We are changing up the written format for Friday Flashback. To link to the previous article, which is a synopsis of the entire year, simply follow this link:
http://blog.jivewired.com/2012/11/friday-flashback-1978.html
On the radio we are still going to present over 200 great songs from each Friday's featured year but the corresponding article will be different. The new format will highlight the indie and counter culture aspects of each flashback year by concentrating on the bands and performers whose careers actually broke during said year. Each Friday this blog will focus on five bands who truly defined indie music during the featured year.
Friday Flashback: Every Friday we set the Wayback Machine to one year in rock history and give you the best (and worst) music from that year, all day long, beginning at midnight CST and running for 24 hours on Jivewired Radio powered by Live365.
This week we are featuring the year 1978. Next week our Friday Flashback year will be 1983.
To listen to this week's Friday Flashback program activate the radio player in the right sidebar by selecting the play button or you can access the radio via an external link so that you can enjoy Friday Flashback even if you navigate away from this page.
Here is the link: http://live365.com/stations/jivewiredradio
1. Joy Division
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Joy Division were an English rock band formed in 1976 in Salford, Greater Manchester. Originally named Warsaw, the band primarily consisted of Ian Curtis (vocals and occasional guitar), Bernard Sumner (guitar and keyboards), Peter Hook (bass guitar and backing vocals) and Stephen Morris (drums and percussion).
Joy Division rapidly evolved from their initial punk rock influences to develop a sound and style that pioneered the post-punk movement of the late 1970s. Their self-released 1978 debut EP, An Ideal for Living, drew the attention of the Manchester television personality Tony Wilson.
Joy Division's debut album, Unknown Pleasures, was released in 1979 on Wilson's independent record label Factory Records, and drew critical acclaim from the British press. Despite the band's growing success, vocalist Ian Curtis was beset with depression and personal difficulties, including a dissolving marriage and his diagnosis of epilepsy. Curtis found it increasingly difficult to perform at live concerts, and often had seizures during performances.
On the eve of the band's first American tour in May 1980, Curtis committed suicide. Joy Division's posthumously released second album, Closer (1980), and the single Love Will Tear Us Apart became the band's highest charting releases. After the death of Curtis, the remaining members continued as New Order, achieving critical and commercial success.
Despite their short career and cult status, Joy Division have exerted a wide-reaching influence. John Bush of AllMusic argues that Joy Division "became the first band in the post-punk movement by [...] emphasizing not anger and energy but mood and expression, pointing ahead to the rise of melancholy alternative music in the '80s."
The band's dark and gloomy sound, which Martin Hannett described in 1979 as "dancing music with Gothic overtones", presaged the gothic rock genre. While the term gothic originally described a "doomy atmosphere" in music of the late 1970s, the term was soon applied to specific bands like Bauhaus that followed in Joy Division's wake. Standard musical fixtures of early gothic rock bands included "high-pitched post-Joy Division basslines usurp[ing] the melodic role" and "vocals that were either near operatic and Teutonic or deep, droning alloys of Jim Morrison and Ian Curtis." Joy Division has influenced bands ranging from contemporaries U2 and The Cure to post-punk revival artists such as Interpol, Bloc Party and Editors. U2 frontman Bono stated that his group loved Joy Division. The singer said in the band's 2006 autobiography U2 by U2, "It would be harder to find a darker place in music than Joy Division. Their name, their lyrics and their singer were as big a black cloud as you could find in the sky. And yet I sensed the pursuit of God, or light, or reason [...] a reason to be. With Joy Division, you felt from this singer, beauty was truth and truth was beauty, and theirs was a search for both".
Artists including electronica performer Moby and former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante have described their appreciation for Joy Division's music and the influence it has had on their own material. In 2005, Joy Division were inducted along with New Order into the UK Music Hall of Fame.
Representative Songs In This Week's Flashback:Warsaw, No Love Lost
2. Buzzcocks
![]()
Buzzcocks are an English punk rock band, formed in Bolton in 1976, led by singer-songwriter-guitarist Pete Shelley and singer-songwriter-guitarist Steve Diggle. They are regarded as an important influence on the Manchester music scene, the independent record label movement, punk rock, power pop, pop punk and indie rock. They achieved commercial success with singles that fused pop craftsmanship with rapid-fire punk energy. These singles were collected on Singles Going Steady, described by critic Ned Raggett as a "punk masterpiece". Devoto and Shelley chose the name "Buzzcocks" after reading the headline, "It's the buzz, cocks!", in a review of the TV series Rock Follies in Time Out magazine. The "buzz" is the excitement of playing on stage; "cock" is Manchester slang meaning "mate" (as in friend/buddy). They thought it captured the excitement of the Sex Pistols and nascent punk scene.
