even if the "poppists" disliked the music they all loved Smash Hits so maybe there was a nuff-respect-to-Neil thing going on.

― Tom (Groke), 9. lokakuuta 2002 17:48

So far, only my #7 for Atomizer has placed, but I have a lot of respect for Prince's Parade. "Girls and Boys" is every bit the equal of "Raspberry Beret". I remember the album, however, as an overconcentration of maudlin ballads, that made this (rather than his later double albums) the definitive break in the former Artist's commercial streak. That said, if Parade makes it, so will Confrontation, 1999, Purple Rain, and Sign o' the Times at a minimum. Artist of the Decade. And I didn't vote for a single one of them.

Perhaps I'm the only one that feels about Neil Tennant's voice the way many feel about Bob Dylan's. Whatever merit the backing, or poetry/commentary have, THAT FUCKING NASAL VOICE. Couldn't they have found someone with chords that didn't grate my skin? Sorry, no love for them.

Actuallyis the first of mine to chart. I'm a little dismayed to see it so low - it's worked its way into my brain as a fundamental key to the decade.

Sorry, Ismael, I forgot to post your blurb on Actually:

"This is brilliant - you lose sight of what an unlikely record this is."

I predict vote splitting stops Prince making the top 10.

i dunno. i didn't split my prince votes. tho i didn't place parade, for reasons of consistency mentioned above. but i still had 4 prince albums in my top 15, to try balance out the no-account prince-deficient ballots.

I was actually kind of relieved.

"Raising Hell" just barely got edged out of my final ballot, glad to see it in the results.

86. Pet Shop Boys - Please (87 points, 8 votes)

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_ZC8AWOly7vE/Ruy1GTR3-wI/AAAAAAAAH34/yRmyrXwGXmY/please.jpg

Also, the Pet Shop Boys' first two album titles were conceived as elaborate jokes, as in a customer walks into a record store and asks for "The Pet Shop Boys, Please...." A year later the clerk sees the same customer and asks "You here for the new ... um ...Depeche Mode wasn't it?" The customer says, "No, The Pet Shop Boys, Actually..."

― mottdeterre, 19. marraskuuta 2009 0:37

Up to "Very" their albums got better and better, after which there was a drop in quality

I don't know - it seemed like "Please" had the best songs, followed by "Actually", followed by "Introspective" - I still have those three on cassette. After that I stopped listening to them much.

― o. nate (onate), 14. kesäkuuta 2005 20:58

Voted for Please cuz I heard it most recently, on the strength of "Two Divided By Zero," "Why Don't We Live Together?" and, oh yeah, the singles.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, 6. marraskuuta 2007 14:52

I forgot to put Actually in my list, I think Very and Behaviour are better albums but this is almost perfect. One of those albums where just about every song could have been a single. Rent has to be one of the most perfect songs to ever make the top ten.

i didn't even realise that they put out albums, i always thought they only had singles...

something tells me just-ice won't make the list :(

And that is it for tonight, most likely I'll continue the countdown tomorrow evening. I leave you to comment on #86-#100.

all that psb stuff didn't age well btw, even the singles sound rather dated now. thanks for the great start tuomas, see you tomorrow on the same programme.

this reminds me i never typed up the full placings for the tv poll. will def. do so by the end of the week. good work tuomas.

One of those albums where just about every song could have been a single.

My 3rd-placed record is absolutely like this, and will almost certainly be top 10

If my #1 pick isn't top-5, maybe top-3, I'm going to go on a drunken mod deletion rampage, and encourage other mods to do the same.

Now That's What I Call Music 8?

Now I'm worrying that my #1 is the one that scored no other votes.

mine was cardiacs and so possibly scraped 60 points

but my numbers 2-4 are gonna be high high high

I think my #1 would have got at least another vote. Hopefully it will make the list but I really don't know what is coming. That said, my lol prediction for the top 20:

Daydream Nation
Sign O'
Purple Rain
Doolittle
Surfer Rosa
The Queen Is Dead
Double Nickles
Appetite fo' destruction
Straight outta compton

oh wait, i have no idea what will place or win. some new order maybe?

if raising hell placed so low i cannot see any rap records other than nwa or maybe de la placing high.

It Takes A Nation Of Millions will probably place high, no?

I'm most interested to see what my #2 does - I'd had it down as dadrock for years, but rediscovered it recently as part of a context where it seemed to be attracting goodwill from all men.

I like Technique well enough, but I'll be very disappointed if the top ten is all New Order.

never discount the ilm techno massive

oh yeah, forgot pe.

and their pipecockpuppets

'It Takes a Nation Of Millions' and '3Ft High' both better be in the top 50.

I actually have never heard Tunnel Of Love. I remember seeing it as a BMG selection of the month at the time and thinking, yuck, having been so burned out on Born. I've been looking for it at the library and used.

I kind of think "It Takes a Nation..." is likely to be in the top 10?

of course it will, i just forgot it for a second. i hope eric b and rakim make the top 50 as well, but i'm not expecting like ultramagnetic or anything crazy like that.

I love how us English speakers get learn the days of the week in Finnish from the posts that Tuomas is quoting. Bonus!

Actually I guess those are months of the year?

I had my hopes up about Slick Rick placing, but yeah after Run DMC this low probably not. Feeling the same way about Up On The Sun coming ahead of II too.

of course it will, i just forgot it for a second. i hope eric b and rakim make the top 50 as well, but i'm not expecting like ultramagnetic or anything crazy like that.

EPMD's Strictly Business ought to go Top 50 in a perfect world, it's the best hip-hop album of the decade!

Wow, this was really fast, Tuomas. I opened this expecting it to be a prank thread of some sort.

i gave high marks to 3 the bottom 4 finishers but nothing else i rated has shown up yet. weird. didn't even save a spot for run-dmc or meat pups 2 (shame & horror). love both dearly, but there was so much competition from other sentimental faves y'see and uh...

anyway, here's some blurbs i was too rushed to jot down on my ballot sub:

ROBYN HITCHCOCK - I OFTEN DREAM OF TRAINS
my introduction to robyn came couple years later, with the element of light, fegmania and the live gotta let this hen out. saw him w/ his egyptians on that tour, was converted instantly and for life. i suppose he defines the "cult artist": cerebral, technically adept but self-effacing, clever to the point where it might become grating. but there's something dark and emotionally immediate underneath the surface folly that's always spoken to me. i often dream of trains, a longtime fan favorite, is the ideal gateway drug for the hitchcock-curious, a lovely acoustic showcase for his wit, pop smarts and bone-deep melacholy (avoid expanded versions that stick bonus tracks, like the execrable "mellow together", in the middle, wrecking the album's flow - even the 1st cd edition from 86 is fucked in this regard.)

SPACEMEN 3 - THE PERFECT PRESCRIPTION
at the height of my weed intake (a period lasting a decade or so) i often called this my favorite album of all time. and while i'd be hard pressed to say that about anything these days, the perfect prescription still comes awful damn close. takes the crushing headlong hypno-psych of their 1st lp (a sound that loop would, as everyone says, make a career of) and entirely subtracts the "crushing". what's left is this beautiful pool of sound, clear ringing guitars over miasmic organ tones, narrated by whispering voices on the edges of narcotic slumber. a warm welcoming drone that feels instantly familiar and timeless, appropriate to both sunburned daydreams and candlelit nods. hell, it's as fine a inversion/perversion of rock's formal conventions as anything can or suicide managed, and while i'm glad it placed, i'm kinda bummed it placed so low.

BIG BLACK - ATOMIZER
this has to be the best and weirdest and most influential american post-punk/hc record ever ever ever. ministry and godflesh and young gods and a hundred wax trax floorcrushers owe EVERYTHING to the tools first struck on chicago's finest forges, whether or not they'll admit it. and nobody worked the sarcastic faux-working class tough guy psycho shtick as well as albini circa atomizer, not even killdozer. memorable songs, incredible guitar tones and textures, razor-sharp lyrics and a totally unique sound. i don't pull it out much these days due to massive overplaying once upon a time (hello pixies) but this was about as good a reason to endure life in the mid 80s as was legally available.

IMO Hysteria > Pyromania

Is there any chance it will show up here?

I'm a bit sad that my fav 80's album (Actually) has already charted.

I think Hysteria is pretty much unlistenable so I hope it doesn't beat Pyromania. High 'N' Dry is the real classic.

anyone tells me there were 93 records better than Pyromania release in the 80s is frontin' big time

^^truth

My favorite 80's album, and my #1 vote, has already charted, too (in 93rd place). I'm just pleased that Thomas Dolby made it into the top 100. He's on #94, too, as a session keyboardist.

i guess this means Introspective is gonna be the highest placed PSB album? neat.

Wouldn't surprise me...

p.s. original the perfect prescription cover art, as the taang reissue art is an affront to the eyes:

http://991.com/newGallery/Spacemen-3-The-Perfect-Presc-179681.jpg

I think my #1 would have got at least another vote. Hopefully it will make the list but I really don't know what is coming. That said, my lol prediction for the top 20:

Daydream Nation
Sign O'
Purple Rain
Doolittle
Surfer Rosa
The Queen Is Dead
Double Nickles
Appetite fo' destruction
Straight outta compton

oh wait, i have no idea what will place or win. some new order maybe?

― 9-1 never forget (a hoy hoy)

I'm betting for Stone Roses getting the top place, can't remember if I did vote for it and how high in my list but all of the albums you've got there are quite probably rounding the top scores.

anyone tells me there were 93 records better than Pyromania release in the 80s is frontin' big time

― all yoga attacks are fire based (rogermexico.), Tuesday, 24 November 2009 04:21 (59 minutes ago) Permalink

^^truth

― EZ Snappin, Tuesday, 24 November 2009 04:22 (58 minutes ago)

y'all I know we like some of the same things but in my world there are like 500 albums from the 80's that are better than Pyromania. Maybe a thousand.

pleasantly surprised that The Perfect Prescription, one of my entries, made the Top 100. Nothing's Shocking is also good but really don't know the rest.

great start.

y'all I know we like some of the same things but in my world there are like 500 albums from the 80's that are better than Pyromania. Maybe a thousand.

― sleeve, Monday, November 23, 2009

^^ frontin' big time. i was never even a big fan but that record was as game-changing as thriller.

yeah but c'mon, worlds is different. i'm not saying it's crap, but i've got cheap trick records, motorhead records, SLAYER RECORDS that didn't make my list. not wasting tears over pyromania.

better is not the same as "game-changing", it means there are a thousand albums from the 80's that I prefer and would rather listen to. thought that's what we were voting on, yeah?

xp

little of both for me

I have all of these except for Tunnel of Love and Please, so I certainly can't complain about the choices. I made a playlist with the albums listed so far. What jumps out is the diversity of production styles. Such a wide range of technology in the 80s, and of course aesthetics between Foetus, Big Black, Meat Puppets, Prince, Jane's Addiction, Associates, OMD, etc. They're all ripped from disc to flac, and MediaMonkey's Level Playback Volume option helps, but still jarring going from even the remastered versions of Def Leppard to Meat Puppets.

Having been an adult in the 80s who was actively seeking new music, my goal in coming up with my list was to inclued stuff that I was blown away by, or had a deep emotional connection to, at the time. I haven't had to do too much revisionist thinking -- these still hold up for me. Pyromania belonged to a type of music that wasn't on my radar in the 80s. Will have to give it a listen.

So far two of my lower-charting albums have maded the list: "Atomizer" which at the time was shocking in both its intense hate and its precision (from "Jordan Minnesota" on the record was relentless), and "Nothing's Shocking", a perfect batch of songs that appealed to both the musical aesthetes and the all-purpose partiers...

damn somehow i completely missed the whole nominating/voting stages for this

or was this the one that was in limbo for like 5 years

It was, but we re-kicked it off last month (full renomination process).

mine was cardiacs and so possibly scraped 60 points

erm...I forgot to vote. ah well.

Considering the placings of the Associates, Big Black Parade and Please in particular, this poll is already a sorry fucking joke.

84. (tie) Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine (87 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://www.thefrontloader.com/imagesforblogs/album_covers/nin_prettyhatemachine.jpg

i'll be mr. obvious dude and say "head like a hole". i guess i like him punky. also, i got tired of him pretty quickly, so pretty hate machine is my de facto favorite nin album.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), 5. elokuuta 2006 5:36

Reznor should do soundtracks, production, etc., as others have said.
His songwriting and clear desire to make noncommercial-yet-popular music has been holding him back for years.

Pretty Hate Machine is still amazingly innovative, even if its sound is dated at this point.

― cdwill, 28. maaliskuuta 2005 17:36

i really forgot what a good album pretty hate machine was in places. big chunks of it are funny (in an intentional way) (i think) and yes, alex is right that he's an exceptional pop songwriter when he wants to be. what the fuck happened to his sense of humor? or am i just hearing what i want to, as usual?

― strng hlkngtn, 5. kesäkuuta 2005 0:03

(I'm sorry about the quotes, but it was kinda difficult to find unambiguously positive comments about this album on ILX.)

yo Tuomas is there any chance you could put the year of release in each result? love your work btw!

suppressing the urge to complain

... and there's my first place vote, although that high placing was a bit of a holdover from the 2005 poll's point system, where #1 votes were counting for 3X the points of #2 votes. I'm not saying that PHM is definitely the best album of the 80's (although I didn't discover it until Feb 1990, along with most people I'm sure) but it seemed like it needed my vote more than the other albums in my top five.

you're saying that you take full responsibility

Of course!

Seriously though, I played the fuck out of that album when it was released. I missed the boat on bands like the Smiths (a few years before my time), so PHM was MY soundtrack for teenage angst and alienation, which was helped by the fact that only about four other kids in my high school listened to NIN and even my gf was a bit afraid of me because I listened to this stuff. Good times.

yeah i like it too. :) my favorite nin album by a long shot. didn't make my list, but i aint too bummed that it came in higher than x, y and z things that i love more. them's the breaks.

Yeah, I'm going to try to enjoy the poll and not complain about exact rankings for once (I'll probably fail at this, but at least I'll try). The range of albums I listened to in the 80's was actually fairly limited, and my ballot was a bit boring (= canonical) so I'm really interested to see how this poll turns out.

Re: most friends being freaked out by NIN ... none of the NIN fans I knew were wearing black clothing and eyeliner every day, we were, for the most part, normal kids who just didn't want to hear GnR 24/7. Today it's a bit hilarious to think that the majority opinion considered NIN to be the most screwed-up music imaginable, but anyone who grew up around the same time as me hopefully understands :)

Some short Atomizer threads for further reading:

POLL: Best Song on Atomizer
Best song on Atomizer that isn't 'Kerosene'
BAZOOKA JOE vs. PASSING COMPLECTION

none of the NIN fans I knew were wearing black clothing and eyeliner every day, we were, for the most part, normal kids who just didn't want to hear GnR 24/7. Today it's a bit hilarious to think that the majority opinion considered NIN to be the most screwed-up music imaginable, but anyone who grew up around the same time as me hopefully understands

truth. occupying the demographic middle ground between metalheads, indie kids and electro-pop fans, NIN had really broad appeal.

