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Taking time off from touring in Britain, Europe and America , Madness managed to do some recording, the first evidence of which was a single 'Baggy Trousers'.

A wonderful, wistful anti-school song ("I had less and less respect for it," recalled Suggsy, "until in my last year, I hardly went at all... I suppose I was a bit of a hooligan."), which went to number three in the charts in October 1980 and went on to become a gold record.

The album on which 'Baggy Trousers' would appear as the opening track was’ Absolutely’, and its b-side, 'The Business', eventually had lyrics added to it and a new name, appearing on the LP as 'Take It Or Leave It'.

The album was, as usual, well-received by the public, achieving platinum status and peaking at number two in the LP charts the same month.

VISAGE – FADE TO GREY (‘TopPop’)

Recorded in 1981 for the Dutch TV show ‘TopPop’, FADE TO GREY was synth-pop at its most emotive, most cinematic; its art-house pretentiousness assisted by lyrics that alternated between English by Strange and French by Brigitte Arens and an unmistakable synth riff.

Written by Billy Currie, Chris Payne and Midge Ure, the seductive package gave the song its rightful place in the electro-pop pantheon.

The song remains a compelling and enduring creation: perhaps the perfect iteration of Eighties synth pop, fusing narcissistic melancholy with the android tones of analogue synths and the hypnotic beat of the drum machine.

SPANDAU BALLET - TO CUT A LONG STORY SHORT (1980)

The first from the Ballet boys and arguably their best, TO CUT A LONG STORY SHORT peaked at #5 on the UK Singles Chart and was “ an era-defining slice of electronic myth-making, and a great dance record to boot”, wrote HighResAudio.com.

Equally praising was AllMusic’s Stewart Mason who described the song as minimalist "spiky synth-pop" with a style reminiscent of early Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark material, and featuring a "a dirty, overdriven synth sound and a stomping Gary Glitter-like backbeat under Tony Hadley's herky-jerky vocal tics.”

"To Cut a Long Story Short" is almost minimalist,” continued Mason, “If the group had never gone on to much, this would likely be considered a minor lost classic of the early-'80s U.K. synth pop scene; as it stands, it's so unlike Spandau Ballet's later, bigger hits that it's largely forgotten.”

Ian Gittins wrote in The Guardian that the song "remains a sharp exercise in art-pop weirdness, all twitchy synths and bubbling urgency”.

jasambrend wrote:

Srdacan pozdrav, Brendinjo! Jesi bolje, jesi bolje, jesi bolje? :)

Nadam se da ces nastaviti s glazbenom slusaonicom..

Jesam, bolje sam...hvala ti na brizi...:)

Cuj, vise se forumasa za tebe zabrinulo, pozeljelo ti cim brzi oporavak i pitalo za tebe. :) I, ako mi dopuste, reci cu i u njihovo ime: doista nema na cemu, to je normalna, topla, ljudska reakcija.

THE STRANGLERS – GOLDEN BROWN (‘TopPop’ 1982)

It was hard to believe that by the end of 1981, The Stranglers were already six albums old. While many alumni of the '77 punk explosion had been forgotten, The Stranglers continued to pump out albums (both band and solo) and singles.

La Folie reassured and reasserted: The Stranglers were not only still going strong, they were willing to move in different directions. Whereas their earlier records succeeded in direct proportion to their venom, the group pushed against the limits of cynicism and bile; starting with the catchy pop of ‘Duchess’, they balanced their output: the nice with the sleazy, the obscure with the easy.

Once they discovered that gruff melodies and spat-out vocals weren't the only way to deliver serious lyrics, the Stranglers began exploring more accessible settings for their satire and political commentary. Whether the fans appreciated this was the test and it seemed that many were willing to go with the flow.

The critical groans accorded La Folie hardly reflected calamitous decline in public interest. The Stranglers' regimentalising of punk attributes and their peculiar crossover appeal had made their legions dogged in their faith.

Though live-wise the La Folie canon was difficult and required the concentration of any audience. GOLDEN BROWN, one of three singles from the album, and one that their completely disinterested record company were initially loathe to release, reached Number 2 in the UK, went Top 5 in a further five countries and has since become their universally recognised signature.

That Golden Brown didn’t really fit in with anything else in their oeuvre was very apt: for the story of The Stranglers has always been defined by their unwillingness, or inability, to fit in.

It was their singular disregard for the accepted notions of how to conduct a career, as well as an attuned collective pop brain, which accounted for their enduring myth.

The illustrations that accompanied La Folie's lyrics on the inner sleeve telegraphed the punchlines in a way the songs themselves scarcely intimated.

‘Everybody Loves You When You're Dead’ didn't seem about anyone in particular, except that pictures of Che Guevara and John Lennon clarified its intent. For the completely innocuous ‘It Only Takes Two to Tango’ we got a doctored photo of a waltzing Reagan and Brezhnev.

The Stranglers now used deceptively simple music to make their statements. Very little of their old heaviness remained, except in the sarcastic lyrics.

You had to pay a little more attention to what they were doing and saying, but – in La Folie's case – the approach added depth to a fine album from a band that always liked to rattle the cage.



Ususret jeseni... :)

Last week in 1989, DEPECHE MODE released the single PERSONAL JESUS (Aug/Sep 1989)

Inspired by Priscilla Presley's book Elvis And Me, PERSONAL JESUS was written by Martin Gore who described the song as “being a Jesus for somebody else, someone to give you hope and care. It's about how Elvis was her man and her mentor and how often that happens in love relationships - how everybody's heart is like a god in some way, and that's not a very balanced view of someone, is it?"

