1983: the year it all went wrong?

And a final song called "Leave Me Alone!"

"You've caught me at a bad time...
...so why don't you piss off."

"Transitional" is what I said! It's got some of the miserabilism of "Movement" and some of the hedonism of later New Order. "Our love is like the flowers" is not a line Ian Curtis was ever going to come up with! Age Of Consent is upbeat! etc.

yeah, upbeat with that extended fadeout of "I've lost you"...

x-post -- Fair enough, but for a sec I'm all, "Wait, WHAT?"

Because nothing's more pop hedonist than an album with that name!

'Hedon the Door'?

Blueski's list of good songs is impressive!

I really like 'owner of a lonely heart'.

thread is total bullshit. I mean, yeah interesting things weren't on the radio and a small group of bands in the UK started putting out crap, but so what? albums I still listen to from '83, some of 'em all-time favorites:

butthole surfers - a brown reason to live
sonic youth - confusion is sex
the fall - perverted by language
the fall - in a hole
glenn branca - symphony no 1
birthday party - mutiny / the bad seed
swans - filth
rem - murmur
einsturzende neubauten - drawing of patient o.t.
rudimentary peni - death church
the cramps - smell of female
misfits - earth ad
suicidal tendencies - s/t
minutemen - what makes a man start fires?
husker du - everything falls apart
creatures - feast
big black - bulldozer
the comes - no side

also stuff by jandek, the ex, daniel johnston, harmonic choir, etc etc

and this happened
http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s365578.jpg

You're missing the point. The point was that there were some quirky things getting into the UK charts in the early eighties, but then by 1983 or thereabouts that didn't happen so much. Which may or may not be true, but there is no parallel universe in which Jandek or Daniel Johnston were storming the charts in 1983.

In other words, none of the above was happening VISIBLY, whereas a year earlier they might have done.

In the US, I think the decline started a bit later - around 1985.

(I mean the decline in Top 40 radio - not talking about small, independent releases.)

A song like Ashes To Ashes is a good example I think. A number one in 1980. Could a song like that - with its Kafka-quoting lyrics, its ghostly, treated piano sound - have got to number one a few years later? Bowie obviously didn't think so when he released Let's Dance.

there is no parallel universe in which Jandek or Daniel Johnston were storming the charts in 1983

it's right here inside my head. also in this universe stan brakhage's the garden of earthly delights outgrosses return of the jedi.

When I look at the overall number of great releases, it was a slump for sure. But I certainly didn't think it at the time. As a tweener kid, I was was just discovering how much there was beyond Queen and Rush, but was enjoying a wide spectrum, from Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Accept, Dio, The Fixx and Cheap Trick on one end to R.E.M., Tom Waits, Bad Brains, U2, Violent Femmes, Social Distortion, Minutemen, Husker Du, X, The Fall, The Wipers, Big Black, Talking Heads, Kid Creole, Lou Reed, Suburbs, Pretenders, Shriekback, Big Country, Minor Threat, Birthday Party, James Blood Ulmer, King Sunny Ade, etc. on the other.

Boring Pazz & Jop results imo.