80s MOVIES

"Contrary to popular belief all 80s kids did not worship the corny & embarrassingly phoney teen movies of John Hughes & his copycats. In fact lots of us kids/teens in the 80s hated them with a passion!"

This was some crap list posted on instagram. I was 8-18 during the 80s. It was pointed out that perhaps this list wasn't for 80s kids/teens as it would have virtually been impossible to avoid any of these movies at the time especially at my age and if you were a bit younger or a bit older too as they were so ubiquitous. My question was "Do I have to tick which ones were good?" (I couldn't read that white print on my small i-phone 6). So I said "Three." This meant I thought no matter what age you are/were three undeniable classics are on that list: Back To The Future, Raiders Of The Ark and The Temple Of Doom. I guess it should have been four as I missed Airplane! at the bottom but assumed that was a mistake because was it not a film from 1979? A quick look on the www revealed that Flying High which Airplane! was called in Australia was in fact released in 1980. Hey that could still be wrong though.

I got dragged along to see ET at age 11 and hated it. I thought it was for cheesy 7 year olds like my little sister. Hey I already had two Devo albums taped off a friend. So how on earth were bullshit  films like this supposed to be appealing. A year earlier I had seen my first sort of grown up film in Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Now that was a rush of adrenaline that changed my life a little. I loved the follow up The Temple Of Doom even more. The next big one was Back To The Future which became the first film I saw multiple times in the cinema. What a masterpiece that kept getting better every time I watched it. How was that possible?! 

That 85/86 era was great! Me and my best mate loved Better Off Dead, The Sure Thing, Hiding Out, Repo Man, Bachelor Party and everything we could find in the video shop with Steve Martin in it such as Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, The Jerk et al. 

Aliens was THE film everybody loved in the mid 80s though, the girls, the boys and probably the adults. So that really should be on this list. I still recall the night eight of us went to the cinema to see it four girls and four boys. Perfect we were gonna get some action. Not the sexy action we were expecting no it was the thrilling edge of your seat horror action that was amped up to levels we'd never seen before. This was nail-biting stuff of the highest order. Sometimes I think it's the best film ever!

I fucking hated John Hughes films. Our girl gang that we hung out with loved them though but then again some of them also liked Bon Jovi. That was all about boys in bands and movies though. Their hormones were getting in the way of their objective taste I thought. Once you've seen First Blood can you go back to trivial naval gazing rich kids? I just thought John Hughes's characters were phoney, smug and patronising as they were written by old people. They also did not really transpose to the brutal rural Australian Catholic high school reality, not that they had to. I think some of my friends wanted to have really specific cliques while maintaining their hegemony, watered down subcultures (but didn't have the guts to be say be a goth or whatever), American style middle class wealth, school cafeterias, American fashion, general all round middlebrow values and dialogue written by an adult man coming out of their mouths. It was middle class exotica really not really mirroring our dusty monoculture of the time. 

Nobody was particularly cool in my school I mean some people had different taste in music to the heavy metal, Cold Chisel and AC/DC (Don't get me wrong I love me Acker Dacker & Chisel mate) prevalent on school bus trips. People did like ace 80s music like The Sunnyboys, New Order, The Smiths, The Go-Betweens, The Triffids, The Church, Tom Waits, The Replacements, (IRS) REM, Nick Cave, Died Pretty etc. Well that was me and a couple of female friends in my year level anyway. Suffice to say these tapes never got aired on school camp bus rides but Queen and Accept did. The music from bands everyone liked like Midnight Oil, INXS, U2, Prince or Crowded House got an airing.

Tangental slide there... let's get back to the topic of er... 80s Movies that's right! I recently watched Ghostbusters and Better Off Dead and thought they were both fucking awful movies. So I decided to leave this stuff in the past where it belongs. 

Star Wars Sequels always sucked along with the original film. I'm just not in the Bruce Willis gang but I think everyone else was on board with Die Hard. Batman, The Karate Kid & Roger Rabbit were all daft kids shit for me by the time they were released. Tom fucking Cruise - he was beyond the pale. An American pretty boy Hollywood smug fuck! there was no need for such a twat. We had Aussies on film like Vince Colosimo in Moving Out and Street Hero, Noah Taylor & Ben Mendlelsohn in The Year My Voice Broke. Not to mention all the Aussie guys on our telly. 