“'Personal Jesus' you will already be familiar with,” said NME’s Paul Lester discussing Depeche Mode’s seventh studio album Violator in 1990, “a timely reminder that Depeche Mode, with their black leather gear, Martin Gore's waggish flirtation with sado-chic and the sinister, mischievous streak that seems to underpin the chaps' every move, are possibly our last hope for chart-pop subversion. For whatever reason, it felt good to have 'Jesus' at Number 13.”

The biggest-selling 12-inch single in Warner Bros. history at this point in time, the song was accompanied by a cowboy-themed video directed by Anton Corbijn that garnered considerable airplay on MTV.

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za meditaciju

..  released on August 17, 1959, Kind of Blue is regarded by many critics as the greatest jazz record, Davis's masterpiece, and one of the best albums of all time. Its influence on music, including jazz, rock, and classical genres, has led writers to also deem it one of the most influential albums ever recorded.



1959 – A YEAR OF CHANGE

Looking back at the year 1959 today, it doesn’t just seem like a different world, it seems more like a distant planet in some far-off galaxy. It was a year when the US Top Twenty hits were songs like ‘Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb’ by Edd Byrnes and Connie Stevens that reached No. 4, ‘Tallahassie Lassie’ by Freddy Cannon that reached No. 3, ‘Dream Lover’ by Bobby Darin that made No. 2, ‘Lipstick On Your Collar’ by Connie Francis that made No. 5, while the Chipmunks’ ‘Ragtime Cowboy Joe’ made No. 9, spending a total of 16 weeks on the chart.

Although it wasn’t all instantly disposable teeny pop, Ray Charles’ ‘What’d I Say’ reached No. 6 and spent a total of 15 weeks on the charts, Nina Simone’s ‘I Loves You Porgy’ made No. 18 and Sarah Vaughan’s ‘Broken Hearted Melody’ hit the No. 7 spot, they were slim pickings. 1959, was, after all the year that saw Wink Martindale’s ‘Deck of Cards’ make No. 7, a song that for some unaccountable reason refused to have the good manners of ‘Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb’ and disappear forever.

It was also the year that saw the death of three great singers, coincidentally one each from the worlds of classical music, popular music and jazz – Mario Lanza, Buddy Holly and Billie Holiday – and it saw the release of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder with a Duke Ellington soundtrack, Cocteau’s Le Testament d’Orphée while Ben Hur swept the Grammy award ceremonies.

The USSR put a rocket into space with two monkeys, Fidel Castro became the President of Cuba, Ingemar Johansson defeated Floyd Patterson to win the World Heavyweight crown, the US Postmaster banned Lady Chatterley’s Lover from the mail on the grounds of obscenity and Los Angeles defeated Chicago in the World Series.

In the UK, the British Motor Corporation put on display its new car called the Mini, costing a little over £500, as compared to the new Rolls Royce Phantom V which cost £8905, and Surrey won the cricket championship for a record seventh successive time. In October, Harold Macmillan called a general election, defeating Labour in a landslide, and one of his new Cabinet ministers, now long forgotten, was to have a lasting effect on all of us. Ernest Marples, the new Minister of Transport, launched a nationwide motorway building programme.

If the distance from which we stare at Kind of Blue today can be measured in terms of a United Kingdom with no motorways, then the wonder of it all is that the music does not sound as if it has come out of the same time-capsule that contains ‘Tallahassie Lassie’ or ‘Lipstick on Your Collar’; it sounds fresh, newly-minted and contemporary. And it is here the source of its enduring appeal lies


https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/kind-of-blue-how-miles-davis-made-the-greatest-jazz-album-in-history

Miles [Davis] talked about being back in Arkansas, and he was walking home from church. And the people in the backwoods were playing these really bad, really great gospels. He couldn't see the people but he heard these gospels coming in through the trees and over the trees. And it was dark, and he was about six years old, and he was walking with his cousin. So he said that gospel, and that music, and also he had been listening to the music from the Guinean Ballet, the finger piano, so all of that fused and came back to him with this feeling that he heard playing when he was walking through the back roads of Arkansas.

And he started remembering what that music sounded like and felt like. He said that feeling was 'what I was trying to get close to in Kind of Blue. That feeling had got in my creative blood, my imagination, and I had forgotten it was there. I wrote these blues to try to get back to that feeling I had when I was six years old, walking with my cousin down that dark, Arkansas road.'

•••
Quincy Troupe, on the inspiration behind Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue
•••

Kind of Blue has sold over 6 million copies world wide. In 2009 it was selling 5000 copies per week.

For those who like genre labels, Kind of Blue, is the pinnacle of Cool Jazz. Technically I guess you’d call it “post-bop modal jazz”. It’s this modal jazz that captured the imagination and ears of generations of music lovers (not just jazz lovers - the album is cited as a major influence by many rock and pop musicians).

So what’s modal jazz?

Most jazz standards are known by their chord progressions. Musicians are either given chord charts, or a full score, and when they improvise, they do so over the chord pattern. But in modal jazz, they have a specific modal scale, not a series of chords.

this is what Miles himself said about this style of composition...

No chords ... gives you a lot more freedom and space to hear things. When you go this way, you can go on forever. You don’t have to worry about changes and you can do more with the [melody] line. It becomes a challenge to see how melodically innovative you can be. When you’re based on chords, you know at the end of 32 bars that the chords have run out and there’s nothing to do but repeat what you’ve just done—with variations. I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords ... there will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.

Of course, the other reason the whole album sounds so relaxed and flawless is the line up of muso’s playing on it. Davis’s ensemble sextet features saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, pianist Bill Evans, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Jimmy Cobb, with new band pianist Wynton Kelly appearing on one track in place of Evans.

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