That Wonderful Year in Music... 1978

Defining the music scene of the late 1970s as merely punk and disco does a great disservice to the bountiful variety and eclecticism of the era, and 1978 proves how narrowminded that opinion can be. Even though vapid American boogie and raw British nihilism captured most people's imaginations --and couldn't be more disparate in sound and philosophy-- the seeds of new wave and post-punk were being planted, while power pop hit a creative zenith. That is not to say, however that the punk movement was a tired novelty and disco flat-out sucked; there was just a lot more going on in '78 that most people recall. If there was a running pattern that year, 1978 was the year of the debut; five first albums and one sophomore effort cracked my top ten. If a notable act from the early '80s didn't bow in 1977, they rolled it out a year later.

I try to keep my lists as concise as possible, but yet again I was forced to expand my top album and song lists to an even twenty. 1978 was a bigger treasure trove of music than I initially assumed, so whittling down from twenty-five albums and ranking them took awhile. For anyone griping about why Pere Ubu's The Modern Dance, Brian Eno's Music for Airports or even a more populist pick like Bob Seger's Stranger in Town didn't make the cut, I just wanted to be as straight to the point as possible. I will attest that I left out a big chunk of disco and top-notch funk from '78 as well. The longer the list, the more out of control it feels.

ALBUMS

1. Darkness on the Edge of Town, Bruce Springsteen. Highly anticipated and exceeding even the highest expectations, The Boss' fourth album completes his transition from restless teen to defeated adult. The colorful cast of losers and misfits that Springsteen paints are unabashedly working class, more cowardly than heroic. It makes more than one listen to "get" Darkness, but you have to admire an artist that puts his principles ahead of his popularity.

2. This Year's Model, Elvis Costello. The spectacled Liverpudlian's most "punk" album marks the first appearance of his longtime backing band, The Attractions. Compared to his debut a year earlier, Model is tough and wild in both brain and heart, and every song careens along both sides of the street. Organist Steve Nieve almost steals the show, supplying reckless riffs on a variety of tracks including the hit "Pump It Up."

3. Parallel Lines, Blondie. Setting the template for every '80s tough gal from Pat Benetar to Madonna, Debbie Harry and the boys hit their creative zenith and cracked the mainstream on album #3. Everybody knows "Heart of Glass" and "One Way or Another," but what keeps the album so fresh 33 years later is its depth and consistency.

4. Van Halen, Van Halen

5. The Cars, The Cars

6. Dire Straits, Dire Straits

7. Outlandos D'Amour, The Police

8. The Kick Inside, Kate Bush

9. Some Girls, The Rolling Stones

10. Third/Sister Lovers, Big Star. Recorded in late 1975 and shelved almost three years --than repackaged in the early '90s-- the songs that comprise Big Star's unofficial third album depicts a band (and a songwriter) falling apart at the seams. Alex Chilton sabotages nearly every song on the disc, a tortured artist putting his depression and desperation to the forefront of every word he sings. Side A is mostly rockers, Side B is all ballads, but both sides are inherently beautiful in their shambling nature.

11. Easter, Patti Smith Group

12. More Songs About Buildings and Food, Talking Heads

13. Excitable Boy, Warren Zevon

14. Give 'Em Enough Rope, The Clash

15. Heaven Tonight, Cheap Trick. Balancing the arena-ready punch of their debut album and the shiny belligerence of In Color, Cheap Trick was another workhorse act that broke through in '78. "Surrender" is the no-brainer hit single and their defining song, while "On The Radio" and "Stiff Competition" are wonderful, albeit buried gems.

16. The Last Waltz soundtrack, The Band/Various Artists

17. Germ Free Adolescents, X-Ray Spex

18. Jesus of Cool (aka Pure Pop for Now People), Nick Lowe

19. Powerage, AC/DC

20. One Nation Under a Groove, Funkadelic. As danceable as it is political, George Clinton et al. hit a creative peak and found unexpected commercial success via Groove. Largely dismissed as merely funk (probably because of the name), Funkadelic was inherently about "black rock," fat beats under Hendrix-style guitars. The title track was a left-field #1 R&B hit, but tracks like the seven-minute "Groovealligence" give the album its soul and intellect.