84. (tie) Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues [1983] (87 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3e/Talking_Heads_-_Speaking_in_Tongues.jpg

some talking heads fans are fond of saying that speaking in tongues was the beginning of the end. while this is certainly not remain in light, it deserves far better than that. matter of fact, i think that it's the closest TH rekkid in spirit to talking heads '77 -- that is, when they were as much about quirky FUN as being innovative (or whatever).

― Eisbär (llamasfur), 19. toukokuuta 2005

I think this is a perfect record.

― On a Strict El Cholo Diet (Bent Over at the Arclight), 19. toukokuuta 2005 7:52

the later albums are good when you're older. like my mom is always listening to speaking in tongues.

― Pablo Cruise (chaki), 28. marraskuuta 2003 7:44

see that's how you do it

I'm betting for Stone Roses getting the top place

No way. I'm hoping for The Queen Is Dead to be No. 1, but I know it won't be.

The Queen Is Dead was the early leader, if I read between Tuomas's lines correctly. I've become much less fond of it as time passes - the bit round the turn just seems weaker and weaker.

I've been working my way through the Talking Heads albums - haven't got to Speaking In Tongues yet, but they're not bad as bands go.

ACTUALLY

though i'm glad it placed - how could it not? - i'm pretty surprised for the low numbers here. only 8 of a hundred or so people even included? i weep for thee, ilm.

this is pretty close to the best american album of the 80s. i put it in at something like #10, in retrospect a hideous travesty of justice but hey i was in hurry. in its pop ambitions, humor, variety and rhythmic drive, it easily eclipses the now more lauded remain in light - the perfect fusion of the dark funk experimentalism of their previous records and the wide-eyed art pop to come.

god i love this record! maybe the first i ever listened to with headphones on, a pen and pad of paper at hand, furiously pausing and rewinding so i could transcribe and understand every word. this when i was about 15, so i call bullshit on this being an old people's record. there is no way in which it fails to rule and i am a goddam chump for not putting it in at #1.

"...surprised for BY the low numbers here."

I voted for Pyromania because of the mood I have been in. Maybe five years from now I will vote for something else. I don't care about filler, I don't care if it isn't perfect. I voted for Billy Idol too and I haven't listened to that album in years. I don't care about "perfect" records, it's all about the representation with me. I'm just voting for Def Leppard because I have always loved them. I've just been in a bad mood, there are too many opinions on the internet, I put this type of music on in the car when my passengers' conversation distracts me.

83. David Bowie - Scary Monsters [1980] (89 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://img11.nnm.ru/b/1/1/7/a/b117aa2b2b6863b0d9d0c65effa7a7fa_full.jpg

The first side of Scary Monsters is near-perfect, but the second side leaves a lot to be desired.

― Jonathan Z. (Joanthan Z.), 17. kesäkuuta 2004 17:06

Seeing that album cover again reminds me of how beautiful it is.

Another vote for the title track, for the outro yelling.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, 3. lokakuuta 2007 1:19

I picked this up recently and I'm loving most of it, but "Ashes to Ashes" stands out because it sounds like 5 different ideas for choruses, any one of which would be the best part of nearly every other artist's songs, lined up, one after another, in a never cycle.

― Z S, 3. lokakuuta 2007 3:41

No, no, no Scary Monsters is Bowies masterpiece. I remember it getting 7 stars in Record Mirror and it's totally justified. It has probably the best sequenced side one of any record ever. Lodger is great of course, but it sounds like a practise run compared to Scary Monsters.

― Billy Dods, 11. toukokuuta 2002 3:00

Okay, that's the first of the things I voted for to show up, kind of surprised it's this low though.

― a dimension that can only be accessed through self-immolation (contenderizer), Tuesday, 24 November 2009 11:57 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what album are you actually on about here?

82. Scraping Foetus off the Wheel - Nail [1985] (91 points, 5 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000NO1T2G.jpg

It had been a couple of years since I'd heard Nail, but today I did.

How the hell did I remember all those lyrics?

HEEEEEEELLLLLLLO operator give me no-man's land
Collect call to no one at all
Been yellin' into an empty closet
To the point of no return and no deposit

killer stuff.

― StanM (StanM), 7. lokakuuta 2006 19:12

its past midnight.
i have listened to melodic indie pop all day to realign my head for weekend festival.
so why is it, before i go to sleep i now have an urge to listen to Nail on headphones.
LOUD.

― mark e, 11. heinäkuuta 2009 2:29

Always loved Hole and Nail...especially Nail. Have had a harder time getting into the others, unfortunately.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), 4. marraskuuta 2004 16:25

jim thirlwell is a hero

Great sleeve art.

great sleeve art.
great album.

81. The Beat (aka The English Beat) - I Just Can't Stop It [1980] (91 points, 13 votes)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_GQtuh1Q_luQ/SNkT326fUtI/AAAAAAAAC8g/WpWosLwFDs8/s400/The+Beat+-+Just+can%27t+stop+it+-.jpg

I didn't find such a thread, but I truly think this is a magnificent album, a 10 out of 10 with any measures.
It's called ska, but very much different from the Specials or Madness.
My favourites are the dashing, post-punk songs like "Click Clock" or "Noise In This World", but there are no weak tracks at all.
And yes, David Steele was the best bassist ever born, at least for me. Also liked the sometimes Byrds-like guitar play of Andy Cox, and of course Saxa is the coolest member of the band.
The other two albums are good also, but not such a big classic as this one.
So am I the only fan??

― zeus, 8. huhtikuuta 2005 1:15

i love the consistancy of sound on this album. probably the darkest sounding ska album ever made!!!

― charleston charge (chaki), 8. huhtikuuta 2005 1:31

That record truly brings back fond memories of my later high school years. M. White is OTM about this being a party record. I used to carry the vinyl to parties with me, just in case.

― kwhitehead (stephen schmidt), 8. huhtikuuta 2005 18:58

^^^ have still never listened to this entire record.

another terrific sleeve

I didn't even notice The Beat on the nominations. I always thought it was late 70s but googling says May 1980.

I don't know what happened to the "Tunnel of Love" cover picture... First it was there, but now I can't see it anymore. If a mod reads this, maybe you could reinsert a pic there?

scary monsters was my #1

Tunnel of Love photo seems to be showing again. Thanks again for doing this, Tuomas. I'm sorry I missed the ballot

in re: pretty hate machine, i first heard it i guess around when it came out, when my girlfriend's roommate pulled out a cassette of it and said, "this guy my mom used to babysit has an album out." we listened to it and we all thought it was overwrought and kind of hilariously abrasive, but we liked "head like a hole." we were all sort of surprised when he became a Big Star.

I got "Pretty Hate Machine" on cassette about a year after it came out. One week later, the tape disappeared and I have never found found out what happened to it. I haven't heard the album since (barring the singles, obv.). I wonder if my Mom threw it out because she thought it was evil or something (this was not typical behavior of my mother, but who knows).

btw Tuomas you shouldn't feel the need to hunt down unambiguously positive comments! just ones that look intersting.

When Pretty Hate Machine came out, my friends and I thought it was fairly tepid in the company of Skinny Puppy, Front 242, and Nitzer Ebb, but I thought the sampling was worthwhile: Reznor supposedly spent a full month listening to Ocora-type recordings to get the tribal chants and background percussion that litter it (as in the "Head like a Hole" intro). With the Adrian Sherwood involvement, Reznor was looking like an American Mark Stewart, and that was promising.

There was universal agreement (among my friends, fellow college DJs who cared about EBM), however, that we hated the teen self-pity angle of the lyrics. Pre-NIN industrial lyrics weren't poetry, but they at least were trying to describe a distopian version of our world some of us felt was immanent. I still like his instrumental work, and Nothing has supported or rereleased artists I adore (Autechre, Coil).

80. Various - The Indestructible Beat of Soweto [1985] (93 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b351/MrClivver/vinyl%20pics/SH105813m.jpg

one of my favorite records evah, but i was once mocked in an IM chat for it, so i don't talk about it in public anymore

― jess (dubplatestyle), 15. kesäkuuta 2003 18:09

That's one of those records that was feted as a classic so often for so long and played so often in various social settings, record stores, etc., that I got a little sick of it and haven't listened to it in years. I'm not even sure I still own a copy. If I want to hear something from that time/place, that's not where I would go anyway (search Boyoyo Boys, Malathini, or Malombo). Nonetheless, I remember it being a lot of fun way back when. I never bothered with the additional volumes; anyone else?

― Lee G (Lee G), 16. kesäkuuta 2003 22:10

the cassette that turned P.S. on is Gumboots: Sax Jive Hits no. 2. I.B. is still no. 1 for me because having listened to a lot of the stuff myself I've never heard anything better, which is not to say "as good"--I play Kings & Queens of Township Jive: Modern Roots of the Indestructible Beat of Soweto just as much. it's all early '70s stuff, faster and more R&B than the first Indestructible Beat, and way more giddy. as Jess sez, the sweet/sourness of TIBOS makes it a bit richer.

― M Matos (M Matos), 16. kesäkuuta 2003 22:28

Nothing I voted for has appeared yet! Not sure whether this means my tastes are so canonical that all my votes will be in the upper half, or so weird that they're mostly out of the running.

Certainly would have voted for Speaking in Tongues in an ideal world but I rate both live records higher (maybe higher than any of their studio albums) and they squeezed it out.

"I Just Can't Stop It" is so perfect.

Nothing I voted for has appeared yet!

Same here, but we're only a fifth of the way in

A friend of Finnish descent with a particularly fine booty had other friends calling it "The Pride of Finland." While I'm sure it's still fine, it's had a good 12 year run, and she would not mind passing on the title to someone else. I nominate Tuomas to be the new Pride of Finland!

If 2 Foetus albums can make the cut, I suspect there's hope for the rest of my selections: the proto-goth/4AD love is strong in these parts.

79. The The - Soul Mining [1983] (93 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/lixnixn/sm1.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/lixnixn/sm2.jpg

Let me just start by saying this album held monolithic status upon it's release back in 1983. It's likely I learned about it from a cable TV program in my hometown of Calgary, Alberta called FM Moving Pictures, which featured a local rock critic and the manager of a record store talking about music, sometimes playing the odd video, more often than not playing a song while a camera zeroed in on the record cover that featured the song that was playing.

Anyhow, I find it odd that from the age of 11 to 13, that this album resonated so strongly with me. During this period, I was also heavily into The Cure and The Smiths, while still dabbling in the top 40, wisely steering clear of the likes of Mister Mister and Opus ("Live Is Life" still makes me want to punch puppies.)

Matt Johnson's self analytical lyrics aside, I think there's incredibly brilliant pop moments throughout Soul Mining. From "This Is The Day" to "Uncertain Smile" (oh that glorious sun streaming through the window in May piano solo courtesy of Jools Holland). And it's likely that my Peter Gabriel fetishism was piqued by Zeke Manyika's African polyrhythms on "Giant".

But 23 years later, I can still put this album on, and I'm floored by the musical invention, the sense of melody, and Johnson's very unique lyrical approach.

What says you?

― Brooker Buckingham (Brooker B), 12. tammikuuta 2006 7:00

astonishingly the original vinyl lp ended at GIANT and not PERFECT the way every cd issue since does.

this may have been the first album i ever heard that showed me there was a world outside of what you heard on daytime radio 1 or read about in SMASH HITS. i was going out with my first ever girlfriend and she had this brother. he had SURFER ROSA. i preferred this.
still do.

matt j went all worthy and shouty on us in later years and
despite me liking them a lot at the time, the subsequent albums don't match up to either their critical appraisal or their status among
the gloomy would-be hip indie types circa 85-89.

i notice GIANT has crept up in balearic circles as a reference point, sort of like a uk BORN UNDER PUNCHES.

why is there no "..seven..." in the countdown at the start?

― piscesboy, 12. tammikuuta 2006 18:17

i am so delighted to see such fond recollections of SM. i worked thruout the peiod of SM and Infected for some bizarre (the company which managed matt at the time). i particularly remember with fondness arranging a kids tv interview which matt and stevo insisted shouls take place at the war room in whitehall; much to everyone's consternation. there was a real sense this album kicked against the prevailing wisdom and i guess this holds true today. i saw matt v recently and he is still writing (unfortunately) without a deal, but he appreciates the love which people have for this period of his work. the only source of bitterness being the availablitiy of the material which is under licence to sony. stevo (the honcho of some bizarre) and matt are real heroes of independent music!!

― alan kaier, 13. tammikuuta 2006 4:07

I was dismissive of Pretty Hate Machine at the time because I felt it ripped off The The. NIN did put on some good live shows, but I still prefer The The.

in grad school a couple years ago, a prof referenced The The and I think he was hoping to seem cool and edgy and whatnot, but all the students just stared back at him with glazed looks, most of them seemingly thinking "what are you going on about, old man?"

^ all our futures

Is the woman on the Soul Mining cover supposed to be Nina Simone?

http://houseofmirthandmovies.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/nina-simone.jpg

there goes my second album (of 30) selected (the first one was meat puppets ii). soul mining should have charted higher. what a glorious album. i am very curious about how many of my choices will make the top 100. 10, 15, 20? i suppose more like 20 as i more or less picked canonical stuff.

thats three albums on which Jim Thirlwell has featured (Frank Want = Jim)
at this rate he will be the ILM 80s icon.

I discovered 'Soul Mining' recently. It's amazing. 'This Is The Day' especially. Not as good as 'Infected' (which wasn't nominated! WTF!) or the recent 'NakedSelf' but probably on a par with 'Dusk'.

I've already posted today about how JGT's cover of ShrunkenMan is epic. He OUGHT to be some sort of icon; he's a genius.

"soul mining" is by far the best album of the the. "uncertain smile" alone is worth more than all other the the albums combined except "blue burning soul" (was that nominated?) but that was originally a matt johnson solo album anyway.

"uncertain smile" is great but i think jools holland wibbles on for just a tiny bit too long

and come on, 'infected'. oh man.

