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Tuesday, Jan. 18, 19*3
The Red and Black
Entertainment
Top 10 albums include ABC, B
By CHUCK REECE
Red and Black Klaff Writer
N ot long before deadline now, and this princely
piece of year end music critcism has no beginning
The bottom end of the story is solid — I rated my top 10
albums and top five singles of the year and even constructed
a crudely subjective point system that made some of the win
ners surprise even me — but this lead paragraph goes
nowhere.
So I yell at the editor: “Kevin! Whaddoldonow?"
Well,” he answers my question with another, “why do we
do a top-10 list?
“To foist your ego on the unsuspecting masses," he
answers.
Indeed. Consider yourself enlightened, justified or en
raged. Or properly foisted.
• • •
ALBUMS
1. ABC — “The Lexicon of Love"
This British band's debut album is everything pop music
should be: irresistible melodic hooks backed by a mighty
beat, purposely sappy, yet intelligent lyrics, sung by a voice
full of romantic anguish Lead singer Martin Fry, whose
brainchild this band is, has romantic anguish down cold In
“Poison Arrow," Fry wails, “Who broke my heart? You
did," with enough conviction to make an innocent woman feel
guilty. Fry has been criticized for making a gimmick out of
love, this album s only theme, but I like his calculations.
True, "The Lexicon of Love" is a concerted effort to make
the perfect romantic dance-club music. ABC. however,
fooled everyone by having enough talent to pull it off. ABC
personifies the look of love.
2. JOE JACKSON — "Night and Day"
"Night and Day" might as well have been glued to my turn
table this fall Joe Jackson's fourth album, perhaps more ap
propriately titled "Thoughts from New York City," evokes
precisely the terror ("Targets") and the magic ("Steppin’
Out") of the city where he wrote these, his best songs What
makes this the great work it is, however, is Jackson's
wonderfully successful look at the feelings of the Big Apple s
people "Breaking Us in Two," "A Slow Song" and par
ticularly "Real Men" paint detailed portraits of serious New-
Yorker anxieties. New York is a city of black and white and
neon nights, and from the cover to the last groove, "Night
and Day” is the finest musical microcosm of the wormy Ap
ple yet.
3. RICKY SKAGGS — “Family and Friends”
While Skaggs’ hits may reflect his honest-to-God country
roots very well, "Family and Friends” is the purest distilla
tion of this new country-music hero’s bluegrass heritage.
Bringing in Mom and Dad Skaggs and a host of singing and
picking old buddies, son Ricky sings about suffering,
memories . . . and Jesus Skaggs can wail about hearing
Heaven’s “voices sangin’ sawft an’ lah-oooww” and never
Bruce Springsteen's “Nebraska” placed in both
the critics poll and Top 10 list
bother me by sounding like a fanatic He sings those tunes for
their soul and their love
4. DIRE STRAITS — "Love over Gold"
Mark Knopfler is the most inventive and lyrical guitarist
around, and his lyrics on this album do justice to the music,
which is gorgeously expansive "Telegraph Hoad," clocking
in at almost 15 minutes, is a masierpiece tale of the industrial
boom and subsequent bust: "I used to like to go to work but
they shut it down/I’ve got a right to go to work but there’s no
work here to be found." But what thrills me about "Love over
Gold" is that these five long songs never bore me No band
since the Allman Brothers of 12 years ago has been able to
play one tune for 15 minutes without sounding bombastic It's
good to hear another one,
5. ELVIS COSTELLO — "Imperial Bedroom"
Elvis ain't angry anymore: He sings things like, "To
murder my love is a crime." To call this album anything but
a landmark work would be a crime, too. Supremely lyrical,
moving pop music.
S. SQUEEZE — "Sweets from a Stranger"
Ignored for far too long, this band finally made waves in
America right before its breakup But Squeeze went out in
style with the typically exceptional songs that grace "Sweets
from a Stranger." "Black Coffee in Bed," a marvelous
single, will always linger in my mind for capturing in two
short, simple lines the hidden pain of a normal person losing
a lover and dealing with the loss “Now she’s gone," Glenn
Tilbrook sang, "and I’m out with a friend ” Not too many
words, but they're as real as the pain itself
7. MATERIAL — "One Down"
The perfect urban funk album Lower Manhattanites
Michael Beinhorn and Bill Laswell with their inter
changeable band have made an album that far surpasses
their jazz-based debut, "Memory Serves." "One Down
sounds like 500 roaring delivery trucks dancing to "Super
Freak.” If that sounds off-the-wall, just go buy the record
and turn it up loud. You'll believe. Oh boy, will you believe.
8. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN — "Nebraska"
“I saw her standin' on her front lawn just twirlin’ her
baton," the Boss sings in this album s first lines. "Me and her
went for a ride, sir, and 10 innocent people died." Maybe
"Bye, Bye, Optimism" is a better title for “Nebraska," on
which Springsteen proves he is born to run But this time he's
not running for the joy of it; he's running from — from old
lovers, from the law, from the scene of his crime
"Nebraska" is a dark record, both musically and lyrically,
and it offers only one hint of deliverance from his middle
American, unemployed-and-driven-to-crime blues as
Springsteen ends the album singing. "Still at the enJ of every
hard-earned day people find some reason to belie.a." What
that reason is he may tell us on the next record, but to under
stand it, whatever it is, “Nebraska" will be necessary
background. You gotta know the whole story, son, even if it’s
sad.
9. PRINCE —"1999"
Prince is everything your mother warned you about, and
that’s why I like him so much. But this is the androgynous
sexpot's most mature, albeit a bit too ambitious, record. At
least he takes some chances, partying to protest the nuclear
threat, singing, "But life is just a party and parties weren't
meant to last/War is all around us/ My mind says prepare to
fight/So if I gotta die I’m gonna listen to my body tonight.'
Prince's philosophy must be "Sex Solves It," but he's enough
of a thinker and a romantic to barely avoid out-and-out
.B. King
tastelessness, and this mix of politics and txxiy thrusts works
very well Besides, who else is going to sing a line like. “Ex
cuse me. but I need a mouth like yours."
10. B.B. KINCi — "Love Me Tender"
The old blues bastion did something weird this time He
took himself to Nashville, took some old country gems like
Conway Twitty’s "One of Those Nights." Don Gibson's "(I’d
Be) A Legend in My Time" and Willie Nelson’s "Nightlife,”
and then loaded the tunes with all the steel-guitar and-sweet-
strings accompaniment that is Nashville's curse. Why? To
see if that guitar Lucille and that inimitable voice could ride
on top of the tripe. It does.
SINGLES
1. GRANDMASTER FLASH AND THE FURIOUS FIVE —
"The Message"
The song of 1982. Rap music, the hybrid of jive talk and
funky beats, always struck me pretty coldly with its I'm-real-
had baby sensibilities But "The Message" is another story,
a horrifying jjne. indeed Grandmaster Flash has come out of
New York’s slimy South Bronx with a vicious musical por
trait of urban decay — the buildings and the people. You can
dance like a fool to it. Which is good, because the people from
Flash's turf have little happiness left save in music The
lyrics tell their story better than I ever could: "A child is
born with no state of mind Blind to the ways of
mankind/God's smiling on you but he’s frowning too/ ‘Cause
onlv God knows what you’ll go through, You’ll grow in the
ghetto living second-rate/And your eyes will sing a song of
deep hate / The places you play and where you slay / Look like
one great big alleyway /You’ll admire all the number book
takers/Dudes, pimps, pushers and the big
money-makers/Driving big cars, spending 20s and 10s / And
you want to grow up to be just like them."
2. MARVIN GAVE — "Sexual Healing"
Yeah, maybe we always knew that sex was the best drug,
but no one ever told us so as well as Marvin Gaye. Making the
word "baby" into a polysyllabic mating call ("beeee-a-he-
bee-heeee”), Gaye works out his sexy falsetto on the sexiest
lyrics ("My heart is like an oveeeeen, I need some
loveeeen”) to come down the pike in a long while.
.1. KID C REOLE AND THE COCONUTS — "I'm a Wonderful
Thing, Baby"
August Darnell (alias Kid Creole) is another one who can
strut his stuff right. This record can shake any dance floor.