By the time we got Blue Velvet and Dogs In Space on VHS in 1987 a year after their theatrical run and watched them to death at the age of 16, all of those commercial Hollywood films on that list ceased to have any relevance. My world would never be the same again. I mean how could I regress to shite like Big ffs? So on Instagram I wrote I’ll give you a proper list of 80s movies, which I thought I'd share here. Most of these are probably in my blog profile under favourite movies but hey most of you probably haven't read that. These flicks have all been re-watched in the last five years. So I'm not adding films I have hazy recollections of being terrific like Wings Of Desire, Jean De Florette, Brazil, The Quiet Earth, The Year Of Living Dangerously or Raising Arizona because I haven't watched them for over 25 years. It doesn't mean they're not still great. These listed flix have all stood the test of time whereas most of that instagram list haven't. 

GET REAL! 80’s KIDS AREN’T TEENS NO MORE LIST:
Blue Velvet
The Hitcher

Stir
Elephant Man
Mad Max 2

First Blood
Aliens
Predator
Malcolm
The Thing
Night Of The Creeps

Ladies & Gentlemen: The Fabulous Stains
Dogs In Space
Cruising

Blue Thunder
Dead & Buried

Heat

Malone

Sharkey's Machine

Breaking In

The Hidden
The Fog
Alligator
Re-Animator

From Beyond
Blood Simple
Evil Dead
Withnail & I
Maniac

Ms 45
Possession

Gloria

Love Streams
Paris Texas

Goodbye Pork Pie

White Of The Eye

Going Down

Threads (Telly Movie)
Fortress (Telly Movie)
King Of Comedy
After Hours
Night Of The Juggler
Walking The Edge

Maniac Cop

Maniac Cop II

Vigilante

Siege 

1984
Cobra
Night Of The Comet

Savage Dawn
Friday The 13th
Friday The 13th II
Blood Beat
Happy Birthday To Me
Sleepaway Camp
Slumber Party Massacre

Just Before Dawn
Next Of Kin

The Changeling
Tenebrae

Scanners
Videodrome
The Dead Zone
Repo Man
Christine
Something Wild

Overboard
The Fly
The Shining
Fatal Attraction
Bad Timing
The Long Good Friday

Mona Lisa
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

L'Argent
The Fourth Man
Bliss
Raging Bull
Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid
Crimes & Misdemeanours

Hannah & Her Sisters

Broadway Danny Rose

The Purple Rose Of Cairo

Hopscotch

Spoorloos
Bad Taste
The Year My Voice Broke
Ghosts Of The Civil Dead

The Killer 

...and I could probably add at least another 50  but I think it shows how much that original list was lacking.

B.O.F. - I Got Your Number

SPACE DEBRIS GOES TO THE 80s R&B DICSO

B.O.F. - I Got Your Number 12"

Yo Yo Record shop on instagram introduced me to this slice of choice R&B from 1985 that I had not heard previously. Which is staggering considering the amount of discos I went to in the 80s plus all the compilations of 80s soul-disco-boogie/R&B I have but this maybe didn't even get in the dance chart. Correct me if I'm wrong! No Research Day! Anyway it's ace! The good vibes and grooves all year round 24/7. It's Dj Space Debris with golden hits and non memories to make new ones too.... 

Mo Movies 38

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

A finely made film by Milos Foreman with a wonderful ensemble cast. Here we go: Dissenting opinion. It doesn't really matter what I think though, the boomers and the other (My Dad's) generation before them have already decided this is a masterpiece and a classic. I'm not always on board with the popular actors of the 60s & 70s, for instance the smug fucks Eastwood & Connery. Then again I love me some Lee Marvin, Bruce Dern, Charles Bronson, Peter Fonda, Walter Matthau, Burt Reynolds etc. Jack Nicholson lies somewhere liminal. Sometimes he's terrific (Five Easy Pieces 1970 & The Passenger 1975) but sometimes he's so unsubtle (King Of Marvin Gardens 1972 & The Last Detail 1973) it drives me mental! His performance here is a perfect example of the latter. The rest of the cast are all wonderful and playing at a particular level and tone. Nicholson just bum rushes the show by overacting. He's switched up to 11. This film's set in a mental institution for Christ's sake! One person cannot be way more over the top because he's got another twenty contenders for the crown (unless this is a point Foreman was trying to make. In which case more fool me). Nicholson's ego fucked up this consummate ensemble's brilliant collective performance to the point where he's just embarrassing. Anyway that didn't stop everyone from loving it. 