I suppose a few more are coming today, but here's the story so far:

100. Robyn Hitchcock: I Often Dream of Trains [1984] (75 points, 5 votes)
98. (tie) Scraping Foetus off the Wheel - Hole [1984] (76 points, 5 votes)
98. (tie) Spacemen 3 - The Perfect Prescription [1987] (76 points, 5 votes
97. Big Black - Atomizer [1986] (77 points, 8 votes)
96. Associates - Sulk [1982] (79 points, 6 votes)
95. Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking [1988] (79 points, 7 votes)
94. Def Leppard - Pyromania [1983] (80 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote)
93. Thomas Dolby - The Golden Age of Wireless [1982] (80 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote)
92. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Dazzle Ships [1983] (80 points, 9 votes)
91. Run-D.M.C. - Raising Hell [1986] (80 points, 10 votes)
90. Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II [1984] (81 points, 9 votes)
89. Prince and the Revolution - Parade [1986] (83 points, 10 votes)
88. Bruce Springsteen - Tunnel of Love [1987] (86 points, 7 votes)
87. Pet Shop Boys - Actually [1987] (86 points, 8 votes)
86. Pet Shop Boys - Please [1986] (87 points, 8 votes)
84. (tie) Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine [1989] (87 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote)
84. (tie) Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues [1983] (87 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote)
83. David Bowie - Scary Monsters [1980] (89 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote)
82. Scraping Foetus off the Wheel - Nail [1985] (91 points, 5 votes, 1 first place vote)
81. The Beat (aka The English Beat) - I Just Can't Stop It [1980] (91 points, 13 votes)
80. Various - The Indestructible Beat of Soweto [1985] (93 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote)
79. The The - Soul Mining [1983] (93 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote)

and here's a spotify playlist with all the ones on there on it

http://open.spotify.com/user/thomp1985/playlist/7vewFkAlw3bKDbMNziktOF

sadly, no foetus

78. The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy & the Lash [1985] (93 points, 16 votes)

http://www.ifsociety.com/img_upload/records/1661r.jpg

xp I've got a soft spot for the singles ("Pair of Brown Eyes" and "Sally MacLeanne" at the time, right?), but yeah, I'm going for the fast crazy drunken sick-bed opener too. Closest thing on here to Red Roses For Me, which I actually like even more. (This is still a great album, though. 'Twas downhill from here, though the next one was pretty good, too.)

― xhuxk, 26. tammikuuta 2009 22:01

cool, i was going to start a pogues thread because i've been listening to Rum Sodomy & The Lash non-stop all week. classic for its creation of water-tight, perfect aesthetic world, complete on its own terms - ie, for 43 minutes you live in the Pogues version of reality and there isn't a chink of light, no gaps in their vision.

POO is impossible but i'll say 'A Pair Of Brown Eyes' because my girlfriend's in the video! (and it's a classic video too)

― pete b. (pete b.), 13. kesäkuuta 2003 14:59

I adore Red Roses for Me and Rum, Sodomy & the Lash in their entirety and bits and pieces after that, notably "Gridlock" and "Young Ned of the Hill" (both off Peace & Love). Completely lost interest after that. "Church of the Holy Spook" on Shane first solo album is a great, rolicking single, though.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), 14. kesäkuuta 2003 13:08

Re: The Indestructible Beat of Soweto, there's no question that is basks in the reflected glow of Graceland. I think its unfortunate that when Island Records chose a an African musician to promote after Bob Marley's death, they chose King 'Sunny' Ade, who is nice but akin to ambient music, with similar commercial prospects. Had a similar promotional push been made for Thomas Mapfumo, the story of 80s African pop music would be one of Zimbabwe rather than South Africa. Corruption and Nadangariro are fantastic albums that will never see the light of day on one of these lists, and I listen to them far more often than The Indestructable Beat of Soweto.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1EVrKDkyk4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-45xNr-udU

There's a different thread for Youtubes so this one don't get too heavy:

THE ILX 1980s ALBUM POLL CLIPS!!

I'm a bit surprised to see the Pet Shop Boys placing so low. I thought they were big ILM faves. Same goes for Bowie too. It makes me curious to see what's coming in higher.

well personally i used all my socks to vote for tin machine

77. Meat Puppets - Up on the Sun [1985] (94 points, 8 votes)

http://rmangum2001.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/meatpuppets_-_uponthesun.jpg

HEY PETE THIS ALBUM IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN MEAT PUPPETS II

― Mr. Que, 14. toukokuuta 2009 0:14

There's a lot to recommend on this album. It was the first Meat Puppets I heard. Bought it randomly out of the SST catalog insert from a Black Flag cassette.

I'd go with Up On the Sun (the title track, obvs). It was always my favorite, but I saw them play it live twice during their too-brief period of stadiums and basketball arenas in the mid-90s and it was just so huge sounding.

― kingkongvsgodzilla, 14. toukokuuta 2009 15:47

I remember buying "Up On the Sun" years ago - I had no idea what it sounded like or what the Meat Puppets sounded like, it was just cheap and I had money to burn. Suffice to say, that it's one of my favourite albums - and, this is fairly important - every person I ever played it to eventually went out and bought a copy too! Alas, I've never really heard anything by the Meat Puppets that is anywhere near as good - II has some good things on it but it's not in the same league.

― Dadaismus, 24. maaliskuuta 2003 17:58

maaliskuuta, toukokuuta, kesäkuuta

haha so cool so see that higher than II!

January tammikuu
February helmikuu
March maaliskuu
April huhtikuu
May toukokuu
June kesäkuu
July heinäkuu
August elokuu
September syyskuu
October lokakuu
November marraskuu
December joulukuu

I wish people would comment on the albums instead of month names.

That was in my top ten. Couldn't really understand where it was coming from when I first heard it. It didn't sound like a lot anything else SST, and tbh I still haven't heard all that much like it since. Three fried minds getting gloriously baked in the sun.

76. U2 - The Joshua Tree [1987] (95 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://snuffleupagush.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/the-joshua-tree1.jpg

The first half of that album is extremely classic. The second half of the album is a turgid, uninvolving mess.

― Dan Perry, 25. kesäkuuta 2002 3:00

To those who dis the B-side of Joshua Tree, just remember that Eno produced it. Remember Bowie's 'Berlin Trilogy' how the A-sides were all semi-accessible singles and the B-sides were arcane ambient mood music. Joshua Tree is the same way. Straightforward Anthems of the A-side; moody, experimental stuff on the B-side. (Kind of reminds me of a prog-rock Midnight Oil, on qualuudes, especially "Red Hill Mining Town" and "One Tree Hill")
Wow, I didn't anticipate anyone would complain about "Trip Through Your Wires"; People usually get worked up about "Bullet the Blue Sky."

― Lord Custos III, 25. kesäkuuta 2002 3:00

Strange how "Red Hill Mining Town" was one of my absolute favourite song when I was 10 years old. I havent heard it in ages, like the rest of the record. It's classic, without a doubt, although the fact that I now despise U2 and have despised them for a decade now kinda prevents me from really saying anything nicer about the record or the band. That's a strange phenomenon. The Rolling Stones, for instance, released far many more bad records than U2, and made real fucking bad moves etc., but this does not change my undying love for them. On the other hand, my dislike of U2 now has a strange retroactive effect. Does this happen to you sometimes?

― Simon, 25. kesäkuuta 2002 3:00

Organic. Layered. Strained. Quiet. Windy. Dusty. Gone. Heroic. Light. Dark. Classic.

― the pinefox, 15. lokakuuta 2002 23:04

Hate me now, ILM! That right there was my #1 vote.

well at least it's outside the top 75.

the only u2 album i would've even considered -- boy -- wasn't even nominated.

It was somewhere in my top 10 too Johnny. Partly for its cultural impact - it's rare that a record makes a band the biggest thing in the world, and I want to celebrate the ones that do - and partly because that Pogues quote about the album creating its own world applies equally to this, and this world is far stranger.

75. Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual [1983] (95 points, 9 votes)

http://robsrecordscdsdvds.com/Cyndi%20Lauper%20Shes%20So%20Unusual.jpg

the big critical thing at the time was, 'madonna will go nowhere because she can't sing, cyndi lauper will have the long term career' because they were very much seen as doppelgangers when they appeared, with madonna being the 'fake' cyndi. it was in Time magazine. i prefer 'she's so unusual' and 'time after time' to anything madonna's done, but at the same time, in a certain sense, i think madonna had better taste. but i HATE taste, i absolutely despise it, and i love the terrible orchestration and use of synthesizers on side two of 'she's so unusual' so that you have to listen THROUGH the songs, you have to put in an effort, to really cry over 'witness' and so on. some of madonna's early stuff is a bit like that, but basically it's so bland you can become attached to it with an act of will, but not a very difficult one. and as for madonna's later stuff, like kylie's new stuff, it's so french, in such good taste. and of course you like it.

― maryann, 25. heinäkuuta 2002 3:00

I've only heard She's So Unusual, but based on that I'd say classic all the way. If only she'd been Madonna instead of Madonna.
-- Justyn Dillingham

EXACTLY what I was gonna say! Ya just KNOW that in an alternate universe, it's not Madonna but Cyndi who...etc.

Well, the videos are all excruciating, but at least Cyndi had Lou Albano in hers.

-- Ned Raggett

Sorry Ned, couldn't disagree more. I hated "Girls..." and Cyndi herself when I first heard her, mostly because she didn't sound like Black Sabbath. But the video for "Time After Time" was quite moving, and won me over. Utterly Charming & Disarming: The bit right at the start when she awakens her boyfriend by allowing a ceramic dog (modeled after RCA Victor's "Nipper", I think) to "lick" his cheek. And later, in the "She Bop" video, she endeared herself to me all over again with her fairly clumsy (and so what!) top-hat-and-cane soft shoe number. And there was even a little animated bit accompanying the synth-break! I was always fairly indifferent to video - most of 'em were forgettable, which means that I've forgotten them! Cyndi Lauper's videos I never forgot.

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), 12. toukokuuta 2005 12:20

i'll fuck with "time after time" til the end of days

― prostitutes all over the place (k3vin k.), 5. huhtikuuta 2009 8:55

At the wedding reception, Madonna can make your gay friends dance, but Lauper can make your 30-something aunts get on the dancefloor. I vote Madonna.

That's one of my favorite album covers ever, btw.

30-something aunts, eh?
xp

Anybody else still waiting for something they voted for to show up?

Cover shot here?

"Also in 1981, Mark played with Ian Lloyd, (Louie, Louie) highlighted by the Halloween Rock Jam two shows at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico 10/31/81. (Blue Angel featuring Cyndi Lauper, was the opening act for those shows.)"

As for U2, we all lost by not getting the Martin Hannett produced album that would have made the Comsats and Chameleons hide in their bedrooms. Our post-1987 feelings are inextricably tied to how we feel about Bono's public persona - Eno and the band are always quietly competent, but "all bad poetry is earnest".

xp: kornrulez, I'm still waiting. Lots of stuff I'm like "how did I not vote for this?" until I look at what I actually voted for. Cyndi Lauper a good example. Non-vote because: as much as I love the singles, I never owned or listened to the album; I excluded all such records as a means of getting my list down to 30.

I've only had one show up - The Beat - and if we're up to the point of albums getting around nine votes I don't hold much hope of seeing too many of my other choices, the obvious big hitters aside.

I'm still hoping that a lot of the stuff I voted for will show up higher on the list.

On my list of 20 records, there are 10 that are firmly in the canon and will definitely place somewhere. I don't have much hope for the Vulgar Boatmen, though.

U2 and Cyndi were the first things on my ballot to appear. 30 seems like a lot of choices, but it really isn't.

74. Galaxie 500 - On Fire [1989] (96 points, 10 votes)

http://www.maths.dundee.ac.uk/~sanderso/music/on_fire.jpg

On Fire was beyond seminal for me when it came out. I couldn't believe music could be so beautiful. So classic, hell yes.

― Mark, 5. joulukuuta 2001 3:00

They were a classic group!.. but "This Is Our Music" was not perfect... although it had many gems, it was their weakest of the 3.. "On Fire" is perfect... an amazing Lp.. perfect from start to finish.. "Another Day" is amazing!

Damon & Naomi is great and Luna is cool too.. but Galaxie 500 is amazing!

Did you ever see the movie HIGHBALL?.. Dean Wareham is in it and does the music.. He plays Justine Bateman's date... He sings "Frankie And Johnny" kereoke.

― Todd, 6. joulukuuta 2001 3:00

Sundar --

I'm thinking your question deserves a thoughtful reply, so I'll offer this: the value of On Fire lies in the fact that it's surprisingly un-like "slowcore," as that particular genre happened to accrete. "Slowcore" gradually became concerned with its own sonic smoothness: low bubbling organ lines, richly-processed guitars, a pervasive sense of stillness, comfort, a fluffy-pillow phenomenon. On Fire has some resemblances in this sense. But On Fire is one of few records I can think of which are tagged as "slowcore" despite sounding surprisingly real, almost garage -- despite the only processing being reverb, really, and tracks like "Strange" letting you hear the band very much as you'd imagine them sounding in a really large garage. "Slowcore" went for this richness and softness, whereas G500 had a hollowness to their sound that's always really appealed to me.

More importantly, On Fire is not really slowcore, when you get down to it: if you get a chance, go back and listen to "Strange" and notice how really active and passionate it is. (The guitar solo practically makes me imagine fireworks launching.) Quite a bit of the record feels this way to me: what I tend to marvel at is the way three instuments, free of much processing or adornment, lock together to form these fairly dramatic constructions. Hyperbolic as it sounds, the word I'm looking for is probably "glorious." Honestly, the starts of those guitar solos on "Strange" sum it up: they come sweeping in so gloriously.

― [nabisco], 28. joulukuuta 2001 3:00

On Fire was my #31 album. Barely missed my list.

great album, should be higher than a bunch of records i haven't heard coming up.

A friend of Finnish descent with a particularly fine booty had other friends calling it "The Pride of Finland."

YSI?

The only thing so far to appear from my list has been Pet Shop Boys – Please, though I voted for other (i.e., better) Spacemen 3 and Prince albums that I’m hoping will make the countdown. I enjoy the NIN, U2, Talking Heads and Bowie albums as well, but none made my top 30 and I figured they’d get enough votes anyway.

Oh wait, I voted for Please too. I forgot because I ranked it #22 on my ballot, and at that point I was just shooting blind because I'd never truly be satisfied.

how far are you going tonight tuomas?

73. X - Wild Gift [1981] (97 points, 9 votes)

http://dkpresents.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/r-925952-1183073207.jpg

this is embarassing but when I was a kid I'd heard of them but I never actually botherd to buy any of their records until I read 'Less Than Zero' *ducks* the same applies to Elvis Costello *cowers* I was very, very young. Anyhow, the cd with 'Los Angeles' and 'Wild Gift' is on any top x00 cd list I'd ever make, though I do wish I could go back in time and keep Ray Manzarek the hell away from them.

