- Music
- 22 May 01
Niall Stokes' 1983
It was a year in which the joys of music were forced somewhat into the background with the government tightening the economic noose and unemployment rising inexorably at home, and with international tensions mounting ever more alarmingly in both East and West, there were more pressing issues occupying the hearts and minds of sensitive human beings. When Armageddon looms, it injects a different sense of urgency into people’s lives and activities. Record sales were down, so too were attendance at live gigs, and the flood of new bands coming on the local scene abated somewhat. Much the same last year, only more so.
And yet there was some extraordinarily urgent music unleashed in 1983. Musicians too were feeling the mounting pressure and the result was some great and spinechillingly relevant records – notably U2’s ‘War’ tour-de-force, Elvis Costello’s searingly melancholic ‘Shipbuilding’ and Randy Newman’s monumental ‘Trouble In Paradise’. All three provided landmarks against which much of today’s fun music must inevitably pale.
There were others who provided healing balm. Step into Van Morrison’s majestic ‘Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart’, with its measured reverie and oceanic cadences and the spirit is renewed. Or Clannad’s delicate, haunting ‘Magical Ring’ an album which communicated an irridescent sense of the kind of world we could move towards.
Guy Clarke too delivered a worn and heartening record in ‘Better Days’ – the kind of thing I can play morning, noon, night and into the wee small hours when the whiskey is neat, and the company good. I was highly enamoured of Mary Black and Maura O’Connell in their debut solo albums, by Carlene Carter and Emmylou Harris, and by the sheer soul power of Annie Lennox’s magnificent voice. Eurythmics are a powerful and hopefully, permanent addition to the pop landscape.
As is Boy George whose Culture Club fulfiled expectations magnificently with the deliciously whimsical ‘Karma Chameleon’, and a fine album in ‘Colour By Numbers’. The Police produced a stunning heavy-weight in ‘Synchronicity’ – one which deserved to reach out top 20 but didn’t – and Lionel Ritchie made on magnificently memorable single in ‘All Night Long’. A classic, it’s still be danced to in ten years time.
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The Cure, Big Country, the Blades, Madness, Philip Chevron, Michael Jackson, the Undertones and Bob Dylan all touched the spot. And De Danann – this one is for John Waters – with the wondrous ‘Queen Of Sheeba’ and – this one is for Declan Lynch – the hilarious ‘Barney From Killarney’. Brilliant stuff.
My biggest disappointment? That, having travelled to London, I didn’t get to do our Tom Waits interview – the man had just delivered a tumultuous if fractured masterpiece in ‘Swordfishtrombone’, the Hot Press No. fave rave and Album of the Year. it was then, with particular relish that I read Neil McCormick’s demented piece on Wait’s poetic ramblings – the cover story of the year?
Other highlights: John Waters’ interviews, Jaqui Doyle’s design, Michael D Higgins’ column and the comradeship of the Hot Press team. You couldn’t ask for more.