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/2012/10/friday-flashback-1980-election-edition.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 four or 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 1980. Next week our Friday Flashback year will be 1995.
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. Siouxsie & The Banshees
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Siouxsie Sioux and Steven Severin met at a Roxy Music concert in September 1975, at a time when glam rock had faded and there was nothing new coming through with which they could identify. From February 1976, Siouxsie, Severin and some friends began to follow an unsigned band, the Sex Pistols. Journalist Caroline Coon dubbed them the Bromley Contingent, as most of them came from the Bromley region of Kent, a label Severin came to despise. "There was no such thing, it was just a bunch of people drawn together by the way they felt and they looked."
They were all inspired by the Sex Pistols – from watching them, they realized that anyone could do it. When they learned that one of the bands scheduled to play the 100 Club Punk Festival, organized by Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, pulled out from the bill at the last minute, Siouxsie suggested that she and Severin play, even though they had no band name or additional members. Two days later, the pair appeared at the festival held in London. With two borrowed musicians at their side, Marco Pirroni on guitars and John Simon Ritchie (already commonly known as Sid Vicious) on drums, their set consisted of a 20-minute improvisation based on The Lord's Prayer.
While the band intended to split up after the gig, they were asked to play again. Two months later, Siouxsie and Severin recruited drummer Kenny Morris and guitarist Peter Fenton. After playing several gigs in early 1977, the band realized that Fenton did not fit in because he was a real rock guitarist. John McKay finally took his seat in July.
After adding a new and permanent drummer named Budgie the band entered the studios to record the single Happy House with guitarist John McGeoch, formerly of Magazine. Their third album, Kaleidoscope, released in 1980, saw the Banshees exploring new musical territories with the use of other instruments like synthesizers, sitars and drum machines. The group initially had a concept of making each song sound completely different, without regard to whether or not the material could be performed in concert.
Melody Maker described the result as "a kaleidoscope of sound and imagery, new forms, and content, flashing before our eyes." Kaleidoscope was a commercial success, peaking at number 5 in the UK album chart. This lineup, featuring McGeoch on guitar, toured the United States for the first time in support of the album, playing their first shows in New York City in November 1980.
Although a broad range of contemporary acts has sampled, covered, or been influenced by Siouxsie And The Banshees—including Savages, Chelsea Wolfe, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV On The Radio, DeVotchKa, Santigold, and The Weeknd—there’s still a strong mystique surrounding the hallowed post-punk group. Siouxsie Sioux and her band of arcane noisemakers started out crafting spiky post-punk. Before long, though, The Banshees had morphed into a daring, murky-yet-shimmering entity that incorporated elements of goth and psychedelia while transcending both.
Representative Songs in This Week's Flashback:Christine, Happy House
2. The Jam
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The Jam were the most popular band to emerge from the initial wave of British punk rock in 1977; along with the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Buzzcocks, The Jam had the most impact on pop music. While they could barely get noticed in America, the trio became genuine superstars in Britain, with an impressive string of Top Ten singles in the late '70s and early '80s. The Jam could never have a hit in America because they were thoroughly and defiantly British.
Under the direction of guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Paul Weller, the trio spearheaded a revival of mid-'60s mod groups, in the style of the Who and the Small Faces. Like the mod bands, the group dressed stylishly, worshipped American R&B, and played it loud and rough. By the time of the group's third album, Weller's songwriting had grown substantially, as he was beginning to write social commentaries and pop songs in the vein of the Kinks. Both his political songs and his romantic songs were steeped in British culture, filled with references and slang in the lyrics, as well as musical allusions.
Furthermore, as The Jam grew more popular and musically accessible, Weller became more insistent and stubborn about his beliefs, supporting leftist causes and adhering to the pop aesthetics of '60s British rock without ever succumbing to hippie values. Paradoxically, that meant even when their music became more pop than punk, they never abandoned the punk values -- if anything, Weller stuck to the strident independent ethics of 1977 more than any other punk band just by simply refusing to change.
All Mod Cons, released late in 1978, marked a turning point in The Jam's career, illustrating that Weller's songwriting was becoming more melodic, complex, and lyrically incisive, resembling Ray Davies more than Pete Townshend. Even as their sound became more pop-oriented, the group lost none of their tightly controlled energy. All Mod Cons was a major success, peaking at number six on the U.K. charts, even if it didn't make a dent in the U.S. Every one of the band's singles were now charting in the Top 20, with the driving The Eton Rifles becoming their first Top Ten in November 1979, charting at number three.