A smart-arse criminal McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) fakes his way out of prison and hard labor into Oregon State Mental Hospital where he is to be assessed. Shenanigans ensue as McMurphy's rebellious streak goes up against Head Nurse Ratched's (Louise Fletcher) tightly controlled authority. While there's nothing particularly wrong with this film apart from the aforementioned, this story just doesn't excite me. Perhaps this film can't live up to its reputation and I have given it several chances. This is a film for other people.

Double Indemnity (1944)

Is this the best crime movie ever? Or for that matter, the best film of all time? Alfred Hitchcock thought so back in 1944. With a script written by Raymond Chandler & Billy Wilder how could you go wrong? They didn't and this is movie perfection! Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray are brilliant as the diabolical duo Phyllis Dietrichson & Walter Neff trying to pull off a murderous insurance scam. However Neff's boss Barton Keyes (Edward G Robinson) is one smart cookie so they're doomed from the start. This is no spoiler of a 76 year old film as Walter reveals his doom at the beginning then the story is told flashback style. That's the amazing trick they pull off, making a film so suspenseful, even though you know the ultimate fate of the main protagonist. It doesn't get better than this.

It's funny that French film critics made gritty American crime dramas pretentious by calling them the cringe-y moniker film noir. Then the French critics made great visionary American directors pretentious too by calling them auteurs. My dad is 81 and he loves his 40s crime/mystery dramas but he has not once uttered the word film noir in his life. He loves Hitchcock & Scorsese too but they're just fabulous directors to him not bloody auteurs. 

Where The Sidewalk Ends (1950)

Otto Preminger has such a good strike rate he deserves to be in the top echelon of finest film directors of the Movie history! Preminger once again teams up with Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney who he had worked with on the 1944 classic Laura. Andrews plays an unhinged cop from the wrong side of the tracks who accidentally get entangled in murder and romance. Compelling stuff! 

Nightmare Alley (1947)

Tyronne Power plays a sideshow charlatan with big dreams of making it out of the carnival scene to become a pop culture superstar. He has skeletons in his closet though and he has to dodge and weave three femme fatales, cops and other sundry nuisances to get to the top. Where will it all lead? I think you all know the answer to that. One of the finest psychological thrillers these eyeballs have seen. 

 

Sunset Boulevard (1950) 

This was a first time watch for me. Don't be so surprised! I've never seen Dr Starngelove (1964) or All About Eve (1950) either. I tried to watch this straight after one of director Billy Wilder's other crime masterpieces Double Indemnity (1944) but the tone was so different I had to come back to it a few days later. I was not disappointed. What's not to love here? A young Hollywood scriptwriter Joe (William Holden) becomes entangled in the life of a once famous, ageing and eccentric silent movie actress Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Strange, eerie and downright sinister shenanigans ensue in the eternally seedy scene of the Hollywood motion picture industry. Fifty years before Curb Your Enthusiasm we had A-list celebrities playing themselves ie. Cecil B DeMille, Buster Keaton, Hedda Hopper, Anna Q Nilsson and Sidney Skolsky. Rewind forever!

Fallen Angel (1945)

Dana Andrews once again stars in an Otto Preminger directed crime drama. While Fallen Angel isn't as renowned as Laura (1944) or Where The Sidewalk Ends (1950) its still a mighty fine entry in the 40s cime-murder-mystery film cannon. A drifter named Eric (Dana Andrews) finds himself in a seaside bar somewhere between LA and San Fransisco. Eric meets the gorgeous Stella (Linda Darnell) who works in the bar. It seems every man falls head over heals for Stella with her dark seductive power. Murder, marriage, money and twisted intrigue are the order of the day here. Top notch pitch black crime drama!

Whirlpool (1949)

Another great post-WWII American crime thriller! Kleptomania, hypnotism, recordings of therapy, psychiatry, amnesia, extortion, grumpy detectives, a delectable leading lady and serial murder are all present and accounted for in this Otto Preminger directed classic. 

Leave Her To Heaven (1945)    

This was a startling change following on from the previous six crime thrillers of the same era as it was in stunning technicolor. Wowee! The blu-ray transfer is spectacular. This diabolical crime thriller is different too as it is set in a host of bucolic settings throughout the USA. Don't let that serene countryside fool you though this is just as pitch black as any any crime story set in the gritty urban American cities of the day. Gene Tierney is at the top of her game as the chilling Ellen. Cornel Wilde is tops too. Horrific.

