Review: '501 Essential Albums of the '80s'

Late last year we got a swollen tome determined to canonize 501 albums from the 1990s. Alas, such a project was doomed to frustrate because by the 1990s pop music had wandered off into such disparate directions that simply enjoying nineties music in general signals a lack of personal taste instead of broadmindedness. In other words, anyone who'd go straight for the entry on Exile in Guyville could only suppress their barf reflex when seeing that Baby One More Time followed several pages later. In other other words, in attempting to please everyone the book seemed aimed at no one.

Review: 'B-Side'

For every hit that makes it onto the radio or Billboard's Hot 100, there's something more obscure happening on the other side. It might be a piece of tossed off trash, but it might also be of exceptional quality ("Rain"), a chance to throw a less prolific band member some royalty cash ("The Inner Light"), or an excuse to get inspiredly loony ("You Know My Name [Look Up the Number]"). Some B-sides are even better than their smash A-sides... at least that's my stance on all those Beatles flip sides I referenced in the previous sentence. 

Review: Tyrnaround's 'Colour Your Mind: Expanded Mind Edition'

As eighties pop got more and more synthetic, certain bands started bucking the trend to embrace an archaically organic aesthetic. Some of these artists took the retro move even further than Paisley Underground groups like The Three O’Clock and The Dream Syndicate, who borrowed sounds from the sixties without pretending to actually hail from the trippiest decade. The Damned and XTC both devised faux persona as Naz Nomad and the Nightmares and Dukes of Stratosphear, respectively, to fool record collectors into believing they were long-lost psych bands of two decades earlier.

Perhaps Australia’s Tyrnaround didn’t go quite that far, but they certainly left no detail of their music and persona un-colored by their favorite era. They dressed and wore their hair like The Byrds. Like Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd, they played loopy fuzz rock and layered on the backward tapes while celebrating eccentric individuals and the joys of tripping. Like both of those bands, Tyrnaround was very groovy.

Now Guerssen Records is placing that grooviness back in the grooves with an expanded vinyl reissue of Tyrnaround’s 1986 E.P. Colour Your Mind. The “Expanded Mind Edition” of that disc jumbles its original four tracks with five bonus tracks that include both sides of their “Want a Rhyme” b/w “Hello or Goodbye” and “Uncle Sydney” b/w “Uncle Jack” singles, as well as the magnificent compilation track “Paragon-Smythe” (complete with a warped advert for a Who Sell Out-esque coda). Audio and packaging are both superb. A download card affords an additional half-dozen bonuses of demos and live tracks. These include covers of “Pictures of Matchstick Men”, “Astronomy Domine”, and “Theme from Dr. Who”, placing as bold a line under Tyrnaround’s modus operandi as that photo of them posing with Beatles, Monkees, and Cream discs on the back cover of Colour Your Mind: Expanded Mind Edition.

Psychobabble’s 50 Favorite Holiday Season Songs

Oh, I’m quite sure you’ve been bombarded with various versions of “Jingle Bells”, “Jingle Bell Rock”, and “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” since well before Halloween. Don’t let that put you off holiday season songs, though. The ones you probably haven’t been hearing a dozen times a day will turn around the “Bah Humbug” attitude that fucking “Christmas Shoes” song induces. Clean that sleet out of your stocking to make room for these 50 festive and freaky holiday season favorites delivered down your chimney with Psychobabble’s Christmas seal of approval!

50. “Merry Xmas Everybody” by Slade

With its glitzy lights, gaudy decorations, and multi-layered garb, Christmas is the glammest holiday. Wolverhampton glammers Slade recognized this and cut one of the all-time seasonal classics with an anthem made for stomping through slush in platform boots.

49. “Christmas Everyday” by The Miracles

If you’re more inclined to go for a slow, romantic stroll in fresh, clean snow, “Christmas Everyday” will be more your speed. Smokey’s love is such a perennial gift that she could turn any day into December 25. That would be a welcome prospect if every holiday song sounded like this one.

48. “Christmas Is My Time of Year” by The Christmas Spirit (AKA: The Turtles)

Review: 'Punk Rock: An Oral History'

By most accounts, Jon Savage typed the last word on British punk twenty years ago when he published his 600-page history England’s Dreaming. Yet former Membrane John Robb recognized the gap in the tale that appears in any third person telling: the punks didn’t get to tell their side of the story in their own words. So he went to work on picking the brains of over 100 first and second wavers and ended up with his own bulky tome titled Punk Rock: An Oral History. Not surprisingly, the 2006 book recycles a fair share of what Savage already laid down, but it is meaningful to get the story straight from Mick Jones, Siouxsie Sioux, Captain Sensible, Gaye Advert, Ari Up, Pete Shelley, Poly Styrene, and the lot, particularly since some of these folks are no longer pogoing through this mortal coil.