Setting Sons, released at the end of 1979, climbed to number four in the U.K. and marked their first charting album in the U.S., hitting number 137 in spring of 1980. At that time, The Jam had become full-fledged rock stars in Britain, with their new Going Underground single entering the charts at number one. During the summer, the band recorded their fifth album, with the Taxman-inspired Start released as a teaser single in August; Start became their second straight number one.
Representative Songs in This Week's Rotation: Start, Going Underground, The Eton Rifles
3. Squeeze
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The band's founding members in March 1974 were Chris Difford (guitar, vocals, lyrics), Glenn Tilbrook (vocals, guitar, music), Jools Holland (keyboards), and Paul Gunn (drums). The group performed under several names, most frequently Captain Trundlow's Sky Company aka Skyco, before selecting the band name Squeeze as a facetious tribute to The Velvet Underground's oft-derided 1973 album Squeeze. Squeeze provided one of the links between classic British guitar pop and post-punk. Inspired heavily by the Beatles and the Kinks, Squeeze was the vehicle for the songwriting of Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook, who were hailed as the heirs to Lennon and McCartney's throne during their heyday in the early '80s.
Unlike Lennon and McCartney, the partnership between Difford and Tilbrook was a genuine collaboration, with the former writing the lyrics and the latter providing the music. Squeeze never came close to matching the popularity of the Beatles, but the reason for that is part of their charm. Difford and Tilbrook were wry, subtle songwriters that subscribed to traditional pop songwriting values, but subverted them with literate lyrics and clever musical references. While their native Britain warmed to Squeeze immediately, sending singles like Take Me I'm Yours and Up the Junction into the Top Ten, the band had a difficult time gaining a foothold in the states; they didn't have a U.S. Top 40 hit until 1987, nearly a decade after their debut album.
Squeeze's early career was spent around Deptford in SE London, where they were part of a lively local music scene which included Alternative TV and Dire Straits. Though the group was initially signed to Miles Copeland III's BTM Records, the label went under in late 1976, and so their early singles and debut EP, 1977's Packet of Three, were released on the Deptford Fun City label.
Squeeze's first EP and most of its self-titled debut album (1978) were produced by John Cale for A&M Records. Cale had been a member of Velvet Underground from whose album Squeeze took their name. However, the debut album's two hit singles, Take Me I'm Yours and Bang Bang were produced by the band themselves, as the label found Cale's recordings uncommercial. In the United States and Canada, the band and album were dubbed U.K. Squeeze due to legal conflicts arising from a contemporary American band called Tight Squeeze. The "U.K." was dropped for all subsequent releases. In Australia, the same name change was used due to legal conflicts arising from an existing Sydney-based band also called Squeeze. Albums in Australia were credited to U.K. Squeeze up to and including Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti.
The band's second album, Cool for Cats (1979), contained the band's two highest charting UK singles in Cool For Cats and Up The Junction, both of which peaked at No. 2. John Bentley replaced Harry Kakoulli on bass in 1979 following the release of the LP.
Released in the spring of 1980, Argybargy received the strongest reviews of any Squeeze album to date, and produced moderate U.K. hits with Another Nail In My Heart and Pulling Mussels (From the Shell). Both songs, plus If I Didn't Love You, became hits on college radio and new wave clubs in America, increasing the band's profile considerably; it was the first Squeeze album to chart in America, reaching number 71.
Keyboardist Jools Holland left the band for a solo career in 1980. Keyboard duties were taken over by highly-rated singer-keyboardist Paul Carrack, a former member of British soul-pop band Ace, who scored a major international hit with the song How Long. Carrack had also been a member of Roxy Music.
Representative Songs in This Week's Flashback:Farfisa Beat, If I Didn't Love You, Pulling Mussels (From The Shell), Another Nail In My Heart
4. Echo & The Bunnymen
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Echo & the Bunnymen are a British post-punk band, formed in Liverpool in 1978. The original line-up consisted of vocalist Ian McCulloch, guitarist Will Sergeant and bass player Les Pattinson, supplemented by a drum machine. By 1980, Pete de Freitas joined as the band's drummer.
