dancing about architecture: Essential Collections

Anyone trawling America’s FM airwaves has probably surmised that the 80s are commercial radio’s cash cow de jour. One station here in Chicago – a typical example of the breed, I’m guessing – promises "Everything 80s!," while delivering a predictably inoffensive mishmash that includes everything from Rick Springfield to Soft Cell, "Safety Dance" to "Faithfully."

It’s the 80s all right, but it ain’t everything. More accurately, it’s the 80s as the decade was defined by the radio programmers themselves 20 years ago – synthy, spiky and safe. Album bands make the rotation, natch – back in the day, the Psychedelic Furs, Prince and the Talking Heads (just to pick three examples) all managed to garner airplay while releasing good-to-great records. But at its foundations, back-to-the-80s radio is about nostalgia, not art. And nostalgia has a way of shrinking, simplifying and stereotyping everything it touches.

Call it the K-Tel-ing of the 80s, and take it from someone who lived the decade somewhere other than a radio-station sound studio – it wasn’t all skinny ties, hair gel and Day-Glo eye shadow. The 1980s were, in fact, more complex, more colorful and more contradictory than the distortions of nostalgia suggest. It was a decade whose opening shot was fired by youngsters the Clash and whose parting one came from oldster Neil Young. It was a decade in which superstar Bruce Springsteen and upstarts the Replacements made their definitive artistic statements in the same year. It was a decade in which the major record companies declared their fealty to the almighty balance sheet, while scrappy indie labels like SST and Rough Trade doggedly defined the aesthetic that came to be known – without irony, once upon a time – as "alternative."

For this drive down memory lane, I’ve skipped the usual 80s stopping points. Sure, London Calling, Let It Be, Sign ‘O’ the Times, and It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back are four of the best records anyone ever made, but you know that. Instead, I picked one album from each year that may not have lit up the cultural radar, but still helped make the 80s just a little less, well, synthy, spiky and safe.

1980 – Tom Robinson: Sector 27 (Fontana Import)
Recorded against what Robinson describes as "a background of egotism, paranoia and Joy Division records," Sector 27 remains an odd, almost unclassifiable, record. Featuring an overtly commercial production, a more complex musicality than the 4/4, Springsteenish protest anthems he recorded with the Tom Robinson Band, and tone that’s more anguished than angry, Sector 27 is nonetheless a moving triptych that progresses from despair to a tentative kind of release. The version of the record now available – Sector 27 Complete – includes nine bonus tracks with a reason for living.

1981 – X: Wild Gift (Slash)
John and Exene’s explorations of love, sex and consequences lost steam when the tension that defined their marriage got its release in divorce court. But when they were good, they were very good, and they were never better than on Wild Gift. Raucous, cathartic and disturbing at the same time, the album practically caroms from song to song, propelled by bad faith, missed opportunities and Billy Zoom’s incomparable guitar. Now for sale as a two-fer with its also-excellent predecessor, Los Angeles.

1982 – Flipper: Generic (Def American)
Crude, plodding and almost diabolically artless, Generic makes esteemed sound fucks like Trout Mask Replica sound like dinner music. It’s not unlistenable, though; I’ve used it twice to clear the room during parties, but find it just the thing for mood enhancement after a long day of work. Although every "tune" eventually sinks in (including the opener, which asks, among other things, "Every see a couple kissing/And get sickened by it?"), the closer’s the clincher: nearly eight minutes of inspired drone held together by a mere seven words. They were jokesters, these guys: When Johnny Lydon’s PiL had the bad manners to steal Flipper’s generic conceit for an album in 1986, the band decided to rename their live album slated to appear the same year. They dubbed it Public Flipper Limited.

1983 – Marshall Crenshaw: Field Day (Warner Bros.)
Widely considered a botched production job on par with Exile on Main Street, Field Day, with its arena-rock booms and echoes, was greeted with cries of sacrilege from fans expecting a return to the jingle-jangle melodicism of Crenshaw’s superb debut. In hindsight, though, Steve Lillywhite’s ham-handed knob-twirling seems the perfect reflection of Crenshaw’s expanding artistic ambition. If the stunning "Whenever You’re On My Mind" appears to be an uncomplicated declaration of love, tunes like "Our Town," "Try" and "All I Know Right Now" capture Crenshaw kicking against his romantic demons in search of a happiness that seems just out of reach. Appropriately enough, the album closes with "Hold It," a promise to keep fighting for that happiness. Even 20 years later, his determination to succeed is palpable.

1984 – Laurie Anderson: United States Live (Warner Bros.)
Like 69 Love Songs, this four-and-a-half-hour live set gets by on volume – even when it’s not great, it’s pretty good, a remarkable accomplishment when you consider that most artists don’t record four-and-a-half hours of good music over the course of a career. But back in 1984, years before the boxed set became the dumping ground of choice for any band with enough detritus to peddle, it was an unheard-of, audacious move. If Anderson’s art-rock experiments never floated your boat, this won’t change your mind. But if your pop world view has a little space set aside for her, this could fill it up nicely.

1985 – Franco & Rochereau: Omona Wapi (Shanachie)
In an Essential Collections essay I wrote on African music last year, I called this "not only one of the top African pop releases I’ve heard, but an unmitigated popular music classic, period." But I figure it’s worth repeating here: A collaboration between two of the deans of African music, this gorgeous album is distinguished by astonishing vocals, chiming, writhing guitar work, and beats that manage not to get lost in the collective beauty. The 80s were a heyday of African music, and this is certainly one of the period’s crowning achievements.

1986 – Sonny Sharrock: Guitar (Enemy)
Along with James Blood Ulmer, Sharrock’s one of few jazz axe-slingers I can countenance, mainly because his love of chaos is so deeply felt. Here, he drones, he slashes, he swings, and with amps turned to 11, he drives his melodies right into your thick skull.

1987 – Tom Verlaine: Flash Light (I.R.S.)
Verlaine’s at his best when he fattens up the guitars and digs into his hooks. Here, he returns to the beefy sound of 1981’s excellent Dreamtime with 10 cuts of quirky, angular pop magic. It’s out of print in the U.S., but pops up occasionally in the used bins.

1988 – Pere Ubu: The Tenement Year (Enigma)
Ubu itself bailed after ‘82’s flaccid Song of the Bailing Man, and the break energized them. This reunion, a return to the avant-rock of Dub Housing, is everything Bailing Man wasn’t: edgy, aggressive and totally uncompromising. When David Thomas launches into "Something’s Gotta Give" on the album’s first track, there’s no doubt he’ll make damn sure it will. Also out of print, also worth the hunt.

1989 – The Mekons: The Mekons Rock ‘n’ Roll (Collector’s Choice)
From DAA’s resident Mekon-in-waiting, Peter Gorman: "The album title is cliched but earned: Rock `n' Roll is a defiant album that finds no comfort, swagger filled with doubt, a glorious trip through very dark days. Now re-released 12 years after it first appeared, all of it still sounds fresh, immediate, aggressive. Starting with the supercharged "Memphis Egypt" in which the Mekons celebrate the music they love to hate ("I walk through a wall/No pain at all/Born inside the belly of rock `n' roll"), the album surges through songs about prostitution, aging, living alone, cocaine addiction, rock's bleak history, insanity, and odes to darkness This is a fiercely passionate album. This is rock `n' roll as it was meant to be played. This is 1989. That's Elvis on the cover."