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

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.