Gilda (1946)

As stated on Instagram this was a first time watch for me and wow was I astounded! Rita Hayworth's sparkling charisma jumped out of the screen and swallowed me whole. A crime-melodrama-adventure-romance with a few tremendous musical numbers thrown in. Gilda has the works. The term film noir has never been more obsolete. Along with Hayworth's fashion, hair, glamour etc. there are some blokes who put in outstanding performances too ie. Glenn Ford, George Macready and Joseph Calleia. Best movie of 1946? It's got some stiff competition in The Big Sleep, The Killers & The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Then I lost the will to write as the 40s & 50s crime movies had me in a whirl. I didn't want to write. I just wanted to enjoy the seedy, cynical and calamitous world of these pictures. I'd seen half of them but they were only half remembered as I was a teenager the first time I saw that half. It might seem strange these days that a teenager in the 80s had seen so many hardboiled 40s crime flicks but there was a reason for that. That reason being Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982). The clever collage film where Steve Martin and Rachael Ward were inserted into a hilarious narrative featuring clips from many classic movies of this era. This was all put together by Carl Reiner and editor Bud Molin. Me and my best mate Scott were totally obsessed with this film a couple of years after it was released. So finding these movies or anything similar on video or taping them off the telly was of utmost importance.

Jean Brooks in The 7th Victim

THE NON-REVIEWED 20

Anyway I watched The Dark Mirror (1946), Phantom Lady (1944), PickUp On South Street (1953), The Hitch-Hiker (1953), Murder My Sweet (1944), Escape In The Fog (1945), Laura (1944), 5 Against The House (1955), Out Of The Past (1947), They Live By Night (1948), Roadhouse (1948), While The City Sleeps (1956), The Seventh Victim (1943), Shockproof (1949), The Lady From Shanghai (1947), The Naked City (1948), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Thieves' Highway (1949), Sorry Wrong Number (1948), The Reckless Moment (1949) and there's probably one or two I've forgotten. 

Patricia Knight in Shockproof

All the good names in the directing, producing, cinematography & writing game are represented: Samuel Fuller, Jules Dassin, Jaques Tourneur, Robert Siodmak, Fritz Lang, Ida Lupino, Nicholas Ray, Orson Welles, Budd Boetticher, Otto Preminger, John Huston, Anatole Litvak, Max Ophuls, Phil Karlson, Edward Dmytryk, Mark Robson, Douglas Sirk, Val Lewton, Nicholas Musuraca etc.

Jean Peters in Pick Up On South Street

Then we had all the beautiful and beaut actresses of the era: Ida Lupino, Mary Astor, Gene Tierney, Patricia Knight, Kim Hunter, Celeste Holm, Rita Hayworth, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Bennett, Valentina Cortese, Olivia de Havilland, Ella Raines, Kim Novak, Cathy O'Donnell, Jane Greer, Anne Shirley, Nina Foch, Jean Peters, Jean Brooks, Thelma Ritter, Claire Trevor, Rhonda Fleming, Sally Forrest, Geraldine Brooks, Isabel Jewell, Mary Newton, Dorothy Hart, Ann Richards and many more. 

Richard Widmark & Murvyn Vye
in Pick Up On South Street

Plus there was first class actoring from the dudes of the era: Humphrey Bogart, Richard Widmark, Cornel Wilde, Burt Lancaster, Lee j Cobb, Robert Mitchum, Richard Conte, Elisha Cook Jnr., George Sanders, Franchot Tone, Alan Curtis, Brian Keith, Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, Clifton Webb, Farley Granger, Howard Da Silva, Dick Powell, Guy Madison, Edmond O'Brian, Frank Lovejoy, William Talman, Otto Kruger, Kirk Douglas, Thomas Mitchell, John Drew Barrymore, James Mason, Orson Welles, Glenn Anders, Everett Sloane, Murvyn Vye, John Baragrey, Tom Conway, Howard Duff, Barry Fitzgerald, Ted De Corsia, Wendell Corey, Ed Begley, Peter Lorre and way too many to mention.

Ida in Roadhouse

My new found faves (ie. the films I hadn't seen previously) of the non-reviewed 20 are Sorry Wrong Number, The Lady From Shanghai, Roadhouse, Phantom Lady and Shockproof. The good news is I think I've got more than enough of these crime-mystery-thriller-melodramas from the golden era to get me through to the end of the year! Thanks to awesome blu-ray labels such as Arrow, Indicator, Imprint, BFI & Eureka.

Burt in Sorry Wrong Number

Barbara in Sorry Wrong Number

PISS OFF TWITTER!

 

Like an addict I had a fabulous moment of clarity where I saw the absolute meaninglessness and emptiness of twitter. 

And just like that "POOF!" After 10  or 11 years it's DEACTIVATED!

PRAISE GOD!

