This past year, I started keeping a log of purchases every week, and a cursory look at those entries show how much catalog has taken over my collection.
Like last year, many of these purchases come from Lifelong Thrift Store or Goodwill. A month-long CD sale at Easy Street Records contributed quite a number of titles. I’ve whittled down nearly 600 purchases to a list of Favorite 10.
Catalog
Patti Smith, Horses: The first time I played this album, I didn’t get it. So I played a few more times and became fascinated with it on each play.
Boris, Pink: I remember other Japanese indie rock fans fawning over this album, and it’s taken me 12 years to get around to finding out why.
David Bowie, Scary Monsters: At first I was going to be boring and choose Ziggy Stardust or Let’s Dance as my favorite Bowie album, but this one takes it, hands down.
Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska: I like the story of how this album came about just as much as I like the end result.
Fugazi, The Argument: Fugazi didn’t make a bad album, just less good ones. The Argument would probably be Fugazi’s best album if 13 Songs and Repeater weren’t in the way.
Joni Mitchell, Court and Spark: I went on a Joni Mitchell binge this year, and this album is the only one I really like. Sorry, Blue.
Roxy Music, Avalon: Quite the dapper album.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced: It’s weird how familiar this album feels after years of hearing covers by Kronos Quartet, Sting and Emmylou Harris.
The Pogues, Rum Sodomy and the Lash: I didn’t accommodate the Pogues during my Celtic phase of the mid-90s because they were more rock than Celtic.
Wire, Pink Flag: I’m also fond of the self-titled Killing Joke album.
The last half of the year was stuffed with reissues that were of particular interest for me.
Reissues
Art of Noise, In No Sense? Nonsense! (Deluxe Edition):(Who’s Afraid Of …?) The Art of Noise! may have all the hits, but the post-ZTT albums from 1986 and 1987 are the band’s creative peak.
Camouflage, Voices and Images (30th Anniversary Edition): This reissue received a limited run in Germany, so pick it up before they’re all gone.
Johnny Hates Jazz, Turn Back the Clock (30th Anniversary Edition): The acoustic re-recording of this album works quite well, given how reliant the original was on MIDI.
Kate Bush, Remastered Part I and Remastered Part II: It’s apparent on which side Kate takes in the loudness wars, because these remasters do nothing with the volume. In the case of The Red Shoes, it’s actually pulled back. But they sound great, particularly Part I.
Julee Cruise, The Voice of Love: I so dug Floating Into the Night that I didn’t think it could be topped. It wasn’t, because The Voice of Love is a different beast.
Sasagawa Miwa, Houjou -BEST 03-18-: I passed on the two most recent Sasagawa Miwa albums, but this retrospective does a good job of highlighting the best parts of her output.
Frank Ocean, Endless: This album was better than Blonde.
Prince, Piano and a Microphone 1983: How about a vinyl reissue of the Love Symbol album?
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
Our retrospective ends at 1978 because my collection starts thinning out at this point. I was 6 years old at the time and just starting to become aware of songs on the radio. Of course, nothing on this list would have appealed to 6-year-old me.
Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians
Brian Eno, Ambient 1: Music for Airports
Kate Bush, The Kick Inside
Emmylou Harris, Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town
Blondie, Parallel Lines
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Variations
Andy Gibb, Shadow Dancing
Willie Nelson, Stardust
Kate Bush, Lionheart
The Police, Outlandos d’Amour
Other favorites from the year:
Clannad, In Concert
Rap Reiplinger, Poi Dog
I loved Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”, but when my dad saw her perform on Solid Gold, he hated her on sight. “She looks drugged,” he would complain, so I wasn’t allowed to listen to Blondie. That didn’t stop my brother from picking up the 7-inch singles for “The Tide Is High” and “Rapture.”
I can only imagine what dad would have said if he saw Kate Bush dancing in “Wuthering Heights.”
If any album on this list would have appealed to 6-year-old me, it would be Rap Reiplinger’s Poi Dog. Local radio played Reiplinger’s skits regularly, and I enjoyed hearing “Room Service” over and over again.
I didn’t realize those skits were available on an album. I thought only radio could broadcast them, so it wasn’t until Poi Dog was reissued on CD in 1992 that I could relive that thrill.
