Today's musicians don't play with the same fundamentals bands played with when I was a kid.

I heartily endorse every word of this post. Bark Psychosis, also a remarkable band, formed in the 80's and owes a lot to Talk Talk.

What's so impressive about Talk Talk is their constant trajectory: they NEVER stood in place, never stopped transforming, and yet their path of development (well, Mark Hollis's, really) is/was such a logical one in retrospect. They're a perfect case study in musical evolution -- five albums, and each one retains key musical ties to the previous one while making massive strides ahead toward something new. (Interestingly enough, Mark Hollis' self-titled solo album, released long after Laughing Stock, continues this trend exactly: it's halfway between Laughing Stock and something even more ethereal and avant-garde. Highly recommended, if you liked that album, and very much the unofficial "sixth" Talk Talk LP.)

Also, their B-sides collection (Asides Besides) is pretty solid too. In particular the B-sides from the Colour Of Spring era ("It's Getting Late In The Evening" and "For What It's Worth") are every bit as good as the material on the album, and you already know what I think about the album.

Today's musicians don't play with the same fundamentals bands played with when I was a kid

That Bill Wyman, there was a good solid bass player that knew his role and didn't play any dumb notes out there. A real team player.

Echo & The Bunnymen (technically formed in '78, but first album was 1980)
...
Today's musicians don't play with the same fundamentals bands played with when I was a kid.

Ironic for a band named (in part) after a drum machine, but Echo and the Bunnymen had a fantastic drummer in Pete de Freitas when they started out.
Damn shame he died so young.

Ironic for a band named (in part) after a drum machine, but Echo and the Bunnymen had a fantastic drummer in Pete de Freitas when they started out.
Damn shame he died so young.

Yeah, DeFreitas was a really versatile drummer, could play convincingly in a host of different styles.

"A Promise" remains the truly definitive Echo & The Bunnymen track for me, though all their albums up to and including Ocean Rain are classics. That song, in fact, is IMO the Platonic ideal of what "postpunk" should sound like.

Some other good 80's walk up choices would be 99 luftbaloons and once in a lifetime.

There is somebody who uses Psychokiller, I think?

It's not so easy to nail a band down to a specific decade. Where do you start? When they formed? Their first gig? Their first release? Their first world-wide release?

I once read an article describing London Calling as the best album of the 1980s -- which was a pretty good trick for an album I got for Christmas in 1979.

I think if I had to rate decades by music I'd go...
1. 1990s: Blur, Sleater-Kinney, Built to Spill, Slowdive, Pavement, Pulp, Dismemberment Plan, etc.
2. 2000s: Elliott Smith, The Mountain Goats, The National, Spoon, The Walkmen, Wolf Parade, Wilco, Radiohead, Kanye, Ghostface, etc.
3. 1980s: Pixies (kinda), Orange Juice, The Smiths, The Replacements, Joy Division (kinda), Galaxie 500 (kinda), etc.

I've got some 1960s & 1970s music in my collection but not enough to make a judgement on the decades. And it's too soon to decide on the 2010s.

And Our Band Could Be Your Life is a very good book on 80s US indie rock. It gets a little repetitive at times but I really liked the chapters on The Replacements, Butthole Surfers, Dinosaur Jr., & Black Flag.

Other great bands formed in the 80s: Fugazi, Nirvana (Bleach was released in 1989), Replacements, Black Flag.

I didn't count Black Flag since "Nervous Breakdown" was released in 1978. I'm really old and I moved to Southern California in 1979 so I remember this. Similarly I didn't count the Dead Kennedys since "California Uber Alles" was released in 1979, nor Prince since Prince was released in 1979.

I hate REM for no particular reason.

I'm not wild about them either, but they were so popular that I listed them. I should also have listed Madonna and Duran Duran.

I can't think of a recent decade that doesn't feature twenty artists and a hundred songs I adore. All this generational oneupsmanship is dumb.

I agree with the sentiment, but I'm not as familiar with music since about 1980 as I should be. In fact if you take 1977 as the starting point, the farther you get from that year in either direction the less familiar I would be with the music. I'm working on it though, and by 2020 I should be semi-familiar with bands from the 2000s and will likely adore 100 songs from that decade.

