1 The B-52's, "Give Me Back My Man"
2 The Producers, "I Love Lucy"
3 Translator, "Everywhere That I'm Not"
4 Flipper, "Life"
5 Waitresses, "I Know What Boys Like"
6 Human Sexual Response, "Jackie Onassis"
7 U2, "11 O'clock Tick Tock"
8 Mission of Burma, "That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate"
9 The Lyres, "(I Want To) Help You Ann"
10 Neats, "6"
11, Run-D.M.C., "King Of Rock"
12 Cameo, "Candy"
13 2 Tone All Stars, "Starvation"
14 The dB's, "Neverland"
15 Hüsker Dü, "Keep Hanging On"
16 Half Man Half Biscuit, "The Trumpton Riots"
17 Julian Cope, "Elegant Chaos"
18 The Wedding Present, "I'm Not Always So Stupid"
19 The Mr. T Experience, "A Song About A Girl Who Went Shopping"
20 Galaxie 500, "Hearing Voices"
21 My Bloody Valentine, "Feed Me With Your Kiss"
My 1980s v. 4.1.a Liner Notes
My 1980s divide this way:
1980-1 Sr. year Tallahassee, FL
1981-5 Harvard
1985-6 York
1986- Stanford
Track 2 The Producers out of Atlanta were the late 70s / early 80s house indie band in Tally. When I put up the video for this song on FB I had 15 likes within 3 minutes all from people of my age from Tallahassee. Enough said.
Tracks 3 and 4 predicted that I would end up in the Bay Area. Translator are the great lost Pop band who should have made a packet but didn't. Flipper is well Flipper.
Track 7 Point of Personal Pride. I'm on a U2 record, however deep in the mix. The best live thing they ever did. I saw the show at the Orpheum in Boston when this track was recorded.
Track 11 Step Aside Gangsta Wannabes; the boys from Hollis Queens would still kick your ass at 40+ with one hand tied behind their back and their Adidas with no laces Plus the video with Larry Bud Melman is a classic as is this non sequitur lyric:
Every jam we play, we break two needles
There's three of us but we're not the Beatles
Just remember they won't stop rockin' till they retire!
Track 8 Mission of Burma my personal Gods and Clinton Conley who wrote this song is actually a Facebook friend. I saw them almost every weekend between 1981-3 when they broke up the first time because Roger Miller's hearing was irreparably damaged from playing too loud in confined practice spaces which is why he looks like this now on their triumphant return:
Moby covered their biggest "hit," "That's When I Reach For My Revolver" on the disc before the "commercial machine" Play. He also appears in a magical lineup on the DVD Documentary, Not a Photograph: The Mission of Burma Story which includes but is not limited to Hugo Burnham and Andy Gill (?)(Gang of Four), Mike Watt (Minutemen/Firehose/Ciccone Youth/et al.), Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo) and that fantastic Asian-American guitarist whose name always escapes me and isn't on IMDB.com entry. Kind of a whole Glen Branca vibe going on at Irving Plaza that night. MAGIC! Oh yeah, Richard Baluyut (Versus/Flowe/Whysall Lane).
Track 10 Earl's unofficial "Theme" song (Inside Starkvegas joke and none of your bidness . . . move along now)
Track 13 The greatest charity record ever. A great performance plus it's for African famine and has shock Black folks performing. this one:
Track 14 A band out of NC who were produced by the legendary Mitch Easter, but only hit moderately in the UK on Albion records and not the US. Should have been the natural heirs of B-52s/REM to indie rock crossover fame.
Track 17 The one true heir to Syd Barrett except JC is "relatively" sane and now sober. A scholar of weird music he wrote this, par example:
Frontman for Liverpool's legendary The Teardrop Explodes. My single favorite song lyric stanza ever:
People I see_
Just remind me of mooing_
Like a cow on the grass_
And that’s not to say_
That there’s anything wrong_
With being a cow anyway_
But people are people_
With the added advantage _
Of the spoken word_
We’re getting on fine_
But I feel more of a man_
When I get with the herd.
Track 18 The best song by my absolute favorite 1980s artist of course it was a B-side on an obscure EP, Nobody's Twisting Your Arm. Perhaps the finest banjo-like strumming Pete Solowka ever did! Did I mention I love songs about telephones . . . "You Keep Me Hanging On", "Hanging on a Telephone", "You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use it?)" et cetera et cetera et cetera
Track 19 MTX used to put up their dookies and blow Green Day out of their Chuck Taylors and off the stage at 924 Gilman Street.
That's my friend Dane posing outside the legendary Bezerkeley club. BTW, Dane once directed the MA thesis of a member of the $wingin' Utter$ at SF State,. His 1980s mix would surely include Georgetown legends The Stiffs with either "Little Chelsea" or "Sad Song"!
What's wrong with a slow epochal fastcore song. I own most of the stuff the girl bought. At least frontman Frank Portman has finally gotten his due and earned a packet off his brilliant debut YA novel, King Dork. Check it Out. Sure they're a dumb little band, but that's also irony my friends.
Track 20 2 of my Harvard 1985 classmates formed a band freshman year, Speedy & the Castanets. I saw their debut performance on the Mower steps or was it by Holden Chapel. C'mon that was basically 30 years ago today! Damon's Krukowski's roommate, one Conan O'Brien, gave him a hand-me-down drum kit. In 1986 they hooked up with their Dalton School friend Naomi Yang (Harvard 1986), woodsheded and signed to Rough Trade (US); they were huge in Europe. I saw the second Kennel Club show, which I'll dub Friends-style "The One with The Big Ass Daisy Earrings" as documented on the DVD . This event included a memorable random meetup with Dean at the bar during the opening act, Smashing Orange or some such. Frontman Dean Wareham went on to greater fame with Luna. Damon & Naomi record under various monnikers and produce avant garde experimental books for exact change. Dean now records with his second wife Brita Phillips. He also wrote a great book—caustic but very, very funny—about it all called Black Postcards.
Track 21 MBV invented Shoegaze with "You Made Me Realise" in 1988 and became, as Creation Records head honcho Alan Magee claimed, the British Hüsker Dü. Everybody, including me, praises Loveless, but its predecessor Isn't Anything has better songs just not that organic whole better than the sum of its parts magic. This song was the absolute best single of 1989; it still blows my mind—Phil Spector wishes he could make a record this good. That's when he's not thinking about jail.
If I, like Jesus, were way cool, something from Colossal Youth would be on here, say "Music For Evenings," "Wurlitzer Jukebox," or "Brand - New - Life." But I'm not, so it isn't. Deal with it.
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