Loud Family - Music: What Happened?

1986
by Scott Miller

"My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes To Bitburg)" - Ramones
To the extent that I can put my finger on what I didn't like about an era whose cultural highlight was "Pee-wee's Playhouse," part of it was Reaganomics. For those too young to have felt the adrenaline rush of its first discovery, it was pretty much this: there is not really any imperative to help people who need help, because doing so only encourages whatever behavior it is of theirs that is working effectively against prosperity. I think this mindset trickled down as a widening entertainer/audience divide. By 1986, top ten acts, with their sampling technology and million-dollar video choreography, were absolutely not doing something you thought of as something you could do at home—at any rate, nowhere near the way twenty years earlier, some appreciable percentage of a given record's buyers would also buy a guitar book or sheet music. Bizarrely a Phil Spector production, the deservedly controversial "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg" doesn't attempt an airtight indictment of Reagan for failing to boycott a German graveyard containing some Nazis (conservative Johnny can't have bought in), but it's aces at putting across the honest feeling of being impotently rankled: "Somehow," one could say of so much, "it really bothered me."

"Live To Tell" - Madonna
I conceive of Madonna as being as unartistic as any major recording star has been in my adulthood; she may not be in real life. I think of her compositional technique as advanced sciences of pleasing an audience, entirely unconcerned with imparting a worldview—but that's my self-serving mind fighting what I think might be a fair judgment that this is a well above average song and vocal. The lyrical sentiment, on the other hand, seems no better than canned. This is almost provable just by considering the insane degree to which the world cuts Madonna too much slack in that area—we can actually endure witnessing her perform these lyrics while hanging on a big mirrored crucifix, when imagining the spectacle of virtually any other artist performing worthier righteously indignant lyrics—say, Helen Reddy doing "I Am Woman"—in a similar get-up would be laughable on the face of it.

"Good Guys and Bad Guys" - Camper Van Beethoven
Camper Van Beethoven were a little more self-mythologizing about their folkiness than was always 100% healthy—it led to a clash of plainspokenness with arty absurdism that, to the best of my ability to run the numbers, adds up to this philosophy: all you nihilists had better get over your unfounded belief system. Yet, so they probably should; a little accordion and mandolin demonstration that a song is still really just a nice thing to hum along to, with some homespun didacticism about the silliness of calibrating to political and socioeconomic metrics, was just the tonic for 1986.

"Fear Of God" - Guadalcanal Diary
Guadalcanal Diary had the voice, the folk sense, and the timing to be a breakthrough band in the way "The One I Love" became a breakthrough song. But they hit this unfortunate Johnny-one-note pattern where the lyrical approach was too often just to put out these mostly Christian non-sequiturs—"our daily bread," "lost in the hands of God," "white clad preacher with a house of gold"—and wait for the meaning-laden clouds to darken the sky. Musically, this one is good enough to have been on the excellent Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man, but it's emotionally draining for me to recommend a song that I'd forgive any listener for taking as a faux crisis of belief; I would have needed a good deal more lyrical hand-holding to get the reality of it.

"Bizarre Love Triangle" - New Order
We're getting closer to the range of songs where the first words out of my mouth aren't apology, but we're not quite there yet. For a good thirty seconds, this is as bad as bad eighties recordings get, with the bonehead synth and fake everything, and the lyrics keep up. "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free": one thought it would, but now one's eyes are opened? But when it all gets going, and the terrific Peter Hook's bass has had a chance to cast a spell, it makes sense, and it is a fine melody—although with more getting down on knees and praying that sounds suspiciously like unreligious people trumping up emotional intensity with something they don't think is real.

"Columbus" - The Church
Here is the inflection point, where I don't quite have more complaints than praise. The Church's eighties sound holds up comparatively well in retrospect because they didn't overdo. They correctly identify that piano/guitar riff, or whatever it is, as what the song is about; they don't pump the sound up to compete with power ballads. Honestly, I don't get "Oh Columbus, I never should have let you go," but if the lyrics are only a few literate-sounding notes of disappointment assembled unreflectively, that works adequately for that gauzy Church emotion—passions vaguely hinted at or dimly remembered.

"Oh L'Amour" - Erasure
I remastered this and got it to sound a lot better. My iTunes copy was painfully high-endy and gutless, but beefed up with standard home skills it dusts New Order; here are disco synths generally cooperating, at least up until that nasty fake sax blasts in. The delicate croon is just right for the content: simple, but, as they say, clean lines.

"Ngicabange Ngaqeda (I Have Made Up My Mind)" - Shawe, Nobesuthu
I was working at Marin's "City Hall" record distributor, a one-stop for most widely distributed independent labels, when The Indestructible Beat of Soweto came out on Shanachie Records—a label that to my knowledge only handled Irish folk-based music like the Chieftains, yet suddenly branched out to South and West African material. It's an amazingly catchy song, with incredibly tight instrumental performances, a stunning female lead vocal, and an otherworldly, foghorn-like male lead vocal that to my ears has something of an exotic novelty appeal, but may be a standard technique for all I know. I should credit Robert Christgau's rave review of this with focusing more of my attention on it.

"Over There" - The Connells
Pretty in much the same way "Oh L'Amour" is pretty, but in American idiom, "Over There" has a piccolo trumpet line that goes some ways toward equaling the majesty of "Baker Street's" sax line. Add to that the breathy but resonant vocals, and a respectable set of lyrics that I take to be a conflicted criticism of militarism in general, and we're now definitely getting somewhere.