The Pixies, Nirvana and My Bloody Valentine all started in the 80's, but I think you have to consider them 90's bands as their best known albums are in the 90's and their overall sound is 90's.

Dinosaur Jr. is a legit 80's band, and they are probably the only one in the upper tier. The Cure and the Cars are alright, there is some interesting dream pop and proto shoegaze stuff (like Galaxie 500, Slowdive), but really the best stuff in the 80's is either at the very end (Pixies) or at the very beginning (Joy Division, Only Ones). The 80's is the second worst decade for music, IMO, only 2000-2010 is worse. 90's and 60's are tied for the best.

The fact that we're nearly 25 years gone from Nothing's Shocking is simply unnerving.

My choice for 80's walk-up music just for the fan participation during the chorus.

The 80's is the second worst decade for music, IMO, only 2000-2010 is worse. 90's and 60's are tied for the best.

I dunno, I thought the 1840's were pretty weak, myself - you got some late Chopin, some early Gottschalk and Schumann, but not much really upper tier.

I dunno, I thought the 1840's were pretty weak, myself - you got some late Chopin, some early Gottschalk and Schumann, but not much really upper tier.

I know it's a half-joke, but I think this is the first time I've seen someone play classical music Rorschach and name *Gottschalk* this early. It's a little like naming great third basemen and saying "Mike Schmidt, Jeff Cirillo, and George Brett" or something.

Talk Talk, by the way, seems to me to be single most underrated band of the decade, full stop. The Colour Of Spring, Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock are quite simply some of the most compelling, transfixingly futuristic music ever made. Those three albums STILL sound 'modern' and relevant. Which is amazing, given how much most everything else from that era is amazingly dated in terms of production. The Colour Of Spring in particular is an unheralded masterpiece (hipsters warmly embrace Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock for their formative influence on post-rock like Tortoise and bands like Radiohead). There isn't a single note on that album I would discard, and "I Don't Believe In You" and "Time It's Time" simply flatten me.

Agreed, kind of. I'd rate the Go-Betweens as the most underrated band ever, and certainly of the 1980s, but Talk Talk is massively overlooked. Laughing Stock may well be one of my three favorite albums of the 1990s, along with Loveless and Whatever...

I dunno, I thought the 1840's were pretty weak, myself - you got some late Chopin, some early Gottschalk and Schumann, but not much really upper tier.

I know it's a half-joke, but I think this is the first time I've seen someone play classical music Rorschach and name *Gottschalk* this early. It's a little like naming great third basemen and saying "Mike Schmidt, Jeff Cirillo, and George Brett" or something.

You poor MSCM sheeple. Peter Cornelius FTW.

Still waiting for Dylan walkup song from either Zimmerman(n).

And, no, it shouldn't be I Shall Be Released.

The fact that we're nearly 25 years gone from Nothing's Shocking is simply unnerving.

That's not nerves. That's your blood flow decreasing as your arteries harden with age.

Dinosaur Jr. is a legit 80's band, and they are probably the only one in the upper tier. The Cure and the Cars are alright, there is some interesting dream pop and proto shoegaze stuff (like Galaxie 500, Slowdive), but really the best stuff in the 80's is either at the very end (Pixies) or at the very beginning (Joy Division, Only Ones). The 80's is the second worst decade for music, IMO, only 2000-2010 is worse. 90's and 60's are tied for the best.

Bob Mould spits at you.

There's plenty of music from the 1980s that is great. The problem is that most of it was never listened to by people in the 1980s. Then again, the vast majority of "80's music" that you hear on "classic 80's radio" was never listened to in the 1980s either. No one listed to R.E.M. until "Stand" became a sorta-kinda radio hit in 1989. There were maybe 12 people in the nation that bought Murmur when it came out, and the band didn't really break big until 1991 with "Shiny Happy People."

From the 90s, most Rage Against The Machine songs would work as walk-up music. Blur's "Song #2" is tailor made for walk up.

#120 Song #2 is part of the rotation at local NHL games. But so is "Cotton Eye Joe"

No one listed to R.E.M. until "Stand" became a sorta-kinda radio hit in 1989. There were maybe 12 people in the nation that bought Murmur when it came out, and the band didn't really break big until 1991 with "Shiny Happy People."

