I began 1988 quite cruisily. When money got low jobs came up at the theatre I worked at which really filled the gaps. I tried to bleach my hair but it only went as far as a kind of auburn. That's the back of my head in the photo. The share house changed personnel and character but still managed to feel like a fun neighbourhood. The Sunday morning recoup with tea and fry-ups was always worth it as the previous night's skylarking was confessed through creaky voices. We'd laugh our way out of our hangovers. The band I'd started in Brisbane and resurrected the previous year recorded an album's worth of music in one of the bedrooms on a Tascam Portastudio. The audio quality is still impressive but the songs (mine) were mostly under worked. Fun doing it, though.
GREEN - R.E.M
I was a fan up to the previous album but I felt the band was getting mired into rising success with big stadium rock songs. They were also taking themselves seriously to the point where they were getting dull. None of that stopped me buying a ticket beyond my means at the time to see them at Festival Hall in Melbourne early the following year. I had actually thought they'd broken up. It had been a year and more since the last one and not a peep in the music press. My flatmate Tracey taped the single Stand from the radio one morning and got me down to blare it in the kitchen ghetto blaster. It was great, quirky and perky, big dumb pop and there was a White Room style wah wah guitar solo. I was down at Polyester that morning to get my copy. Pop Song 89 bashed into it. Get Up was a great upbeat number with a lovely weird breakdown. You Are the Everything was strong and moving. Stand was big, joyful and dumb. World Leader Pretend had a great sparse third verse that sounded like Cat Stevens. But after that you get a lot of what was already establishing itself as formula. Start with a big rock song, blend in some earnest acoustic numbers, start side two with a minor key rocker that sounds political and take whatever was getting kicked around at practices and slap it into a song. It was the last REM album I bought. The first side was fun and the second remains an indistinct blur of fuzztone, growling Michael Stipe vocals, mandolins and accordions. My days at the time were directionless and seemed endlessly so. This album reminds me of that.
DAYDREAM NATION - SONIC YOUTH
From the sensational Evol set from '86 and the good highlight record Sister from '87 we got this sprawling mess of tuned down overdrive, drones and buried vocals. I played it once and forgot about it. I saw them at the Corner a few months later and they were great. This was the one that broke them locally (as with Green and REM, just quietly). It was the last Sonic Youth album I ever bought.
ISN'T ANYTHING - MY BLOODY VALENTINE
If you're cool you should say you prefer this to the better known and loved Loveless (because that's better loved and known). I like it a lot but it's not a patch on its more famous follow-up.
SURFER ROSA - THE PIXIES
Liked this but didn't love it. Loved the later Doolittle. As with MBV you're meant to say you prefer the earlier to the latter because .....
THE SERPENT'S EGG - DEAD CAN DANCE
I was sitting on the floor with a few other people at a friend's place and The Chant of the Paladin came on. I couldn't recall a word of the conversation that happened over it. I should say under it for I felt as though I'd just been hypnotised. A little later I was given a tape of the whole album. I would fall into a great dark world of black lakes and dewy verdance, never wanting to return. Like the best gothic movies ever, this doesn't need a plot as the atmosphere is so compelling. I still listen to this.
JOY DIVISION - SUBSTANCE
Both sides of the three singles, the rerecorded Ideal For Living EP, and various odds n sods made for a brilliant listen. The CD and double cassette had more (I had the cassette, wouldn't afford a CD player for six more years). The audio quality was fresh and big. I had most of this on singles but things like From Safety to Where ... were elusive. Bought it again on CD and then on hi-res download. Still listen to it. The New Order Substance had come out the year before as a double vinyl with both sides of each 12 inch. Neat. Got that on CD as well but it hasn't appeared on HD DL yet.
LIFE'S TOO GOOD - THE SUGARCUBES
An erratic mix of passionate screams over guitar textures that seemed to change with every track and the most idiosyncratic vocals since Kate Bush, odd dadaist paens to demons, birthdays and mothers. World welcome Bjork. There was a band as well but they had trouble keeping up. Tracey brought this back from the UK, too.
16 LOVERS LANE - THE GO-BETWEENS
A very enjoyable set from a band who had settled into a breezy groove typical of the time with its Brandy Alexander afternoons and champagne with strawberries and talk of books from Picador and op shop treasures. It reminds me of hot chips on St Kilda pier and sundown at the Esplanade and spring evenings of aimless discussion. I can listen to it but this one (and the previous one Talulla) is mostly just nostalgia for me. By contrast the much earlier Before Hollywood still sounds like a current record.