Their first UA Buzzcocks single, Orgasm Addict, was a playful examination of compulsive sexuality that was (and remains) uncommonly bold. The BBC refused to play the song, but the single sold well. Later, more ambiguous songs staked out a territory defined by Shelley's bisexuality and punk's aversion to serious examination of human sexuality. The next single, What Do I Get? reached the UK top 40 charts. Lipstick, the B-side to Promises, shared the same ascending progression of notes in its chorus as Magazine's first single, Shot By Both Sides, also released in 1978.
Their original career produced three LPs: Another Music in a Different Kitchen, Love Bites, and A Different Kind of Tension, each supported by extensive touring in Europe and the U.S. Their trademark sound was a marriage of catchy pop melodies with punk guitar energy, backed by an unusually tight and skilled rhythm section. They advanced drastically in musical and lyrical sophistication: by the end they were quoting American writer William S. Burroughs (A Different Kind of Tension), declaiming their catechism in the anthem I Believe, and tuning in to a fantasy radio station on which their songs could be heard (Radio Nine). In 1980, Liberty Records signed the band, and released three singles. The double 'A' side Why She's A Girl From The Chainstore/Are Everything made the Top 75 that year.
Representative Songs In This Week's Flashback:Orgasm Addict, What Do I Get?
3. Lene Lovich
![]()
One of the more offbeat and memorable figures in new wave, Lene Lovich certainly drew much of her widely varied approach from her unconventional early experiences. Born of a Yugoslavian father and British mother, she spent much of her childhood in Detroit, MI. At age 13, she moved to Hull, England, with her mother. She ran away to London shortly thereafter, where she worked several odd jobs ranging from bingo caller to go-go dancer to street busker. Around this time, she developed an interest in art and theater, enrolling at the Central School of Art.
She took up the saxophone and, after a brief stint in a soul-funk band (with future collaborator Les Chappell), Lovich wrote a string of songs for French disco star Cerrone. In 1978, Stiff Records signed her after hearing her first recording, a remake of I Think We're Alone Now. She quickly became one of Stiff's brightest stars, headlining package tours and earning several U.K. hits over the next three years with the unforgettable Lucky Number, Say When, Bird Song, and New Toy. Unfortunately, her theatrical quirkiness didn't translate well into LP length, and as new wave dissolved, she disappeared from the music scene.
Lovich helped launch her career by screaming on soundtracks of European horror films. A similar sort of exotic spookiness can be found in her late-’70s and early-‘80s output as an artist. In tandem with collaborator/husband Les Chappell, the Detroit-born Lovich fashioned an odd sort of punk-theater music fusion built around her vocal trills, swoops and sighs. Her Slavic space-queen persona is fleshed out in her provocative (and often funny) lyrics. Beneath all the sci-fi weirdness, a sharp intelligence peeks through. Her tracks glide on techno-pop grooves or crackle with leg-twitching energy. The careening Lucky Number— Lene’s biggest hit — captures much of her off-kilter, warm-hearted appeal.
Representative Songs In This Week's Flashback:Lucky Number, I Think We're Alone Now
4. The Fall
![]()
Out of all the late-'70s punk and post-punk bands, none were longer lived or more prolific than the Fall. Throughout their career, the band underwent myriad lineup changes, but at the center of it all was vocalist Mark E. Smith. With his snarling, nearly incomprehensible vocals and consuming, bitter cynicism, Smith became a cult legend in indie and alternative rock. Over the course of their career, the Fall went through a number of shifts in musical style, yet the foundation of their sound was a near-cacophonous, amelodic jagged jumble of guitars, sing-speak vocals, and keyboards. During the late '70s and early '80s, the band was at their most abrasive and atonal.
Prior to forming the Fall in 1977, Smith worked on the docks in Manchester, where he had auditioned and failed with a number of local heavy metal groups. Smith wasn't inspired by metal in the first place; his tastes ran more toward the experimental rock & roll of the Velvet Underground, as well as the avant-garde art rock of Can. Eventually, he found several similarly inclined musicians — guitarist Martin Bramah, bassist Tony Friel, keyboardist Una Baines, and drummer Karl Burns — and formed the Fall, taking the group's name from the Albert Camus novel. The band cut an EP, Bingo-Master's Break-Out!, which was funded by the Buzzcocks' label, New Hormones, but it sat unreleased for nearly a year, simply because the band couldn't find anyone who wanted to sign them. The Fall were outsiders, not fitting in with either the slick new wave and the amateurish, simple chord-bashing of punk rock. Consequently, they had a difficult time landing a record contract. After a while, the group had gained some fans, including Danny Baker, the head of the Adrenaline fanzine, who persuaded Miles Copeland to release the EP on his Step Forward independent label.
