Favorite Albums By Year: 1986

After driving pizzas around for a while, in November I landed my dream job – a coveted gig at THE record store in Texas – Sound Warehouse. SW had stores in Dallas, Houston, Irving, Abilene, for a while Oklahoma City… and the closest ones to Burleson, Fort Worth. The big store on Camp Bowie was our favorite but Berry Street was a little closer. When they opened the newer Berry store inside an old Safeway, we got to “meet” and get an autographed picture of one of our heroes, Tempie Lindsey who was then at the Zoo [KZEW]. Anyway they decided to open a store in north Arlington [close to Six Flags and Ranger Stadium, the spot was eventually a taqueria and is now the Lot 9 parking lot of AT&T Stajium aka Jerry World]. I interviewed with the assistant manager in Irving, which was quite a drive from Burleson – he asked what I had been looking at in the racks – Jefferson Airplane. So I am very certain I got the job for knowing my 60s and 70s rock and roll. I started at 700 Monday morning Thanksgiving week, set to open Friday at 10. I don’t remember how many of us alphabetizing, filling racks, making those tall cards with band names – somehow Echo’s band was just the “Bunnyme.” Also trying to compete with eventual owners Blockbuster, they decided to rent videos. Tales of video horror those first weeks, typing in all of that customer information from hand written applications and the boredom of daytime and the rushes on Friday and Saturday nights… Wednesday that week I worked from 7am until about 330am Thursday morning. But I had made it into the record store! I had the dream job, the job everyone wanted. * 

1. Tones – Eric Johnson

This Austin Texas guitar wizard’s major label debut was just an amazing collection of guitar fireworks [Zap, Soulful Terrain] with passable vocals [Off My Mind] and pure Hendrixian homage [Victory].

2. So – Peter Gabriel

It was Red Rain that made me buy this. I was still working at Domino’s because I flew over to the Berry Street store [not one in Arlington yet] and rushed home with this album. Lots of hits: Sledgehammer, Don’t Give Up, Big Time, the song blasting from John Cusak’s boom box in the key scene in …Say Anything In Your Eyes.  Just a brilliant album.

SIDE NOTE: At the time I didn’t make the connection of Daniel Lanois with U2 producers Eno and Lanois, but I would and for a short time I bought a lot of albums Lanois worked on or produced including his own solo records.

3. Urban Beaches – Cactus World News

IrishU2 clones. Or as Musician magazine called them, U-Too] But much more of the Boy / October U2 than the Unforgettable Fire / Joshua Tree U2. Another album found by my friend Marty. I found this amazing. Eloin McEvoy is no Bono but is a good enough singer. Their second album No Shelter [1989] was shelved after two singles were released and bombed. [It finally came out in 2004] and the band dissolved . But I highly recommend checking this out on You Tube. Church Of the Cold, Worlds Apart, State Of Emergency and In A Whirlpool are the standout tracks.

4. Lifes Rich Pageant – R.E.M.

In the record store I was exposed to new things and this was one that just floored me. It stayed in in rotation through the spring and most of the summer of 1987 until R.E.M.No. 5 DOCUMENT appeared. Still my favorite R.E.M.

5. Blah Blah Blah – Iggy Pop

My musical mentor J. Michael Leone told me that I needed to hear this album and I blindly [on his recommendation only] went and bought it. Some people might roll their eyes at being introduced to Iggy by this David Bowie produced album [I might argue that Bowie also “produced” Raw Power because I’m an asshole that way] but anything that opens up the door. Is it a VERY 80’s production? Oh lordy, yes – very similar to Bowie’s Never Let Me Down [which I also happen to like very much – maybe for purely sentimental reasons but so what!]. When Iggy croons [Shades, Isolation] he is great. The more rocking tracks Cry For Love, the title track and Winners & Losers are also really good. The cover of Wild One / Real Wild Child I burned myself out on. Writing three songs with ex Sex Pistol Steve Jones [although Jones only plays the solo on Cry For Love on this album] would lead to a much tougher, much more classic Iggy on his next release Instinct.

* It was Carlos, the accessories guy [blank tapes, blank videos] who decided that I wasn’t a Charles or a Charlie anymore. “No,” he said “you’re much more of a ‘Chas.’ But you should be a ‘Chaz’ – with the Z because that’s cooler.” And that my friends is how that happened. 