― James Blount, 18. tammikuuta 2003 7:42

Eh I object to both albums being smooshed together like this. So best song off the debut is the title track. Best song off Wild Gift is "We're Desperate." "We're Desperate" gets the vote.

"White Girl" was a contender. But I've never been 100% certain what it was about. 90% certain but not 100. And "Adult Books" always eluded me. The singles scene clearly repulsed them, esp. the one at The Masque. But what's with the Tomata Du Plenty reference?

"Some Other Time" I get, esp. this great line: "This midnight I will/Turn into a beer I will." Perfect way to get John's attention.

― Kevin John Bozelka, 21. tammikuuta 2008 2:59

the double cd of los angeles/wild gift might very well be my #1 DID, if i had such a thing

― ron (ron), 16. tammikuuta 2003 22:59

if that cardiacs album doesn't show up on this i'm gonna regret having missed voting

a little man... i mean

I'll be posting the results up until 71 tonight. Since it turned out I have time tonight but I'm quite busy tomorrow, I thought I'd do 15 today in the case I won't have the time for this tomorrow. I'll try to slow down to 10 albums per day after 71.

Pretty wacky mixture of stuff so far.

Pretty wacky mixture of stuff so far.

True. Yet I like all of it.

That X album was my #5, the highest-placing album from my ballot to have shown up yet. It's become almost a bit too familiar to me through over-playing, but it's amazing how not-dated it sounds. Could have been recorded yesterday.

Alright! I am finally on the board. Thanks X.

This is an astoundingly great record. Their best, but Los Angeles will probably finish higher.

glad to see that nail made it (go foetus) as well as pogues & up on the sun, tho i didn't vote for either.

re a hoy hoy: the album i was actually banging on about ("best american album of the 80s") = speaking in tongues

72. The Chills - Kaleidoscope World [1986] (98 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/46/152406988_d5bad5d319.jpg

I've still got the Kaleidoscope World album on vinyl! God loves me!

― Ozzy Goth Beatles (Bimble), 1. helmikuuta 2009 7:47

Well, well, well. Hello, Selzer. I only know "Kaleidoscope World." Does "Brave Words" sound different than that album? Because "KW" arguably sounds "muddy," but it's got a cool echo-y timelessness to it. I love the reverb drench in "Pink Frost." Goosebumps, man. Goosebumps.

― Ben Boyer (Ben Boyer), 17. lokakuuta 2003 0:31

You are a mean mean mean old man Mr K. CLASSIC, "Heavenly Pop Hit" got me into pop music. That and "STand", I guess. "Lost EP"! Fantastic shit! Kinda stands up the best now I think, tho I could stand to hear the Lps again. My fav band up till I heard the Beatles. My taste ranges far and wide obv... anyway dunno if it's been mentioned but if the Cd of "Kaleidoscope World" has the Lost EP on it (and I think it does) yr kinda fine, yeah get Brave WOrds next... really really weird rememebering how for about 3 yrs they were meant to be Nz's big rockpop hope for Us sales, haha. HAHA cos they synced up w/NIRVANA'S BOOM rather than w/REM's, which might've worked. And they had a better Lp at the time. Oh well.

― 808 the Bassking (Andrew Thames), 28. tammikuuta 2007 9:06

Christ, ILM polls always make me feel embarrassingly unknowledgeable. I've heard maybe five of these. There's some I haven't even heard of.

haven't heard the last 2 but man do they both have great covers

Yeah, The Chills is a total unknown to me, but that cover almost makes me want to listen to them.

Best covers on this thread belong to Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel (who are one of the bands I'd never heard of).

and there goes my third album choice. kiwi indie pop at its finest. a compilation of the early singles and stuff. some of these innocent tunes are too beautiful for this fucked-up world.

That spotify link again for anyone who missed it:
http://open.spotify.com/user/thomp1985/playlist/7vewFkAlw3bKDbMNziktOF

Currently at 254 tracks or 15.5 hours of 80s goodness :)

The Chills are one of my favorite bands that I never listen to enough. But I make that times that I do really count.

(Also, I think this is the fifth album I voted for to make the final list.)

71. Roxy Music - Avalon [1982] (99 points, 10 votes)

http://grungehouse.com/cd_cover/010/lg/Roxy_Music_-_Avalon.jpg

after years of listening to this album at other people's houses (for some reason it has a strange habit of turning up in apartments where i'm staying for some time--this has been true for years) i finally just out and bought this on sale at FNAC.

this strikes me as an experimental album in the older, less voguish sense. a new approach to arrangement above all. it's hard to reconstruct the context in which this album first appeared because we've had 20 years of various forms of rock music and muzak whose aims seem to converge here.... in a way the record seems to embody what it in fact (in part) anticipates...certain musical gestures that now scream (not unappealingly mind) THE EIGHTIES.

what is it about the synth washes and arpeggiated guitar in the chorus of "take a chance with me" that seem so fervently of their time?--and for me both unnerving and a bit exciting for conjuring up an entire world that belongs to my past. it's not really so far from the structure and affect of this song to things like Toto and Sade and other songs that remain lodged in my memory but refuse to name themselves.

as an experiment this album seems to fail--again, in part--a lot of the time. maybe it's that the minimalist gestures--the perfectionism--of the arrangements are often betrayed by melodies that strike me as kind of banal, unimaginative, falling back without due skill on certain overfamiliar ploys. the album escapes this sense of disappointment at certain points in every song, but especially in "more than this" and the title track (though the former much more than the latter) whose structures really work for me...the gauging of expectation that is the crux of pop songwriting is really fine in "more than this" and thus it's very satisfying. the changes propel you through the song but are sufficiently spartan and slow to allow for appreciation of the arrangement. the guitar is particularly nice except for one moment when it seems to get a bit too wanky for me

looking forward to hearing this song in lost in translation

please let's not make this a classic.dud thing as i'm tired of hearing things like "this rocks" etc which seem even more a hopeless abstraction of actual reactions to music than the stuff i've written above

― amateur!st (amateurist), 21. tammikuuta 2004 16:41

The thing that strikes me most about this album is that with the possible exception of Diamond Life by Sade, it seemed to be every hopeless collegiate frat schmuck's means of "setting the mood" for bump'n'grind sessions with doe-eyed sorrority whistleheads back in the mid to late 80s. Surely Roxy Music deserve of a better legacy. Still, a fine album, that notwithstanding.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), 21. tammikuuta 2004 17:01

Avalon is, I think, one of the first albums that sounds so smooth and polished that it leaves the production nowhere to go, no improvements left to make. Through the 60's and 70's, the idea of the studio virtuo was someone who could work beyond the technological limitations of the equipment, but in Avalon it sounds like all the barriers have fallen and the sky's the limit. There's no sharp attack on anything on the record, least of all Ferry's voice. It's my favorite Roxy Music album by far, and a template for all of Talk Talk's subsequent work.

Also, the r&b bass on the title track is fantastic.

― Brian Miller, 21. tammikuuta 2004 18:56

Grooveshark can fill in some of spotify's gaps e.g. http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/album/Pretty_Hate_Machine/140859

That's it for tonight, see you later!

the roxy music album for people who don't like roxy music. the 4th album from my list.

Good work Tuomas.

100. Robyn Hitchcock: I Often Dream of Trains [1984] (75 points, 5 votes)
98. (tie) Scraping Foetus off the Wheel - Hole [1984] (76 points, 5 votes)
98. (tie) Spacemen 3 - The Perfect Prescription [1987] (76 points, 5 votes
97. Big Black - Atomizer [1986] (77 points, 8 votes)
96. Associates - Sulk [1982] (79 points, 6 votes)
95. Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking [1988] (79 points, 7 votes)
94. Def Leppard - Pyromania [1983] (80 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote)
93. Thomas Dolby - The Golden Age of Wireless [1982] (80 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote)
92. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Dazzle Ships [1983] (80 points, 9 votes)
91. Run-D.M.C. - Raising Hell [1986] (80 points, 10 votes)
90. Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II [1984] (81 points, 9 votes)
89. Prince and the Revolution - Parade [1986] (83 points, 10 votes)
88. Bruce Springsteen - Tunnel of Love [1987] (86 points, 7 votes)
87. Pet Shop Boys - Actually [1987] (86 points, 8 votes)
86. Pet Shop Boys - Please [1986] (87 points, 8 votes)
84. (tie) Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine [1989] (87 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote)
84. (tie) Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues [1983] (87 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote)
83. David Bowie - Scary Monsters [1980] (89 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote)
82. Scraping Foetus off the Wheel - Nail [1985] (91 points, 5 votes, 1 first place vote)
81. The Beat (aka The English Beat) - I Just Can't Stop It [1980] (91 points, 13 votes)
80. Various - The Indestructible Beat of Soweto [1985] (93 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote)
79. The The - Soul Mining [1983] (93 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote)
78. The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy & the Lash [1985] (93 points, 16 votes)
77. Meat Puppets - Up on the Sun [1985] (94 points, 8 votes)
76. U2 - The Joshua Tree [1987] (95 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote)
75. Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual [1983] (95 points, 9 votes)
74. Galaxie 500 - On Fire [1989] (96 points, 10 votes)
73. X - Wild Gift [1981] (97 points, 9 votes)
72. The Chills - Kaleidoscope World [1986] (98 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote)
71. Roxy Music - Avalon [1982] (99 points, 10 votes)

Yay, very glad to see the Chills on here.

some very fine writing about avalon there, but i'm wondering how alex in nyc managed to get into every hopeless collegiate frat schmuck's bedroom during those bump'n'grind sessions

critical profile of the chills & clean seems to have risen quite a bit over the last 5 years - in america at least. not sure why this is but i'm happy to see it.

I voted for three of those 30 ('Hole', 'Atomizer' and 'Rum, Sodomy and the Lash'). Not expecting too many of my 30 to appear in the next 70 but you never know.

I haven't even heard a handful of these but I'll try to make a point of giving them a go.

Run-DMC my only vote so far

This is a fine list so far. Many thanks Tuomas.

Wild Gift is my only vote so far.

I must listen to too much music, because I have heard all of these except for I Just Can't Stop It (which I've only heard some of).

This list is inspiring to check out a few names that I've seen floating around in the past but never followed up on: such as Foetus and Spacemen 3.

Yay, happy to see the Chills on there -- it was my #4. Only album I voted for to show up at this point.

Wish something by The Clean had been nominated.

My #22, 27 and 30 have showed up so far. The Chills are a brand new name to me, which is surprising considering the 80s is when I was devouring the most new music.

Amateurist's take on Avalon is dead right, if the tune on the clips thread is at all representative. I like the arrangement, but the vocals are curiously flat. I never paid it any heed on my trips to the library as a teenager - the other Roxy albums always seemed more intriguing for some reason.

Didn't vote for it, but that Chills album is great. For those who don't know it, if you like the Galaxie 500 record, I can't really see you hating the Chills. Same sort of smart, sad indie pop, though a bit less guitar-ish and Velvets-y.

"Wild Gift" is the first from my top 10 to make the list. I love that Exene and John Doe had similar sounding voices and always seemed to be singing at the top of their range. It gave their music an urgent desperate quality. Their sound was completely unique. I can't even think of any bands who tried to imitate them.

I also think "Wild Gift" is their best album.

Up On The Sun rubbing shoulders with The Joshua Tree is a nice contrast. Both going after that desert vibe to some extent, but two radically different results.

For those of you who are going to check out The Chills, you should also look for Submarine Bells, from 1990. That could be their best.

Except for the ultra el cheapo ones, we've had a fantastic collection of cover art.

I'm still shut out! Though I did vote for Talking Heads and the Chills -- just not these albums. (TH live records + "Brave Words") Sort of surprised at all the "Chills, whodat?" In my (weird, I guess) conceptual universe they are loads more famous than Meat Puppets, Foetus, and the Associates, more or less comparable with Galaxie 500.

Same here. I thought The Chills were universally loved among people of a certain age and musical disposition.

Alex in NYC otm I got it on to Avalon a lot and I'm a total douchebag.

Girls tended to favor Sade, and between that and Moon Safari there was a period where the price to be paid for even heavy petting was the "Sadeness Part 1" cassingle on repeat.

LOL auto-reverse

Certainly would have voted for Speaking in Tongues in an ideal world but I rate both live records higher (maybe higher than any of their studio albums) and they squeezed it out. Me too. I've been nearly shut out of the poll so far - I'm guessing I'm going to be crowded into the top picks, which means maybe my ideas about what sounds good aren't so funny, here....

loving this list so far. 3 albums on my ballot have shown up (indestructible beat, on fire & avalon) as well as a bunch i almost voted for and decided not to for whatever reason (soul mining, kaleidoscope world, speaking in tongues, dazzle ships, more). stoked on this, fine work tuomas

so much love & respect for avalon it's not even funny. one of my favorite albums for many years. haven't listened to it in forever, dunno why.

didn't vote for it but am glad you all did.

i have always wished "india" was like 10x longer

yeah, it's kinda criminally short. funny thing about avalon is how much it sounds like something eno would've done - especially on stuff like "india". going in opposite directions, they wound up in the same place.

"avalon" and "more than this" make me feel like molly ringwald in a john huges movie, you know when andrew mccarthy looks at her from across the crowded gymasium and the whole world stops & drains away & the lights begin to whirl and there is no other moment. it's pretty good.

which is the lyrics to avalon pretty much

This is not the time to ask this, but what happened to Odyshape? I didn't see it on the nominations list, but I thought it had been nominated. I probably would have voted for it.

oh hey yeah. i think I nominated it! and almost certainly would have voted for it. boo on no odyshape!

do over!

odyshape should just share honorary #1 status w whatever wins

What happened was that the Raincoats s/t album was disqualified (for being from 1979), but then Fastnbulbous mentioned Odyshape after the nomination period was over.

Honorary joint #101 status more like. x-post

okay. i lied. i talked about odyshape on some other thread. didn't nominate it here. no one did. :(

instead i nominated a bunch of crap that's worse than odyshape. diamanda galas feh. :(:(:(

i was so wanting to take credit for that.

damn i thought 'odyshape' was a given on this thing. definitely deserves a placing.

and xpost- it IS criminally short! a great segue-track but it could have been so much more

x-post

Yeah, I would have voted Raincoats over Litanies to Satan (with all due respect to Galas as a live performer). Of course, I could have sacrificed one of my four salsa nominations that probably nobody else voted for.

ha - one salsa album would have been more canny. with 4 you risk vote splitting among contentious ilm salsa massive.