"I Hope You're Happy Now" - Elvis Costello and the Attractions
Tris McCall is so wrong about this album being better than This Year's Model, but it was sure a bright spot in 1986, and there was even the very 1978 move of the second Costello album, the not quite as good King Of America. "I Hope You're Happy Now" is the song that scores the highest on the This Year's Model scale; there's a real rock groove and some chordal longing in quiter moments like "I never loved you anyhow." "You make him sound like frozen food/His love will last forever" doesn't quite add up as a punch line, but works with the gestalt created by the song and the great Attractions.

"Behind the Wall of Sleep" - The Smithereens
Pat DiNizio's big vocals handle this outstanding sixties-style F-G-Am pattern torch anthem perfectly. Inspired personages to evoke the era: Jeanie Shrimpton (she had hair like), Bill Wyman (she stood like)!

"Four Letters" - Volcano Suns
This one might get the prize for sounding the most nineties; it's Peter Prescott, drummer from Mission Of Burma, with a borderline emotionally unhinged slab of thick, sludgy rock worthy of any 1988-1992 Sub-Pop release.

"True Soldier of Love" - Christmas
Christmas straddled the line between brilliant and ungainly. They were never solid; it was always the case that their good points were so good they outweighed inconsistent skills at parody and surrealism. "True Soldier Of Love" shows off Michael Cudahy and Liz Cox's mostly unison singing, as well as their ability to go out on lyrical and melodic limbs, yet make it back alive. Several borderline nonsense verses ("We went down to the riverside and looked at fish/Thinking fish thoughts") then ramp up with the comparatively straightforward "Take this nail and then use it to hang my heart upon your wall... And when company calls, you can tell them all about a girl who fell for you," and into a grand climax repeating "you" over new chords. The sudden emotional immediacy is an effective device, and even more so is the sudden revealing of Liz as the real protagonist and Michael as the backing vocalist.

"Visa Cards and Antique Mirrors" - The Windbreakers
The inspired, grungy, mid-rangy production here has the same mojo as LMNOP's amazing "Forever Through the Sun" single: buzzy, sustained lead guitar to horrify eighties ears—and DX7 bell sound as a peace offering. The jangly eccentricity of Bobby Sutliff was always a bit of a strange match for Tim Lee's high-energy indie garage rock, but it could all sometimes really hit with fascinatingly explosive musicality, like on this Bobby number.

"Earn Enough For Us" - XTC
XTC were notoriously furious with Todd Rundgren's excellent production. I've never known the details, and always been curious. I mean, the mind reels at the potential for bad ideas Todd could be capable of embracing unreservedly, but this doesn't sound like any of those. Let's see—there's no hideous but oddly cool graphic-EQ snare sound, no soul numbers, nothing obviously done on a laptop; could there have been motorcycles and lace sleeves involved? While I like this song's charming and catchy take on wedded bliss in hard economic times, I don't share the general enthusiasm for, say, the hit "Dear God" (nothing against the sentiment, which happens to be lame, but the tune just doesn't do it for me) I'd rather send newcomers to the masterful Drums and Wires, English Settlement, or Oranges and Lemons as whole albums.

"In Little Ways" - Let's Active
Robert Plant was a big fan of Mitch's material around this time, and this tune makes it easy to hear why: Mitch was getting the range and depth of Led Zeppelin right when surface imitators were making the big, dumb noise that was Zeppelin's reputation among critics who approached them shallowly. The lyrics work Easter's theme of dire emotional "ups and downs" with perceptiveness and heroic optimism: "I will not let it go in little ways" is a great line. This atypical piano number has a fantastic instrumental hook and is probably Let's Active's overall best song, on the trailing end of their popular heyday.

"Blue Sky Day" - Died Pretty
Ron Peno's over-the-top rock vocals put an oddly indelible stamp on what is otherwise a somewhat rustic, early Rod Stewart sound with organ, mandolin, violin I think I recall. The combination is strangely unforgettable. I feel like I love the words, even though I have an extremely hard time deciphering them—is this perhaps the effect of a thick Australian accent? My best shot at the chorus is, "I will give to you some air, I will leave/A message timeless and some spare time to breathe"; at any rate, it gets a strong feeling of wistful regret across to me, and the real point is a mind-boggling yelp on "well, I..." of the second chorus.

"Fall On Me" - R.E.M.
It was very difficult—for anyone—to make progress beyond Murmur; I would have bet against at any given point. Reckoning: good one, but sort of the one done while touring all the time that had a less fully incubated mental picture; Fables of the Reconstruction: the not as good, holding pattern one with some intriguing but dubious experiments; Lifes Rich Pageant: a return to form in a small-audience way, with one secret weapon: "Fall On Me." This was the group's best conventional melody, and brought a real intelligence in the form of their patented "non-linear" lyrics to the art of the breakthrough hit: "Buy the sky and sell the sky... And tell the sky, don't fall on me" works a gorgeous passing minor chord or two into the chorus build-up; "Feathers hit the ground before the weight can leave the air" has the heft of eternal paradox to it.

"I Know It's Over" - The Smiths
Morrissey is a better-trained singer now—still not Stipe's equal from the baseline, but with a chance to win with the right serve and volley game, which is what happens on The Queen Is Dead. R.E.M. are simply not yet capable of this much emotional directness, much of which is not even that good on The Queen Is Dead, really, but when it is good it's astounding. The whole passage with the imaginary rejecting lover is masterful: "If you're so very funny/entertaining/good-looking, then why are you on your own tonight?" The brilliance is in how painfully it is dragged out. "I know, because tonight is like any other night/That's why you're on your own tonight." To know not to economize there is canny. You don't expect a moral crescendo from Morrissey, but he delivers one of history's best: "It's so easy to laugh, it's so easy to hate/It takes strength to be gentle and kind." To have so lucid an articulation of a loving heart to draw upon any time of any day, when a simple song lyric comes up in one's mind, is an incredible gift.