TODAY’S TOP TEN ALBUMS OF THE ’80s (by Brian McCloskey) 1. Remain In Light / Speaking In Tongues (Joint) – Talking Heads 3. The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses 4. Back In The DHSS - Half Man Half Biscuit 5. Rain Dogs - Tom Waits 6. Disintegration – The Cure 7. Doolittle – Pixies 8. Hex Enduction Hour - The Fall 9. Kings Of The Wild Frontier – Adam and the Ants 10.Feet High And Rising - De La Soul ‘I honestly had to think hard when I was first asked to choose my ten favourite albums of the eighties,’ says Brian from Derry who now lives in Santa Monica, lucky chap. ‘I tend to think of that decade in terms of great singles – one could pick a great Top Ten consisting of Best Of compilations from the eighties. 1981 was the best year ever for singles, but 1989 was a great year for albums: half of my top ten come from 1989. ‘I cheated by including two Talking Heads albums, because....Talking Heads, right? Trying to decide between Remain In Light and Speaking In Tongues is like choosing between Revolver and Sgt. Pepper: each is equally great in its own way. Remain In Light and Speaking In Tongues are timeless and eternally ahead of their time; no matter when you hear them, they sound like transmissions beamed back from some impossible future. ‘If you post my chart, Ill share a link on my Facebook pages and invite others to drop you a line with their lists too. Deal?’ Deal. Here’s Brian’s website likepunkneverhappened.blogspot. It’s excellent, despite the Smash Hits influence! Incidentally, Brian’s tenth choice was Cosmic Thing by B52s but only ten records can be included in a chart. More than my job’s worth… Done your chart yet? Message, don’t post, your selection and if you could mention why you chose your No. 1 that would be great. If you want to promote anything – record, book, film, gig etc. – send the details at the same time. We guarantee to post every one we receive. Also, if you’d like to nominate anyone to do the Top Ten challenge, please be our guests. The aim is to produce the Ultimate Flexipop! Top 40 Albums Of The 80s Chart so please put your choices in order. Released 8th October 1980 – one month before the first issue of Flexipop! – Remain In Light is the fourth studio album by Talking Heads. It was recorded at locations in the Bahamas and the US and produced by Brian Eno. The album peaked at No. 19 in the US and No. 21 in the UK. It also made the Top Tens in Canada and New Zealand. To date, it’s sold over one million copies. The members of Talking Heads wanted to make an album that dispelled notions of frontman and chief lyricist David Byrne leading a back-up band. They decided to experiment with African polyrhythms and recorded the instrumental tracks as a series of samples and loops. Byrne’s lyrics drew inspiration from academic literature on Africa. The artwork was crafted with the help of the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys computers. The ideal the band aimed for, according to Byrne, was ‘Sacrificing our egos for mutual cooperation.’ The singer additionally wanted to escape the psychological paranoia and personal torment of what he had been writing and feeling in 1970s New York City. Eno and the band wanted to experiment with the communal African way of making music, in which individual parts mesh as polyrhythms to create a cohesive whole. Afrodisiac, the 1973 Afrobeat record from Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, became the template for the album. The working title Melody Attack was used throughout the studio process after the band watched a Japanese game show of the same name. They realised that the title was too flippant for the music recorded, and they adopted Remain In Light instead. ‘Besides not being all that melodic, the music had something to say that at the time seemed new, transcendent, and maybe even revolutionary, at least for funk rock songs,’ said Byrne. The final mass-produced version of Remain In Light boasted one of the first computer-designed record jackets in the history of music. Psychoanalyst Michael A. Brog has called its front cover a ‘disarming image, which suggests both splitting and obliteration of identity and which introduces the listener to the albums recurring theme of identity disturbance. The image is in bleak contrast to the title with the obscured images of the band members unable to “remain in light”.’ Byrne has described the albums final mix as a, ‘Spiritual piece of work, joyous and ecstatic and yet its serious. In the end, there was less Africanism in Remain In Light that we implied ... but the African ideas were far more important to get across than specific rhythms.’ The first side contains the more rhythmic songs recorded. The second side of Remain in Light features more introspective songs. Rolling Stone said, ‘Remain In Light yields scary, funny music to which you can dance and think, think and dance, dance and think, ad infinitum.’ The Village Voice said, ‘ David Byrne conquers his fear of music in a visionary Afrofunk synthesis – clear-eyed, detached, almost mystically optimistic.’ John Rockwell, writing in The New York Times, suggested that it, ‘confirmed Talking Heads position as Americas most venturesome rock band.’ Remain In Light was named the best album of 1980 by Sounds, ahead of The Skids The Absolute Game, and by Melody Maker, It featured at No. 3 – behind London Calling and Bruce Springsteens The River – in The Village Voice s 1980 Pazz & Jop critics poll, which aggregated the votes of hundreds of prominent reviewers. In 1997, The Guardian collated worldwide data from renowned critics, artists, and radio DJs, which placed the record at number 43 in the list of the 100 Best Albums Ever. Rolling Stone listed it at number 126 in The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Track List: Side One 1. Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) 2. Crosseyed And Painless 3. The Great Curve Side Two 4. Once In A Lifetime 5. Houses In Motion 6. Seen And Not Seen 7. Listening Wind 8. The Overload Two singles were released from Remain In Light - Once In A Lifetime and Houses In Motion. It received critical acclaim, and was named one of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century by National Public Radio. It peaked at No. 14 in the UK and, amazingly, only No. 103 in the US. ‘Were largely unconscious,’ said Byrne of the song. ‘You know, we operate half-awake or on autopilot and end up, whatever, with a house and family and job and everything else, and we havent really stopped to ask ourselves, “How did I get here?”’ Once In A Lifetime pays homage to early rap techniques and The Velvet Underground. The track was originally called Weird Guitar Riff Song because of its composition. The video of the song is exhibited in the New York Museum of Modern Art. ‘Under the rocks and stones, there is water underground…’
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 13:45:11 +0000
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