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Aged well vs sounds like shite

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You know when you go into a record shop and they have one of those 3 for a tenner deals.
You find 2 that you want and then pick up a third you are ambivalent about just to fulfil the deal?
Well this happened to me.
Byrds Sweetheart of the Rodeo and The Style Council Shout to the top collection both Items I wanted.
For the third I opted for Level 42 Something about you – the Collection. Was a fan back in the day, saw them live 3 times – pretty good – at the time.
This purchase was about 3 months ago – just got around to playing the ’42. vFuck me that hasn’t aged at all well.
Why is that? Style Council still sound fab and the Byrds are ageless.
What makes a band sound shit after being okay – is it fashion or just production vales? Most stuff from the 60’s still sounds great – the 80’s didn’t fare so well.

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Comments

  2. Listening to it this am, well first two tracks I thought ‘what the hell was I thinking?’. I can’t believe I actually had their albums in my collection. I am embarrassed.
    Duly discarded to the bin.

  3. Obviously, production and technology has a lot to do with it.

    1950s jazz and classical sounds great ‘cos it was recorded with a mono or stereo pair direct to 1″ tape.
    1960s valve gear sounded nice if a bit constrained by 4-track tape.
    1970s you could record the sound of a live band in full fidelity on 16 tracks.
    1980s primitive digital technology comes in allowing limited messing up.
    1990s digital multitrack allows unnecessary production to bloom.
    2000s in-box workstations allow infinite tracks and infinite post-production wankery.

    Heppo has a point, the 70s were really good-sounding.

    • The mid-eighties sounded bad because of the technology (even Hounds Of Love suffers from it). Those acts that resisted the ‘new’ recording methods still sound pretty good to me. I’m thinking Tom Waits, Dexys Midnight Runners, Elvis Costello for King Of America and Blood & Chocolate.

      There are also albums that, on release, sounded like the future. A number of them still sound great: Revolver, Electric Ladyland, This Year’s Model, The Scream, OK Computer.

      Electronica that completely inhabits its own universe ages well, too: Björk, Orbital, Burial, Haxan Cloak and so on.

  4. Funnily enough Mrs BJB and I were watching one of BBC4’s 1980s TOTPs recently. when this came on and we both said how it sounded pretty contemporary. I think a lot of R & B from that period does. Probably because it has been sampled a lot.

    • Almost right now Baron. I loved them back in the day but sound dreadful now and cd is now in bin.
      On a more positive note I am currently listening to the Shemekia Copeland album that you recommended. It’s very good – were you on medication when you recommended it?

      • Meds? Nope. Psychedelics? Maybe.

        You know that album by The Pines* I told you about, it’s called ‘Above The Prairie’, get it. It’s bloody very good, so good I’ve ordered 3 more of their albums.

        *I don’t know who it was that mentioned The Pines in a post but I was intrigued, having heard their name before. Anyhow thank you, the album above is from 2016, it’s their latest and is really good.

  7. Oh dear. I loved and still love Level 42. Saw them live last year and it was a great night out. Come on now strap your air bass up high, get your thumbs out and give “Lessons In Love” a listen. If you’re not grinning like a fool 30 seconds in your not…… well you’re not me actually…….

  8. Was listening to a Depeche Mode compilation (The Singles 81-86) this morning – still sounds great, and still has that “futuristic thing” I latched on to as an 11 year old.
    From the same time period and (nearly the same) genre: OMD still stand up, but not convinced by the future-proofing of Tears For Fears.

    Interestingly, the Tears For Fears collection CD (Tears Roll Down) was one I picked up as a makeweight in a 3 for a tenner deal too.

  9. Having grown up with Britpop (that’s a crappy name for a genre) I now find a lot of those bands have aged more than the bands from the sixties they, let’s say, borrowed from. The Kinks, The Small Faces and The Beatles still sound great. Or maybe I just prefer the sixties to the nineties. Low sounds better than Kid A.

  10. I listened to the Buggles and Landscape albums recently and they both stand up because they were distinctively of that particular time. Early OMD and Depeche Mode too. The same kind of sounds were in pop hits of that era (e.g. Kim Wilde’s Chequered Love ) but they sound hopelessly dated now. The remix of Bowie’s Fame in 1986 (was it?) was borderline at the time but is a complete what-were-they-thinking aberration now.