70. Laurie Anderson - Big Science [1982] (99 points, 11 votes)

http://wfs.velvet.jp/80s/img/laurie_anderson_big_science_82.jpg

a couple years ago someone who swears by it and grew up with it convinced me to buy this blind, and for a while it was just off-puttingly 'conceptual' and all that. but slowly, it's crept up on me. it really works late at night when you've been up a long time and are starting to get loopy, but aren't ready to put on something "mellow" yet.

the breakthrough definitely came when I realized that I was anticipating "Example #22" instead of wincing through it. now it's fun! still not wild about the spoken bits, but "Born, Never Asked" is great.

"Sweaters" is just almost this tremendous pop song, I kinda want to cover it and normalize it. "O Superman" has all the entrancing qualities of really good house music without all the big thumping beats distracting you from the good stuff.

then again, I might be just going through a momentary change of heart because I'm up all night working on a paper and it's just suddenly clicking with me. i dunno.

― Al (sitcom), 23. huhtikuuta 2003 8:40

Hmm. I've got mixed feelings. My instinct is to say CLASSIC!!! because Laurie Anderson is awesome, and she's totally hot (even in her fifties), and "From the Air" is ridiculously good (one of my mix-tape faves), and I love that "O Superman" became a hit in the UK, and the album cover is gorgeous. But I also think that "O Superman" is too long -- it only starts to get good toward the end -- and a couple of songs seem a little too fragmented, or don't follow through on their potential. Still, better than her late eighties stuff.

― jaymc (jaymc), 23. huhtikuuta 2003 17:24

Ha, dude, don't worry about it, I'm just being picky. Your opinion itself makes sense, I guess -- sounds like you just think it's too static, and want more variation.

I don't recall the repeating syllable "thickening" anywhere (though there are a couple moments where it gets put on a short on-beat delay, so that the rhythm skips forward a bit) -- what happens at the end is that a big dark synth line starts playing counterpoint on bass! During the "your ____ arms" part. That's kind of the "payoff," I suppose.

If you ever get sucked into real close listening to this, you may (or may not) find that the minor embellishments throughout wind up providing the variation you're looking for -- or anyway, for me, it's stuff like that moment of delay, or the dollop or birdsong, or the weird asymmetry of the little synth arpeggio that comes ... those are the things that provide constant change and interest, to me.

― nabisco, 26. joulukuuta 2007 21:16

Big Science is the first album I voted for to show up, btw. When the voting was on, for quite a while it looked like it wasn't gonna place in the top 100, but it had an upsurge towards the end.

haha funny to see the thread i started about that album all those years ago quoted there. i haven't listened much to Big Science since then but I still found room for it on my ballot, pretty neat record.

I love how this album slows synth pop down to a contemplative mode, which makes you appreciate those sounds in a different way than with more upbeat stuff. And despite the artsiness it never really sounds indulgent.

Would have voted for the amazing _Home of the Brave_ if it had been nominated. I had no idea anything like this existed until I saw this movie and I was shaken for a month afterward.

as someone who contributed to that upsurge i gotta rep for this record here - albeit that 'from the air' and 'o superman' are the standouts...the last two tracks are a REALLY strong closing pair and cement this as a totally sweet record, rather than a decent art-pop album with two massive hits

Oh man "It Tango"

Another awesome album cover too, I think.

^^^yes

Another one of mine, too - although actually I've always felt it patchy, but it gained a high placing on my ballot because the tracks that are great are truly awesomely astounding (and other superlatives). Not been on heavy rotation for a couple of years, so maybe I should give the other ones more of a try again.

I'm also still surprised that On Fire is so low - I'm assuming that's because others are coming up higher, but maybe I'm wrong about that?

69. Scritti Politti - Cupid & Psyche 85 [1985] (100 points, 7 votes)

http://www.lpcd.de/10/F1616_01.jpg

I just realized like a bolt: Scritti Politti (well, C&P 85, all I've heard) invoke in me the very same, very strange, very difficult-to-articulate sense of strangeness and wonder that Steely Dan do! I want to explore this a little further when I have more time and mental energy, but what do you all think of this comparison?

― Clarke B., 13. marraskuuta 2002 10:43

"Cupid & Psyche" is one of the greatest albums ever recorded. I second (or third) the qualitative comparison with Steely Dan - there's a similar "sheen" to the music and an almost obsessive workmanship they share. Indescribable, really. I never warmed up to "Provision", though. (I think Miles is an over-rated prick so maybe that had something to do with it.) I'll have to gove it another listen. I still haven't heard any of the the early Scritti stuff or "Songs to Remember".

― Larry Tremblay, 11. marraskuuta 2003 23:02

cupid and psyche is one of my favorite albums ever. it's so bright and shiny and capitalist sounding. it reminds me of nyc for some reason. every once in awhile i'll pull it out and it turns into a brief obsession of superlatives in my head. i haven't heard any other scritti albums though.

― basquiat (disco stu), 28. helmikuuta 2005 1:40

I missed lyrics like I'm in love with a Jacques Derrida / Read a page and know what I need to / Take apart my baby's heart / I'm in love

Much as I love Songs to Remember, love it the most in lots of ways, Cupid & Psyche 85 is so far ahead of it. Green didn't have to sing about Derrida once he'd found a way of making his records deconstruct themselves even as they dazzle and shine.

I don't know anything about Scritti Politti. Records deconstructing themselves sounds interesting but also sounds like work to listen to (I'm sorta joking but only sorta). Is this album a jam?

It's a total jam.

I am never sure how seriously you should read Green's interest in post-structuralism into his music, but he definitely uses the playful aspects of it to take the piss out of himself and the listener even at the same time as he's making you groove/cry.

I'll pick it up, then!

Would have voted for the amazing _Home of the Brave_ if it had been nominated.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Same. Big Science has never felt to me like a standalone and I had trouble voting for the Reader's Digest version. But I'm glad 11 of you could look past that. I might actually have voted for Mister Heartbreak too if it had made the list.

glad to see Nail placing, anyone who is interested in the studio side of Foetus would be well off seeking out Thaw, and if the more brutal heavy side is what appeals to you, the live official "bootleg" Rife (which is basically Foetus backed by the Swans) is AMAZING. Foetus live (back in the day, not so much now) was a scary intense thing.

Big Science is totally sequenced as its own thing and tbh I prefer those songs in that context.

official version of Rife = double cd MALE.
easier to pick up i suspect.
intense stuff indeed (story re blood & crowd bashing @ london gig buried on another thread)

ive had a running argument w/ former ilxor fluffy bear about whether MALE or RIFE is better. I prefer RIFE, and he is wrong.

totally listened to Damp the other day and yes that ShrunkenMan cover is IMMENSE along with pretty much everything else there but that is late-era foetus so JJ and I are gonna probably fall out ;_;

mind you the early stuff gets better with every listen

the new stuff is fine, i just prefer the direction hes taken with steroid maximus to any of the foetus branded stuff - the newer foetus always sounds a bit forced to me, although yeah there are some gems in there no question

i forgot to mention this yesterday but this

I was dismissive of Pretty Hate Machine at the time because I felt it ripped off The The. NIN did put on some good live shows, but I still prefer The The.

― Fastnbulbous, Tuesday, November 24, 2009 4:43 PM (Yesterday)

totally baffles me. am i missing the comparison here, because i dont hear it at all

meaning the first sentence obv

al jourgensen's The The

can't believe I forgot to vote in this

yeah can me and curtis just make some votes in the thread or what

sure!

actually i would be v v curious as to what you guys would have voted for

sign of the times and double nickels on the dime

guessing those will both be top ten, maybe top five? worried that ilx will snub the minutemen into the top twenty tho

68. New Order - Power, Corruption & Lies [1983] (100 points, 16 votes)

http://www.worldinmotion.net/neworder/discography/albums/1983/PCL.jpg

It was the first album I ever heard by them and is still my favorite by far. In many ways it's their most unique album because they don't sound shackled by their JD roots anymore but at the same time they haven't developed NO pop blueprint yet either. I'd really like for them to make another record like this, where they're basically just fucking around. 'S.T.R.E.E.T.D.A.D.' by Out Hud gives me a bit of a PCL fix.

― Scott Warner (thream), 12. lokakuuta 2006 17:34

I love the record. Why? Because of the way the sloppy playing humanizes the programmed stuff. Because of the way the perfect melodies mesh so well with the loose fiddling with the nascent technology. Because of the hint of optimism that shows up, esp. in light of its predecessor. Because of Steve's frenetic but slightly less tribal drums. Because of the way, to this day, I'm still not sure how it was made, or how these songs came from the same band that made "Movement." Similarly, because the band caught near-death crapping through that live NYC performance recently released on DVD more or less went right back into the studio and came up with something as vibrant and beautiful as "P, C L."

Etc.

― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), 12. lokakuuta 2006 18:32

another odd memory of that record -- when i got it, it must've been 1986; i would have been 15. i had discovered new order from "low-life," which was their current album at the time. (i heard "the perfect kiss" somewhere, god knows where, and bought the album.) but when i got "power corruption and lies," somehow it felt like i was reaching back into the distant past; somehow i was very aware that i was hearing the document of a band that didn't exist (like that) any more. why was that? it was only three years since "power, corruption and lies" had come out, and if anything i suspect the pop world moved more slowly then. somehow, in my mind i was listening to a document that seemed beamed into the future from some faraway point in new wave history, when in reality it was a pretty contemporary record. as i sunk deeper into goth/new wave stuff, 1981-83 was generally my favorite period, and somehow it seemed so far away, like i was terribly inauthentic to be this kid from portland, oregon who only discovered the music through, like, "head on the door" in 1985.

do kids like this feel this way? will some 15-year old buy M.I.A.'s next album, and then go back and, discovering "arular," consider it some kind of benjaminian angel of history?

(oddly, in much the same way, i still can't help but think of "brotherhood" as "that new new order album," since that's how i thought of it when it came out -- the first of their records i knew about in advance of its release. i was now IN THE KNOW and boy, did i cherish that status.)

― philip sherburne (philip sherburne), 12. lokakuuta 2006 19:32

wow, that is way lower than i thought it would be

the empire is crumbing

actually i would be v v curious as to what you guys would have voted for

since I didn't vote and my list will have no bearing on the results I'm just gonna post it here:

(unordered)
Bauhaus - Mask
Bauhaus - In the Flat Field
The Chameleons - Strange Times
The Chameleons - Script of the Bridge
The Chameleons - What Does Anything Mean? Basically
The Cure - Disintegration
The Cure - Faith
Depeche Mode - Construction Time Again
Depeche Mode - Black Celebration
Echo & the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain
Echo & the Bunnymen - Crocodiles
Brian Eno - Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks
Brian Eno / David Byrne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Eric B. & Rakim - Paid In Full
Michael Jackson - Thriller
The Jesus and Mary Chain - Psychocandy
Joy Division - Closer
Killing Joke - What's THIS For...!
Kraftwerk - Computer World
The Legendary Pink Dots - Asylum
N.W.A - Straight Outta Compton
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Architecture & Morality
The Passions - Thirty Thousand Feet Over China
Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Simple Minds - New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)
The Sisters of Mercy - First and Last and Always
The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead
Spacemen 3 - Sound of Confusion
Thomas Dolby - The Golden Age of Wireless
Tones on Tail - Pop

I probably would have bothered to order it if I voted

People who did vote, please don't start posting your ballots yet, as that might give off the results. You can post them once the list is finished.

Every 80s New Order album was nominated, so Power, Corruption and Lies's position suffered from serious vote splitting. I still expect a top-15 placement for Substance.

The Chills are great btw, thanks ILX.

totally baffles me. am i missing the comparison here, because i dont hear it at all

― NAKES HAVE THE STAPLES IN THEM (jjjusten), Wednesday, November 25, 2009 4:34 PM (34 minutes ago)

It's true that Ministry is a far more obvious influence on NIN, but listen to Infected again. It's a less obvious, minority opinion for sure.

Crutis, what is your opinion on Double Nickels, y/n/never heard/etc?

67. Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes [1983] (101 points, 12 votes)

http://www.bentclouds.com/violentfemmes.jpg

"Blister in the Sun" has gone down a very, very unfortunate path w/r/t cultural connotations.

That said, I'm willing to go on record as believing that that first record is both a classic and a landmark, the most accurate and eloquent expression of geeked-out pissed-off awkward maladjusted unpopular teenaged-boy-dom in the history of recorded music. What will forever boggle my mind is how, over the years, the band was adopted as a novelty act for precisely the sorts of people who should have had the least experience of that phenomenon; no cultural juxtaposition is quite as criminal as hearing "Kiss Off" coming through the window of a frat house rather than a weedy teenager's rusted-out compact car. It's also worth noting, in rockist terms, how utterly on that record was, from the tight, blazing performances to the thoroughgoingly perfect honesty and realness and this is what we're saying and that's just it-ness of it. It's pathetic and it's snotty and defiant about being pathetic. It is basically hip-hop for frustrated, socially irritable suburban kids.

The rest of the catalog wavers steadily downward -- the older they get, the more you're forced to read them as a novelty -- but I'd submit that records like Why Do Birds Sing are worth taking seriously.

― [nabisco], 8. tammikuuta 2002 3:00

"...the band was adopted as a novelty act for precisely the sorts of people who should have had the least experience of that phenomenon; no cultural juxtaposition is quite as criminal as hearing "Kiss Off" coming through the window of a frat house rather than a weedy teenager's rusted-out compact car."

This is very deeply wrong. The point is that the most splendid and muscular king of the prom has felt, thought, and said the same things as do the people on this record. It is everybody's property.

Very good case for at least 5 songs here but I will go with "Prove my Love" for the "AWWWWWW" right before the title is sung.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), 5. marraskuuta 2007 5:22

Great album to have sent to you in the summer of 1983 by your friend who taped them on cassette over the taped Gerald Ford speech he received from going to Boys Nation (I was the alternate and didn't go). This was backed with Fleshtones; other cassette had dB's hits and a selection of songs from Murmur and Reckoning.

Freshman year of college, punk girlz were hanging out in line singing the intro to "Blister in the Sun," I came in with the handclaps, immediately was in with whole punk set for four years.

― Dimension 5ive, 13. marraskuuta 2007 4:21

Crutis, what is your opinion on Double Nickels, y/n/never heard/etc?

I have never heard the Minutemen iirc

I think Violent Femmes must be mostly an American thing...? Wikipedia says that album sold platinum in the US, but the only place I ever remember hearing them is The Crow soundtrack.

i'm American and they're awesome. and "Blister in the Sun" gets played on my local alt-rock radio station as much as like Stone Temple Pilots

i'm American and they're like kryptonite for the ears.