VIVA HATE - MORRISSEY
I only liked the Smiths selectively: most of the side one of Queen is Dead, some great tracks off the debut, not a note of Meat is Murder, and some outstanding singles like How Soon is Now? Apart from that I found them bland, emperors in new clothes. But Tracey, a Smiths fan and the only other person in the house apart from me who bought records, had this. I loved the Vini Reilly guitar playing and Morrissey's melodies and phrasing and lyrics. It was pretty obvious what fans really dug about them and after all the blather about how good Johnny Marr was (I found his playing mostly muzak-like) here was proof to me that he'd added very little of great worth. Suedehead, Every Day is Like Sunday, Late Night Maudlin St and The Ordinary Boys were great Smith songs with better guitar playing. I even bought this on CD in the next decade for those numbers. For some reason this reminds me very pleasantly of the time. Must have been having some fun.
I AM CURIOUS ORANJ - THE FALL
It was a much cleaner sound than the one I remembered from the early '80s but that suited it. Anyone who could turn the hymn Jerusalem into an attack on sponging deserves my admiration if not support. A good mid period Fall.
NOTHING'S SHOCKING - JANE'S ADDICTION
I would come to greatly prefer the next one but the song Jane Says really put a hook in. I don't remember hearing all of this at the time, just tracks here and there, mostly at pubs or parties. The overall sound was strong with the screechy vocals and clean guitars. Maybe I liked the sound more than the songs.
Singles:
Belinda Carlisle sang Heaven is a Place on Earth which sounded like a commercial for the kind of car that none of her old Go Gos fans would be able to afford. Don't Worry Be Happy made you feel like making Bobby McFerrin very unhappy. Stutter Rap was funny for about four hearings as you collected all the jokes and then it sounded like old jokes. The follow-up This is the Chorus about Stock Aitken and Waterman contained the song's sole joke in the title and so didn't even need to be heard. Bananarama sang Love in the First Degree and again sounded like everything they opposed when they hung around with Fun Boy Three. The local Chantoozies sounde like Bananarama if they'd never gone through the cool phase. George Michael's Faith and I Want Your Sex had memorable titles. Fairground Attraction with their song Perfect were available for scapegoating for the mounting blandness that was consuming UK pop. Robert Palmer's Simply Irresistible sounded like everything else he'd done after he started having hit singles. Kylie was so lucky to have been title checked in a parody song about her producers. Rick Astley could not have known that his number one would lead to an "I fuck one goat" joke on the internet decades later but that it would be the only reason anyone would know about the song in 2010. John Farnham's Age of Reason wasn't that bad but had none of the hooks of the big breakthrough in '86. The Mercy Seat was, I had to admit, good. The Church released their final signature tune in Under the Milky Way. Sonic Youth showed they could sound like smooth college radio with Teenage Riot. Morrissey hinted strongly that he really was the songs in the Smiths with Every Day is Like Sunday and Suedehead. The Pixies showed pretty much everything they were ever going to do with Gigantic except that it was sung by the other lead vocalist so they had to open with their big one to get it out of the way instead of leaving it for the encore. The Go Betweens' Streets of Your Town sounded like anything from its album and the one before but had a breezy charm. Swans released a grab at a hit single with a pleasant cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart. Siouxsie and the Banshees came up with a corker in Peekaboo which mixed hip hop drumming, jazz age dance and a vocal that seemed to come from a different part of the room with each line and it wailed with rage about the star and customers of a peep show. The video was great, too.
The Bicentennial of the Invasion (not its official title) ended with only one of the original gang at my place. Goodbye Miriam, Tracey and Ian and welcome Anne, Marie and Steve and (soon enough) Catherine. The Gatekeepers' 12 inch single Indoors came out to no better acclaim than a dismissive review in RAM (whose star was fading anyway). Well, its value as an artefact rose a little in the next decade (more, in fact than it deserved, though I did like the first B-side, Ogre so much that I remixed and mastered it for a b-side of the single The Smile that You Prefer in 2015). Christmas was wonderful at one of the apartments over the Black Cat where future flatmate Steve was digging, sipping bubbly and nibbling on duck and tapinade while a huge storm flooded Brunswick Street so that the trams looked like gondolas slicing through it. Then on to the fabled local royal house at Westgarth Street where I had a funny first conversation with a near-future love. We didn't care so much about New Years then. I gave up my ticket to the big Punters Club bash as it was already crowded at eight, went back home and hopped in with Tracey's crew and went to a dull party in the burbs before coming back in and finding a few pleasantly scummier house parties in Fitzroy and Carlton before giving up and going straight to tea and toast at dawn.
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