One day in 1987 –shortly before I would go to open the Cooper Street store – I was working the front counter, checking this guy out. He was buying a CD – remember CDs were still new at this time and lots of 1970s hit albums were being released and people rushed to buy them on this new “indestructible, always perfect and pristine” medium. Not realizing that the sound was only so-so, compressed and with extreme highs and lows that you don’t hear but kind of feel were missing giving things a clipped feel if one listened closely or loudly enough and/or that they would wind up buying them again in 10 or 15 years when those errors were fixed and the sound remastered. The rush when the first Beatles albums came out was amazing. When the second batch – Help!, Rubber Soul and Revolver came out, we worked the evening shift in evening wear [robe, wifebeater shirts, shorts, etc] staying open until about 1am to allow people to get copies and got on the 10 o’clock news. I must have sold a 10,000 copies each of Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet, Run-DMC’s Raising Hell, the Beastie Boys Licensed To Ill and Def Leppard’s Hysteria. Mostly on cassette or CD. 

ANYWAY, this gentleman and his wife are buying the first Boston album, that debut that anyone who has listened to FM radio for about a week knows backwards and forwards but it so happened that Don’t Look Back had just been released and was on sale. [OMG, before tear aways, you’d have to reprice each album [and CD and tape] each time it went on and off sale. You’d have vinyl copies of Michael Jackson’s Bad or Springsteen’s Tunnel Of Love with 7 or 8 price stickers piled up!] I mentioned this and he said “I know but thanks. Hey Chaz, nice name.” So I look down at the check he’s handed me – it’s the Zoo evening DJ Chas Mixon. I think I just laughed a little, told him I’d enjoyed his work for years.

faves 1985

Favorite Albums By Year: 1985

1985 – the year I finished school! Well, high school. It would take several more semesters of diminishing returns [well into my adulthood] and wiping out of math classes [Algebra, which I had 4 semesters of in high school!] like a skateboard hitting a parking stop before I just realized that I was not college material. So while I may know more than a lot of people, I don’t have a piece of paper or parchment with fancy writing on it that says so. Thus I became a busboy and then a pizza delivery driver which given my Burleson High Skool edjumacation was about right. But delivering pizzas also gave me a lot of cash, and rare was a week I didn’t go buy something at Sound Warehouse. Always amassing, always listening. 

1. Town And Country – The Rave Ups

Why the Rave Ups? Why this little nothing band out of L.A. via Pittsburgh, PA? Well you see, back when FM was still The King and before corporations started hiring Consultants to program  all of their stations to sound the same OR to use satellite technology and BE the same*  they tried to tweak some things in an effort to remain “cool, meaningful and relevant.” They tried to add some new, younger artists in with the Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and the Who. Now some, young impressionable kids with heads full of mush, wide open ears and minds not so hardened and narrowed grew to like some of these bands. Like the Rainmakers out of Kansas, Jason and the Goddamn Scorchers Hell Yeah Sumbitch out of Nashville and this little nobody band from Pittsburgh but found when they moved to L.A. called the Rave Ups. Now the Rave Ups had this country-ISH sound mixed with punk attitude and a lot of humor. Some later called it Cowpunk. The song that got played on the all might KZEW the Zoo was Positively Lost Me in which Jimmer Podrasky listed the things he was taking with him because he was O-U-T outta there including 6 paperback books and a dying tree and a looking glass and diamond ring, a picture frame and a couple keys and some dreams. But the rest of the album was just as fun. There is Class Tramp which skewered the guys with their new sharp shoes, looks that are old, thought that are new who want to be decadent because it might be fun. Which is followed by In My Gremlin – yes, cruising around blasting the AM radio in your old AMC Gremlin. The break into the mock of the Beach Boys singing “she’s so fine, my 109..” – that’s the humor. Those of us who bought this album are a small eclectic group who all fiercely love this record. Anyone you meet who has this record is immediately a friend. 