Ian McCulloch began his career in 1977, as one third of the Crucial Three, a bedroom band which also featured Julian Cope and Pete Wylie. When Wylie left, McCulloch and Cope formed the short-lived A Shallow Madness with drummer Dave Pickett and organist Paul Simpson, during which time such songs as Read It In Books, Robert Mitchum, You Think It's Love and Spacehopper were written by the pair. When Cope sacked McCulloch from the band, A Shallow Madness changed their name to The Teardrop Explodes, and McCulloch joined forces with guitarist Will Sergeant and bass player Les Pattinson to form Echo & the Bunnymen. This early incarnation of the band featured a drum machine, assumed by many to be "Echo", though this has been denied by the band.
In the 1982 book Liverpool Explodes!, Will Sergeant explained the origin of the band's name: "We had this mate who kept suggesting all these names like The Daz Men or Glisserol and the Fan Extractors. Echo and the Bunnymen was one of them. I thought it was just as stupid as the rest."
Echo & the Bunnymen's debut single The Pictures on My Wall was released on Bill Drummond & David Balfe's Zoo Records in May 1979, the B-side being the McCulloch/Cope collaboration Read It in Books (also recorded by The Teardrop Explodes approximately six months later as the B-side of their final Zoo Records single Treason). McCulloch has subsequently denied that Cope had any involvement with the writing of this song on more than one occasion.
By the time of their debut album, 1980's Crocodiles, the drum machine had been replaced by Trinidad-born Pete de Freitas. The lead single, Rescue, climbed to UK No. 62 and the album broke into the Top 20 at No. 17, following critical acclaim. From All Music Guide's Ned Ragett:
"Inspired by psychedelia, sure. Bit of Jim Morrison in the vocals? OK, it's there. But for all the references and connections that can be drawn (and they can), one listen to Echo's brilliant, often harrowing debut album and it's clear when a unique, special band presents itself. Beginning with the dramatic, building climb of "Going Up," Crocodiles at once showcases four individual players sure of their own gifts and their ability to bring it all together to make things more than the sum of their parts."
Representative Songs in This Week's Flashback: Going Up, Do It Clean, Rescue
Sources For This Article: AV Club, All Music Guide, Rolling Stone Magazine, NME, Chicago Tribune, Melody Maker, Liverpool Explodes!, BBC News![]()
http://blog.jivewired.com/2012/10/friday-flashback-1980-election-edition.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 four or 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 1980. Next week our Friday Flashback year will be 1995.
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. Siouxsie & The Banshees
Siouxsie Sioux and Steven Severin met at a Roxy Music concert in September 1975, at a time when glam rock had faded and there was nothing new coming through with which they could identify. From February 1976, Siouxsie, Severin and some friends began to follow an unsigned band, the Sex Pistols. Journalist Caroline Coon dubbed them the Bromley Contingent, as most of them came from the Bromley region of Kent, a label Severin came to despise. "There was no such thing, it was just a bunch of people drawn together by the way they felt and they looked."
They were all inspired by the Sex Pistols – from watching them, they realized that anyone could do it. When they learned that one of the bands scheduled to play the 100 Club Punk Festival, organized by Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, pulled out from the bill at the last minute, Siouxsie suggested that she and Severin play, even though they had no band name or additional members. Two days later, the pair appeared at the festival held in London. With two borrowed musicians at their side, Marco Pirroni on guitars and John Simon Ritchie (already commonly known as Sid Vicious) on drums, their set consisted of a 20-minute improvisation based on The Lord's Prayer.
While the band intended to split up after the gig, they were asked to play again. Two months later, Siouxsie and Severin recruited drummer Kenny Morris and guitarist Peter Fenton. After playing several gigs in early 1977, the band realized that Fenton did not fit in because he was a real rock guitarist. John McKay finally took his seat in July.
After adding a new and permanent drummer named Budgie the band entered the studios to record the single Happy House with guitarist John McGeoch, formerly of Magazine. Their third album, Kaleidoscope, released in 1980, saw the Banshees exploring new musical territories with the use of other instruments like synthesizers, sitars and drum machines. The group initially had a concept of making each song sound completely different, without regard to whether or not the material could be performed in concert.
Melody Maker described the result as "a kaleidoscope of sound and imagery, new forms, and content, flashing before our eyes." Kaleidoscope was a commercial success, peaking at number 5 in the UK album chart. This lineup, featuring McGeoch on guitar, toured the United States for the first time in support of the album, playing their first shows in New York City in November 1980.