SINGLES

"Thunder Island," Jay Ferguson

"Driver's Seat," Sniff n' The Tears

"I Need a Lover," Johnny Cougar

"Spirit in the Night," Manfred Mann's Earth Band

"Crazy Love," Poco

"Don't Look Back," Boston

"Don't Stop Me Now," Queen

"Baker Street," Gerry Rafferty

"I Feel Love," Donna Summer

"If I Can't Have You," Yvonne Elliman

"Ca Plane Pour Moi," Plastic Bertrand

"Brickfield Nights," The Boys

"Top of the Pops," The Rezillos

"Teenage Kicks," The Undertones

"Into The Valley," The Skids

"Yachting Types," The Yachts

"Down on the Boulevard," The Pop

"Pretty Please," The Quick

"Better Off Dead," La Peste

"Changing of the Guards," Bob Dylan

Your thoughts?

Mama Said There'd Be Weeks Like This...

Hi everyone,

As you've already noticed, my blog entry is quite late this week. In fact, this is the latest I've ever posted my weekly entry. In my defense, it has been a week of overscheduling and unexpected obstacles. On top of temping 40 hours a week, I've been taking the long train ride to Chicago several times to rehearse with my improv classmates. I gave myself just enough time to write something... and than a Category 1 tornado hit Downers Grove on Tuesday night and my neighborhood was without power for over 24 hours. I even had a specific topic in mind, one that required a bit of research, but it can wait a few weeks. I was very tempted to the call this week a wash and sit it out --the first time I would've done so in 5 1/2 years-- but at heart I didn't want to let you all down. I had to type out something.

Between improv and data entry, I've also been working out. In late April I bought a gym membership, and once or twice a week I meet with a trainer. I'd been looking to lose some weight, and though I've been careful about meal portions and my sugar intake, progress had stalled. You see, I was pretty skinny in high school --about 5'8" and 130 lbs.-- but I had a high metabolism and paid minimal attention to dietary needs. Nearly five years later, I was a half-inch taller and 45 pounds heavier. That's not obese by any means, but I was increasingly lethargic and feeling more self-conscious. Rather than buy a new wardrobe to accommodate my weight gain, I made a series of changes to my diet: no large extra value meals (smalls and mediums were my breaking point), more water, and less snacking. By late 2008 I was down to 165 pounds, and that's where I hovered around until two months ago. Now I'm just over 155, which was my approximate weight in mid-2005. Once I clear that hurdle, the question now is how I'll keep that weight off in the long run.

One last thing: upon hearing of the passing of Clarence Clemons, I took a breather from my "Wonderful Year" research and listened to Greetings From Asbury Park, The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, and Born To Run back-to-back-to-back. I arrived at two conclusions that had been lodged somewhere in my subconscious for years. First of all, Clarence was the heart of the E Street Band; it makes perfect sense that he was the first official member of Bruce's backing band (nearly 43 years!) and The Boss' unofficial lieutanant. Secondly, he was one helluva saxophonist. I sincerely regret that I never got to see the E Street Band play live when I had the opportunity, if only to see and hear Clemons' immaculate solo on "Jungleland." You will be dearly missed, Big Man.

Next week: the year in music, 2006.

That Wonderful Year in Music... 1975

In 1975 rock finally reached critical mass. After some lost years following the breakup of the Beatles, a whole genre that was once written off as the noisy noodlings of long-haired hippies by Middle America finally garnered some mainstream respect. Leading the charge was Bruce Springsteen, who followed two well-received but poor-selling albums with an almost flawless, commercially successful masterpiece (see below). Springsteen's third album generated enough buzz that in late October he became the first non-politician to appear on the cover of Time and Newsweek in the same week, no small feat for a guy who was barely holding onto his record contract just months earlier.

