1979 at 40

My last year of school. The band I'd tried to form imploded with the loss of its best guitarist. I was told about that on New Year's Eve. The seventies were closing down and I couldn't wait for it. My studies suffered as my social life soared. Too little too late I sat for exams I barely understood were already part two of the ones that would get me into uni or bar me from it.  I assumed I was going to get into uni because I wanted to. It seemed like the kind of plan that fell into place for no better reason that all of them already had. I fell in love with two girls who liked me (but that was it). If music had been a major part of my corner of culture it was now central to it. The school parties sounded like Countdown and the Uni parties sounded like student radio (if we'd had student radio). I liked both and went to many. It was a year busy for all the wrong (i.e. right) reasons.

Armed Forces  Elvis Costello and the Attractions

This and the previous year's Model were like my music bible. As one who still struggles to care about song lyrics and considering how Elvis Costello's vocal style does not befriend the word by word follower I picked up enough of his wordplay and vitriolic delivery to declare a new favourite songwriter. Also, just as This Year's Model had improved the sound of the debut album about 80% by incorporating the best of 60 garage sounds and a lot of cinematic sensibility, Armed Forces went further with rich arrangements and a very well handled variety of tone and fullness. Still a favourite album.




Metal Box - PiL

Spacey, eerie, spikey, noisy or just trancey, this is PiL's apex for me. There was good here and there on the first album but this felt like a whole coherent work. Poptones could send me into a meditative brainfreeze. Everyone's on point and it sounds like a whole band working. It's cohesive and unnerving.










Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division

I was unaware of this one until the year after (the news about Ian Curtis came through). But when I did hear it all the way through (having ridiculed its seriousness or really its fans' seriousness) I loved it. Unrelentingly dark and spooky with strange noises-off like something bad was happening deep in the hall of the songs. Not just heavy, it was unsettling. It made the proto-goth of Bauhaus look like cabaret.

This might warrant an article to itself, now that I think on't.






Tusk - Fleetwood Mac

Hated then and hate now. This eighty disc album was released with a campaign built on its excesses (long gestation in songwriting and even longer and more expensive recording and longer still mixing and mastering) which felt like an insult in the time of musical austerity in the wake of punk rock. A band that thought it was building a cathedral but really only producing a denser housebrick. I will never understand the love millennials (and people in their 50s pretending that they are millennials) have for this garbage.







The Wall - Pink Floyd

This completely surprised me. We had a copy of Dark Side of the Moon in the rumpus room record stack and I never played it once. Pink Floyd always struck me as stuff for the oldies until I read about Syd Barrett and then heard Piper at the Gates of Dawn. But then 4T0 did a play-through and discussion of The Wall and I fell in instant love with Comfortably Numb. I got it for Christmas through one of my usual Christmas present suppliers (sister, parent, can't remember) and recall listening to all of it after a weighty Christmas lunch with some of my siblings. My sister Marina declared it intriguing but sick which I took as praise. It didn't turn me into a Floyd fan by any means (I only heard most of their work in the noughties) but I felt, for all its excess of production and length, that it was the best fellow traveller to punk outside David Bowie. I still like a lot of it.


Fear of Music - talking Heads

Liked it better later. This one formed part of the general Uni party soundtrack and, when it surfaced in the gaps of the conversation, I would note it. The instrumental Drugs is a favourite and if I hear it now it reminds me of the powerful effects of OP rum on the teenaged brain. Not as unpleasant a sense memory as that might seem.









In Through the Out Door - Led Zeppelin

Punk has erased most of what I felt about Led Zeppelin but one school friend bought this (I wasn't going to) and I put it on with the brother who had really nurtured my investigations of the band. In The Evening made a big blasting opening but then it just kind of perked out into tuneless filler until the next epic track which sounded like prog rock and then the big soppy ballad and then the formless blues that sounded like a piss take. As a young punk I rejected it wholesale. I later bought it in the eighties when I was replenishing old records I'd hastily jettisoned in the move from Townsville to Brisbane, and then as HD downloads with the recent remasters. Still only really like In The Evening and Carouselambra, though.




Regatta de Blanc

The Police went from cool to daggy within about a year. Nevertheless the first single from this, Message in a Bottle, enthralled me and I will always associate it with the rainy summer of that year and everything that was going on. I heard all of this album at the time and, while it didn't make much of an impression as a set of standout tracks I did like the newness of the sound, the complex production and strong vocals. Part of the era that didn't make it through to me later.







The Specials

Another one I didn't know about until the year later but then really took to. I had so little concept of ska but tracks like Gangsters pushed a darker side of the dance. I cannot separate this from my move to Brisbane and the part it played in dispelling a short-lived but intense period of right wingism I went through. That was mostly about contrarianism and fuelled by the return to social zero of being in a new town. It started fading the moment my new social life started. That involved listening to records like this and a real warmth in ejecting all the wrong.