2. Lone Justice

I don’t remember how we found Lone Justice – it’s possible that we heard them on the radio or maybe we had to check out this band that was opening for U2 or Tom Petty [who gave the band the song Ways To Be Wicked] or maybe we saw them on Live Aid or if Marty brought it back from one of his trips scouting colleges. I really don’t remember. But I know every note of this kick ass country-rock-cowpunk band fronted by the feisty Maria McKee. McKee could howl as she does on East Of Eden , she could sparle like she does on Sweet, Sweet Baby [I’m Falling] or she could move you like she does on You Are the Light and Don’t Toss Us Away. Incredible gifted singer who was disillusioned by the music business [especially the business side and those telling her what to record and how to improve her image and such that she went underground after 1989s self titled sole debut, only releasing 6 albums in the next 30 years.

3. State Of Our Union – The Long Ryders 

If I credit Marty for finding Lone Justice, I take credit for finding the Long Ryders. Even though nobody else I knew took to them. To me, this was just heartland rock and roll and it’s tales of hard times and persevering in the popular styles of Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp [post “Cougar] and Bob Seger but as if the music was written by R.E.M. Later re-reviews suggested that this album was the genre that would be known eventually as Americana – similar to the much ballyhooed Uncle Tupelo.

4. Little Creatures – Talking Heads 

Of course this was a very popular album but it’s because it’s a damn good album. It seems to be the least experimental of the Talking Heads records – but is this because they move to the mainstream or because the mainstream finally caught up to Talking Heads? And She Was and Stay Up Late got radio play but there’s only one so-so track – Creatures Of Love. Another album so good you can listen to it two or three times in a row and still enjoy it.

5. Centerfield – John Fogerrty

The unexpected return of John Fogerty after 10 years of silence is a great slice of Rock & Roll, still in the Creedence Clearwater tradition. Except John played EVERYTHING himself. [He said later it was great – “if I thought of a bass line I didn’t have to teach it to someone or wait for someone else to play it, I just laid it down.”] Of course because it sounds like John Fogerty and because John Fogerty wrote all of the CCR songs, the old label sued Fogerty for .. well sounding like himself. The basic argument was that part of the riff – two notes – in The Old Man Down the Road were also used in Run Through the Jungle. TWO NOTES. Fantasy lost this case but won a battle with a defamation suit for the song Zanz Can’t Dance – Saul Zanetz being the head of Fantasy records. Zaentz apparently did not like being called a little pig who could not dance and robbed people blind. After the initial run of the record, the title was changed to Vanz Can’t Dance. But Centerfield proved once again what Bruce Springsteen said in inducting CCR into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame: "As a songwriter, only a few did as much in three minutes [as John Fogerty]. He was an Old Testament, shaggy-haired prophet, a fatalist. Funny, too. He was severe, he was precise, he said what he had to say and he got out of there."

* AOR [Album Oriented Rock] began hitting the skids in the 80s and after the Reagan and then the Clinton administration changed the rules, large corporations such as Clear Channel and Cumulus Media could own more than 7AM, 7 FM nationally to no caps on how many stations and entity can own but there are caps on their “per market” presence: eight stations in large markets, six or seven stations in medium markets, and up to five stations in small markets, as long as that entity did not control more than 50% of stations in the market. In justifying this, the FCC asserted that “group-owned stations provided deeper news coverage, better quality programs, and more public service programming than independently-owned stations,” which implies that an increase in group-owned stations could increase programming diversity nationwide. Which was pure hogwash. [And I BELIEVE in Free Markets!]

Anyway as competition heated up so did the pressure for numbers. In 1989, the best rock radio station un DFW [a large market, 8^th in the nation] went from playing good loud rock [although they had been adding the “hairy metal” that was the rage then to Christmas music at 6am one day and two weeks later changed the call letters to KWRM and because the home of “Soft Relaxing Favorites. And while this sounds like some kind of prank the old team of LaBella and Rody would pull [one April Fools Day they did briefly “change” the format from rock to talk… “I gotta hear some Skynryd man!” needle across the record noises “NO! ALL TALK NO ROCK!”] the this was truth. The KZEW call sign has been moved to 101.7 licensed to an Adult Contemporary station in Wheatland Wyoming. [That also sound like a LaBella and Rody gag but…]

KTXQ aka Q102 struggled on into the late 90s tweaking along the way but in 1998 The Book [Arbitron ratings] showing the station as 19^th in the market with a 2.8 share or about 14000 to 15000 people at any one time and then it, too was silenced. [Great story here and some keen insights form the insiders on the end of that era from the Dallas Observer.] The key quote here:

"One of the weirdest things about all this consolidation is that onetime competitors are now allies," says R.J. Lane. "That's so weird. It's like, 'Who's our competitor now?' In the last two, three years, everybody's starting to be owned by the same people, and where's the competition? Where's the motivation? You need enemies in your market. Now, it's all a monopoly."