During 1978, Smith replaced bassist Friel with Marc Riley (bass, guitar, keyboards) and keyboardist Baines with Yvonne Pawlett because they wanted to make the Fall more accessible. The new lineup recorded the band's first full-length album, Live at the Witch Trials, which was released on January 1, 1979.
Representative Songs In This Week's Flashback: Frightened, Music Scene
5. The Mekons
![]()
More than any band that came out of late-'70s England, the Mekons (the name taken from the popular sci-fi comic Dan Dare) have perhaps the most devoted fans of any band even remotely connected to punk rock. And why not? Over the course of several decades, this band, with an ever-shifting lineup (only Jon Langford and Tom Greenhalgh remain from the original), produced some of the best rock & roll on the planet, be it amateurish rock-noise, cool synth-driven pop, guitar rave-ups, or postmodern country & western, the Mekons have done it all and done it with style, grace, and a ribald sense of humor.
Emerging from the same Leeds University "scene" that begot Gang of Four, the Mekons weren't as overtly political as their Marxist-inspired brethren, but their punk rock pedigree and unsubtle anti-Thatcher and -Reaganisms did set them apart from the post-punk world's innumerable careerists and posers. Their early recordings were exceedingly lo-fi affairs that valued emotion and energy over anything that remotely resembled musical proficiency. Songs like "Never Been in a Riot" and "32 Weeks" sound as if the band entered the studio, arbitrarily decided who was going to play what, and started the tapes rolling. It was fun, challenging, and anarchic -- principles to which the band has clung, musical genre notwithstanding, ever since their inception.
From the time of their debut album, The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen, the Mekons had turned into a slightly more accomplished post-punk band that, like their pals in Gang of Four, wielded trebly guitars and shouted vocals over semi-funky rhythms tracks. The songs lacked focus, but this was a bizarre record that, for all of its oddly ingratiating music, offered little insight as to whom was making it. This remained true for a couple of years or so as the band (basically Langford, Greenhalgh, Kevin Lycett, and whomever else they could rope into a session) made one exciting, enigmatic, and extremely difficult-to-find record after another.
Representative Songs In This Week's Flashback:Where Were You?, Never Been In A Riot
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http://blog.jivewired.com/2012/11/friday-flashback-1978.html
On the radio we are still going to present over 200 great songs from each Friday's featured year but the corresponding article will be different. The new format will highlight the indie and counter culture aspects of each flashback year by concentrating on the bands and performers whose careers actually broke during said year. Each Friday this blog will focus on five bands who truly defined indie music during the featured year.
Friday Flashback: Every Friday we set the Wayback Machine to one year in rock history and give you the best (and worst) music from that year, all day long, beginning at midnight CST and running for 24 hours on Jivewired Radio powered by Live365.
This week we are featuring the year 1978. Next week our Friday Flashback year will be 1983.
To listen to this week's Friday Flashback program activate the radio player in the right sidebar by selecting the play button or you can access the radio via an external link so that you can enjoy Friday Flashback even if you navigate away from this page.
Here is the link: http://live365.com/stations/jivewiredradio
1. Joy Division
Joy Division were an English rock band formed in 1976 in Salford, Greater Manchester. Originally named Warsaw, the band primarily consisted of Ian Curtis (vocals and occasional guitar), Bernard Sumner (guitar and keyboards), Peter Hook (bass guitar and backing vocals) and Stephen Morris (drums and percussion).
Joy Division rapidly evolved from their initial punk rock influences to develop a sound and style that pioneered the post-punk movement of the late 1970s. Their self-released 1978 debut EP, An Ideal for Living, drew the attention of the Manchester television personality Tony Wilson.
Joy Division's debut album, Unknown Pleasures, was released in 1979 on Wilson's independent record label Factory Records, and drew critical acclaim from the British press. Despite the band's growing success, vocalist Ian Curtis was beset with depression and personal difficulties, including a dissolving marriage and his diagnosis of epilepsy. Curtis found it increasingly difficult to perform at live concerts, and often had seizures during performances.
On the eve of the band's first American tour in May 1980, Curtis committed suicide. Joy Division's posthumously released second album, Closer (1980), and the single Love Will Tear Us Apart became the band's highest charting releases. After the death of Curtis, the remaining members continued as New Order, achieving critical and commercial success.