Lodger

Low was big and spooky when not unnervingly quirky. Heroes was, apart from its big title track that was also a hit single, a dark delve into the night. Lodger was a travelogue which, despite its big leaps in style and mood, felt friendlier. The song and video of Boys Keep Swinging felt like a piss take but still proved very infectious. DJ felt like Talking Heads but in the best way, influenced rather than ripped off. Look Back in Anger brought in epic texture and a Beatlesque chorus. And it went on with fluid ebow guitar, prepared piano and in the middle of it all a quiet and eerie song (Repetition) about domestic violence. I felt very avant just owning this but loved listening to it anyway. Still do.



Eat to the Beat  Blondie

Blondie went all Phil Spector with massive scale pop like Dreaming, Union City Blue and Atomic. The whole thing flowed and bumped the mood at high school parties (Uni students probably considered it too teen). This was really the final one for me as, some singles aside, Blondie was a spent force after it. They played in Townsville at the end of the year (or was it 1978?) and sounded like a good live band but they didn't sound like this.








The B52s

One of my sister's Uni friends had this and we heard it one afternoon at his place. There was such pluck and invention in the grooves. Fifties sci-fi monster movie imagery, brittle naivete, spiky guitar tone like a banjo playing surf rock. A talking male voice lifted by two women harmonising in mighty voice. Part beachnik, part garage rock and all party, this one endures and still sounds like summer holidays.







The Pleasure Principle - Gary Numan

The sound of tomorrow was a creamy scream over prickly synthesised bass and a voice that sounded like it had never known emotion. Tales of cybernetic intelligence with real emotions, identification with cars that had nothing to do with rock and roll, a droning lament that introduced as pre-future an instrument as a viola and tore into the listener as the song's confession told us of the complex. A big sustained cinema show that stirs me to this day.







One Step Beyond Madness

Like The Specials I knew this better the following year in Brisbane and liked to the same effect.













Prehistoric Sounds

This was so ill-served by its label that I didn't get to hear it for years. No local radio, nothing on any of the music shows on tv and not in shops. By the time I might have pursued it I was a broke student. It's the only one I didn't even have as a tape. I bought the reissue box of the first three albums and wished I'd made the effort. Still, better late ....















SINGLES


Well ...

There'd been years of disco and years of punk and some surprise infiltrators appeared. Anita Ward's Ring My Bell, like I Feel Love, was a disco hit that osmosed through the wall of the Disco Sux crowd, having a disarming ethereality. Le Freak, similarly was one of the few funk that got past the punk bouncers. I loved hearing that bass line punching at the glass of the refec. Donna Summer tried the other way around and came up with the rock Hot Stuff which worked. Amii Stewart's cover of Knock on Wood got everyone going with its chunky electronics, soul screaming vocal and brass bursts. We Are Family sounded like the 60s but only a few of us knew that.

But...

The Bee Gees stepped back from the disco reign they had established back in '75 and tried some big orchestral pop mixed in with the shrieking falsettos that had made them a million and more but Tragedy ended up sounding old and shrill.

All of us who abandoned ABBA could only nod sagely at how samey Chiquitita was and knew we'd made the right decision (and then decades later pretended that we hadn't decided on anything and blaster stuff like this through our phone earbuds).

Robert Palmer's Bad Case of Loving You played on Countdown with the same backline of models windmilling fake guitars as his much later Addicted to Love. Hmm.

The Little River Band's Lonesome Loser was so out of place with its times that it felt like it should have had a video in gluey black and white.

ELO ripped the hook from a Pretty Things song no one remembered and even took the title (Don't Bring Me Down). I had a friend called Bruce. A characteristically meaningless moment in the song sounded like "don't bring me down, Bruce" so I'd often surprise him by suddenly yelling, "don't bring me down, Bruce. Don't bring me down, Bruce. Don't bring me down, Bruce. Don't bring me down!" Ah, such fun. I tell ye.

Born to Be Alive went forever and was meant to. That it sounded machined for the disco crowd didn't seem to turn anyone off.

I Will Survive had a zombie life beyond that of Stairway to Heaven. It is so numb from repetition that I can only hear an impression of it rather than the song itself.

My Sharona was great until you heard it the fourth time and you'd worked it out to find that it was kind of naff and creepy.

Supertramp's Logical Song would have pleased everyone who liked the earlier stuff a lot. Not me.

Racey's Some Girls was like better produced Merseybeat but with the cringing camp of the late 70s.

Up There Cazaly was about a game played somewhere on another planet (I didn't even realise how Melbournian it was being) and sounded like the king of the zombies leading a charge.

I think C'mon Aussie C'mon was the same thing for cricket.

Kiss embraced disco with a pretty good hit in I Was Made for Loving You but managed to make themselves look silly and irrelevant in the video.

Everyone loved the chorus of Baby It's You but the whining verses sounded like they dressed in frayed flairs from an op shop.