The takeaway from all of this is that corporations very sadly eliminated the local personality in many areas because the DJ / On Air Personality was based somewhere out of New York, L.A., Chicago, Nashville or in the case of Sirrius, Irving TX and the only had one person at the local station for the three minute news and traffic at the top and bottom of the hours and to play the commercials. So the chances of your little record like Hanky Panky breaking out of Pittsburgh or Bat Out Of Hell out of Cleveland or Detroit and becoming a cross country smash were now severely limited because there was not local guy to say “Fuck you, I like it and I’m going to play it and let the masses decide for themselves.” Radio today is as bland as the MacDonald's quarter pounder. Yes you can get one anywhere in the world and it should taste about the same. Yay!  But on the other hand, you can get one anywhere in the world and it tastes THE SAME.

As you may have guessed many, many hours and a lotta dimes were spent discussing this important issue with my friend Marty, the guy who DID his homework instead of slacking [see Favorite Albums By Year: 1984 post] and wound up in Nashville in a Music Business classes at Belmont University. [With none other than a before she was even anybody Trisha Yearwood.]  But of course he went on to become an Electrical Engineer instead of the first Mr. Trisha Yearwood, r the next Chris Lordge-Alge, Daniel Lanois or Jimmy Iovine. So I guess that year at Belmont didn’t pan out like he thought.

Faves 1984

Favorite Albums By Year: 1984

In spite on dire Orwellian predictions, it wasn’t THAT bad. Sometime late in 1983 or early 1984 I began letting my hair grow out, got kicked out of ROTC, and replaced carrying various Dungeons and Dragons and Lord Of the Rings books with The Rolling Stone Interviews and No One Here Gets Out Alive. Listened to the short lived AM Stereo KRQX which went from “oldies” [harmless 1950s and 1960s pop] to a sort of AOR Classic Rock Oldies.”  [the Byrds, Dylan, Jefferson Airplane’s hits] And of course this was the last gasp of FM radio before the corporations took everything over and homogenized the shit out of playlists. For example, one might hear Dylan’s Lily, Rosemary and the Jack Of Hearts on the afternoon Zoo [KZEW] but you would never hear that on any “Classic Rock” station now – they’d rather play Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight for the 1495^th time this week…  

1. Learning To Crawl – The Pretenders

With two replacement Pretenders, Chrissie Hynde roars back to life with this masterpiece. The preview single featuring Back On the Chain Gang [her tribute to the late James Honeyman-Scott] and My City Was Gone [the song about returning to Ohio and finding it a changed place; also the bumper music for the Rush Limbaugh Show – Hynde donates those royalties to PETA] was a double sided hit but a little over a year before the finished album dropped. Time the Avenger and Middle of the Road were also played on FM radio and are two standout tracks. Show Me, 2000 Miles [which is usually played at Christmas because it talks about Christmas and snow and stuff but it’s also about Honeyman-Scott] cover of the Persuaders hit Thin Line Between Love And Hate slow the pace down where necessary. 

2. Reckoning – R.E.M.

Although I bought this album a few years after its release, it very quickly fell into rotation. Gosh it’s been a long time, so I had to put it on. Still sounds fresh. R.E.M. is a rare bird – a band that just seems to be inseparable on record – the guitar leaves space for the bass, the bass isn’t married to the drums and the drums are just amazing – Bill Berry was a monster! – and in the middle there’s Michael Stipe’s foghorn [with Mike Mills singing something else in the background- not usually doing “contemporary” harmonies]. Peter Buck’s guitars jangle and arpeggiate all over the place And while there are lots of great faster songs here [Little America, Pretty Persuasion, Harborcoat], it’s on the mid-tempo number the R.E.M. shine – South Central Rain [which I remember seeing them play on Late Night with David Letterman], [Don’t Go Back To] Rockville and the lovely mournful Camera.