4. JOHN ANDERSON — "Would You Catch a Falling Star?"
Anderson’s twangy tale of a washed-up country star iqok-
ing for a little affection has to be the finest country single of
IMS
5. GANG OF FOl'R — "I Love a Man in a Uniform"
kh»
Pylon was the critics’ favorite local band. Readers liked them too
Readers vote for XTC
Sometimes, you just
don’t know what you're
getting into When it was
decided that The Red and
Black would run, in ad
dition to its usual critics
poll, a readers poll, we
figured we'd gel 40 or 50
entries Instead we
received 213 And at least
half of those came in the
day after we thought we
finished counting all the
votes After a few hours of
blind panic, we sat down
and recounted The results
are in your hot little hands
A few oddities: At least a
hundred entries voted one
Ashvin Chabra for Best
Campus Personality. As all
of these votes came in one
envelope we suspected the
old Democratic practice of
ballot stuffing Therefore
all the votes for Chabra,
Mean Dan Sox, Wazo the
Dog and all other
manifestations of the
residence halls'
imagination were
discounted You think we
were born yesterday or
something?
— Kevin Bicknell
And now the winners:
ALBUM OF THE YEAR
1 “English Settlement” by
XTC
2. "Love Over Gold" by
Dire Straits
3. "October" byU2.
SINGLE OF THE YEAR
1. "Down Under" by Men
at Work
2. "Town Called Malice”
by the Jam
3. "Rock theCasbah’ by the
Clash
FILM OF THE YEAR
1. “Das Boot ”
2. "Diner ”
3. "The Wall."
WORST ALBUM
t. "Asia" by Asia
2. "American Fool" by
John Cougar
3, “Success Hasn't Spoiled
Me Yet” by Rick
Springfield.
WORST SINGLE
1. “Ebony and Ivory" by
Paul McCartney and Stevie
Wonder
2 "The Girl is Mine" by
Paul McCartney and
Michael Jackson
3 “Love Will Turn You
Around” by Kenny Rogers
HERO OF THE YEAR
1 Joe Morgan
2 Dale Murphy
3. Phil Niekro
VILLAIN OF THE YEAR
1. Bear Bryant.
2. Ronald Reagan.
3. The St Louis Cardinals
BOOK OF THE YEAR
1. "The One Tree" by
Steven Donaldson
2 “Real Men Don’t Eat
Quiche" by Bruce Feir-
stein.
BEST CAMPUS
PRESENTATION
1 Gang of Four at legion
Field
2 Pat Metheny at
Memorial Hall Ballroom
BEST NEW BAND
1. A Flock of Seagulls
BEST LOCAL BAND
1 REM
2. Pylon
FAD OF THE YEAR
1 Unemployment
2 Walkman radios
3 Valley Talk
DRUG OF THE YEAR
1 Extra strength Tylenol
FAVORITE CAMPUS
PERSONALITY
1 Mr Dotson
Elvis’ ‘Bedroom’
critics’ No. 1 pick
SINGLE OF THE YEAR
1. "Sexual Healing" by
Marvin Gaye.
2. "Rock the Casbah" by
the Clash.
3. “I Love a Man in
Uniform" by the Gang of
Four
BEST FILM
1. 'E.T."
2. "Shoot the Moon "
3. "Das Boot."
WORST ALBUM
1. “American Fool” by
John Cougar
2. "Vacation” by the Go-
Go’s.
3. "Diver Down" by Van
Halen
WORST SINGLE
1. “Jack and Diane” by
John Cougar
2. "Never Been to Me" by
Charlene.
3. "Mickey” by Toni Basil
HERO OF THE YEAR
1 Herschel Walker
2 SAFE
3. John DeLorean
VILLAIN OF THE YEAR
BEST NEW BAND
1. Jason and the Nashville
Scorchers
‘What’s hot and
what’s not’
BEST LOCAL BAND
1. Pylon.
2 REM
FAVORITE CAMPUS
PERSONALITY
1. Vince Dooley.
1 Ronald Reagan
2 Dan Hallenbeck
3. Joe Frank Harris
Herschel was critics’ hero
To quote Vince Dooley,
"What can I say but ,vhat
can I say?” Here are the
results of the fifth annual
critics poll in which we give
you our unshakable, writ-
in-stone opinions on what’s
hot and what’s not. Our
critics this year are
Charles Aaron, Kevin
Bicknell, J. Greg Clark, J.
