We’re settling into our the mid-eighties groove, trying to decide whether to buy on vinyl, cassette or a new super-shiny disc that’s compact. Here’s your selection of toppermost stories fro the NME – one in particular included as a night out at the Hacienda saw me spend most of it with my mouth open as Einsturzende Neubauten try to drill into the walls of the building. By way of complete contrast I saw Rush again at the NEC – the original concert at the Deeside Leisure Centre (if memory serves me right an ice rink otherwise) being postponed.
Usual rules apply, anything and everything from the year in question.
A. Compact future
Hot on the heels of their video disc, Phillips are about to follow up with something just as exciting – the compact disc. The player costs between £400 and £500 = don’t panic, it will plug into your existing hi-if – thankfully the discs should cost little more than a plastic album.
First commercial development of the CD was by Sony in Japan, where 2000 were snapped up in a matter of days. In spite of such sales figures, the largest British record company, EMI, has decided to stay on the sideline for a few years, leaving it to Welsh Independent ~Nimbus Records to start building the first British factory.
Typically adventurous, Virgin Records are quickly into the fray, offering five of their biggest selling albums – ‘Tubular Bells’ ‘Dare’ ‘ Kissing To Be Clever’ Face Value and ‘Architecture and Morality. Virgin expect to sell them for less than £10 each.
What’s That Sound?
Meet Einsturzende Neubaute. Their names mean Collasping New Buidlings, and that gives some idea of the Grerman Quintets’s obsession with destruction. They use road drills, sledgehammers and axes in their shows to create sounds like you’ve never heard before.
Recently, Neubauten leader Blixa Bargeld recorded their 12″ single ‘Thirsty Animals’ with the Birthday Party’s Rowland Howard and American anarocho-punk Lydia Lunch. Barged miked up his chest to pick up the eerie sound of another group member crushing his bones….and if you think that’s off the wall, they had intended to include the recording of a side of meat being sewn up!
Cops Say Yes To League
The Anti-Nowehere League’s album Live In Yugoslavia finally reappears three months after the original pressing was seized by the police. Only 1500 copies had reached distributors at that time, and several thousand more were impounded at a police warehouse because of audience obscenities.
The Re-cut released album has five offending words bleeped out, although dedicated fans can obtain the record in Europe without the bleeps.
Blue Is The Colour
New Orders’ Blue Monday (no relation to the Fats Dpmino song of the same name) first appeared in the UK indie charts in March. It took a week to reach No 1 there, and remained so for nine weeks.
It reached No 12 in the major singles chart, surviving a challenge from follow-up Confusion, produced by Arthur Baker, and selling over 400,000 copies to become the highest-selling 12 inch single of all time.
In answer to U2’s new album ‘War’, US soul group War have recorded a three-part track called U2.
Over 40,000 turned up to see Paul Weller’s new Style Council play a Nuclear Disarmament benefit in London’s Brockwell Park. They played just two numbers: Speak Like A Child and Money Go Round.
https://youtu.be/70OPY6sb9Rw
Appears to have nothing to do with U2 but a tasty piece of 80s funk nonetheless.
I saw the Style Council do that exact same set list (!) at Liverpool Empire in 83. Also a benefit for CND (and miners?). Can remember absolutely nothing else about it. Can anybody help me?
I went on my first ever holidee sans parents. For the previous five years I’d prided myself on knowing the charts like the back of my hand, so I was astonished, upon returning after my brief break to find the fantastic Story Of The Blues by Wah! at number 3 in the hit parade. Other Liverpudlians with massive choruses that year included The Icicle Works with Love Is A Wonderful Colour and the two Bunnymen singles Never Stop and The Cutter. All top 15!
The first Now Thats What I Call Music album was released in November.
They were made to prepare the way for the birth of minibreakfast. She would never have survived into adulthood without Now!
She’s going to like that post very much. You’ll find out why soon…
Ha! Indeed, I’d been already been around for some time by 1983.
This remains the only one of the Now… series I ever bought. Are they even still going? I think the last one I saw in a shop was number seventy-something.
Now89 – released last week
I was 16 in 1983 and leaving my heavy metal phase behind. I was leaning more to the arty side, in particular Bowie and Japan, but there can be no denying that for me 1983 was the year I was obsessed with Marillion. I had all the singles on 12″, memorised every word of the Script for a Jesters Tear album, and found the Manchester Apollo gig a near religious experience. I was so overcome when I got my programme signed by the band afterwards that I could barely speak to them (I’ve just looked it up – 14 April, about a month after my birthday). I just can’t obsess about bands now like I could when I was young, which is surely a good thing, and I can’t remember the last time I played any Marillion either.