Over the Border was a post-Shirley Skyhooks' attempt at a punk anthem. It sounded more pub rock which wasn't just the music and the bellowing vocal but one of the verses which bid the visitor to Queensland not to get caught having sex with underage girls. Really. Not to get caught. I resisted. At least the Angels' crack at it kept the politics ... political. The 'Hooks really only had revival and embarrassment to look forward to after this.


But then again ...

I Don't Like Mondays was a guaranteed hit among schoolkids and was where I went to school. A rich pop drama about a school shooting was good enough but the invitation to join the irony of the '50s style verse melody and the cinema in the chorus and video made it irresistable. If you'd seen the Boomtown Rats two years before on Flashez you might have been surprised but if you'd stuck around on that story for the interview with the band you wouldn't have been. Bob Geldof, when challenged about the "punk" sound said: "we play 1977 pop music." Obvious thing to say but it felt like a bolt.

Video Killed the Radio Star sounded like it was made in a cake shop that had the word quality in its log line but it was nevertheless crafty and hooky and I gave it points for that. Like a few on this list this record pointed the way to charting pop for the next five years. If you came into your own pop music in the '90s, listen to the female vocals in this one and hear the Pixies.

I thought I'd written Shadow Boxer. In fact, when it was played on Countdown it took a second to realise that they'd just got to it first and that it wasn't that unique a chord progression and they'd done it really well. Not a big fan of The Angels but still like this. Great use of harmonic change in the middle eight and momentum leading to the solo.

Dave Edmunds covered an Elvis Costello B-side and turned it into a worldwide hit. Girls Talk is a magnificent, galloping slice of bright pop from the relentless forward motion of the verses to the shing of the choruses, through the brilliance of the 12 string solo (oddly a tone lower than the rest of the song) to the ringing fade. Greatness.

Joe Jackson's Is She Really Going Out With Him kept the right side of the divide that Graham Parker straddled between boomer white-soul and British punk. This was a big moment.

I didn't know much about reggae so I had no problem liking the catchiness and production of Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons' Hit and Run.

The Reels' Love Will Find a Way was served by a rare non-embarrassing mimed video. They didn't sound like anything else Australian and kept their promise to stay good.

It was hard to accept that The Dickies were not British. They looked and sounded like it and didn't sound like anything American. Their cover of The Banana Splits theme song remains a heartstopping favourite.

Reasons to be Cheerful downplayed the big hit before it (which I also used to quote all the time) and had more staying power, being funnier and creepier.

Protection was the only song by Graham Parker I cared about. It kind of had a hard ska rhythm which I mistook for Brecht and Weill and was served by a great evocative video. It was on high rotation one Saturday night when a few of us just drove around and around doing nothing. It was the only time I ever did that and it made me vow to never do it again. It was both boys and girls but not remotely sexual. We all knew each other too well. I remember it, rather, as enjoyable but weary. Didn't quite work. If I were to apply nostalgia to it I'd think American Graffiti with a '70s lean or some crap by John Hughes but while we talked and drank a lot it mostly ended up in the bowl like the rest of our hangovers' byproducts. Seventeen and nothing. The song's still good, though.

Judy Tzuke's Stay With Me Till Dawn blended singer songwriter earnestness with a Pink Floyd arrangement and a video that looked like a Dr Who episode set by the Arctic Ocean. Still like this one.

Mi-Sex cannily put Computer Games out with the electronics and quirky popping vocals in full knowledge that it would have a life after the top ten as the background for stories on 4 Corners and Simon Townshend's Wonderworld for years to come.

Lene Lovich began blipping on Australian radar with Number One, launching numberless jokes from deservedly faceless middle aged DJs about it not being no. 1 on the charts. But it was and is a mighty pop statement.

I could yell almost all of M's Pop Muzik and happily assumed the role of performing monkey on request. Everyone: "New York, London, Paris, Mosman!"

So...

The year ended. I had some fun on Magnetic Island after school was through and returned to face uncertainty. I failed to get into uni and then failed my driving test. I lazed on the patio, sipping on lemonade and vermouth, strumming an acoustic and reading something by Gore Vidal or Anthony Burgess. I recall strongly wandering along the Strand after some errand in town. I stopped by the artificial waterfall that used to be there and was hit by a sense of panic. I had no idea what would become of me. I had no idea how to start an adult life. I knew I couldn't blame anyone else for that but that only made it worse. I eventually got a bus home and went through a list of illformed options, all of which looked too difficult or boring. Mum saved me by enrolling me in a kind of patchup school in Brisbane where you could keep all your strong subjects (I was good at a few things) and just make up the gap with new courses. But you had to do two years worth in one. Anyway, until then I partied, moped and played guitar through a fuzzbox that I eventually lent to someone forever (and then found out it was rare and worth a mint). Still, the days were lazy and the nights drunk and filled with promises. I took a plane south in January and never lived in Townsville again ... though I visited. But I can easily remember that the TAA plane rose above the coast and for a moment the window by my seat was filled with the glistening jade green of the water far below. That wasn't the last time but there would be very few more. There would have been a song in my head but I don't know what it was.