Lo Five - God's Waiting Room

This new Lo Five tape was released on Friday but I goddamn missed out again as it sold out pretty quick sticks. Living in the Antipodes doesn't help with these things. No need to worry though because God's Waiting Room is available on digital at Miracle Pond Records bandcamp page and it sounds so top rankin once again. That's like three choice albums in 6 months. They are on a roll and sounding fresh with each new release. Their two albums from last year The Art Of Living & TONIC featured high in my end of year lists. Lo Five have become integral to the UK's esoteric underground present, future and past. They're showing great signs of lovely, eerie, elated, creaky, solitary and weird goodness. This is the music of mysterious dreams, intergalactic rainy days and mid morning misty knolls. I recommend wrapping your ears around this immediately! 

Invasion/Australia Day Rock Edition

A BIT LATE BUT WHO GIVES A FUCK...

I loved this GangGajang song when i was in year 7. It still sounds great. I'm thinking only Aussies will understand that. Then again particularly idiosyncratic and quintessentially Australian bands like The Triffids and Mental As Anything went global so maybe I'm wrong. I guess what I mean is it was only a minor hit here so it's not gonna give my international viewers that nostalgia rush!

Ugly Thing from The Creatures is from my hometown Mildura is much more well known to my international audience coz it's a scuzzy 1967 garage rock classic. Plus they named an American rock magazine after it as well as well as a series of great 80s compilations of 60s Aussie garage rock on Raven Records. 

Next we have this Aussie 80s rock gem from the amazing Died Pretty featuring the impossibly charismatic frontman Ron Peno. Everybody Moves has almost become too unbearably emotional for me now. Such a simple line "Everybody changes" cuts so so deep every time I hear it. I think they were popular in Greece & Spain and a cult band in America. I do recall a write up in Melody Maker around the late late 80s too.

Now American college kids (LOL) of a certain age (just over 50) are gonna remember one of the Ultimate Aussie Underground Tunes. This Screaming Tribesman song IGLOO was a mega hit on American college radio. I'm pretty sure sure in some American states it entered the mainstream top 40 charts. Gee I wonder why? This 1983 tune still blows my mind. Better than fucking Nirvana right here in 1983! Guitars only comparable to Husker Du's Bob who I'm guessing was a fan. IT DOESN'T GET BETTER THAN THIS!!!

Planet Core Productions Live - 1995

This one goes out to my brother in law. I played him Marc Acardipane's Holy Jungle Mess (1994 Mix) during the festive season. Sure he's 15 years younger than me but he said "I hated that track. If it had of had some chav mc’n up a storm over it then I could get down." Well I'm not even sure what chav means in English or whether it would even translate into German but if you want some gabbers MC=ing & dancing over Acardipane beatz you got it right here. Future in yo face! YOU KNOW THE SCORE!  

BEST of 2020

DEATH TRIPPIN' IN THE VIRAL ZONE

ALBUMS

Duma - Duma

Rock Sutra - Sun Araw

Tonic - Lo Five

The Most Unusual Cat in the Village/Jass Of Thun - Moon Wiring Club

Black Sarabande - Robert Haigh

Laying The Ghosts To Rest - Nick Edwards

The Art Of Living - Lo Five

Rec And Ruin Ep - Howlrownd

Songs From Another Life - Steve Kilbey & Gareth Koch

Playing - Busy Microbes

Unit Signals - Ploy

Esoteric Healing: Friend Or Foe? - Her Majesy's Coroner For Wirral

Chryse Planitia - Steve Kilbey & Gareth Koch

After Hours - N Chambers

Loom - Katie Gately

Music For Psychedelic Duelling - R.E.E.L.

Beginning To See The Light - Nick Edwards

Hill, Flower, Fog - Emily A Sprague

Sabbatical - Rangers

Temporal Bandwidth - Nick Edwards

2020 was beaut as we all know. I was lucky that the four members of my family who contracted COVID-19 survived. I'm sorry for everyone else's losses. It's fucking tragic!

*To avoid reading anything about the end of Western Civilisation and the regressive politics behind it, don't read the GREEN PRINT!

I think I've become too obsessed with society/civilisation or lack thereof to give much of a toss about music or anything else for that matter. I'm going to be more critical here of the left because seriously giving the far right any more words is a waste of webspace but the insanity is across the board of the political spectrum. So much nonsense is being espoused I'm flabbergasted. I mean I've been monitoring it on youtube, twitter, 4Chan and other servers since 2013. For all this nonsense to become mainstream is a disgrace. The bloody QAnnons, Pizza Gaters, The neo-racism masquerading as anti-racism, the insane child abuse of the trans-zealots at the Tavistock Centre, the science deniers,  the world health organisation, the maths de-funders and every dickhead in between are here to make your world a much much worse and horrifying place! Why aren't we we discrediting these twats en masse and keeping them as far away as possible from healthcare, education, children and me?  