I may well have been at that Marillion gig as I saw them at the Apollo on either the first or second album tour.. Looking back at 83, when I was 17, it was the last year where I kept that youuthful ability to not worry about being ‘cool’. University was calling and my rock and metal past would be buried under indiedom for several years, in fact until meeting Msmoles.
Peter Hammill was the support if that helps nudge your memory.
Shared experience with Marillion but after a few years of not playing them the Fish era albums are excellent.
So here I am once more….
Do these threads point to some sort of attention disorder or an inability to follow things through?
Starts at the beginning, then wildly shoots off into, of all places, the dire 1980s.
A bit like the History of Rock magazine starting in…erm…1965.
Anyway….CDs/£10 and f***** Branson.
Elongates chin.
Rubs chin.
Goes “hmmm.”
Points said chin into the face of another.
Says in a high-pitched voice “Jiiiimmmmyyyyyy.”
@deramdaze from the 1957 post
I think some sort of hive mind consensus is emerging from the various comments on chronological vs random. Taking a chunk of 3-5 years seems to offer some coherence so, for example, we can track musical movements like rock and roll or punk. Then zipping around to a different era should keep things fresh and draw in contributors itching to let fly on the heyday of glam or acid house.
Always good to hear from you.
You will always hear from him on a thread like this.
Vince Clarke gets restless again, and leaves Yazoo to form The Assembly – the only fuits of this band being the Feargal Sharkey warbled Never Never
Not much of quality added to the genre of Jazz. I do rather like The Henry Threadgill Sextet – Just The Facts And Pass The Bucket. The collective imagination of the two percussionists, three horns, a bass and a cellist is exciting and dynamic.
My top five movies of the year?
Local Hero
The Dresser
The King Of Comedy
The Hunger
and, of course, The Man With Two Brains.
I’d agree with that. Especially The Hunger. And The King Of Comedy. And The Big Chill. (Except you spelt the last one all wrong).
Saw all of these, but also saw the original stage production of the Dresser at the Manchester Royal Exchange – with Tom Courtenay and Freddie Jones. Brilliant.
“We’re not dead, are we sir?”
D. Baker once asked his listeners for the meaning of the word “trouserloony” which is used in the film.
and Trading Places makes 6
That would be my No.1.
Too many good scenes to mention.
I promised you more Sisters last time round. In 1983, they released the Alice and Temple Of Love singles, as well as The Reptile House EP, making it one of their finest years for recorded music.
David Bowie enjoyed his most successful year ever. Let’s Dance was a global phenomenon, as was the tour. He starred in The Hunger and did some proper acting in Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (great song, too).
I’d struggle to think of a worthy top ten albums for 1983 but, indubitably, the greatest album ever recorded was released *pause for trumpet blast* Tom Waits – Swordfishtrombones.
Synchronicity, High Land Hard Rain, a Walk Across The Rooftops, Duck Rock, Mummer, Punch the Clock, Hearts and Bones, Explosions in the Glass Palace, Hootenanny, Speaking in Tongues, Climate of Hunter, Soul Mining, The Sin of Pride, You’ve Gotta Say Yes To Another Excess and, yes, The Luxury Gap.
Not a bad year at all.
I don’t rate too many of those.
I’d put Brian Eno’s Apollo at number two and REM’s Murmur at 3. Then, Talking Heads.
Black Uhuru Anthem, that was good. Power, Corruption And Lies was nae too shabby. I yield to no man in my admiration for Living My Life by Grace Jones. That’s just off the top of my nut…
I’d argue that Living My Life was released in 1982.
The thing about your and Moose’s lists is that none of those albums are anywhere that artist’s best, apart from The Luxury Gap, maybe, and Synchronicity, which, as a Police album, doesn’t count.
OMD – Dazzle Ships, Prince – 1999, Kid Creole & the Coconuts – Doppelganger, Marc & the Mambas – Torment & Toreros, and Imagination – Scandalous (the multicoloured bin bag sleeve image album) as well.
And in Sweden; Imperiet released Rasera!
A purple pedant points out that 1999 was released in 1982.
Hmm, perhaps I couldn’t afford to buy it until the beginning of the next year? Or perhaps it arrived in Sweden a few months late! 🙂
The Blue Nile’s “A Walk Across the Rooftops” is indeed a remarkable record, but sadly it didn’t see the light of day until 1984.
Billy Bragg’s “Life’s a Riot with Spy vs Spy” mini-LP was released in 1983, and I spent plenty of time listening to it.
I still listen to Life’s a Riot. I have the CD with the Between the Wars EP as an extra which makes it a better length than the original 15 minutes or so and doesn’t seem at odds with the original material.
Big Country – The Crossing
Marillion – Script For A Jesters Tear
Metallica – Kill Em All
Live Albums (if they count):
Dire Straits – Alchemy
U2 – Under A Blood Red Sky
… and some others (and it was all going so well).