I can't agree with this. Murmur was Rolling Stone's Album of the Year in 1983, and it sold 200k copies. Document went platinum in 1988. "Stand" came out as a single in 1989. "Losing my Religion" was the first single from Out of Time, got ridiculous airplay, and reached #4 on the singles chart. Then "Shiny Happy People" was released as the second single.

I do agree with your larger point, though; much of our admiration of 80s music comes from retrospection, like discovering the Replacements when you come of age. But R.E.M. was getting plenty of attention and achieving plenty of success before Out of Time catapulted them to one of the biggest bands in the world.

I'm convinced half the bands you guys are mentioning are totally made up.

I'm convinced half the bands you guys are mentioning are totally made up.

Yeah, Husker Du is actually just a Swedish boardgame. Never was a band.

Yeah, Husker Du is actually just a Swedish boardgame.

I remember!

There were maybe 12 people in the nation that bought Murmur when it came out, and the band didn't really break big until 1991 with "Shiny Happy People."

Beaten to it by Dock Ellis, specifically regarding "Losing my Religion."

And "Radio Song" remains one of my favorite tunes of all time.

I'm convinced half the bands you guys are mentioning are totally made up.

Take it to the conspiracy theory thread.

I can't agree with this. Murmur was Rolling Stone's Album of the Year in 1983, and it sold 200k copies.

Thriller - M. Jackson (1982): 60+ million units
Back In Black - AC/DC (1980): 50 million units
Bad - M. Jackson (1987): 40+ million units
Dirty Dancing Soundtrack - various artists (1987): 32 million units
Born In The U.S.A. - B. Springsteen (1984): 30 million units
Brothers In Arms - Dire Straights (1985): 30 million units
Appetite For Destruction - Guns N'Roses (1987): 30 million units
Slippery When Wet - Bon Jovi (1986): 28 million units
Faith - George Micheal (1987): 25 million units
The Joshua Tree - U2 (1987): 25 million units
Whitney Houston - Whitney Houston (1985): 25 million units
Like A Virgin - Madonna (1984): 21 million units
Guilty - Barbra Striesand (1980): 20 million units
Can't Slow Down - Lionel Ritchie (1983): 20 million units
Purple Rain - Prince & The Revolution: 20 million units
Private Dancer - Tina Turner (1984): 20 million units
No Jacket Required - Phil Collins (1987): 20 million units
Hysteria - Def Leppard (1987): 20 million units

I could go on and on and on. 200K was nothing.

Beaten to it by Dock Ellis, specifically regarding "Losing my Religion."

R.E.M. broke with "Stand" off of Green. They then confirmed their status as a radio staple with Out of Time. If you're going by popularity and radio play, R.E.M. are a 90's band, not an 80's band. Absolutely no one bought early R.E.M. outside of college students.

I don't like to dispute the Georgia resident's account of the R.E.M. story, but "The One I Love" from Document was almost as big a hit as "Stand".

"Can't Get There From Here", "Fall On Me", "Superman" and "ITEOTWAWKI" were top 20 on the mainstream rock charts as well, if not top 40 overall.

R.E.M. discography

Oh, to be sure, 200k was not a lot in those days. Maybe relatively very few people bought Murmur, but that's the truest of the three statements you made about R.E.M. in #120. Perhaps "absolutely no one bought early R.E.M. outside of college students" but Document pre-dates Green, and it sold over a million copies while yielding a Top 10 hit in "The One I Love."

"Orange Crush," while not commercially released as an official single in the United States, was the first single from Green, and reached #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks and Mainstream Rock Tracks. It's not the Top 40, but it's still indicative of pre-"Stand" popularity. (I have no idea what the difference between "modern" and "mainstream", but there you go). "Stand" was the second single from Green, and the band's second Top 10 hit. Green eventually went double-platinum, so if you want to consider that their break-through, by all means. But your post in #120 focuses on "Stand" and "Shiny Happy People" as their first indications of being a successful band, while leaving out Document and "Losing My Religion," two very crucial points in their ascent to mega-popularity.

I do consider R.E.M. to be every bit a 90's band as an 80's band. They have very few rivals in the consistency/length of their discography.