Despite their short career and cult status, Joy Division have exerted a wide-reaching influence. John Bush of AllMusic argues that Joy Division "became the first band in the post-punk movement by [...] emphasizing not anger and energy but mood and expression, pointing ahead to the rise of melancholy alternative music in the '80s."
The band's dark and gloomy sound, which Martin Hannett described in 1979 as "dancing music with Gothic overtones", presaged the gothic rock genre. While the term gothic originally described a "doomy atmosphere" in music of the late 1970s, the term was soon applied to specific bands like Bauhaus that followed in Joy Division's wake. Standard musical fixtures of early gothic rock bands included "high-pitched post-Joy Division basslines usurp[ing] the melodic role" and "vocals that were either near operatic and Teutonic or deep, droning alloys of Jim Morrison and Ian Curtis." Joy Division has influenced bands ranging from contemporaries U2 and The Cure to post-punk revival artists such as Interpol, Bloc Party and Editors. U2 frontman Bono stated that his group loved Joy Division. The singer said in the band's 2006 autobiography U2 by U2, "It would be harder to find a darker place in music than Joy Division. Their name, their lyrics and their singer were as big a black cloud as you could find in the sky. And yet I sensed the pursuit of God, or light, or reason [...] a reason to be. With Joy Division, you felt from this singer, beauty was truth and truth was beauty, and theirs was a search for both".
Artists including electronica performer Moby and former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante have described their appreciation for Joy Division's music and the influence it has had on their own material. In 2005, Joy Division were inducted along with New Order into the UK Music Hall of Fame.
Representative Songs In This Week's Flashback:Warsaw, No Love Lost
2. Buzzcocks
Buzzcocks are an English punk rock band, formed in Bolton in 1976, led by singer-songwriter-guitarist Pete Shelley and singer-songwriter-guitarist Steve Diggle. They are regarded as an important influence on the Manchester music scene, the independent record label movement, punk rock, power pop, pop punk and indie rock. They achieved commercial success with singles that fused pop craftsmanship with rapid-fire punk energy. These singles were collected on Singles Going Steady, described by critic Ned Raggett as a "punk masterpiece". Devoto and Shelley chose the name "Buzzcocks" after reading the headline, "It's the buzz, cocks!", in a review of the TV series Rock Follies in Time Out magazine. The "buzz" is the excitement of playing on stage; "cock" is Manchester slang meaning "mate" (as in friend/buddy). They thought it captured the excitement of the Sex Pistols and nascent punk scene.
Their first UA Buzzcocks single, Orgasm Addict, was a playful examination of compulsive sexuality that was (and remains) uncommonly bold. The BBC refused to play the song, but the single sold well. Later, more ambiguous songs staked out a territory defined by Shelley's bisexuality and punk's aversion to serious examination of human sexuality. The next single, What Do I Get? reached the UK top 40 charts. Lipstick, the B-side to Promises, shared the same ascending progression of notes in its chorus as Magazine's first single, Shot By Both Sides, also released in 1978.
Their original career produced three LPs: Another Music in a Different Kitchen, Love Bites, and A Different Kind of Tension, each supported by extensive touring in Europe and the U.S. Their trademark sound was a marriage of catchy pop melodies with punk guitar energy, backed by an unusually tight and skilled rhythm section. They advanced drastically in musical and lyrical sophistication: by the end they were quoting American writer William S. Burroughs (A Different Kind of Tension), declaiming their catechism in the anthem I Believe, and tuning in to a fantasy radio station on which their songs could be heard (Radio Nine). In 1980, Liberty Records signed the band, and released three singles. The double 'A' side Why She's A Girl From The Chainstore/Are Everything made the Top 75 that year.
Representative Songs In This Week's Flashback:Orgasm Addict, What Do I Get?
3. Lene Lovich
One of the more offbeat and memorable figures in new wave, Lene Lovich certainly drew much of her widely varied approach from her unconventional early experiences. Born of a Yugoslavian father and British mother, she spent much of her childhood in Detroit, MI. At age 13, she moved to Hull, England, with her mother. She ran away to London shortly thereafter, where she worked several odd jobs ranging from bingo caller to go-go dancer to street busker. Around this time, she developed an interest in art and theater, enrolling at the Central School of Art.
She took up the saxophone and, after a brief stint in a soul-funk band (with future collaborator Les Chappell), Lovich wrote a string of songs for French disco star Cerrone. In 1978, Stiff Records signed her after hearing her first recording, a remake of I Think We're Alone Now. She quickly became one of Stiff's brightest stars, headlining package tours and earning several U.K. hits over the next three years with the unforgettable Lucky Number, Say When, Bird Song, and New Toy. Unfortunately, her theatrical quirkiness didn't translate well into LP length, and as new wave dissolved, she disappeared from the music scene.