Our cast spends the first 50 or so pages rhapsodizing about their influences and putting to rest the well-traveled clichés that the punks had nothing but disdain for hippie psychedelia, prog, and glam. Then they get deep into the details of their formations, their rises and falls, coloring in between the timelines with the personal perspectives and stories that make Robb’s book unique and essential in its own right. Don Letts comes clean about being the second biggest collector of Beatles memorabilia in England before hocking it all to devote himself to reggae and punk. Captain Sensible relates the tear-jerking tale about how The Damned’s first break up drove him to cry his peepers out while watching Abba: The Movie before heading to XTC’s debut record release party to molest their cake. Robb also gives voice to those who got shut out of England’s Dreaming, spending much time with agit-proppers Crass and paying respect to such punk offshoots as Two-Tone ska, Goth, and Oi, which our tour guide is keen to sever from its racist image. Such politics play a powerful role as punk finally invites feminists to the Rock & Roll party and right wing, National Front ideology attempts to piss on it.

Robb plays a broader role in his book than mere behind-the-scenes interviewer and editor with his sometimes awestruck, sometimes sly interjections. His retort to Sniffin’ Glue-founder Mark Perry’s rant about how The Clash unforgivably betrayed the scene when they signed with CBS Records is—no hyperbole—the greatest footnote ever footnoted. While I have no reservations in recommending PM Press’ new reprint of Punk Rock: An Oral History, I must offer one valuable bit of advice: feel free to skip ahead anytime you see a quote from that whiney, self-impressed windbag John Lydon. Put a sock in it, Johnny!

Review: '100 Hits: Punk & New Wave'

Don’t be duped by the totally no frills packaging; Demon Music Group’s 100 Hits: Punk & New Wave is a first-rate budget package collecting a bit of essential and a whole lot of obscure. The title alone is priceless. Were there even 100 punk and new wave hits during the ‘70s and ‘80s? Not likely. So the compilers aren’t required to assemble five discs of material anyone should expect to be definitive. Yes, there are beloved warhorses from The Sex Pistols, Blondie, The Buzzcocks, X-Ray Spex, and XTC. And certainly no one with even a passing interest in this kind of music should be without full-length L.P. by those artists. The real value of this set is the odd treasures by Department S, Fad Gadget, D.A.F., Modern Eon, Leyton Buzzards, The Records, The Flys, Honey Bane, and many others.




Because this set covers such a wide swath of sub-genres, the compilers arranged the individual discs fairly thoughtfully. There are few jarring stylistic shifts. The Human League isn't sandwiched between, say, The Saints and The Fun Boy Three. Disc one is the most eclectic, providing an overview of each subgenre to come and parading out most of the best known tracks (“God Save the Queen”! “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)””! “Hanging on the Telephone”! “Whip It”!). Disc two is mostly devoted to synthy, dancey new wave. Disc three is cheekily split between the set’s lightest and heaviest numbers. Disc four spotlights power pop and ska. Disc five is wall-to-wall punk.

There are plenty of budget CD series out there, but Demon’s 100 Hits line is unique. Along with the usual Disco, ‘80s Classics, and Rock Anthems compilations, there are such unconventional themes as Northern Soul, The New Romantics, and Indie. The concept of a Punk & New Wave compilation is nothing particularly novel, but the track choice makes it a quirky and worthwhile alternative to more essential and conventionally compiled sets, such as Rhino’s No Thanks! The ‘70s Punk Rebellion.

Here’s the complete track list:

CD 1
1  Hanging On The Telephone
Blondie
2  Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've?)
Buzzcocks
3  God Save The Queen
Sex

February 8, 2010: Track by Track: ‘Psonic Psunspot’ by The Dukes of Stratosphear

In this ongoing feature on Psychobabble, I’ll be taking a close look at albums of the classic, underrated, and flawed variety, and assessing them Track by Track.

The mid-1980s: a barren wasteland of antiseptic record production distinguished by harsh, gated drum sounds, tinny horns, and synthesizers. Aside from the most lo-fi college bands, no one came out unscathed. Elvis Costello and the Attractions put out Goodbye Cruel World (1984), a record that kicks off with a Darryl Hall duet complete with farty sax solo. The Damned also got saxy on Phantasmagoria (1985), their over-polished, synth-swathed bid for big chart success. Even the filthy Replacements broke out some flatly recorded horns on the otherwise fierce Pleased to Meet Me (1987). The real tragedy of such records is that they often contained a good deal of excellent songs that could have really shined in a different setting. But labels remained convinced that their acts had to delve into DDD flawlessness in order to compete with the soulless likes of Phil Collins and Duran Duran. Consequently, ‘60s holdovers like The Stones, The Kinks, Pete Townshend, and Robert Plant were among the worst offenders, probably because they had to struggle the hardest to remain relevant.