Cool. Violent Femmes is only the second off of my ballot to show up (along with Run-DMC). I voted for a ton of canonical stuff, tho, so it's going to be interesting to see if any of them don't make it.

As far as hearing them, Violent Femmes was a pretty formative album when I was in high school--and that was 94/95. I think that they go through waves of popularity. I'd stumbled onto the album after seeing how many of their songs showed up on KROQ's top 500 list--I think "Blister in the Sun" might have even been #1.

A couple years ago, at Lollapalooza 2006, the Femmes were playing opposite one of Sleater-Kinney's last shows. I'd felt obligated to watch Sleater-Kinney, but the show was boring as hell, so 20 minutes in I ran all the way across Grant Park to catch the last bit of the Femmes' set. One of the best decisions I ever made. They were rockin it, with a full horn section, enthused to be playing for their home town. People were dancing their asses off. It was great.

Album came out in '82, though, according to the band's website: http://www.vfemmes.com/discography.html

thought they were from wisconsin.
xp

Oh, that's weird. AMG, Wikipedia, and discogs.com all say it came out in 1983.

Yeah. The only reason I know that is 'cause I did a Best of '83 thing a couple of years ago and ended up excluding it. At that time, I think wikipedia had it as '82 too. So, who knows. Release dates are so slippery. Acclaimed music has it as '82 as well.

My ballot is looking increasingly "strategic" as this progresses, only one has turned up. And were I entirely true to my teen self, Violent Femmes would have. The debut was my (suburban north american) version of '77 punk. I weaned myself off of hand-me down cassettes of Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull with a single, much worn, copy of this album. Its so much a part of the fabric of those years, yes blared out the windows of my first rusted car before parental curfew, that I seriously wonder how any of us 30 somethings can get critical distance.

xp mizzell: the album had its roots in street busking by the trio on the pedestrian State Street near the U Wisconsin campus in Madison. When I arrived there 20 years later for grad school there were still hopefuls busking on the weekends in the same places.

Hm. I guess they were from Milwaukee, but they were definitely talking about Chicago as their home town at that show--maybe it was just home base for a while.

I grew up in the 80s, and had all the REM, Replacements and Husker Du records. But I never even heard a single song by the Violent Femmes till much later. Nobody listened to them in my New Jersey high school, even the proto-goths/alternative girls who liked Bauhaus and The Cure.

66. Prefab Sprout - Steve McQueen [1985] (104 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000NJLPYI.jpg

Although Wendy Smith's angelic voice was sometimes a bit too much for my liking, I'd still say classic. Steve McQueen! And how can you not resist singing along about jumping frogs?

― Stevie Nixed, 27. huhtikuuta 2001 3:00

so did I!

I also did not learn until recently that the line in "Faron Young" is "as obsolete as warships in the Baltic"...(I had thought it was something like "as obsolete as Washington's contacts", whatever the hell that might mean)...

speaking of lines, the whole "turkey-hungry, chicken-free" thing keeps me from voting for "Moving The River"...

were any of you NOT between the ages of 18 and 26 when this record came out?...I have a hard time believing that this could strongly connect with somebody who wasn't college-age at the time, but then again, "kids today" still go through Beatles phases...

― henry s, 22. heinäkuuta 2007 19:27

I really loved 'Steve McQueen' and 'Cars & Girls' .. but I just haven't been able to get into anything else ... I really want to too - because Steve McQueen is 'simply amazing' (a phrase that will undoubtedly show up on the cliches we love to hate thread) - and maybe it's that high standard that's kept me from liking much else...

― dave225 (Dave225), 9. tammikuuta 2003 20:04

This is as British as Violent Femmes is American.

except I'm american and was the only one to have it at number 1.

didn't include violent femmes on my ballot for no reason at all. thought about that in passing yesterday and concluded that they must not have been nominated. i guess i just missed them - this record would have been an easy top 10 finisher for me if i HAD noticed it. anyway both nabisco and eephus otm up there - it's about as perfect a summary of what it feels like to be young and weird (and horny and pissed and whatever else goes along with that) as anyone's ever come up with. at least as good as surfer rosa in that regard. and the tunes are great, and the mostly acoustic sound is rich & warm, and they're always doing interesting little things in the margins of their tunes, making them feel real and alive and happening-right-now. there is no better feeling that music can provide than being 16 and singing along to "add it up" REALLY FUCKING LOUD as you drive around town late at night with a carload of other teenagers. unless it's doing the same thing to "bohemian rhapsody", i dunno.

and i'm so damn glad that big science made it! a top 10 record for me, one i didn't get into until a couple years after punky teen angst stuff like the violent femmes. i bought it for the cover i think, and it baffled me almost entirely. there were parts i liked, but i just didn't get it. i didn't understand how anyone could like it or consider it "good music". but i couldn't quite let it go, either. over a period of a year i kept going back to it, playing it every few months out of perversity or curiosity or maybe just the hope that i hadn't wasted $7.99... and one day it just clicked with me. it no longer sounded like a bunch of weird art abstractions, it sounded like music - lovely, eerie, ethereal music. even sexy, in creepy & cerebral sort of way. the sort of music a cold clear night would listen to when there weren't any people around to bother it. in its ultimately rewarding inaccessibility, it became the template for how i'd approach music for years to come, always looking for the thing that seemed hardest to grasp. a bunch of folks seem to view it as a couple big hits and some filler, but i think it's an almost perfect album from start to finish. "big science", "walking and falling", "born never asked" and "let x=x/it tango" are just as as strong as "o superman" and "from the air".

ok heres my ballot plz recalculate VERILY, IT'S THE ILX 1980s ALBUM POLL VOTING THREAD! Voting ends on Sunday, November 22nd. thx

oh wow this thread is already going!!! ack! ten a day is WAY too many, i will never be able to keep up with anything. But thanks again Tuomas for doing this, it looks like a really interesting list so far and I'm looking forward, when I have the time and fast Internet, to checking out some of this stuff, because so far I only really know one or two things on the list. Big Science is so great but I don't have the energy right this second to explain why. The way she says, "Thanks for showing me your swiss, ar-my KNI-EEF!" probably sums it up - it's this bizarre intersection of affected art-school oddity, robotic distortion, and a pure human vulnerability at the bottom of it. And that's really just the SOUND I'm responding to - I've never really gotten around to understanding/responding to this whole thing as an art piece or product of its time/scene, etc. - there's just something in Anderson's delivery that really clicks with me. Also feels weirdly contemporary, and not just because autotune makes everything sound kinda like this - - - the same overlap of robot and beating heart shows up in "Umbrella" for example.

Well. Looks like we're going to have to start over.

I got a tape of Violent Femmes winter 1983/84 of my freshman year of h.s. Perfect timing. Learned that some 20-somethings either never outgrew their 14 year-old pubescent sexual frustration and angst, or that perhaps they made it for us. And also that Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers felt the same things a decade before.

I had a promo cover of Steve McQueen/Two Wheels Good on my wall that I got for free at the record store, but I hadn't actually heard it until college. I probably wouldn't have liked it when I was 15.

Laurie Anderson was the perfect inspiration for my undergrad post-structuralist wanking. At the risk of eternal embarrassment, here it is: Laurie Anderson & Feminist-Postmodernist Representations: Can oppositional avant-garde performance make a difference in mass culture?.

65. Donald Fagen - The Nightfly [1982] (105 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://www.5piste1.fi/WebRoot/Kaupat/Shops/5piste/4676/9764/B3A1/F991/73A0/C0A8/071D/C833/nightfly_0020_iso.jpg

this album (1982 i think) gets forgotten because the new steely dan narrative is "whoa they didn't make an album for 20 years what WERE they up to?"

but i like it a lot. it's supposed to be about a kid in the suburbs (long island), just about to graduate high school, for whom the radio and records serve as stray enticing bleeps from a distant satellite a.k.a. the big city. the nightfly himself is a late night radio dj who is the epitome of nyc sophistication. fagen appears as the n.f. on the cover. on the back cover there is a gorgeous photo of a block of bungalows in the middle of the night. but one light is on--presumably it's the kid, up listening to the radio.

the album manages to evoke this scenario and all the levittown associations perfectly without being especially retro (excepting the cover of "ruby baby" and the closing tin pan alley-styled song) and more significant without resorting to satire at all, or irony. there is an affection. but even that is muted. the presentation is almost clinical, not especially cynical or cruel, just clinical. detached. it's actually quite an achievement i think to conjure up a world that's been so worked-over with ironic and mythic appropriations and present it in this fashion.

i think this album should be in every s.d. fan's collection. i don't know about his follow up, kamarkiriad (sp?).

― amateurist (amateurist), 3. heinäkuuta 2003 10:47

oh it's straight classic all right - "The Goodbye Look" was playing in a freaking airport I was passing through a month or so ago and I laughed my ass off since it's a song about destabilizing countries where airports are often sites of huge uglinesses i.e. this is a song where the protagonists may or may not be terrorists

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), 3. heinäkuuta 2003 16:34

Steely Dan released several great albums, but "The Nightfly" was better than any of them. Donald Fagen is one of those rare cases of major group leaders who break up the group and then go on to release an even better solo albums.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), 14. maaliskuuta 2006 0:54

Someday, I'll start a thread about songs like "I.G.F." (International Geophysical Year, 1957-1958), nostalgia about an era when progress seemed inevitable. The audio equivalent of watching the Jetsons. I miss modernism.

Great record. I loved the video for New Frontier. Hard to believe now, but for a time that saw heavy rotation on MTV.

Steve McQueen is such a great album but I can't play it without skipping Horsin' Around it spoils an almost perfect album. I love Swoon too but the jump in quality from that to this is really impressive. It's a shame they peaked so early really.

63. (tie) Tom Waits - Rain Dogs [1985] (106 points, 12 votes)

http://bigearflux.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/rain-dogs.jpg

see, i ignored it as it was lacking the darker ballads of swordfishtrombones, franks wild year, alice, etc. then i discovered how great "singapore" and "clap hands" are and now i think overall it's one of the very best. That said the "big three" of Tom's early 80s career blend together so well it's very hard to tell which is best.

― dog latin (dog latin), 23. huhtikuuta 2004 1:59

This is one of my favourite albums ever. I haven't listened to it for a while, but it is pretty much perfect apart from a couple towards the end - but then it redeems itself a million times over with "Anywhere I Lay My Head". I love "Time" and "Tango Till They're Sore" and "Clap Hands" especially. He sounds drunk throughout.

― The Lex (The Lex), 23. huhtikuuta 2004 2:06

I remember hearing this album at age 12 and having my mind blown. I had heard some of his 70s stuff before courtesey the weirdo hippy guy down the street, and I knew Rod Stewart's version of "Downtown Train." But I was completely baffled and awed by Rain Dogs. Within two months I "acquired" four or five other TW albums, but this one remains that magic moment, probably rivaled only by the first time I heard Lou Reed's Transformer, where I could see infinity. In terms of musical possibility.

― Huck, 23. huhtikuuta 2004 5:37

^^^^
Would've been in my top three had I voted.

rain dogs another album that opened a lot of doors for me, re: initial inaccessibility that eventually revealed wonders. didn't include it cuz i'm not much of a waits fan anymore, but i should have - it's splendid, much better than a lot of what i DID pick.

idea that it lacks great ballads baffles me a bit. "hang down your head", "time", "downtown train" and "anywhere i lay my head" = some of waits' best. "union square" always cracks me up, too. like the exile-era stones at the tail end of a crippling speed and booze binge, falling off the rails but still rocking like a bag of greasy lemurs. keef on guitar!

I absolutely love the haunted fairground vibe of the first half. Wish more people would attempt a sound like that.

Even though I've known for a long time that's not actually Tom Waits on the cover of Rain Dogs, I still always think it is when I first look at it.

i'll be goddamned

http://www.galleribalder.com/imgs/gallery/6122/6122_142013358648a059a9bdf22.jpg

"Lily and Rose", 1969
Anders Petersen

Def. the best Waits album, and just hugely important to me at the time; but didn't vote for it cause I never really listen to Waits anymore.

His '80s and '90s music was definitely more challenging, and because I'm old and boring now I tend to gravitate back to the '70s albums.

63. (tie) Cocteau Twins - Treasure [1984] (106 points, 12 votes)

http://vox2.cdn.amiestreet.com/album-art/Treasure-by-Cocteau-Twins_57075_full.jpg

I changed my mind back again - the odd track mixed in with some other stuff is great, a whole album unbearable. Too cloying - too samey. They're a gnat's chuff away from grateness on a maybe half a dozen tracks - the one off Treasure (Lorelei? I never remember the silly titles)which couples a soaring breathy Liz with a kinda Glam stomp in slo-mo is damn near close to perfection. If Guthrie's production could have mixed the cotton woolly maximum flange which he uses all the time with an occasional sharper focus it would sound 100 times better. Contrast, see?

― Dr.C, 12. joulukuuta 2001 3:00

TReASURE!!! GORGEOUS 4AD OUTDATED DRUM MACHINE SOUNDS YEAH!!! BAYBEE

There is no reason for anything as holy as "Persephone" to exist in a godless world. There is just no fucking reason. I'm speaking as a
perplexed atheist. I mean, maybe you just had to be there to understand how fucking amazing that sounded at the time. Is there anything like that song on this earth? Where?

― Bimble, 30. maaliskuuta 2008 11:57

blount this is the thing, my wife and I are here listening to Treasure and what's most stunning about it is how original it is/was. I actually don't know how much Kate Bush is in there - at this point, Bush had released, what: Kick Inside, Lionheart, the Dreaming & Never Forever only I think. I guess yeah some of the more esoteric Siouxsie shit. But just as an old dude, the thing I remember me & all my friends thinking was how from-outta-nowhere this shit was. I guess maybe it sound like they'd been doing lines & listening to Japan and wishing they could dance to it more though. Bowie instrumental shit too maybe.

― J0hn D., 7. huhtikuuta 2008 0:15

the waits album where it clicked for me was "nighthawks at the diner". and i have listened to most of them. the relaxed live atmosphere and his hilarious rants make that album. absolutely phantastic to smoke weed to.

i seriously dislike treasure. but i love heaven or las vegas and garlands. not only does treasure sound dated in a bad way but i find the tunes weak and annoying.

Treasure was number 5 in my ballot, but I don't dare listen to it these days in case the mystique has worn off. No way are the tunes weak though. "Ivo" and "Lorelei" have tremendous melodies.

not only does treasure sound dated in a bad way but i find the tunes weak and annoying.

treasure has the best tunes of any cocteaus album!!

