Loud Family - Music: What Happened?

1983
by Scott Miller

"Burning Down the House" - Talking Heads
The eighties became what they were in 1983. You can hear the difference in the Dream Syndicate's "Still Holding On To You," a still-very-good song that's like 1982's "Tell Me When It's Over," but with eighties production: most of the world of feral and arcane studio sound obsession is simply gone in favor of a few new simple rules, the first of which is that there has to be a big gated-reverb snare. And the mix has to leave plenty of room for this snare, there can't be too much guitar. This is like saying you can't hang a painting in a room with an 800-pound gorilla, because it will distract from the gorilla. The aesthetic may trace to Peter Gabriel, whose excellent mix on "The Intruder" was too influential, and his supposed claim that many mixes have been wrecked by cymbals taken too seriously (I don't know if he really said that, but I can count on the fingers of one hand the mixes that have been wrecked by cymbals). Anyway, this is the world as occupied by bands like Talking Heads, the Cars, Devo and any other new wave band seeking eighties survival, hence the historical inaccuracy of this being the new wave sound. Authentic new wave had not much reverb, not much "space" in the mix, and bigger rhythm guitars. "Burning Down the House" makes good use of the change, and the extremely cool Robert Rauschenberg rotating transparency album art reduced my grousing about the permanent retirement of the band's seventies minimalist arrangement magic.

"You're My Favorite Waste Of Time" - Marshall Crenshaw
Maybe most prominent on the Attack of the Killer Bs album, this killer B of Everlyesque harmony pop with a just a hint of "Saturday Night Fever" is now available as an eighties-resistant home demo, which is my recording here.

"Synchronicity II" - The Police
Does "Every Breath You Take" really strike people as surpassingly beautiful? I can find nothing to like about it. The whole Synchronicity album seems like not very good ideas dressed up in not very good sound—except for this song, whose little rhythm section details add up to a very interesting listen. Yet, don't quiz me on the ominous implication of the slimy creature in the Scottish lake stirring as "industrial" office workers have a bad day. Its foot is caught in one of those six-pack rings?

"Without You" - David Bowie
Huge hit that it was, Let's Dance began the long, long era of every new Bowie album being touted as the best one since Scary Monsters. This song is wonderful, and it makes you realize that as expressionist as he had always been, he was capable of a degree of understatement whose last vestiges are still discernible here. As much as I like Adrian Belew's guitar, Bowie shouldn't be allowed near him—or Reeves Gabrels. I think this is Earl Slick, who, like Mick Ronson, has plenty of personality but plays just enough and no more.

"It's About Time" - True West
True West was formed by some passing acquaintances of mine including Russ Tolman and Gavin Blair, members of Dream Syndicate front-person Steve Wynn's ex-band the Suspects—but it was really Richard McGrath's supple, psychedelic guitar that woke up the ears, and helped make the so-called "paisley underground" a force for good in the period.

"Hand In Glove" - The Smiths
"Hand In Glove" is almost alone as a worthwhile 1983 recording whose sound jumps unarguably out of the grooves. Johnny Marr could really do jangly in a way that wove a spell—wasn't just the same plodding, only treblier—and the harmonica lends an impressively musical and blues-neutral touch. Morrissey would struggle with production for years afterward.

"Run It" - The Replacements
This is the Replacements package in a minute and some change: funny, catchy, transgressive center—"red light, red light, run it!"—casual but ambitious playing, excellent yelled vocals, little beer party musical quotes that had "band that will never be that big" written all over them. But they fought the power and pretty much won.

"Going Down To Liverpool" - Katrina and the Waves
Kimberley Rew, the talented, pixyish other guitarist from the Soft Boys, has had weird little periods of major industry clout, none more pronounced than when Katrina Leskanich belted his composition "Walking On Sunshine." Among his classics in my book is "Going Down To Liverpool," of which the Bangles did an excellent contemporary cover.

"Blister in the Sun" - Violent Femmes
Weird how everyone likes this song. That's good, I guess.