Reiplinger forged the Honolulu stand-up comic scene, and it died when he did in 1984. Or maybe it was the humorlessness of the 1980s.
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
1979 is officially the year I started collecting music. And it’s all because of a post-disco hit about the Twilight Zone theme song. This list, though, couldn’t have been compiled till 2006.
Gang of Four, Entertainment!
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Evita
Stephen Sondheim, Sweeney Todd
Philip Glass, Einstein on the Beach
Midnight Oil, Head Injuries
Talking Heads, Fear of Music
The Clash, London Calling
Michael Jackson, Off the Wall
The Police, Reggatta de Blanc
Emmylou Harris, Blue Kentucky Girl
Other favorites from the year:
The Manhattan Transfer, Extensions
The B-52’s, The B-52’s
The hit in question is “Twilight Tone” by the Manhattan Transfer.
Though more renowned as a jazz vocal quartet, the group wouldn’t get on my radar till “Twilight Tone” invaded the airwaves. Search YouTube for a performance of the song on a variety show — it’s amazing what people will endure for art. Or gimmickry.
My parents relented and bought the Extensions album for me. Of course, I played “Twilight Tone” to death, but I also dug the other songs on the album. Unlike “Twilight Tone”, they ranged from doo-wop to a capella. One song was a bizarre novelty with the singers voices rendered at chipmunk speed. You could say this was Manhattan Transfer’s disco album.
I’ve included it in the extended list. As fond as I am of the album, I have a better sense of what 1979 really offered as a year in music.
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
If my 8-year-old self were in control of this list, the soundtrack to Xanadu would occupy the top spot. The only other title he might have recognized would be Diana. And he would have questioned the inclusion of AC/DC.
U2, Boy
David Bowie, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
Kate Bush, Never for Ever
Diana Ross, Diana
X, Los Angeles
Grace Jones, Warm Leatherette
Killing Joke, Killing Joke
Talking Heads, Remain in Light
AC/DC, Back in Black
Emmylou Harris, Roses in the Snow
Other favorites from the year:
The Police, Zenyatta Mondatta
Soundtrack, Xanadu
ABBA, Super Trouper
The B-52’s, Wild Planet
The roots of my collecting bug are anchored in 1980.
I would bug my mom to buy me 7-inch singles. I was told I didn’t have the sufficient capacity to judge whether a full album would be worth the purchase price. My mom wasn’t about to drop cash on a set of songs if only one of them would entertain me.
So I amassed quite a lot of singles — “Tell It Like Is” by Heart, “A Lover’s Holiday” by Change, “Stomp!” by the Brothers Johnson.
I was, however, a pest about ABBA. The age of eight seems to be the right level of maturity for ABBA to sink its sugary hooks into an impressionable mind. My niece was crazy for Mamma Mia, the movie musical, right around the age I bugged my parents to get me their Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. The first volume didn’t have “Chiquitita.”
Video games interrupted my interest in music for four years, so it makes me wonder in how much more trouble I’d be today without that disruption.
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
If there were a year I was least interested in music, it would be 1981. And it was a remarkable turn of events, because I had amassed quite a 7-inch collection the year before.
Duran Duran, Duran Duran
Lou Harrison, Three Pieces for Gamelan with Soloists / String Quartet Set
Eurythmics, In the Garden
U2, October
The Police, Ghost in the Machine
ABBA, The Visitors
Black Flag, Damaged
Brian Eno and David Byrne, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Bucker and Garcia, Pac-Man Fever
Rick Springfield, Working Class Dog
Other favorites from the year:
Go-Go’s, Beauty and the Beat
Gang of Four, Solid Gold
Grace Jones, Nightclubbing
1981 marked the start of my fascination with the classic video games of the era. I would also take an interest in computers and programming. My parents actively discouraged me from pursuing either interest, but it would not stop me from sneaking away to the arcade when we went to the local malls.
That didn’t mean I was totally unaware of music. Of the titles on this list, I would have listened to the Police, ABBA, Rick Springfield, the Go-Go’s and Buckner and Garcia. And I would have definitely seen Grace Jones in the press.
If there was one album I really wanted to get at the time, it would have been Pac-Man Fever by Buckner and Garcia, mostly for the maze patterns on the inner sleeve that would have help you to win the game.