Although a broad range of contemporary acts has sampled, covered, or been influenced by Siouxsie And The Banshees—including Savages, Chelsea Wolfe, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV On The Radio, DeVotchKa, Santigold, and The Weeknd—there’s still a strong mystique surrounding the hallowed post-punk group. Siouxsie Sioux and her band of arcane noisemakers started out crafting spiky post-punk. Before long, though, The Banshees had morphed into a daring, murky-yet-shimmering entity that incorporated elements of goth and psychedelia while transcending both.
Representative Songs in This Week's Flashback:Christine, Happy House
2. The Jam
The Jam were the most popular band to emerge from the initial wave of British punk rock in 1977; along with the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Buzzcocks, The Jam had the most impact on pop music. While they could barely get noticed in America, the trio became genuine superstars in Britain, with an impressive string of Top Ten singles in the late '70s and early '80s. The Jam could never have a hit in America because they were thoroughly and defiantly British.
Under the direction of guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Paul Weller, the trio spearheaded a revival of mid-'60s mod groups, in the style of the Who and the Small Faces. Like the mod bands, the group dressed stylishly, worshipped American R&B, and played it loud and rough. By the time of the group's third album, Weller's songwriting had grown substantially, as he was beginning to write social commentaries and pop songs in the vein of the Kinks. Both his political songs and his romantic songs were steeped in British culture, filled with references and slang in the lyrics, as well as musical allusions.
Furthermore, as The Jam grew more popular and musically accessible, Weller became more insistent and stubborn about his beliefs, supporting leftist causes and adhering to the pop aesthetics of '60s British rock without ever succumbing to hippie values. Paradoxically, that meant even when their music became more pop than punk, they never abandoned the punk values -- if anything, Weller stuck to the strident independent ethics of 1977 more than any other punk band just by simply refusing to change.
All Mod Cons, released late in 1978, marked a turning point in The Jam's career, illustrating that Weller's songwriting was becoming more melodic, complex, and lyrically incisive, resembling Ray Davies more than Pete Townshend. Even as their sound became more pop-oriented, the group lost none of their tightly controlled energy. All Mod Cons was a major success, peaking at number six on the U.K. charts, even if it didn't make a dent in the U.S. Every one of the band's singles were now charting in the Top 20, with the driving The Eton Rifles becoming their first Top Ten in November 1979, charting at number three.
Setting Sons, released at the end of 1979, climbed to number four in the U.K. and marked their first charting album in the U.S., hitting number 137 in spring of 1980. At that time, The Jam had become full-fledged rock stars in Britain, with their new Going Underground single entering the charts at number one. During the summer, the band recorded their fifth album, with the Taxman-inspired Start released as a teaser single in August; Start became their second straight number one.
Representative Songs in This Week's Rotation: Start, Going Underground, The Eton Rifles
3. Squeeze
The band's founding members in March 1974 were Chris Difford (guitar, vocals, lyrics), Glenn Tilbrook (vocals, guitar, music), Jools Holland (keyboards), and Paul Gunn (drums). The group performed under several names, most frequently Captain Trundlow's Sky Company aka Skyco, before selecting the band name Squeeze as a facetious tribute to The Velvet Underground's oft-derided 1973 album Squeeze. Squeeze provided one of the links between classic British guitar pop and post-punk. Inspired heavily by the Beatles and the Kinks, Squeeze was the vehicle for the songwriting of Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook, who were hailed as the heirs to Lennon and McCartney's throne during their heyday in the early '80s.
Unlike Lennon and McCartney, the partnership between Difford and Tilbrook was a genuine collaboration, with the former writing the lyrics and the latter providing the music. Squeeze never came close to matching the popularity of the Beatles, but the reason for that is part of their charm. Difford and Tilbrook were wry, subtle songwriters that subscribed to traditional pop songwriting values, but subverted them with literate lyrics and clever musical references. While their native Britain warmed to Squeeze immediately, sending singles like Take Me I'm Yours and Up the Junction into the Top Ten, the band had a difficult time gaining a foothold in the states; they didn't have a U.S. Top 40 hit until 1987, nearly a decade after their debut album.
Squeeze's early career was spent around Deptford in SE London, where they were part of a lively local music scene which included Alternative TV and Dire Straits. Though the group was initially signed to Miles Copeland III's BTM Records, the label went under in late 1976, and so their early singles and debut EP, 1977's Packet of Three, were released on the Deptford Fun City label.