Bruce dominated the headlines, but he wasn't the only story in '75. It was the last big year for glam rock before it disintegrated and metamorphized into punk. Citing modal jazz and Kraut-rock as a mutual influence, artists like Brian Eno and Pink Floyd proved that rock can have a calming, ethereal effect, finding a spacey, melodic center without dabbling into passé psychedelia. This was the unofficial midway point of what radio programmers will call the "classic rock" era, with relative newcomers Queen and Aerosmith joining veterans like Led Zeppelin and The Who in packing arenas worldwide, stirring the masses with charging, power-chord driven sermons. Other subgenres that defined popular music in the 1970s were loud, clear, and present at mid-decade: metal, jazz fusion, funk, R&B, you name it.

BEST ALBUMS

1. Born To Run, Bruce Springsteen. Is this the apex of American rock? If not, it's hard to fuse the two major elements of The Boss' third album --a wistful look back at teenage street life, augmented with Spector-esque bombast-- into anything more luscious and perfect than this. "Thunder Road" sounds and feels like the first chapter of an epic novel, while the heavenly sax solo that bridges "Jungleland" brings everything full circle. The title track alone took six months to sculpt, and worth every second of tinkering. All in all, the defining album of a generation-defining artist.
2. Physical Graffiti, Led Zeppelin. Dubbed by Rolling Stone critic Jim Miller as a bid for artistic respectability, this sprawling double-LP is potpourri of musical styles and the near-seemless fusion of five years' worth of sessions and outtakes. Where the first disc is topheavy on heavy rockers like "Custard Pie" and "The Rover," disc two displays Jimmy Page et al. at its quirkiest, as demonstrated by the psuedo-country "Down By The Seaside" and the acoustic noodlings of "Bron-Yr-Aur" and "Boogie With Stu." This may not be the first album that I'd suggest to a Zeppelin neophyte, but it does a better job of covering the band's various personalities than any of the single-disc albums could.
3. Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan. In the early '70s, the unrequited king of the '60s counterculture was in a slump of sorts. Dylan had become self-indulgent, weird and oblique, and if he was releasing music for his own personal amusement. When his first marriage slowly crumbled, however Dylan refound his focus. Though he has repeatedly claimed that he doesn't write confessional music, the ten songs that comprise Blood on the Tracks revolve around the heartache, anger, and loneliness of a failed romance. Through it all Dylan still sounds like an iconoclast, defiantly indifferent to what others think of him and what they project him to be.
4. A Night At The Opera, Queen
5. Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
6. Horses, Patti Smith
7. Toys In The Attic, Aerosmith
8. Tonight's The Night, Neil Young
9. Katy Lied, Steely Dan
10. The Koln Concert, Keith Jarrett. What are the ingredients of the best-selling solo jazz album in history? Apparently, all you need is one man, one piano, and 1,300 enraptured Germans. Unplanned and entirely improvised, every gesture and flourish in this 66-minute live set is spontaneous. This album is not so much about Jarrett's ability to improvise on the piano as it is a mediation on the instrument itself and the nature of sound. A marvelous composition, and the paramount live jazz recording of the decade.

Honorable Mentions: Another Green World, Brian Eno;
The Basement Tapes, Bob Dylan & The Band; Captain Fantastic and the
Brown Dirt Cowboy, Elton John; Still Crazy After All These Years,
Paul Simon; Gnu High, Kenny Wheeler; Nighthawks at the Diner,
Tom Waits.

BEST SINGLES

"Ballroom Blitz," Sweet
"Fly By Night," Rush
"TNT," AC/DC
"Welcome To My Nightmare," Alice Cooper
"Bungle in the Jungle," Jethro Tull
"Slip Kid," The Who
"Teenage Letter," Count Bishops
"Sound Track," Be-Bop Deluxe
"Motorhead," Hawkwind
"To The Last Whale (Medley)," David Crosby and Graham Nash

"Lady Marmalade," Labelle
"You're The First, My Last, My Everything," Barry White
"One of These Nights," The Eagles
"At Seventeen," Janis Ian
"Laughter in the Rain," Neil Sedaka
"Sky High," Jigsaw
"Why Can't We Be Friends," War
"Miracles," Jefferson Starship
"Letting Go," Paul McCartney & Wings
"Magic," Pilot

I wish I had more funk/disco/R&B on the singles list, but it's hard to ignore all the great bubblegum in the Top 40 that year. Regardless, I'd love to hear what you think.