Some of the cagier groups skirted contemporary production trends by releasing one-off, “novelty” records credited to some long-lost, fabricated ‘60s band. They put together collections of organic, Retro-Rock that stood in warm contrast to the icy sounds of the day. In 1984, The Damned masqueraded as Naz Nomad and The Nightmares to release Give Daddy The Knife, Cindy, a phony soundtrack to a phony Roger Corman-esque psychedelic horror movie containing gritty covers of American psych and garage classic such as The Human Beinz’s “Nobody But Me”, Paul Revere and The Raiders’ “Kicks”, and The Electric Prunes’ “I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)”. It wasn’t anything incredibly essential; just a fresh palette-cleansing before they mounted Phantasmagoria.

XTC never succumbed to the trappings of ‘80s production as severely as many of their contemporaries, but an album like Skylarking (1986) still displayed a slightly off-putting sheen—though one that could not significantly spoil its uniformly excellent songs. But the ‘60s-psych-enthusiasts yearned for that era’s “compact magic” (in guitarist/singer/chief composer Andy Partridge’s words) enough to feel the need to retreat into their own pseudonymous project. Thus, Partridge transformed into “Sir John Johns”, bassist/singer Colin Moulding was now “The Red Curtain”, keyboardist Dave Gregory became “Lord Cornelius Plum”, and drummer Ian Gregory, “E.I.E.I. Owen”, and XTC was reborn as The Dukes of Stratosphear.

Upon the re-release of the entire Dukes output in May 2009, Andy Partridge told The Chicago Tribune “these days you’d just lean on a button, and there it is; it’s all sampled and pre-screwed-up for you. But then you really would have to play an electric saw at the bottom of a well and then have that spun in backwards and stuff like that.” He could have said the very same thing in 1985 when The Dukes of Stratosphear were conceived and digital effects made anything possible, and quite easily achieved, in the studio, but lacked the naturalness, the opportunity for magical accidents, that the whimsical, experimental techniques of the past allowed.

Unlike The Damned/Naz Nomad, XTC/The Dukes of Stratosphear composed original music, making their ruse a bit more convincing and a lot more artistically significant. In fact, the records XTC released as The Dukes of Stratosphear rate as some of the best music they produced and probably the most successful and accurate homage to ‘60s psychedelia ever recorded. Today Partridge considers Psonic Psunspot to be an official XTC L.P., serving as the missing link between Skylarking and Oranges and Lemons (1989), and credits the entire Dukes project with refreshing XTC’s creatively by giving them the “excuse to dress up crazy and not be (ourselves).”




The Dukes’ first release, the 1985 E.P. 25 O’Clock, puts a very fine point on their intentions, with each song serving as a specific take-off on a specific classic of the original psychedelic era. “25 O’Clock” is a ringer for “I Had To Much To Dream”, “Bike Ride to the Moon” is a poppier rewrite of Pink Floyd’s “Bike”, and “The Mole from the Ministry” not only sounds like The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus”, but its fabulous music video reinterprets the “Walrus” sequence from Magical Mystery Tour. Such specificity makes 25 O’Clock sound a bit too much like a Rutles-style novelty (albeit a superb novelty). The Dukes of Stratosphear relaxed a bit on their one and only L.P. With Psonic Psunspot, they crafted a neo-psychedelic classic that still pays all-due tribute to Floyd, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Kinks, and other behemoths of the mid ‘60s, while still sounding quite like XTC (by this point, they’d fessed up about The Dukes’ true identity). By parading out all the essential tropes of psychedelia—satires of the military and straight society, drug songs, music hall, backward tape loops, Mellotrons, ostentatious surrealism, half-baked conceptual devices—XTC essentially create the ultimate album of 1967 twenty years after the fact.

Psonic Psunspot by The Dukes of Stratosphear
Originally released August 1987 on Virgin Records
Produced by The Dukes of Stratosphear
All songs by Andy Partridge unless otherwise stated.

*blue-highlighted song titles are links to audio clips

Track 1: Vanishing Girl (Colin Moulding)

Normally, comparing a band’s work to another’s is an all-too easy Rock criticism cop-out. However, a self-conscious homage like Psonic Spunspot cannot be considered without acknowledging its various influences. Critics often cite the exhilarating “Vanishing Girl” as The Dukes’ homage to the sweet, jangly pop of The Hollies. Drawing inspiration from one of the less psychedelic acts referenced on the album, “Vanishing Girl” is its most straight-forward track, and hearing The Dukes this naked would have ensured their