If you’re allowed compilations, I’d add:
The Jam – Snap
Stiff Little Fingers – All The Best
I think you prove my point! 😀
If your point is – as it seems to be – that hardly anyone made their career best record in 1983, then you’re on to something (with the obvious exception of High Land, Hard Rain), although you’ll probably find that’s true of many years.
Doesn’t make Let’s Dance sound any better..
Tom Waits is also an exception.
I think he doesn’t
Alchemy was 1984 wasn’t it?
Aah, yes …
Got a bit carried away trying to pad the list out.
Can I change the suggestion to Love Over Gold
(That was a good ‘un – the best DS album?)
The NME Best Albums and Tracks Of The Year 1983
“http://www.nme.com/bestalbumsandtracksoftheyear/1983-2-1045394”
I have 4 of the albums: Tom Waits, Billy Bragg, King Sunny Ade and Prince Charles. Tracks of the year (does that mean singles?) I had James Brown, Afrika Bambaataa, M’tume, Malcolm McLaren, King Sunny Ade, Arrow and PiL. It wasn’t a great year for rock or reggae, but there was still enough good stuff around.
Electro seemed to be a new sub genre of hip hop, Man Parrish – Hip Hop Be Bop, Space Is The Place by the Jonzun Crew and Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force – Looking For The Perfect Beat were some of the best. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released their last great record White Lines (Don’t Do It)..
As for other new music, soca was “the new reggae”. Virgin and Island were releasing African music. King Sunny Ade’s Synchro System brings back memories of the African night at the Fridge in Brixton. I was never that fond of London nightclubs, but that night had the right mix of great music and nice people.
I saw King Sunny Ade on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury that summer. Spectacular.
I can’t recall seeing anyone else from that year’s line-up apart from Julian Cope. A good laser show every night from behind the pyramid stage over the site, as we sat around our campfires getting very, very stoned.
Not an especially memorable musical bill for me, that year.
The weather was apparently dry and sunny all weekend for a change.
1983 was my in-limbo year, having had to leave the Welsh cottage I’d been renting for years in 1982. In ’83 I lived unhappily in a succession of temporary places and then in January 1984 left West Wales for Norwich and an electrician’s training course and a different life.
Point well made @Alias
Did you go to Sol Y Sombra ?
Sunny Ade actually released 6 albums in 1983 in Nigeria, one of which Synchro Series formed the basis for the Synchro System album released by Island /Mango. Earthworks was releasing the Beat of Soweto compilations, Zimbabwe’s Mapfumo issued 2 of his best -Ndangariro and Mabasa, Franco did his only tour of the States and Youssou N’dour did 7 seconds with Neneh Cherry.
Good times for African music.
I didn’t go to the Sol Y Sombra, I know I must have missed some great nights. I had had my fill of West End night clubs and I had a few friends who were architecture students at that time. They had finished their first degrees, done their 2 years work experience and were back at University for a further 2 years to complete their qualifications. There were house parties nearly every weekend and the music at them was mostly good.
The NME was introducing me to some ‘new’ old music via their cassettes. 1983 gave us jazz with Stomping At The Savoy, R’n’B with The ACE Case and ska , rocksteady and reggae with Smile Jamaica.
@junior_wells indeed, my all time favourite from this era, another Peel discovery.
Blimey, I’ve not heard that for a while. Got it on 12 ” somewhere in the loft. Great track.
A melancholy year for Stevie Wonder fans.
He made the splendid, if derivative, single The Crown with Gary Byrd… and a few months later jumped the shark with the dreary I Just Called To Say I Love You. Like Prince 10 years later he finally made number one with his worst single to date.
Gary Byrd! I found this a couple of weeks ago for 50 pence. Happily, the lyrics are printed on the back of the sleeve, meaning I can practice rapping along to the instrumental b-side – all ten minutes of it!
I had that Gary Byrd 12″ too. In my synth-dominated early 80s record collection, this was one of the ones that didn’t really fit in – but I loved it all the same.
1983 was a great year for me. I finished school (Hallelujah!) and had my final long summer holiday (I didn’t have to work because I was supposed to go on to higher education in the fall, but I only lasted two days before I came to my senses and dropped out). I had two great sets of friends, and two fairly new wonderful best friends. As I remember it, it was a scorching hot summer and it was spent partying like it was 1999…
I met a lot of people that year that would become important to me for a long time. And I danced a lot.
I remember being rather excited when the Smiths’ debut single (Hand in Glove/Handsome Devil) was unleashed upon an unsuspecting world in May 1983.
@duco01 oh my God how could I forget? The Smiths at the Hacienda just after This Charming Man came out – full gladioli and hearing aid experience. One of the handful of gigs I can dine out on still….they were ridiculously exciting. Got the Francois Kevorkian 12″ mix at around that time…they don’t include this often in the endless repackaging of the Smiths canon do they? check how it mutates at around 3:20 very uneasily…
I graduated, moved to London (Enfield), moved into a bedsit sharing a flat with another guy. My rent was 15 quid a week!