REM was fairly popular at school in the 80's. I think Life's Rich Pageant was the album most of us--those of us who liked them--discovered them. For the alt-crowd people I think REM, The Cure and Depeche Mode were the most popular.

edit: I'd agree Document was REM's crossover album.

Speaking of bands that started in the late 70s, I would make the argument that U2 peaked with War.

Edited to add: REM was on the same level as TMBG way back then, and it's sure interesting to see how those career tracks diverged...

"Orange Crush," while not commercially released as an official single in the United States, was the first single from Green, and reached #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks and Mainstream Rock Tracks. It's not the Top 40, but it's still indicative of pre-"Stand" popularity. (I have no idea what the difference between "modern" and "mainstream", but there you go). "Stand" was the second single from Green, and the band's second Top 10 hit. Green eventually went double-platinum, so if you want to consider that their break-through, by all means. But your post in #120 focuses on "Stand" and "Shiny Happy People" as their first indications of being a successful band, while leaving out Document and "Losing My Religion," two very crucial points in their ascent to mega-popularity.

I don't dispute that they were prospects in the mid- to late-80s, but they didn't break in the bigs until "Green." The 80s were an era of pop music dominance. The historical period of "80s music" should properly be understood to be that of Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston and Phil Collins, not "alternative" acts like R.E.M. The only college rock act that really broke big *in the 80s* was U2 with "The Joshua Tree." Maybe Dire Straights, but that was more crossover between college rock and traditional classic rock. The other primary unit-shifter in the 1980s was hair metal.

R.E.M. and Pixies were seminal acts from the 80s that started breaking through in the latter half of that decade, but they were not popular music in that decade, really. "Green" was their breakthrough, and "Out of Time" cemented them as a powerhouse in alternative rock, in 1991, when alt-rock and grunge displaced traditional R&B based pop and hair metal as the dominant styles. The fact is "alternative '80s" has a cooler cachet these days than admitting you were listening to "Thriller" and Wham!, so everyone has edited their personal histories to have been into the underground when they were really rocking feathered out mullets and jamming to Love Bites. (The Pixies never broke. Ever.)

Claiming the '80s were a decade of alternative rock rather than Madonna singles is like claiming 2012 was the year of Tame Impala rather than Taylor Swift or Skrillex.

Claiming the '80s were a decade of alternative rock rather than Madonna singles is like claiming 2012 was the year of Tame Impala rather than Taylor Swift or Skrillex.

For most people in the 80's, alternative rock was the B-52s, Talking Heads, and INXS. Not that there's anything wrong with any of those. For everyone else, it was Jackson/Houston (king and queen of pop) and the video of the month ("Come On Eileen" or whatever MTV decided was in the rotation that day).

Also, I believe the #128 figures are total, not for the year they came out. Can anyone find Murmur's total?

No love for Marshall Crenshaw?

And one wishes Bryce Harper's walk-up music was Kim Wilde's "Kids In America"...recorded before he was born.

INXS

I was never a big fan of theirs, but I must never "Never Tear Us Apart" is an all-time excellent tune.

I know it's a half-joke, but I think this is the first time I've seen someone play classical music Rorschach and name *Gottschalk* this early. It's a little like naming great third basemen and saying "Mike Schmidt, Jeff Cirillo, and George Brett" or something.

"American composer and pianist? You've probably never heard of him."
[puts on black plastic glasses, grows beard]

Absolutely no one bought early R.E.M. outside of college students.

But if you were a college student during the 80s (as I was) your impression of the decade's music is shaped by what you and your friends were actually listening to, not what was "popular" or on mainstream radio. By the late 1980s, if you were so inclined, you could very easily seal yourself into a hermetic "alternative rock" bubble and only be dimly aware of what was happening on top-40 radio. The same was likely true for people into hip-hop, etc.

But if you were a college student during the 80s (as I was) your impression of the decade's music is shaped by what you and your friends were actually listening to, not what was "popular" or on mainstream radio. By the late 1980s, if you were so inclined, you could very easily seal yourself into a hermetic "alternative rock" bubble and only be dimly aware of what was happening on top-40 radio. The same was likely true for people into hip-hop, etc.