But once you track it all back through a 30+ year history it's not that surprising though. A lot of people don't actually understand that an idea such as "White Privilege" just doesn't arrive organically by some kind of osmosis. Some numskull has to come up with that piece of rhetoric in an academic essay by flipping an underprivileged classes critique, getting rid of poor white Americans as underprivileged by tossing them into the trash so that it was then only just people of colour could then be underprivileged or oppressed in the USA and 30+ years later after its gained some traction through some mental intersectionality my nephew thinks it's a fact because he learnt it at university. My nephew also learnt I'm a racist because if I deny it it's true. "It's all written down at a university Uncle Tim so it's true!" 

Governments mean absolutely nothing now as the authoritarian lunatic fringe have got hold of governance through Big Tech, Big Pharma, Education, Media, Multinational Corporations, whoever you work for and now your children. It's a sideways revolution and if I hear another narcissistic sanctimonious zealot espouse anymore bullshit I'm going to explode. I'm not allowed to show concern over the unquestioned rising authoritarianism in my home state of Victoria, Australia. I can't even ask Do you reckon Dr Fuckin Fauci is perhaps a bit dodgy? Why will race-baiter Barrack Obama not denounce critical race theory (which is weird and shameful considering his rich kid background and he's half white like that's a fucking race now, and his dad was a government economist for the Nigerian government. So he's not even part of the oppression game...) or ask Whether trans women (that's biological men for those not keeping with the program, not that I can bloody blame you) should be allowed to compete in women's sports? or What's in Hunter Biden's laptop? or Why do you think so many more minorities voted for Trump in 2020? No, No, No! How very dare you? The far left illiberals, blm and baby tantrum anarchists have it all worked out in their condescending racialised minds. This was perfectly illustrated by Chelsea Handler, a white American celebrity, saying to her ex-boyfriend 50 Cent, an African American, that she had to remind him that he was black and that he needs to be voting on the left. She may has well have said "Know your place boy!" 

Anyway music-wise I didn't check out any pop, rap or anything that didn't really come straight to me via my bandcamp ie. My best of new music list isn't anywhere near as adventurous as last year's as its mainly full of old faves although there are a couple of new artists to me Duma, Ploy & Her Majesty's Coroner For Wirral.

Lo Five deserve a special mention for continuing their consistent run of British underground esoteric electronics with occasional hints of psych, ambient and whatever else can be found in the dank countryside of music's memory. This year Lo Five served up two terrific slabs of wintry post rave comedown that is fresh in a soggy déjà vu kind of way today even though we all thought Mordant Music wrote the final chapter to that story with his brilliant Dead Air in 2006. There's still some glow in the half-life of rave's radioactive transmissions on these paranormal Lo Five recordings. 

I did listen to some other stuff I quite liked but I just haven't given them enough time for them to sink in yet like Carl Stone's Stolen Car, Lamentations from William Basinski, Emperors New Clothes by Duckett, The SIGN and PLUS LPs from Autechre and Myth Of Equilibrium from C Lavender. 

All my previous champs who have been there since the start of my blog are present and accounted for ie. MoonWiring Club, Sun Araw, N Chambers (aka Panabrite), Nick Edwards (aka Ekoplekz) and Rangers. All with stellar records. I know I say it every year but MoonWiring Club is the most under-appreciated musician on the planet. As for Sun Araw nobody seems to have given a damn about him for like 8 years since he did that LP with The Congos. Rock Sutra though is a goddamn masterpiece in Sun Araw's genre of one!

I wanted to like the Charli XCX record but I think i'm just too old and have heard it all before a lot. I get kiddie ravers diggin it though because it wasn't bad just like say a Tame Impala LP isn't either but Ive just been in these sonic zones too often.

I don't even know what any of 2020's old trends were apart from adding Neo or nu to an existing genre. I did notice some Death Metal & Shoegaze but fuck me these genres haven't been good or innovative since the early to (and this is pushin it) mid 90s!

I missed past favourates The Flaming Lips, The Weekend, The entirety of Atlanta rap and Oneohtrix Point Never The only thing I missed that I'll probably check out is the Clipping record.