Eddy Ellison, Bob Keyes,
Beth Lilly, David Nelson,
Bill Oliver, Chuck Reece,
Jim Tremayne and Chris
VanSieckle. Enjoy.
— Kevin Bicknell
BOOK OF THE YEAR
1. "Keeping Faith" by
Jimmy Carter.
2. "The Manly Handbook”
by David Everitt and
Harold Schechter.
BEST CAMPUS
PRESENTATION
1. The Gang of Four at
Legion.
2. Hunter S. Thompson at
Memorial
DRUG OF THE YEAR
ALBUM OF THE YEAR 1. Sinsemilla from Oconee
County
1. "Imperial Bedroom" by
Elvis Costello.
2. “It's Hard" by the Who.
3. "Nebraska" by Bruce
Springsteen
Pop music ’82
By KEVIN HICKNEIX
Hril .inti Hindi Knlrrlulnmrnl Krfltor
If you wen* a record company president in 1982, chances
are you were very depressed. You were probably unhappy
that sales had dropped almost 40 percent from last year. You
were likely upset that an album could get in one of the top five
chart positions, could indeed make it to No. 1, and not go
platinum You were probably somewhat embarrassed that
your main competition for the dollars of young America was
an electronically-created gohbling-monster. No, if you were
a record company president in 1982, you were not happy
However, if you are a record buyer, 1982 probably gave you
cause to be very happy There was a greater diversity Doth in
the music that was put out and in the mannc*r in which it was
released Music videos have altered the concept of radio as
the only way to get records heard The growth of independent
labels has provided an alternative to the record companies
themselves. And perhaps most importantly, the record
companies’ financial crisis has perpetuated an atmosphere
of experimentation that just didn't exist in the late 70s, the
so-called good old days of record-selling where men were
men and top-ten records always went platinum — or at least
gold
Yeah, those were the days weren’t they 7 But the late ’70s
were one of the blandest periods in pop music history largely
because the major companies had (or thought they had) a
foolproof formula. Keep the music inoffensive, don't take
chances by trying musical innovations or by working with
troublemakers, push it to the radio stations who'll play it
because they don't have anything else and you too can have a
hit Usually it worked, hut it had the unpleasant side effect of
making the radio sound as bland as mayonnaise. That
blandness in which the performers who weren’t trying to
imitate Fleetwood Mac were trying to ape the Bee Gees was
crucial to the multi-platinum success formula of the '70s
That formula has broken down, but a lot of the blandness is
gone as well The record companies really don’t know what
people want anymore and so they ’re trying anything from the
synthesizer-based dance music of Soft Cell and the Human
league to the ominous African beat of Peter Gabriel’s
"Shock the Monkey . " From the charmingly mindless schlock
of Tony Basil’s "Mickey" to the white trash pop funk of J
Geils band From the raw boned white blues of George
Thorogood to the sensuous soul music of Marvin Gaye. In the
heydey of the record companies, from 1976 77 these songs
would have been on the fringes of the airwaves They are a
little too eccentric to fit into the multi-platinum formula —
they’re not as safe as such faceless but manageable acts like
Journey and Foreigner
But that's only part of the story Kadio airplay cannot, by
itself, make a record a hit — that’s the audience's respon
sibility And 1982 may have seen a more open audience for
interesting music than in the years before it Such artists as
Joan Jett, the Go-Go's and the Stray Cats are selling mainly
to a high school audience and while all three artists are pure
pop they have a great deal more verve and spirit than such
late 70 s pop as Peter Frampton or Fleetwood Mac It may be
that the music is getting better simply because its audience is
accepting better music
Certainly that’s what you might think while remembering
the pop event of the year, Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska "
The album was a pop event not because it sold a great deal
(although it went gold and then some) but because it
demonstrated a great deal of good faith between a great
artist and his audience
There was Springsteen giving his fans, who had waited two
years for the next record, an album which was honest,
compassionate and completely uncommercial It was widely
predicted by the industry that the record would cost
Springsteen the audience he had worked to build in the
previous years Instead it somehow sold 850,000 copies.
The reason it worked was the reason pop music worked last
year An artist had the freedom to put out good music that
escaped conformity and took chances, and the audience was
open enough to accept it That's the way it should work
And music worked better in 82 than it has in a long time.