- Music
- 22 May 01
Niall Stokes' 1979 My own album of the year was the Radiators ‘Ghostown’
The album of the year is the one you love the most, the one you play the most, the one you return to most, the one that reaches deepest down inside of you, the one that becomes part of your consciousness, the one you can’t escape from personally and don’t want to …
It’s a vintage year that throws up more than a few of these and 1979 was hardly one. My own album of the year was the Radiators ‘Ghostown’ but I’m not in the slightest bit unhappy with the emergence of Ry Cooder’s ‘Bop Till You Drop’ on top of the collective crop because that also meets the above criteria.
Similarly much of Graham Parker’s great ‘Squeezing Out Sparks’. ‘You Can’t Be Too Strong’ is my song of the year, a brilliantly courageous, honest, open and appropriately strong statement of the emotional confusion surrounding the difficult and hazardous topic of abortion. Never mind about rock’n’roll, art seldom gets so close to the bone or to the marrow of the bone.
Though excellent as a collection of singles and thoroughly enjoyable as such, The Undertones debut for me didn’t come near ‘Ghostown’: albums benefit from dynamics, from a sense of exploration, of a journey – musically or lyrically or into the self. PIL created that sense in relation both to the studio and to Lydon’s ideas but left the impression that they were totally unsure of their destination and just mildly less so of their direction. The experiment was still of interest, like Gang Of Fours on ‘Entertainment’ but somehow in neither case did the results seem to bear out the excitement felt elsewhere.
Mind you half-cocked ideas abounded, which made revisiting Elvis Costello’s ‘Armed Forces’ and especially ‘Accidents Will Happen’, ‘Oliver’s Army’ and ‘Green Shirt’, towards the year’s end, a particularly fulfiling experience. Each song is so dense, so loaded, so intelligently formulated and properly realized. If only he weren’t so fired by hostility and instead found compassion, he would make the greatest music.
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Compassion is something of which Tom Waits is never short. His ‘Blue Valentine’, a late-comer in ’78, sneaks into our ’79 lists and deservedly so, calling to mind again in so doing that magnificent night at the Olympia Theatre earlier in the year. A man with a huge heart, worn on his sleeve all the way from here to Nebraska and back in a bust up Pontiac (try it sometimes) and bleeding.
Among established Irish rockers, Rory Gallagher made most impact with a great single in ‘Philby’, an equally infectious album-opened in ‘Follow Me’ and a thoroughly consistent 33 to back it up in ‘Top Priority’. Lizzy faltered with ‘Black Rose’ and the departure of Gary Moore and Van Morrison also wilted slightly but not seriously, with ‘Into The Music’, an excellent album though less auspicious than ‘Wavelength’.
From the Rats, ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ was a huge achievement both artistically and commercially and though ‘The Fine Art Of Surfacing’ is an uneven album, the ideas are there to suggest further potential growth, especially Geldof’s part as a songwriter.
The ones I’m annoyed to have missed include Joy Division, The jam, The Kinks, Richard and Linda Thompson, Kevin Burke and Micheal O Domhnaill and The Outcasts (which I heard through once and liked). Any of these, but especially Joy Division and the Jam, might have done better in our top 30 had they been more generally available or released sooner. Karl says that’s true also of Roy Loney, his top choice.
On the traditional and folk fronts, ‘Scullion’ was my own favourite but Planxty’s ‘After The Break’, Dolores Keane and John faulkner’s ‘Broken Hearted I’ll Wander’. Burke had O Domhnaill’s ‘Promenade’, Noel Hill and Tony Linnane’s debut, Freddie White’s live solo LP, and the two Paddy’s ‘Doublin’ all come highly recommended. On the international side I’d instance the Roches debut as well worth checking out while Jack Lynch rates Robin Williamson’s ‘A Flint At The Kindling’ highly.
It was an unexciting year for country, though Emmy Lou delivered with ‘Blue Kentucky Girl’ and Joe Ely consolidated a growing reputation with ‘Down On The Drag’. Otherwise there was the magnificent crossover return to form of Jerry lee Lewis with ‘Rockin My Life Away’, an album which could have hit out top ten but was inexplicably forgotten till too late.
Namechecks are also in order for David Johansen, the Jukes, Millie Jackson, Chic and Sister Sledge who made great music but don’t figure in the lists …
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While at home, there was the magnificent U2, the excellent Atrix, D.C. Nien, the Virgin Prunes, Rudi, The Outcasts, Refrex, The Blades, Tony Koklin, The Teen Commandments and, in another garden, Scullion, to provide excitement. protex, the X Dreamists, the Bogey Boys and the lookalikes still carry high hopes. The Undertones should be huge. But the Irish albums to look forward to, above all in 1980 will be those by U2 and Paul Brady. Internationally: Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon, John Fogerty (here’s hoping) and Jackson Browne.
Finally, beware of Killing Joke.