Treasure was my #16, but the Cocteau Twins were bar none my favorite band of the decade. Numerous well regarded US-based reviewers described them as "aural wallpaper", but their series of lps and eps stretching from Sunburst and Snowblind (1982) right up to Heaven or Las Vegas (1990) was pure joy, unencumbered by language or nostalgia. As direct a knob on my emotional state as the very best dub. This is the music of the Right Hemispheres.

Treasure is probably the critical consensus pick, but it's a bit more measured, discrete, than the enormous virtual soundscapes of Head Over Heels.

is Treasure the last for today?

62. Grace Jones - Nightclubbing [1981] (106 points, 12 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://sleevage.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/1205759619.jpg

Solid gold, straight down the line 100% classic - 'living my life' and 'nightclubbing' especially. The surprise is that the records actually sound as good as the covers promise - she covers songs that seemed unimprovable -'nightclubbing', 'private life' and effortlessly pulled it off. The guy who produced the classic albums, (alex sadkin I think - dont have the albums with me), died in the eighties, leaving her to the machinations of Trevor Horn - (possibly the only man who could make an unsexy Grace Jones record?).Would be worth canonising simply for the version of 'la vie en rose' on the (otherwise awful) 'portfolio' LP

― Mat O, 3. helmikuuta 2002 3:00

Purchased 'Nightclubbing' on a whim yesterday and find it unbelievably good.. I'm surprised no-one's mentionned the opening track, 'Walking in the Rain', so bare, yet so sexy, mmh mmmhh..

― Fabrice (Fabfunk), 14. elokuuta 2003

he one with the gold sleeve (Nightclubbing?) is great from start to finish. so, classic

album is simply unbelievably good. like all-time albums list good.

― J0hn D., 27. heinäkuuta 2008 2:32

DJed "Use Me" and "Nightclubbing" and "Pull Up to the Bumper" on Friday night. what's great about those tracks is that they can really spring you into just about anywhere (weird rock, funk, dub, disco) afterwards.

― beta blog, 27. heinäkuuta 2008 18:54

ok that is cool but comes as a complete surprise to me

This is a really good countdown! Six of my favorite albums have already qualified, really much better than most of "best of 80s" type things.

Just seeing the cover of Nightclubbing now made me turn off what I was listening to and put it on. That run of albums she did from Warm Leatherette to Inside Story is one of the very best of the decade.

That was my #1 vote. Such an incredible album. It takes dub's and reggae's depth, new wave's icy coolness, Grace's unique masculine disco diva genderfuck personality, and from those elements produces an record that's utterly on its own wavelength. The cover versions blend seamlessly with the original material, despite the sources for being as different as Iggy Pop, Bill Withers, and Piazzolla. When Grace Jones sings "I'm a walking disaster, I'm a demolition man", she sounds so much more convincing than Sting, the man who wrote the tune. "Art Groupie" proves that despite the diva reputation she can make fun or herself. And the album ends on a suprisingly sweet and gentle note with "I've Done It Again"; Grace has toyed with detachment and genderblend so convincingly throughout the album that it feels almost as if someone else has replaced her for the final song. But it's still Grace Jones.

That's a brilliant description Tuomas. When I started buying her albums a few years ago it was one of those truly exciting revelations like when I started getting into Prince or The Associates. I voted for another one of hers too but I think sadly that will be her only album in the list.

I was so happy when she made a comeback last year (and with a fine album), and had a gig in Helsinki this summer, so I could finally hear her perform this stuff. I can't imagine any other 60-year old woman could sing "bull up to my bumper baby, drive it in between!" with such style and authority.

That sounds amazing I would love to see her live at some point. Hurricane was a really good comeback it's a shame it wasn't bigger, Williams Blood is up there with her finest. I'm glad there's a bit more interest in her at the moment there's talk of reissuing the out of print albums (Fame and Muse) and even a release of the album she made sometime in the nineties.

I'm surprised to see the Cocteau Twins already. This is probably going to be their only appearance, since Treasure is usually considered their canonical album. I love it too, but I much prefer the darkness of Head Over Heels or the perfect melodies and harmonies of Victorialand.

She made an album in the 90s?! Do you have any info on that, I've never heard about it? I thought she only released a handful of singles in the 90s ("Evilmainya", "Sex Drive", "Love Bites"), and that's all.

(x-post)

this is a cool list so far! Cupid & Psyche 85 was my no.2 and i guess i hoped that would be higher. Steve McQueen also way too low imo. still hope there's gonna be some other new pop/synth-pop stuff high up and not just an all-alt-rock top 10...

61. Arthur Russell - World of Echo [1986] (108 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/6909-world-of-echo.jpg

this is one of the most unique sounding records ever made, and the music is brilliant and memorable to boot. my girlfriend just got me The World Of... on vinyl for Christmas! What a sweetie.

― sleeve, 25. joulukuuta 2007 18:51

It sounds so rainy and yet so arid. If that makes sense.

― I know, right?, 25. joulukuuta 2007 19:07

i've just downloaded "world of echo" and am listening in full for the first time. oh, new obsession. where have you been all my life. beautiful.

― Emily Bjurnhjam, 20. maaliskuuta 2008 5:21

I just want to thank Emily for resurrecting this thread and making me dust off this old gem. There it was in the graveyard of my vinyl, in a milk crate I never give any consideration to. I think even if I had flipped through it I would have just thought "oh that's the Arthur Russell record" without playing it. But World of Echo is just what I needed back in my life. And the bonus tracks! Wow!

I think what stands out most about this album for me is it doesn't seem like it's really as old as it is. It seems very modern and it's hard for me to believe I can trace it as far back as my teenage years. Another thing that stands out is just that there is nothing in the entire world that sounds like this record. Nothing. Other than saying it probably should have appeared on the 4AD label, you can't really narrow it down any further than that.

― Bimble, 23. maaliskuuta 2008 16:13

This is from Wikipedia which I know isn't the most reliable source but I had heard about one of those before reading it on there.

Jones recorded two albums during the 1990s, but they remain unreleased thus far—in 1994, she was due to release an electro album titled Black Marilyn with artwork featuring the singer as Marilyn Monroe; in 1998, she was scheduled to release an album entitled Force of Nature.

aw, that was my number one.

A perfect album for a warehouse loft in autumn afternoon. Peeling off the flamboyant glitter of Russell’s disco productions leaves this frail skeleton of percussive cello and vocal murmurs, submerged in cathedral reverb. My first nominee to chart.

Wow, I would definitely want to hear the electro album! Some of the house and techno remixes of her 80s/90s tunes are quite good. And the DJ Hell remix of "I've Seen That Face Before" that came out a few years ago is brilliant! She should do a full collaboration with DJ Hell, they'd be a perfect fit stylistically.

(xx-post)

Anyway, that's all for tonight.

Wow, I can't imagine what World of Echo sounds like. Slowdive?

ok just listened to a track off the Arthur Russell (which i dont know at all) and it is really incredible

a lot of the '98 'Force Of Nature' ended up on 'Hurricane' i think (which is why a lot of does sound a bit like it was produced ten years prior ha)

my prediction for ilx's top ten: (not in particular order) -
talk talk - spirit+laughing
the fall - hex+ grace
jesus and mary chain - psychocandy
sonic youth - daydream nation+evol
replacements - let it be
pixies - surfer rosa
talking heads - remain in light

70 - 61 is a pretty awesome list of records

I assume "Sex Drive", the single she relesed in 1993, would've been on the 1994 album. It's pretty good, not earth-shattering or anything, but it's fun to hear on a straight house track.

(xx-post)

way xpost

it... doesn't really sound like anything? I think everybody reacts to that album in a very different, very personal way. It's so intimate but also so wide open. There's nothing like it.

hell ya this list keeps getting better. i love every single album posted today, prefab sprout wooo!

i like this list so far. there are at least 5 albums i need to find now.

World of Echo sounds closer to the ambient cello + singing bits off AR Kane's 69 than it does to Slowdive.

Four from my ballot have turned up so far but nearly all of these albums are ones where I think, "Yeah, that deserves to be in here". Plus I really want to hear The Chills now! Also thosee Violent Femmes and X albums, which I've never bought for some reason.

bringin things up 2 speed...

100. Robyn Hitchcock: I Often Dream of Trains [1984] (75 points, 5 votes)
98. (tie) Scraping Foetus off the Wheel - Hole [1984] (76 points, 5 votes)
98. (tie) Spacemen 3 - The Perfect Prescription [1987] (76 points, 5 votes
97. Big Black - Atomizer [1986] (77 points, 8 votes)
96. Associates - Sulk [1982] (79 points, 6 votes)
95. Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking [1988] (79 points, 7 votes)
94. Def Leppard - Pyromania [1983] (80 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote)
93. Thomas Dolby - The Golden Age of Wireless [1982] (80 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote)
92. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Dazzle Ships [1983] (80 points, 9 votes)
91. Run-D.M.C. - Raising Hell [1986] (80 points, 10 votes)
90. Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II [1984] (81 points, 9 votes)
89. Prince and the Revolution - Parade [1986] (83 points, 10 votes)
88. Bruce Springsteen - Tunnel of Love [1987] (86 points, 7 votes)
87. Pet Shop Boys - Actually [1987] (86 points, 8 votes)
86. Pet Shop Boys - Please [1986] (87 points, 8 votes)
84. (tie) Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine [1989] (87 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote)
84. (tie) Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues [1983] (87 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote)
83. David Bowie - Scary Monsters [1980] (89 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote)
82. Scraping Foetus off the Wheel - Nail [1985] (91 points, 5 votes, 1 first place vote)
81. The Beat (aka The English Beat) - I Just Can't Stop It [1980] (91 points, 13 votes)
80. Various - The Indestructible Beat of Soweto [1985] (93 points, 6 votes, 1 first place vote)
79. The The - Soul Mining [1983] (93 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote)
78. The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy & the Lash [1985] (93 points, 16 votes)
77. Meat Puppets - Up on the Sun [1985] (94 points, 8 votes)
76. U2 - The Joshua Tree [1987] (95 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote)
75. Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual [1983] (95 points, 9 votes)
74. Galaxie 500 - On Fire [1989] (96 points, 10 votes)
73. X - Wild Gift [1981] (97 points, 9 votes)
72. The Chills - Kaleidoscope World [1986] (98 points, 7 votes, 1 first place vote)
71. Roxy Music - Avalon [1982] (99 points, 10 votes)
70. Laurie Anderson - Big Science [1982] (99 points, 11 votes)
69. Scritti Politti - Cupid & Psyche 85 [1985] (100 points, 7 votes)
68. New Order - Power, Corruption & Lies [1983] (100 points, 16 votes)
67. Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes [1983] (101 points, 12 votes)
66. Prefab Sprout - Steve McQueen [1985] (104 points, 10 votes, 1 first place vote)
65. Donald Fagen - The Nightfly [1982] (105 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote)
63. (tie) Tom Waits - Rain Dogs [1985] (106 points, 12 votes)
63. (tie) Cocteau Twins - Treasure [1984] (106 points, 12 votes)
62. Grace Jones - Nightclubbing [1981] (106 points, 12 votes, 1 first place vote)
61. Arthur Russell - World of Echo [1986] (108 points, 11 votes, 1 first place vote)

just watched that Associates viddy and i barely restrained myself from ripping my ears off...

(2xp) Yeah, with so many entries I keep thinking "how could I not have voted for that?" - was really hard getting it down to 30 and so much stuff had to be ditched is how; bunch of stuff I like but I'm not as familiar with as I felt I should be to vote for it, some stuff I thought would do well enough without me, plus a couple of albums where I love the bands but had to admit that the one album nominated for each did nothing for me, etc

World of Echo is also probably one of the last ones where a single number one vote means the difference between making the list and not making it. I think that's what's interesting about this last stretch of albums--even though it's a consensus vote, they still feel very personal.

"It's so intimate but also so wide open" is exactly right about World Of Echo. Such a cohesive and singular record. Russell's own comparison with foreign language singing is really astute when he talks about "the musical effect of words as sounds, but where the meaning is not totally withdrawn." If I'd voted this would have been number one, with Double Nickels the only serious contender, 80s all about original use of vocals w/me, apparently.

I just don't get "World of Echo", although I do understand what other people see in it. You'd think that AR Kane gone ambient AND funky would be right up my alley, but this music does nothing for me, and I've accepted that.

World Of Echo is the first album I've not heard that I really want to get after reading the descriptions.

Zeno laughing stock was 90s

unless you meant colour of spring which will probably show up too

folks there is an elephant in the room, it has 8 tracks, and one of them is called 'hold back the rain'

just sayin'

xpostin bout WoE
It's too odd to easily recommend; it sounds kind of like plainsong, fuzzed out, dubby, lonely, plainsong. It's very emotional, but it's balanced by that meditative quality - I bet it was good for him to make. It's pretty interesting that Panda Bear got kind of close to that sound without hearing it, mining similar turf.

Maybe there should be a separate predictions thread, but I can only see 4 or 5 of Zeno's list being top ten.

the ilx xtc contingent could land an album in the top 10 if everyone voted for the same one

(the right one being english settlement of course!)

am gonna stick my neck out and predict a surprisingly low turnout for psychocandy

ooh i think i put ES about 6th or 7th

xp that'll be in for sure and prob skylarking too and maybe even black sea? but not in the top 10.

i'm really enjoying how much of this list i don't have though. plenty of stuff to belatedly check out

i had black sea 6th, ES 8th and skylarking 19th (out of 20 voted for)

yeah there's LOADS to check out! totally gonna investigate this arthur russell stuff.

most of my choices are yet to come. stoked.

yeah i just listened to a song from the arthur russell album on youtube and I AM INTRIGUED

ain't web 2.0 neat

dude this album is on spotify that is like web 2.3 at least

world of echo is so thick and troubling but soothing, takes me to another place when i put it on *is set adrift on memory bliss*

yay for grace jones! arthur russel's cool and all, but nightclubbing is an all time classic. "i've done it again" gives me chills every time even after all these years. three scoops of <333

agree that this is one of the most satisfying "best of the 80s" type deals i've ever seen - so far. yay for ilm!

i'm really enjoying how much of this list i don't have though. plenty of stuff to belatedly check out

For real – it'll make for a fun next couple of months trying to hear all these.

SO far have introduced myself to the new-to-me Associates...that version of Gloomy Sunday is INSANE>

I'm thinking that in a perfect universe someone posts a big zipfile of all the albums on this list on their blog and I get to listen to all of them in order over the Xms holidays.

do kids like this feel this way? will some 15-year old buy M.I.A.'s next album, and then go back and, discovering "arular," consider it some kind of benjaminian angel of history?
Your prev. paragraph pretty much describes how I discovered punk and post-punk circa 1988. Even the Smiths (who had only broken up, like, a year earlier) seemed old and distant, and I felt inauthentic for digging them up, along with all the rest. The stuff from the early 80s was, like, antediluvian.