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
From here on out, you’ll see a lot of names repeat on these lists. These selections reflect my tastes as an adult rather than what I would have been listening to at the time.
Duran Duran, Rio
Clannad, Fuaim
ABC, The Lexicon of Love
Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska
Kate Bush, The Dreaming
The Waitresses, Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful
Roxy Music, Avalon
X, Under the Big Black Sun
Soundtrack, Tron
Midnight Oil, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
The only album on this list I actually listened to in 1982 was the soundtrack to Tron. I was all about the video game, and I dug the special effects in the movie. I was, however, too young to understand how awful the screenplay was.
I saw the Waitresses on Solid Gold and absolutely loved “I Know What Boys Like.” By the time I would start collecting music, the Waitresses had already recessed into one-hit wonder memory. But the song left such an indelible print, I would seek it out in my first year of college.
Duran Duran’s Rio was released that year, but I had no inkling of it at the time. Music was a passive activity. The car radio or my siblings’ boomboxes keep me informed of the days’ hits, but my passion lie with video games — an activity my parents curtailed because they equated it with gambling.
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
The 1983 Favorite Edition list is not terribly cosmopolitan. And why should it? I would have been 11 years old at the time, and pre-teens, even precocious ones, aren’t renowned for sophistication.
Eurythmics, Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
Clannad, Magical Ring
U2, Live Under a Blood Red Sky
David Bowie, Let’s Dance
Duran Duran, Seven and the Ragged Tiger
R.E.M., Murmur
Huey Lewis and the News, Sports
The Police, Synchronicity
10,000 Maniacs, Secrets of the I Ching
The Waitresses, Bruiseology
Other favorites from the year:
Toto, IV
Culture Club, Colour By Numbers
Violent Femmes, Violent Femmes
Cyndi Lauper, She’s So Unusual
The Pointer Sisters, Break Out
MTV was the big driver of music in this era, but I wouldn’t have known it because my parents refused to subscribe to cable. The household wouldn’t welcome cable TV till well after I had moved out after college … in 1997.
So my exposure to music in 1983 was limited to American Bandstand and Solid Gold. For a short while, a syndicated TV show called Prime Time Videos aired on broadcast affiliates, but it would not last.
I was still heavily into Pac-Man, even though my parents refused to welcome a game console or computer into the house. It’s a wonder how I’ve made computer programming my career.
So if this list seems particularly safe, it’s a reflection of the limited avenues of consumption. It’s probably why I have such a voracious appetite now.
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
And now we enter some new territory. I didn’t start collecting music in earnest till 1985, and I wouldn’t start exploring catalog music till 2005. Raiding thrift shops has allowed me to fill in a lot of history, which is why were expanding the range of this retrospective to as far back as 1978. Today, we start with 1984.
Stephen Sondheim, Sunday in the Park with George
The Replacements, Let It Be
Soundtrack, Amadeus
Andersson / Rice / Ulvaeus, Chess
Art of Noise, Who’s Afraid of? … the Art of Noise!
Madonna, Like a Virgin
Prince and the Revolution, Purple Rain
Bruce Springsteen, Born in the USA
Arvo Pärt, Tabula Rasa
Thompson Twins, Into the Gap
Other favorites from the year:
Guadalcanal Diary, Walking in the Shadows of the Big Man
Nena, 99 Luftballons
Eurythmics, 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother)
Sade, Diamond Life
I was much more into arcade video games — the classic era of Pac-Man and Galaga — than music in 1984. The only album I owned from that time is 99 Luftballons. Everything else I would discover later.
My 12-year-old self would not have known what to make of the Replacements or Arvo Pärt. He would have scoffed and wretched over the idea that Madonna or Prince could rank on such a list. They were his brother’s albums, after all.
He certainly did not have the sophistication or patience for two LPs of Mozart, although he might have really liked watching Amadeus.
And he would have definitely protested the inclusion of Bruce Springsteen on the list, all the while gazing lustily after the cover of Born in the USA.
He would have totally understood the Thompson Twins, though.
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
This list is the last of the original years covered in my previous survey. The Favorite 10 hasn’t changed, but the extended list has gotten longer.
Tears for Fears, Songs from the Big Chair
Sting, The Dream of the Blue Turtles
Arcadia, So Red the Rose
ABC, How to Be a Zillionaire!
