Critics Roundup 1984

Fending off the ailments of the new pap, my year got divided in two. Initially, I survived through black music of all eras and elements be it superb compilations from the past like Don Covay, Jimmy Witherspoon and Huey ‘Piano’ Smith or African music and the new American sounds anointed at ‘The Pink Elephant’ turntable by Paul Webb. Then fleeing the depressive paragraphs of politics, there was a retrenchment of the imagination that need not be regressive.

For there may be new spirits simmering in London, a new opposition who’ll also see off the old/new musos, those abstractly arty synth manipulations. Between the acoustic ethic pioneered by Billy Bragg and the Pogues, evolutions from both the trash and batcave scenes, and the sense of a new ambivalent, spiritual romanticism (Frankie Goes To Knock?) next winter may show who’s recognised the new opportunities. Meanwhile women like Christine and Danielle Dax educated the emotions.

And of course, there was U2, but you know of them already?