I expect all 15-year-olds feel that way. This year's crop are going, "2006 was so long ago, when old people roamed the earth!"

I can't believe how long ago the 80s actually were. The 18-23 year olds I work with view me with the same tender pity and slight awe at age & experience that I viewed the Original Hippies with once upon a time.

This latest batch is the first to have a few albums I might want to check out: Donald Fagan especially (I've heard some of these songs, but would have just assumed they were Steely Dan songs), and maybe Grace Jones and Arthur Russell (the latter of whom I somehow know nothing about). (It's not as though I've heard everything else on the list so far, but I've heard enough Foetus and Meat Puppets, for instance, to know I'm not really interested.)

I voted for 7 of the 40. happily canonical over here.

same here - 7 for 40 so far

do kids like this feel this way? will some 15-year old buy M.I.A.'s next album, and then go back and, discovering "arular," consider it some kind of benjaminian angel of history?
Your prev. paragraph pretty much describes how I discovered punk and post-punk circa 1988. Even the Smiths (who had only broken up, like, a year earlier) seemed old and distant, and I felt inauthentic for digging them up, along with all the rest. The stuff from the early 80s was, like, antediluvian.

― I've got some funny ideas about what sounds good (staggerlee), Wednesday, November 25, 2009 6:00 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

yup, i had the same thing going in 84 or so. was all jazzed about of-the-moment music like the violent femmes, husker du's zen arcade, sonic youth, etc. but stuff that had come out only a few years before, like early black flag and dead kennedys records, seemed to belong to someone else in another place & time. they weren't of MY moment.

on the other hand, it was easy to relate to much older stuff like the stooges, sonics, vu, etc. it's a weird dynamic

Kind of opposite for me. When I started getting heavy into music around 86, I was kicking myself for not having done so sooner and thus missing out on Minutemen and Burma as going concerns. (On Horrible Truth, they even had a song played at Tuts! I coulda been there!) Those self-kicks as much as anything propelled me into about a decade of extreme music consumption & helped foster the checklisty aspects of same. And look at me now, nominating Double Nickels and the Burma comp, how little I've changed ...

When I was 15, I was convinced all the good music had been made 10 years earlier.

31 of these albums now on the spotify list: http://open.spotify.com/user/thomp1985/playlist/7vewFkAlw3bKDbMNziktOF

much thanks to whoever put yesterday's on when i couldn't get to a computer btw ~

also also did the second violent femmes album get nominated? that one actually rings a lot truer to my experience of teenagerdom (well, except 'black girls') than the first one, though the first one is often awesome.

Your pa molested you, threw you in a well and committed suicide too?

i dont usually like to talk about it :(

60. Eric B. & Rakim - Paid In Full [1987] (111 points, 8 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://a4.vox.com/6a00cd96fde2fe4cd500d4143e6c9c685e-500pi

Bona fide classic. Rakim speaks the Truth knowwhatamsayinnn? Probably to good and heavy for recent hip hop fans, you know what with the real scratching and rhymes that make sense ;)

― Omar, 16. toukokuuta 2001 3:00

Almost every song on there is a bona fide classic, but I've never even particularly thought about it as a whole. Possibly due to the endless re-issues of the 12s, er, and the fact that I've bought them. 'Eric B Is President' is one of the ten greatest songs ever made.

I don't know that hiphop purists hated the Coldcut mix of 'Paid In Full' at the time, at least in Britain, as I remember first hearing it on a comp called Machine Gun Poetry, which was mostly underground Brit stuff like Overlord X and London Posse. Still think it's a great song too.

― joel, 16. toukokuuta 2001 3:00

Classic. Before Rakim, if you tried to bust your amateur rhyme and you were, uh, white like me, you always ended up with that really corny heavy handed meter, like maybe somebody reading a limerick or something, but if you got some Rakim in your head, you could sound GOOD.

I remember hearing people saying "You thought I was a donut/You tried to glaze me" before I ever heard anything off that first record (I can't even remember which cut it's from though). I also remember when the next album came out, convincing all my housemates and several friends that instead of "Rakim I say, follow the leader, Rakim I say" he was saying "Rakimitate, follow the leader Rakimitate". I'm still not sure which one it is.

― Ken L (Ken L), 13. marraskuuta 2004 5:17

my #1 :D

only 2 hiphop albums in the first 40 = mental tho. and only think 3 or 4 more left to come that will do better than paid in full.

I remember when I first heard Paid in Full years ago, it totally blew my mind... It felt unbelievable someone was doing shit like this back in 1987! But these days my feelings towards Paid in Full have cooled down a little bit; even though I still admire the sheer technical brilliance and innovativeness of it, it feels kinda too insular and airtight. It's a rap album that's about nothing else than rap, Rakim's rhymes only relate to other rhymes, and I like my rap music a bit more expansive than that. When we're talking about taking-it-to-the-next-level rap albums of that era, I rate Crititical Beatdown over Paid in Full, even if Rakim has more skills than Kool Keith or Ced Gee. Still, it is an awesome-sounding, classic album, and I did vote for it, so it deserves to be on the list.

It's my second favourite album of the decade. I thought the first Run DMC album was a lock to be nominated so I used mine on other things but I rate it #1. Paid In Full is perfect. I don't care if it is insular, half the best records from the time were (Radio wasn't nominated either!) Rakim out-raps everyone else and Marley's beats are the better than any others. Critical Beatdown and Nations of Millions may be more expansive, Pauls Boutique and 3 Ft High & Rising may be more fun- but Paid In Full is the only one of the lot which is 100% perfect. In fact I think the strict subject matter and sound might be the reason for it, they made 1 perfect album about rapping and dj-ing and then didn't really know what to do after. They still made good records (and Microphone Fiend!) but never really came close since. The new Rakim is just embarrasing.

Paid in Full was one of the ones I had to cut from my list in the end, mainly because I know and love the big hitters but not the entirety of the album. From memory, I think I ended up with only 3/30 hip-hop albums, which probably reflects my listening ratio, but is a bit lame. Thinking about it in light of the discussions on the other threads is making me feel like a tokenistic NME-style wank. Which it shouldn't do, so thanks you guys. Bah.

Great to see Arthur Russell on the list, was low down on my ballot as it isn't as yet that fixed into my personal canon, but it is an awesome record.

the version of "Eric B. Is President" on Paid in Full is so much better than the original 12" single version.

"Chinese Arithmetic" still sucks, though.

sorry emil.y for making you feel like an nme reader

Yeah, I see your point, and I can appreciate it. On one level PiF is the perfect rap album, it's almost impossible to find a flaw in it. It's just that there are certain things I most like in rap that I can't get out of it, which is why I rate some other rap albums higher, even if they are less perfect that PiF. It's kinda like I feel about certain intricate pieces of abstract art: I can totally appreciate what they're trying to do, and admire the craft that's put into them, but they don't touch me in ways some other art pieces do.

(x-post to A Hoy Hoy)

sorry emil.y for making you feel like an nme reader

― liverpolol da don (a hoy hoy)

I don't know why this is making me lol so hard, but it is. I feel better now, thank you.

i guess so. its like punk albums that don't give a toss about any of the related politics or whatever or pop albums just about dancing. if they are done perfectly, i don't give a toss that there is no expansive themes. it still has a message i guess: "i am so fucking good at this that i am going to make an album about it". if rakim and marley didn't the ability it would be ridiculous but i dunno, it just works sooooooooooo well.

59. Mekons - Fear and Whiskey [1985] (111 points, 8 votes, 2 first place votes)

http://nobrasil.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/0553.jpg

Fear and Whiskey was the first one I ever heard (back in '86), so that's the one for me.

― JN$OT, 4. toukokuuta 2007 13:19

give mekons another chance, man, they rule - start with Honky Tonkin', Retreat from Memphis, I love Mekons, Fear and Whiskey, Curse of the Mekons...fuck it, most of them are great. Oh, and definitely see them live - that's half of it right there

― roger adultery (roger adultery), 12. maaliskuuta 2003 23:10

This isn't even hard - the Gang of Four released two fantastic albums and numerous single sides before sliding irreparably to "Karate Kid 2" - for nearly a quarter of century, they managed only "Hard," an inconsequential live album, two hideous "comeback albums" and a meager amount of solo work. Their more recent comeback album is actually excellent, but features only 25+ year old tunes.

The Mekons have had their ups and downs, and it's probably fair to say that - despite early classics such as Never Been In A Riot," "Where Were You?", "Teeth," "Rosanne," "Guardian," "Snow," "Karen" and a few others - the Gang of Four were more consistent early on. But for both bands, I've only compared two albums and related singles -since then the Mekons have been generally great - sometimes incredible (I'd cite "Fun 90," "Rock And Roll," "Fear & Whiskey" and "So Good It Hurts" as some of the best releases in the past 20 years) and always at least worth a spin. More than I can say for "Mall" or "Shrinkrapped" or "Dispossession" or introducing the world to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And that's not even including the many odd perfect moments that the Mekons still manage - their weird but perfect remake of "Sporting Life" last year, for one.

Plus they have a sense of humor!

Mekons by a mile.

― dee xtro (dee xtro), 19. helmikuuta 2006 5:18

xxxxxp a hoy hoy:

Polls are never about objective truth or universal consensus, but about demographics. This poll is telling us something not about music but about who we are.

I started lurking here years ago in part because of past polls, which (seemed to) place a hazy focus on strands of music emerging out of the common hinterlands of (mostly european) pop and experiment in the 80s, but welcomed genius arriving from other corners. Thats more or less my trajectory, too. Those who see the best of modern music as a continual divergence of musics of the African diaspora, and there's a lot of merit to the idea, generally found other forums.

shame that my #1 has been pretty much the only album w/ a shitty cover so far tho. the artwork of the 80s was terrific according to this thread of records i've never heard.

Derelict- I know. But hiphop does have a pretty big ilx following and its not like there werent great hiphop albums made in the eighties, so i feel it should at least have someone bang on about it. now there isn't just 1 token rap record on this list though it doesn't seem as bad. And I did also vote and nominate a bunch of lol indie.

There's rap on Fear and Whiskey.

there's a new Mekons version of "Sporting Life"?!?!

XP

That's an old quote, probably referring to Punk Rock album

cool, thanks! I never gave that the chance I should have.

58. The Cure - Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me [1987] (112 points, 7 votes, 2 first place votes)

http://blog.funkygog.de/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/the-cure-kiss-me-kiss-me-kiss-me-front.jpg

i got my grandmother to buy this record for me for christmas the year it came out

― From Rax to Rich's (jjjusten), 18. helmikuuta 2009 5:24

I got my parents to let me buy this album by telling them I heard a song from it at a church dance (which was true).

― i'm shy (Abbott), 18. helmikuuta 2009 5:37

I remember when John bought this album and played it for me; the last time I had as strong an avaricious reaction to music was when my brother first played his Controversy album for me in 1981.

I don't know what my mom thought about my obsession with this album; I used to play "The Kiss" over and over and over, then I started playing side 3 over and over and over, then I started playing side 2 over and over and over, then finally I taped it and gave the original back to John so he wouldn't pummel it and just listened to it over and over and over and over again.

I have to vote "Like Cockatoos" on this, except for that my real vote is going to "The Snakepit", by which I mean I'm voting "Hot Hot Hot!!!" which of course is a smokescreen for my vote for "The Kiss" the translates to "How Beautiful You Are..." because how could I possibly not vote for "Just Like Heaven" and "Catch" is a must-have but "Torture" is so alluring and grimy and nothing is as visceral as "All I Want" and I can't live without "One More Time" and FOR FUCK'S SAKE THIS WHOLE ALBUM IS FANTASTIC, EVEN THE TWO SONGS I DON'T LIKE ALL THAT MUCH ARE INDISPENSIBLE

― Lots of praying with no breakfast! (HI DERE), 18. helmikuuta 2009 17:24

Even something like "The Caterpillar" (which just came on) has a genuinely brilliant, in fact near-perfect build-up, introducing so many musical and emotional themes with busy percussion, playful piano leads and some dramatic off-kilter strings. It's not quite as spectacular as, say, "The Kiss" or "Pornography" or "Homesick" or whatever, but it further adds to the fact that Smith really knew how to write a motherfukken song, and REALLY knew how to make a song's sound work with its title and lyrical themes.

― Mequophidiophobia: fear of the beer snake (country matters), 18. helmikuuta 2009 20:26

I'm surprised it took so long for The Cure to show up. Figured vote-splitting would knock several albums down closer to the bottom (or maybe there will just be a cluster of them here in the middle).

57. Arvo Pärt - Tabula Rasa [1984] (112 points, 9 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/06/ba/b431793509a01daf8b708110.L.jpg

Today I learned that the mentor and former boss of one of my two dearest friends passed on. My friend is crushed and I'm doing what I can to help, as I can. For now, though, stuck at home sick, I have put on Tabula Rasa and marvelling once again at what a pure, beautiful expression of sheer grief "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten" is.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), 16. helmikuuta 2005 22:05

Someone at work loaned me one or two Pärt CDs several years back, but I didn't have much of a response. (It didn't helped that he framed them in the context of Steve Reich, who he knows I like, comparing Reich unfavorably to Pärt.) However, I just borrowed some Part from the library (a recording with Tabula Rasa, Fratres and Symphony No.3, and I'm enjoying it. I'm interested in the way it is at times so traditional and yet so contemporary, all at once.

― Rockist Scientist, 1. syyskuuta 2007 1:14

the ECM release of tabula rasa is my single favorite piece of music ever written/performed/recorded, and if i could listen to only one piece of music ever again until i died, it would absolutely unquestionably be this one.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), 13. joulukuuta 2005 22:40

Yay! And also wow, I really didn't expect that one to get in. Some absolutely breathtaking moments in these pieces.

awesome

I did not vote for this but have no problem with its placing, beautiful album.

I'm gonna get a bit emo here, but whatever... Some time ago I was asked to pick some classical tunes for a funeral of someone who had died suddenly and unexpectedly. I started a thread on ILM to ask for recommendations, and someone (I think it was Dan) recommended "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten". I'd never heard it before, so I donwloaded it, and listened to it... I was totally shattered, I couldn't help but cry. There's something so deeply sad Pärt has managed to express in that composition that I can't imagine any other musical piece ever conveying the same.

my #1

Excellent placing, gives me hope that Solo Piano by Philip Glass may still make it.

I like the variations of "Fratres" quite a lot too. Even though Pärt is (I think) best known for his "holy minimalist" choral compositions, I prefer these pieces to the choral stuff I've heard. "Cantate Domino Canticum Novum" and "Magnificat" are very pretty though.