All the other ones are complete bullshit...

Starting my trip back through the 1979 album charts.

30/12/79 : Reggatta de Blanc - The Police

And we start the year with one I totally would have guessed was an 80s album, but it seems like it just sneaks into the 70s. I'm going to claim it as one I owned, because whilst I never actually bought it, I had a home-taped version of it and played it loads - I seem to recall it's mostly quite good, but has some unusual bits on it. 

Well, any album that starts with "Message In A Bottle" can't be all bad, can it? I also really like "Bring On The Night" and "The Bed's Too Big Without You". And the rest of it is pretty decent as well - it does have a bit of a slow decline in quality towards the end so maybe could have benefited from one less track, but I'm just being picky here. The unusual bits I remember are mostly in "On Any Other Day" - they're just goofing around on it, which isn't dreadful but it ain't great either. But where this album hits the spot, it hits it nicely and it was a very pleasant revisit after many years.

We're at #7 in the charts this week on their thirteenth week of a very decent 73 week run, with it spending its first four weeks at #1. The top five this week were best-ofs from Rod Stewart (his last of five weeks at the top), ABBA, Hot Chocolate and Elvis and an album we've previously met from Pink Floyd with the highest new entry being The Secret Policeman's Ball comedy album (#41) - I'm not sure I've ever heard this one.

Wikipedia has a decent amount on the album (119 milliPeppers) and it tells us it's their second album and the title roughly translates from French as "white reggae". I'd forgotten that both "Message In A Bottle" and "Walking On The Moon" both got to #1 - they were big around this time and, unusually, they were actually getting on with this being quite a good-natured recording effort. They were a bit short on material though, with "No Time This Time" being a previous b-side added in to pad out the album length (so I was right!). The critics were mostly nice about it, although our old friend Robert Christgau declared "if I heard as much reggae as they do in England, it's more likely I'd find it infuriating" - that man can talk utter shite at times! Commercially, it did well without quite taking over the world yet, getting to #1 in Australia and The Netherlands and #25 in the US.

It was lovely to be reminded of this - it's maybe not an absolute classic, but it's pretty damn decent and has some top tracks on it. Let's hope '79 continues in this vein (don't worry, I'm sure it won't!).

1965 - And another one down!
23/12/79 - Some well-done cheese

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm not wishing I was back in the USA, coz I come from Morecambe and the skies are grey

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 15/11/24 : Earth To Grace - Massive Wagons I will listen to the new entry at #1, but there's absolutely NO WAY I'm writing a whole entry on it - so instead we have this which I know absolutely nothing about. But it has to be better than the abomination at #1. Well, it's something you don't hear too much of these days - I guess "hard rock" is probably as good a description as any. It’s not going to win any awards for musical complexity but it’s quite catchy - I was r eminded of Gary Moore in his heavier days that teenage me used to like. It also certainly doesn't take itself too seriously - "Free And Easy" tells us "I don't shoot guns, it's not healthy - I drive a Ford C-Max I got off my dad and it's filthy" and "Rabbit Hole" offers up an amusingly sceptical take on conspiracy theories and then abruptly ends "Auf wiedersehen, adios - this song fucking ...
Read more

And she'll tease you, she'll unease you

Image
  A first for me! Cheap tickets often pop up to various All Points East events through work, but it often coincides with holiday time - and the one time I did make an effort to go a train strike prevented me from making out into the wilds of East London. Until now when, for no obvious reason, I went to a day when I had no great interest in the headlining act. It's based in Victoria Park in Hackney and it's a BIG site. The set-up is similar to Reading Festival with two main stages which alternate between acts, involving a lot of audience migration across the site. The distance between the stages might even be bigger than at Reading, but there's also a sizeable tented stage about halfway between so you can always stop off if you're feeling tired - and I did, on several occasions! Also, unlike both Reading and BST Hyde Park, there is a lot of shaded area on site which was also much used throughout the day whilst a LOT of music was being enjoyed, because I saw... Liana Flor...
Read more

Who are ya?!?

Image
A point each for the name, the song and the artist. 1. Her boyfriend’s a dick – he brings a gun to school 2. He took me to the future in the flux thing and I saw everything 3. He lives on the second floor 4. She told my baby we'd danced 'til three, then she looked at me 5. He tempted her with his treacle tart and his tasty wholemeal bread (2 names) 6. He’s stepping through the door 7. His girlfriend's pregnant too - he’s about to be a father 8. She’s gotta be strong to fight them, so she’s taken lots of vitamins 9. She came from Miami, F.L.A - hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A. 10. Her smile is like a breath of spring, her voice is soft like summer rain 11. He’s darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there 12. He was jamming good with Weird and Gilly 13. Two American kids doin' the best they can (2 names) 14. I just act like I don’t remember and she just acts like she don’t care 15. She got a double wide and she rode a plane 16. You could have heard a...
Read more