1983. The year I graduated from high school. Also the year I went to college and discovered MTV. I grew up in rural mid-Michigan and we didn't have cable TV. I spent countless hours in the dorm's common room watching MTV. It exposed me to music and bands I had never heard of as well as bands that I loved. As I mentioned yesterday, my 1983 contenders list is long and there's another ten great albums that didn't even make that cut. I would like to mention those artists just to illustrate what a great, diverse era this was for music. The Police, Pink Floyd, Men at Work, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, Talking Heads, Stevie Ray Vaughn, ZZ Top, Huey Lewis and the News and Cyndi Lauper. There are many amazing albums on my final cut list. Those are: Big Country The Crossing, Culture Club Colour By Numbers, Marillion Script For a Jester's Tear, U2 War, John Cougar Mellencamp Uh-Huh, David Bowie Let's Dance and Iron Maiden Piece of Mind. Iron Maiden was the last cut and it was very difficult.
My number one is also difficult. My top two are both game changing debut albums that were like nothing else in popular music at the time. Don't hate me again, but number one has to be Murmur by R.E.M. My reasons are 1) Their importance in the Eighties, 2) their innovative sound, 3) three of my all-time favorite songs; "Radio Free Europe", "Sitting Still" and "Shaking Through".
Number two is the self-titled album by Violent Femmes. Nobody sounded like these guys. This album starts out with "Blister in the Sun", "Kiss Off", "Please Do Not Go" and "Add it Up". That's crazy. They sounded kind of goofy, yet there was in your face attitude like "Well, you can all kiss off into the air, behind my back I can see them stare. They'll hurt me bad, but I won't mind. They'll hurt me bad, they do it all the time". And then "I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record". And they wrote the most famous song about masturbating. I probably should have made this number one, but Murmur is an iconic album. Sorry.
Number three is my favorite heavy metal frontman, Ronnie James Dio, with Holy Diver. I've posted about Dio before. He's awesome. I'm glad I could put him on a Mt. Rushmore. Go back and check out my old post on Dio; I said everything there.
Finally, one of my favorite groups from the Eighties who I feel are grossly underrated; The Fixx with Reach the Beach. One Thing Leads to Another. Sign of Fire. Saved by Zero. Great album. They did get considerable play on MTV, but for some reason they never reached the level of a band like INXS.
Looking ahead to 1982, I was reminded that Thriller came out in 1982. So, I don't know why it was on the list of best albums of 1984. I did live through Thriller-mania. Not sure how I missed that. Anyhow, 1982 is pretty solid. As much as I want to select Chronic Town by R.E.M. as number one, I won't because it was an EP. There's a spoiler for ya. Peace.
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