"In a Big Country" - Big Country
This is one of the better big, fist-pumping eighties productions; it just seems to have a high-stepping, passionate, outdoorsy, not-overly-bright appeal. I would have to account the Northern California region of the U.S. as a qualifying big country where dreams stay with you like a lover's voice fires the mountainside, and I regret that shallow, high-dream-turnover people from small, flat countries cannot connect with this rich experience.

"Every Word Means No" - Let's Active
"Every Word Means No" was my naive idea of a million-selling hit, and its lack of impact on any but indie circles contributed to my realization that I was getting into the music business at a time where I didn't have the slightest idea what people wanted or what they were thinking.

"One Hour 1/2 Ago" - The Rain Parade
Paisley underground bands were properly from L.A., and one group of core practitioners was the Rain Parade, which contained future Mazzy Star members David Roback and Will Glenn. Emergency Third Rail Power Trip was probably the most certifiably trippy of the branded projects.

"Beauty and Sadness" - The Smithereens
It's funny how at a time when Let's Active were making their guitar riff move, the Smithereens—one of the few acts to do big guitar riff business as late as 1986—were at this time playing their psychedelic card. I love the little turn on, "Maybe you never belonged to me."

"My City Was Gone" - Pretenders
This swamp guitar rocker reminds me a little of both Creedence and the Hollies of "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress." It suffered the indignity of being Rush Limbaugh's radio show theme song, but with any luck the world will remember Chrissie's shock at the overdevelopment of her home state long after they're forgotten anything Rush said.

"The Real World" - The Bangles
The most utterly pleasant vocal harmony group in years was a big paisley underground scene player. Those who know only "Eternal Flame" might be amazed at how inventive and together they were in their relative infancy.

"Shaking Through" - R.E.M.
Murmur was huge. By inducing an entire college rock culture to go its way, it could plausibly be called the only stake in the ground averting total, lasting Michael Jackson/Madonna industry domination. Micheal Stipe practically single-handedly invented the possibility of being reflective and oblique, yet still getting a lot across and doing big box office. He didn't come right at you with social injustice in those days; he entered your consciousness via the passing shadows of telephone polls and disused word choices like "up the stairs and to the landing"—somehow with more immediate results. It's very hard to choose one song (especially with "Radio Free Europe" already taken for 1981), but I've always found the nuanced modulation of "Shaking Through" to be moving, and "Could it be that one small voice doesn't count in the world" to be one of Stipe's most direct and moving lines.

"A Day In Erotica" - The Three O'Clock
The actual inventor of the paisley underground was Micheal Quercio, whose previous band the Salvation Army produced—completely out of nowhere—an album of revved-up psychedelic guitar numbers with the hint of real melodic skill. The Sixteen Tambourines album disillusioned some Nuggets fans, but represented an incredible flowering of Micheal's melodic facility and range. "Jet Fighter," "Stupid Einstein," and "And So We Run" are all gems, but "A Day In Erotica" is a full-blown art rock classic. The vocal cluster on "She will run for miles, run to you" rivals the Bangles.

"Jokerman" - Bob Dylan
Rumored to have renounced Christianity and embrace Judaism, it was hard to pin down exactly which flavor of religious crank Dylan constituted on the mad prophesying of "Jokerman." One of his last bell-clear vocals, the way he's saying what he's saying somehow rings true to me, and the tune rings true to me. I think he might be talking about some variation on how Jesus is perceived—maybe the world's hostility toward someone embracing and passing on a radically prophetic message.

"Diane" - Husker Du
For a song to mean even more business than "Jokerman" is remarkable. I actually hesitate to play this song for any given person in any given social context because it's so troubling. It's a believable account of a rapist/murderer picking up a girl, which without any tasteless description fully captures the shocking nature of the event. It's a Grant Hart song, but Bob Mould's guitar avalanche carries much of the emotional message. In a way it's a punky and thus to a degree unprofessional approach, yet achieves something of a monumental grandeur that plays against the rude banality of evil's encroachment into civility. The eighties saw deterioration of serious subject matter into either gratuitous offensiveness played partially for humor, or grandiose overinflation, but Husker Du found the perfect pitch early.