10,000 Manaics, The Wishing Chair
Clannad, Macalla
Kate Bush, Hounds of Love
Soundtrack, Macross Song Collection
Midnight Oil, Red Sails in the Sunset
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Requiem
Other favorites from the year::
Camper Van Beethoven, Telephone Free Landslide Victory
Eurythmics, Be Yourself Tonight
Hiroshima, Another Place
The Pogues, Rum Sodomy and the Lash
Simple Minds, Once Upon a Time
Sade, Promise
Hüsker Dü, New Day Rising
The Replacements, Tim
The Outfield, Play Deep
INXS, Listen Like Thieves
Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam with Full Force, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam with Full Force
The Power Station, The Power Station
The Family, The Family
Prince and the Revolution, Around the World in a Day
Younger Me would approve of most of this list.
He would have gasped at the inclusion of Prince, considering the Sibling Rivalry Collection Race was at its height, and this kind of intrusion would be accompanied by a drubbing.
And he would groaned at the inclusion of The Outfield. Older Me would then advise him to wait 20 years before a real appreciation could begin.
I capped this survey at 1985 because my collection before that year wasn’t extensive enough for much punditry. Weekly visits to thrift shops in the last three years have allowed me to fill in enough gaps to keep going till 1978.
A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries ranking my favorite albums from 1985 to 2004. My collection has expanded greatly since then, particularly in the last five years. So I wanted to see what has changed in 10 years.
In 2008, my collection tapered off with releases before 1987. I went so far as to call 1986 an uninteresting year. I’ve since had time to explore the year in greater depth.
The Art of Noise, In Visible Silence
Janet Jackson, Control
Soundtrack, Megazone 23 Song Collection
Paul Simon, Graceland
XTC, Skylarking
The Smiths, The Queen is Dead
Prince & the Revolution, Parade
Nakamori Akina, Fushigi
Duran Duran, Notorious
Club Nouveau, Life, Love and Pain
Other favorites from the year:
Anita Baker, Rapture
Bananarama, True Confessions
Fishbone, In Your Face
Run DMC, Raising Hell
Peter Gabriel, So
John Adams, Harmonielehre
Enya, Enya
Dwight Yoakam, Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. Etc.
R.E.M., Lifes Rich Pageant
Pet Shop Boys, Please
Kronos Quartet, Music of Sculthorpe, Sallinen, Glass, Nancarrow, Hendrix
The Human League, Crash
If you told Younger Me that Older Me would like So and Raising Hell, Younger Me would wretch. At the time, Run DMC and Peter Gabriel were so ubiquitous, I felt I would never need to hear “Walk This Way” or “Sledgehamer” for the rest of my life.
One advantage of growing older is no longer caring about looking at all fashionable.
Younger Me would have been puzzled by the inclusion of Dwight Yoakam on the extended list, to which Older Me would have to tell Younger Me to wait 9 years.
Younger Me: Oh, I was wondering whether I should get that Human League album. Is it really that good? Older Me: Yeah, but I don’t think you’d quite appreciate it at your station in life. Wait a few years. Younger Me: Really? How many? Older Me: 30.
![[Art of Noise - In No Sense? Nonsense!]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/ArtOfNoiseInNoSenseNonsense-300x300.jpg)
![[Blondie - Parallel Lines]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/BlondieParallelLines1978160432_f-300x300.jpeg)
![[The Manhattan Transfer - Extensions]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/TheManhattanTransferExten39283_b-300x300.jpeg)
![[ABBA - Greatest Hits, Vol. 2]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/ABBAGreatestHitsVol240172_f-300x295.jpg)
![[Go Gos - Beauty and the Beat]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/GoGosBeautyandtheBeat190257_f-300x300.jpg)
![[The Waitresses - Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/TheWaitressesWasntTomorrowWonderful_f-300x300.jpg)
![[Duran Duran - Seven and the Ragged Tiger]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/DuranDuranSevenandtheRa39957_f-300x300.jpg)
![[Thompson Twins - Into the Gap]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/ThompsonTwinsIntotheGap170433_f-300x289.jpg)
![[The Outfield - Play Deep]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/TheOutfieldPlayDeep1985142461_f-300x294.jpeg)
![[Nakamori Akina - Fushigi]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/nakamori-akina-fushigi-300x300.jpg)