Anyway I'd say I missed a whole lotta good music just so long as I didn't miss any great music!

                                       

Talking about music seems trivial but there were some special things that need attention because they were immensely helpful during this stressful time. For a start music this year was all about instagram for me. Not long after releasing the amazing 70s tropical psych cumbia jamz of Ranil y su Conjunto Tropical by the mysterious Ranil, Analog Africa, the fabulous reissue record label, kept posting these great sometimes totally unknown tunes every day during the initial fully paranoid panic days when you didn't know if you were actually going to come back alive from the shops or not. It was a new delight to listen to everyday. It seems like a small gesture now but at the time it meant everything. Analog Africa even issued a special digital Ranil compilation for a small donation to a Peruvian health org. So that was really fucking cool as his music has been so rare to Western ears up until recently. I mean Raúl Llerena Vásquez aka Ranil was from Iquitos in the Amazon, one of the most remote cities in the world, you cannot get there by road.  Sadly though after everyone discovered Ranil's Cumbia Amazonica records 40 years after they were recorded, he died due health issues complicated by Corona. RIP. 

If 2020 was about one musician it was Steve Kilbey. It was about his love and generosity. He's been around for over 40 years and is the singer-songwriter-bass player for legendary Australian neo-psych rock band/pop group The Church. They influenced The Smiths and The House Of Love amongst hundreds of others. The Church had international hits and most of you people under 40 probably know him because The Church's Under The Milky Way was featured during the party scene in the 2001 movie Donnie Darko. You also hear The Unguarded Moment, Almost With You, Metropolis etc. every time you enter a supermarket, in Australia anyway. Their LPs Of Skins & Heart (1981), The Blurred Crusade (1982), Seance (1983), Heyday 1985), Starfish (1988), Priest=Aura (1992), Hologram Of Baal (1998), Uninvited By The Clouds (2006) & Untitled #23 (2009) etc. are absolute classics not just considered so here in Australia but in America, Europe & other international territories. 

Steve's done a million other projects too including a bunch of terrific solo LPs as well as collaborative duos like Hex (with Donnette Thayer), Jack Frost (with Grant McLennan), Gilt Trip (with his bro Russell) plus many more. His more recent efforts in the last decade have been a fabulous spate of collaborative LPs with either Martin Kennedy or Gareth Koch. One of my favourite  records of the 10s is his solo masterpiece Sydney Rococo (2018). His creative well has never ever run dry! I think he released at least 4 LPs this year alone including one with unlikely collaborator Kate Ceberano.  

He gave us all a gift this year though when the fear was so strong. The strain was exhausting. We were scared, lonely, cabin fever crazy, discombobulated and just gone weird. Steve was a bit glum as his American "Indie 80s Revue" tour with the likes of Morrissey was cancelled. So his income became unstable like many others throughout the world. I think it was the first Monday night of Lockdown in Australia that he decided to do an hour long concert for his instagram followers. You could pay if you could or just take solace in the generosity of his artistry. He was in his eastern suburbs Sydney seaside apartment gettin stoned, being a card and giving us the tunes. Not just from his own pen but from his favourite influences like Bowie, Lou, T-Rex, Cockney Rebel, Bob, The Boss etc. 

It developed over the months and became very ambitious as he took on doing entire Church LPs just on his acoustic guitar. Bear in mind he wasn't the guitarist in The Church he had incredible masters Peter Koppes & Marty Wilson Piper for those duties. Somehow he even sometimes made the tricky bits work for him but sometimes it all went humorously awry. He also did his solo LP classics Remindlessness (1990) & Sydney Rococo (2018). It was fun, rough around the edges and at times incredibly touching. I've never cried at a concert but he had me in tears several times. As restrictions lifted then went back into place then changed again sometimes he would have his mates join him such as George Ellis, Barton Price, Stefan Horlitz (via computer file) and probably a few I've missed. He even did a Bruce Springsteen tune, I didn't know, Racing In The Street that moved me so much because it was about living life to the full but we had all become the people in that song not living due to a fucking virus but hey we're here to tell the tale while many sadly and tragically aren't. It wasn't just that he was spitting in the face of this abyss with love and sometimes hedonistic abandon but also with hopeful humorous spirit that made these Monday night i-phone shindigs so essential and intoxicating! 