Learned to drive in 1983, opened up a whole new way of listening to music. Aztec Camera, the Smiths and Echo and The Bunnymen. My 18th birthday 18th July spent at The Albert Hall with The Bunnymen at their absolute peak. What a year! In fact on my birthday an album was released that went against everything my check shirted, misery self stood for but I played it as much as all the others. It is the charity shop favourite “No Parlez”. In reality a masterpiece of 80’s production so of it’s time to render it meaningless today except as a figure of fun. I’m going to post some Bunnymen from my 18th birthday gig but spare a thought for Paul, Pino and the Fabulous Wealthy Tarts……
@dave-amitri I must have seen them this year too – possibly at the Crystal Day, we didn’t do the breakfast and ferry stuff, but saw them at the St Georges Hall in the evening, cracking gig.
The 12 inch is better, but the visuals drop you right in it:
(Freeze I.O.U.)
The Chameleons
https://youtu.be/ocBR2TIX378
Their debut which of course I didn’t hear till about 1987. Cover work by Reg. What on earth are you talking about?
Still sounds great.
Mmmm … it’s always nice to see an acknowledgment of Middleton’s finest band on the Afterword.
And I see that there’s a fab new DeLuxe version of Script of the Bridge + Bonus DVD that’s just been released …
https://thechameleons.tmstor.es/cart/product.php?id=30626
Bugger. I was at that gig. Not quite the first comeback gig though..that was the Wytchwood gigs in Ashton. Magical night. First time I ever got to see The Cams..with my best mates and on a night that my team best Bolton 5-3 in the second leg of the play off semi final. Last minute goals , hat tricks, sendings off. But I didn’t find all that out till getting home after a 2 pm curry. Fantastic fantastic memories!
On a Friday night in -83 I went with a friend to a free late night preview of Flashdance. I thought it was shite; the story, the acting, most of the music. But she fancied herself as a dancer and absolutely loved it.
Was that the start of the legwarmers craze, or did that start earlier? Perhaps it started with Fame – the TV series, not the film – but I’m sure Flashdance had a part in its success story. No, I never wore any, I swear. But I was guilty of big hair, unfortunately.
And the song became a standard for aerobics classes thereafter.
Post-Vince Clarke, each single that performed OK represented a month or two of survival for Depeche Mode. Get the Balance Right! came out in early 1983 and limped along to No. 13. Even though the 12″ Combination Mix had attracted the attention of the developing House DJs of Detroit (something they are still baffled by) – they had seen Vince’s Yazoo get very big hits indeed – the biggest (Only You) was a song that Vince had actually offered to them to tide them over…but the remaining Depeche Mode members decided to go it alone and rejected it.
Later in the year, Depeche Mode released Construction Time Again. I had two copies because a disgusted Level 42 fan I knew gave me his – he bought it. listened to it once and really, really hated it. He actually bought Modern Romance records and somehow these made the cut. Bloody philistine. But at least he liked music.
When Construction Time Again came out, it was polished and actually made sense as an album – not just a collection of pop songs. That, and the preceding Everything Counts single made me think that they were finding their feet. They weren’t there yet, but they had put some distance between themselves and the ever-present Dumper in 1983.
It was that song, and later Enjoy The Silence which made me drop the “I don’t like plinky-plonk synth bands” prejudice.
There’s a live version of “Everything Counts” in some enormodome somewhere and it still makes me smile to think it’s the See You Hitmakers. I can’t think of any other band who re-invented themselves so perfectly. 1984’s “Master and Servant” and “People Are People” after this were just perfect. A Depeche Mode best of is essential listening.
This is the one, fantastic……..
It’s taken me thirty years to realise what great songs they made. That’s a corker.
No Parlez was released in July.
By the end of August it was starting to appear in Second Hand Shops
(I’m sure it has the power to clone itself)
They actually used No Parlez technology to develop 3D printers.
I remember thinking it was so great I got tickets for his B’ham Odeon gig, horrific to then realise, at the grand old age of 27, the audience was mainly teeny boppers. Right put me off.
1983 was the only year I went to Monsters of Rock at Donington (I won the ticket from a local newspaper). Whitesnake headlined, it was Dio’s first ever gig, ZZ Top and Meat Loaf were there too but Twisted Sister stole the day despite playing early in the afternoon. I can’t find any footage of that gig but here they are on The Tube in the same year. This is the sound of 1983. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvg_wWDcWYg
I hate to be pedantic. I really do.
But when you’re talking about one of the greatest singles of the 80s these things matter.
Young Guns (Go For It!) was a hit in 1982.
oops curse the flux combinator.