Squeeze's first EP and most of its self-titled debut album (1978) were produced by John Cale for A&M Records. Cale had been a member of Velvet Underground from whose album Squeeze took their name. However, the debut album's two hit singles, Take Me I'm Yours and Bang Bang were produced by the band themselves, as the label found Cale's recordings uncommercial. In the United States and Canada, the band and album were dubbed U.K. Squeeze due to legal conflicts arising from a contemporary American band called Tight Squeeze. The "U.K." was dropped for all subsequent releases. In Australia, the same name change was used due to legal conflicts arising from an existing Sydney-based band also called Squeeze. Albums in Australia were credited to U.K. Squeeze up to and including Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti.
The band's second album, Cool for Cats (1979), contained the band's two highest charting UK singles in Cool For Cats and Up The Junction, both of which peaked at No. 2. John Bentley replaced Harry Kakoulli on bass in 1979 following the release of the LP.
Released in the spring of 1980, Argybargy received the strongest reviews of any Squeeze album to date, and produced moderate U.K. hits with Another Nail In My Heart and Pulling Mussels (From the Shell). Both songs, plus If I Didn't Love You, became hits on college radio and new wave clubs in America, increasing the band's profile considerably; it was the first Squeeze album to chart in America, reaching number 71.
Keyboardist Jools Holland left the band for a solo career in 1980. Keyboard duties were taken over by highly-rated singer-keyboardist Paul Carrack, a former member of British soul-pop band Ace, who scored a major international hit with the song How Long. Carrack had also been a member of Roxy Music.
Representative Songs in This Week's Flashback:Farfisa Beat, If I Didn't Love You, Pulling Mussels (From The Shell), Another Nail In My Heart
4. Echo & The Bunnymen
Echo & the Bunnymen are a British post-punk band, formed in Liverpool in 1978. The original line-up consisted of vocalist Ian McCulloch, guitarist Will Sergeant and bass player Les Pattinson, supplemented by a drum machine. By 1980, Pete de Freitas joined as the band's drummer.
Ian McCulloch began his career in 1977, as one third of the Crucial Three, a bedroom band which also featured Julian Cope and Pete Wylie. When Wylie left, McCulloch and Cope formed the short-lived A Shallow Madness with drummer Dave Pickett and organist Paul Simpson, during which time such songs as Read It In Books, Robert Mitchum, You Think It's Love and Spacehopper were written by the pair. When Cope sacked McCulloch from the band, A Shallow Madness changed their name to The Teardrop Explodes, and McCulloch joined forces with guitarist Will Sergeant and bass player Les Pattinson to form Echo & the Bunnymen. This early incarnation of the band featured a drum machine, assumed by many to be "Echo", though this has been denied by the band.
In the 1982 book Liverpool Explodes!, Will Sergeant explained the origin of the band's name: "We had this mate who kept suggesting all these names like The Daz Men or Glisserol and the Fan Extractors. Echo and the Bunnymen was one of them. I thought it was just as stupid as the rest."
Echo & the Bunnymen's debut single The Pictures on My Wall was released on Bill Drummond & David Balfe's Zoo Records in May 1979, the B-side being the McCulloch/Cope collaboration Read It in Books (also recorded by The Teardrop Explodes approximately six months later as the B-side of their final Zoo Records single Treason). McCulloch has subsequently denied that Cope had any involvement with the writing of this song on more than one occasion.
By the time of their debut album, 1980's Crocodiles, the drum machine had been replaced by Trinidad-born Pete de Freitas. The lead single, Rescue, climbed to UK No. 62 and the album broke into the Top 20 at No. 17, following critical acclaim. From All Music Guide's Ned Ragett:
"Inspired by psychedelia, sure. Bit of Jim Morrison in the vocals? OK, it's there. But for all the references and connections that can be drawn (and they can), one listen to Echo's brilliant, often harrowing debut album and it's clear when a unique, special band presents itself. Beginning with the dramatic, building climb of "Going Up," Crocodiles at once showcases four individual players sure of their own gifts and their ability to bring it all together to make things more than the sum of their parts."
Representative Songs in This Week's Flashback: Going Up, Do It Clean, Rescue
Sources For This Article: AV Club, All Music Guide, Rolling Stone Magazine, NME, Chicago Tribune, Melody Maker, Liverpool Explodes!, BBC News