 

3. The Unforgettable Fire – U2

When I first heard Pride [In the Name Of Love], I’m PRETTY sure I was delivering pizzas. By this time, the Limon [the nickname uncle Bill christened the Duster with after the 7 Up commercials] had bitten the dust and I was driving Mom and Dad’s old ‘79 Caprice Classic. Quickly my tape of War / The Unforgettable Fire was a staple in that car [although I may have skipped over Elvis Presley And America every single time]. Where War was crisp and clean and clear, Unforgettable Fire sometimes feels like it was recorded on a bad machine that clipped all of the highest highs off the tape or like it’s wrapped in gauze. Within seconds of the opening of  A Sort Of Homecoming, there’s a wall of polyrhythms and layers of guitars with a ton of treatments [and sometimes treatments of treatments –check out the title track] and the return of Edge’s Echoplex announcing that this is a far different album than War. But Larry Mullen Jr. still drives the whole thing behind the tubs. And on this one Adam Clayton’s bass fills the gaps and drives right along with Muller – one the motor, one the driving wheel – allowing Edge to be all of the places you don’t expect him to be. The studio cut of Bad is okay but doesn’t compare to the new life it took on on the Wide Awake In America EP – and of course at Live Aid in the summer of ’85. 

4. Perfect Strangers – Deep Purple

So in 1984 / 85, my friend [nameless because I need someone to bail me out if RIAA hears about this] and I added some pocket money by recording some of our albums for some of our friends for a small sum of folding money. Now I’m not talking about burning off thousands of CDs and charging full retail here. In those days you had to physically record the record i.e. not just rip a copy in less than five minutes that will be the same forever and ever as long as you take care of your hard drives] which meant pausing in the middle, flipping the record over and unpausing the tape deck, etc. Also since we were genrally recording off of records, the end listner also got any pops, clicks and surface noise!  One could do other things while recording these tapes – like homework if you were Nameless Friend with college ambitions or reading The Rolling Stone Interviews for the 40^th time or attempting to make heads or tails of of Jim Morrison’s The Celebration of the Lizard poem from inside the cover of Waiting For the Sun [and unfortunately, the cover was the best thing about that record] if you weren’t planning on going to college – but it was still a time consuming process. 

Having said all of that, we got some requests. And you know what went really well on the back side of Whitesnake’s [amazing] Slide It In? Why Deep Purple’s Perfect Strangers! [At this time I was not into Purple and had no idea of the connection between Whitesnake’s David Coverdale and Deep Purple or specifically the Burn album. And oh my god, how does Burn burn!] So I was exposed to this album A LOT. Which is fine, it’s a damned amazing album. In the first minute of Knocking At Your Back Door, you get Jon Lord’s great organ, Roger Glover’s under-rated bass kicking in, Ian Paice’s amazing drumming and Ritchie Blackmore’s dominating guitar – then Ian Gillan starts singing… and that’s just the first song!!! And in typical Purple fashion, the riffs feel like they come from everywhere. Under the Gun feels Arabic but also vaguely Eastern European. Mean Streak is just straight ahead driving rock and roll that would not have felt out of place on Fireball or Who Do We Think We Are. Gypsy’s Kiss feels like a track from the Ronnie James Dio era of Rainbow.

5. Points On the Curve – Wang Chung

I saw Wang Chung open for the Cars on the Heartbeat City tour. Me and Dad kept getting bonked on the head by two girls behind us trying to dance in the narrow row of seats in Reunion Arena and shouting “Wang Chung is EXCELLENT!” In spite of this, I bought the album anyway. This is a few years before (BLECH) Everybody Have Fun Tonight. Wang Chung were much better as a moody band. Check out the largely forgotten but still very good theme song To Live And Die In L.A. Dance Hall Days is a good song you may hear on 80s on 8 or what have you. But working with Tears For Fears producer Chris Hughes they put out a synth heavy electronic album in line with Nik Kershaw’s The Riddle or the Thompson Twins Into The Gap. With some pretty good lyrics that appealed [Especially Even If You Dream] to a teen “in love” with a girl far enough away to be on the moon and who was not interested in me that way. The first of many imaginary love affairs. 

ALSO OF NOTE: If I was including live albums, Talking Heads great live disc Stop Making Sense would figure prominently on this list. Like maybe number three or four.