  11. This argument about 80s production values is never ending. I grew up in the late 70s/early80s so those sounds are more familiar and comforting to me – but I can see why they bring older viewers out in hives. I get a sense that in the 80s there was a bit of drive by artists of all generations to progress and be cutting edge and discard the older music and use technology perhaps before it was fully formed – so Kate Bush, Trevor Horn and co. went mad on the Fairlight and didn’t worry that the production might sound a bit thin and plastic by today’s standards. For me, those records now have a period charm that reflects the era they came from – that was what the 80s sounded like – enjoy it for what it was.
    If you dismiss 80s production you’re missing out on countless brilliant records by ABC, Human League, Duran Duran, Culture Club, Frankie, Spandau, and countless R&B records like the Jam & Lewis productions, all the 80s Boogie stuff – I’ll always hold up Scritti Polliti Cupid and Psyche 85 as the last word in a perfect harmony of that 80s production style and brilliant songs –
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_38gaboSr60

    • There are some where the production is an essential part of creating that record’s universe. I’ll accept Cupid & Psyche, Lexicon Of Love and Dare. I’d add to that some New Order, Bronski Beat and Soft Cell. Not Culture Club, Frankie nor Spandau.

      As for R&B, I can listen quite happily to Sade but Janet Jackson’s Control sounds horribly dated and Anita Baker’s Rapture is toe-curling, even though the writing and performances for the latter two are tremendous.

  12. I was a teenager in the 80s and I utterly hated the production sound of music from around 1984 onwards. I could tell even then ‘this will sound crap in retrospect… why can’t people see that here and now?’ (I felt the same way about the clothes too.) So I bought second-hand 60s and 70s records from a dodgy market behind Royal Avenue in Belfast instead and waited for the 80s to be over. It really was that bad.

    Still, some music from the 70s has aged abysmally – I never experienced ELP ‘at the time’, bar their late 70s hit single, but I bought a best-of on 2CD (or 3CD maybe?) some time in the 90s or early 2000s and I was astounded at how flimsy and thin it all sounded. Bombast without and heft, even – just pointless widdling. And yet they were huge. How? Ghastly.

    • I saw the writing on the wall when the NME tape was full of plinky plonky synth pop rubbish rather than the brilliance of the earlier ones. Others doubtless saw the future but I was appalled.

      • On the other hand it’s amazing how quickly the reaction set in. If you listen to Department of Enjoyment from ’84 there’s hardly any synth on it apart from Zulu Nation and, er, Art of Noise (latterday progsters with Fairlights).

        The real digital hegemony was in reggae, which was pretty much destroyed creatively by synths and drum machines. Inevitable but tragic.

      • Exactly my experience.

        My tipping point was a Kinks’ compilation when, on spying a song that had got to no. 3 in the Guinness Book of Hit Singles that I hadn’t heard … “Autumn Almanac” … I played it, open-mouthed, and said “Right that’s it, I’m not listening to any of that 1980s shite ever again.” And I didn’t, much harder though it was to avoid pop music back then. That was 1983.

        I too tapped my fingers impatiently for the rest of the decade, hoovering up unwanted 60s vinly, waiting for it all to end.

      • Dear NME, I’m appalled. …

        I get it. Even now some of it makes my teeth grind but I can’t believe that there is no redeeming features to be found among the plinky plonk…. Some of my absolute favourite music happened betweend 80 and 86….
        Not even The Adventures Colin?

        • I’m friendly with a couple of them personally, and Pat Gribben is an amazing guitar player… but their recordings in that late 80s/early 90s era have those big drums and AOR splodge all over them. Interestingly, Pat regards pop songs/songwriting as ‘almost a different thing’ from playing the sort of rock, blues and fusion he grew up with – he’s somehow able to separate them, and to keep guitar solos and fiddly bits off his pop song recordings. I don’t know how he does it.

          Here’s Adventurous Pat playing some Mahavishnu:

    • I really think it’s a bit of a sweeping statement to dismiss all synth bands particularly from the early 80s. Look beyond the veneer and you can get some substantial enjoyment from some quite astonishing musicianship. I’m not sure what guitar Martin Gore uses here – but it sure as hell sounds good, never heard a sound like that before in my life – and the drums are played by a man possessed (Fletch did it one take, apparently).

      Aside from the public persona, I really think that Dylan, Neil Young or Lou Reed had done this song – it would be acknowledged, rightly, as a classic. Oh, and a heartbreakingly poignant lyric too.

      https://youtu.be/y7QDMCqdDXo

  15. There’s a Level 42 tribute band that plays quite often in my local pub. Personally, I think Level 42 made some really good pop singles; they aren’t, however, the sort of band I would expect to inspire the level of slavish devotion that inspires tributes.

  16. Simple Minds. Put em on for a bit of singalong with Mrs Wells driving home.

    It was such a letdown after last hearing them. That post In The Air Tonight drumming thundering away. Jim’s voice muddy and submerged.

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