Lovich helped launch her career by screaming on soundtracks of European horror films. A similar sort of exotic spookiness can be found in her late-’70s and early-‘80s output as an artist. In tandem with collaborator/husband Les Chappell, the Detroit-born Lovich fashioned an odd sort of punk-theater music fusion built around her vocal trills, swoops and sighs. Her Slavic space-queen persona is fleshed out in her provocative (and often funny) lyrics. Beneath all the sci-fi weirdness, a sharp intelligence peeks through. Her tracks glide on techno-pop grooves or crackle with leg-twitching energy. The careening Lucky Number— Lene’s biggest hit — captures much of her off-kilter, warm-hearted appeal.
Representative Songs In This Week's Flashback:Lucky Number, I Think We're Alone Now
4. The Fall
Out of all the late-'70s punk and post-punk bands, none were longer lived or more prolific than the Fall. Throughout their career, the band underwent myriad lineup changes, but at the center of it all was vocalist Mark E. Smith. With his snarling, nearly incomprehensible vocals and consuming, bitter cynicism, Smith became a cult legend in indie and alternative rock. Over the course of their career, the Fall went through a number of shifts in musical style, yet the foundation of their sound was a near-cacophonous, amelodic jagged jumble of guitars, sing-speak vocals, and keyboards. During the late '70s and early '80s, the band was at their most abrasive and atonal.
Prior to forming the Fall in 1977, Smith worked on the docks in Manchester, where he had auditioned and failed with a number of local heavy metal groups. Smith wasn't inspired by metal in the first place; his tastes ran more toward the experimental rock & roll of the Velvet Underground, as well as the avant-garde art rock of Can. Eventually, he found several similarly inclined musicians — guitarist Martin Bramah, bassist Tony Friel, keyboardist Una Baines, and drummer Karl Burns — and formed the Fall, taking the group's name from the Albert Camus novel. The band cut an EP, Bingo-Master's Break-Out!, which was funded by the Buzzcocks' label, New Hormones, but it sat unreleased for nearly a year, simply because the band couldn't find anyone who wanted to sign them. The Fall were outsiders, not fitting in with either the slick new wave and the amateurish, simple chord-bashing of punk rock. Consequently, they had a difficult time landing a record contract. After a while, the group had gained some fans, including Danny Baker, the head of the Adrenaline fanzine, who persuaded Miles Copeland to release the EP on his Step Forward independent label.
During 1978, Smith replaced bassist Friel with Marc Riley (bass, guitar, keyboards) and keyboardist Baines with Yvonne Pawlett because they wanted to make the Fall more accessible. The new lineup recorded the band's first full-length album, Live at the Witch Trials, which was released on January 1, 1979.
Representative Songs In This Week's Flashback: Frightened, Music Scene
5. The Mekons
More than any band that came out of late-'70s England, the Mekons (the name taken from the popular sci-fi comic Dan Dare) have perhaps the most devoted fans of any band even remotely connected to punk rock. And why not? Over the course of several decades, this band, with an ever-shifting lineup (only Jon Langford and Tom Greenhalgh remain from the original), produced some of the best rock & roll on the planet, be it amateurish rock-noise, cool synth-driven pop, guitar rave-ups, or postmodern country & western, the Mekons have done it all and done it with style, grace, and a ribald sense of humor.
Emerging from the same Leeds University "scene" that begot Gang of Four, the Mekons weren't as overtly political as their Marxist-inspired brethren, but their punk rock pedigree and unsubtle anti-Thatcher and -Reaganisms did set them apart from the post-punk world's innumerable careerists and posers. Their early recordings were exceedingly lo-fi affairs that valued emotion and energy over anything that remotely resembled musical proficiency. Songs like "Never Been in a Riot" and "32 Weeks" sound as if the band entered the studio, arbitrarily decided who was going to play what, and started the tapes rolling. It was fun, challenging, and anarchic -- principles to which the band has clung, musical genre notwithstanding, ever since their inception.
From the time of their debut album, The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen, the Mekons had turned into a slightly more accomplished post-punk band that, like their pals in Gang of Four, wielded trebly guitars and shouted vocals over semi-funky rhythms tracks. The songs lacked focus, but this was a bizarre record that, for all of its oddly ingratiating music, offered little insight as to whom was making it. This remained true for a couple of years or so as the band (basically Langford, Greenhalgh, Kevin Lycett, and whomever else they could rope into a session) made one exciting, enigmatic, and extremely difficult-to-find record after another.
Representative Songs In This Week's Flashback:Where Were You?, Never Been In A Riot