Yes, this is definitely true. This is also how people will often claim things like the early 2000s were the era of Elliot Smith or The Shins or something, rather than, you know, Britney Spears and Nu Metal. I'm not inoculated from this tendency myself, but I like to keep in mind that my tastes are almost universally minor and underground. It's just a simple fact that there was never an "era of Pavement," but that there was a mini-epoch of Green Day.

EDIT: to sum it up, the fact that I spend the early-to-mid 90s listening to Superchunk and Archers of Loaf doesn't change the fact that that era was dominated by Bush and Creed.

Yeah, Bush sold a lot of records, but no one ever cared about Bush. Pop culture can't be reduced to units sold or # of eyeballs watched, I think. Influence has a diffusive quality. Anyway, has anyone mentioned Teddy Riley and L.A. Reid as 80's titans? I think those guys wrote the bulk of the soundtrack to my high school years.

Yeah, Bush sold a lot of records, but no one ever cared about Bush. Pop culture can't be reduced to units sold or # of eyeballs watched, I think. Influence has a diffusive quality.

Define influence rigorously, then. I can see the Pixies and Sonic Youth being influential, given that they molded the bands that defined the *next* era, but I don't see any way to say they were definitive of their era. Sure, a few college students were listening to Surfer Rosa and Daydream Nation. Yes, those albums were extremely influential on the grunge/alternarock takeover of pop music in 1991. Operation Mindcrime was more definitive of the the popular tastes of 1988.

The Pixies never broke. Ever.

Maybe not in America, but they certainly did in the UK - Doolittle, Bossanova, and Trompe le Mode all made the Top Ten chart there. And they were inescapable in the UK music papers. For those in the US who paid attention to the UK music scene, the Pixies were exhibit A of an American band of the time who were more popular over there than back home. I did an interview with Black Francis for a local music paper in Seattle when Doolittle came out. Thought it was going to be on the cover - the story ran, but the cover went to...Donny Osmond.

Maybe not in America, but they certainly did in the UK - Doolittle, Bossanova, and Trompe le Mode all made the Top Ten chart there.

Stipulated, with the caveat that in the context of this discussion that's a lot like Manti Te'o's girlfriend in Canada.

We're discussing influential but unpopular 80's bands AND Talk Talk and nobody's mentioned Slint? I'm disappointed in you people. Slint changed all our lives.


[108]:
1. 1990s: Blur, Sleater-Kinney, Built to Spill, Slowdive, Pavement, Pulp, Dismemberment Plan, etc.
2. 2000s: Elliott Smith, The Mountain Goats, The National, Spoon, The Walkmen, Wolf Parade, Wilco, Radiohead, Kanye, Ghostface, etc.
3. 1980s: Pixies (kinda), Orange Juice, The Smiths, The Replacements, Joy Division (kinda), Galaxie 500 (kinda), etc.

This is just a BIZARRE list. Blur? In that group? And Spoon, Wilco, Radiohead, Ghostface Killah and Elliot Smith are all from the 90's. Technically, so are the Mountain Goats, but I can see putting that group in the Oughts' box.

his is just a BIZARRE list. Blur? In that group? And Spoon, Wilco, Radiohead, Ghostface Killah and Elliot Smith are all from the 90's. Technically, so are the Mountain Goats, but I can see putting that group in the Oughts' box.

The D-Plan's debut was in 1995, but they didn't really break nationally (to whatever extent that they did) until 1999's Emergency & I.

Well, that's 90's however you look at it, but I wouldn't consider major-label debut (or signing rather than debut in this case, to split hairs, as their recording history with Interscope (iirc) was... atypical) the defining characteristic in the context of this discussion. To take a more widely-known example, that would make Modest Mouse a band of the Oughts, which is patently ridiculous. Regardless I consider ! and ...Is Terrified crucial parts of the D-Plan canon, so they're solidly in the 90's.

Incidentally, I'm still pissed that Maritime was never as good as their pedigree. While we're on the subject.

! had it's moments, but the Plan canon sort of begins and ends with E&I.

Your point about labels and signings is correct, of course. And Modest Mouse peaked with Lonesome Crowded West.

Absolutely no argument on the latter. I'd say their crowning moment came almost at the median of LCW - about the midpoint of Cowboy Dan.

I think you're unfairly discounting The Dismemberment Plan Is Terrified though. Emergency & I means a lot less without it.