He reached his ambitious and creative zenith when at one stage that he promised to write 10 new songs for the next week's show. He did it! When some restrictions were lifted he even managed to record these songs for the critically acclaimed album 10 Women. This was recorded with his posse Garth Koch, Barton Price, Roger Mason & George Ellis. He's long been a hero of mine, since I was a teen in fact, but I never imagined I'd spend such an intimate year with this psych pop poet guru at this stage of my life. Monday nights at 6 o'clock during the pandemic lockdown of 2020 will forever be remembered as the best hour of the week. We got to go and have a great time at Steve's apartment. Strange days made great by Steve Kilbey. Thankyou!

*I've noticed many other artists cottoned onto this idea during the pandemic like Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Dave Graney, Dean Wareham etc. Whether or not SK invented it is a moot point. He utilised it at an incredible moment for humanity and for all of us who experienced it, it was a gift where you could give him a gift back. 

REISSUES/ARCHIVES/COMPILATIONS

Origins - Foul Play

Black Riot: Early Jungle, Rave & Hardcore - Various 

Join the Future: UK Bleep & Bass 1988-91 - Various

Frankfurt Trax Vol. 1: House Of Techno - Various

The Most Famous Unknown: Expansion Pack 1 - Marc Acardipane

The Most Famous Unknown: Expansion Pack 2 - Marc Acardipane

The Most Famous Unknown: Expansion Pack 3 - Marc Acardipane

The Primitive Painter - The Primitive Painter

America Invertida: Leftfield Pop & Experimental Folk From 80s Uruguay - Various

Ranil y su Conjunto Tropical - Ranil

Stay Safe & Sound: Ranil Selection!! (SHARE IT !!!) - Ranil

Cadence Revolution 1973-1981: Disques Debs International Volume 2 - Various

Under The Influence Volume 8: A collection of rare Boogie & Disco - Various

Love Saves the Day: History Of American Dance Music Culture 70-79  - Various

Soul Brother Records Presents: Groove On Down 3 - Various

The Sound of the San Francisco Christian Center - San Francisco Christian Center

Sign O' The Times (Remastered) - Prince

Brown Acid: The Tenth Trip: Heavy Rock From The Underground Comedown - Various

The King Of Sudanese Jazz - Sharhabil Ahmed

Maarifti Feek - Fairouz

Venus - Logic System

Jazz Rock - Tadao Sawai, Kazue Sawai, Hozan Yamamoto, Sadanori Nakamur, Tatsuro Takimoto & Takeshi Inomata

Gohan Ga Dekitayo - Akiko Yano

Danzindan-Pojidon -  Inoyama Land 

#Notes of Forestry - Motohiko Hamase

Nick Luscombe Presents Tokyo Dreaming - Various

Pacific Breeze Volume 2: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1972-86 - Various

Wamono A To Z Vol. I: Japanese Jazz Funk & Rare Groove 1968​-​1980 - Various

Gateway Summer Sound: Abstracted Animal and Other Sounds - Ann McMillan

Crystals: New Music for Relaxation 2 - Craig Kupka

Wrekage 2011-2019 - Ekoplekz    

Tabitha Reverb - Moon Wiring Club

It's funny that the first 8 reissues listed here are the most modern music written about on this entire post. They were recorded between 26 and 32 years ago! When music was future and future was music. The kids don't even care now. I played some Marc Acardipane to my 30 something friend and he just said he hated it. He's was a hip-hop kid in his youth now he'll just go for country or whatever neo is going. He's probably loving some neo-soul right now.

Frankfurt's Marc Acardipane's gabber, doom/gloom-core, breakbeat science etc. still rules sonically so much I really can't think of anything that betters it. 4 LPs of this stuff reissued in 2020 is almost enough but don't worry there's more remasters on the way! 

Foul Play's elegant, sparkly yet still deliriously darkside 'ardcore jungle is as fresh as the day it was recorded just like lots of the stuff on the Soul Jazz Hardcore/Rave/Jungle comp which has an odd & perhaps somewhat misleadingly divisive title (So 2020!). Don't forget where this nascent scene kicked off, that music is put together on the brilliant UK Bleep & Bass 1988-1991 compilation.

Primitive Painter's armchair /chill-out room electronica is a top notch obscure outlier. It should accompany your Ultramarine and Global Communication cds. The sorta stuff both techno-heads and rockists could agree on. It got lost in the mid 90s glut somehow but it's here now and well worth a listen.

America Invertida: Leftfield Pop & Experimental Folk From 80s Uruguay was the surprise archival comp of the year. It was like if 4AD, dreampop, ye olde psych folk melded with music indigenous to South Americas. Of course it has an 80s alien Uruguayan vibe all of its own and its exquisite stuff. Thank you Vampi-Soul. Strut & Analog Africa released gold from Central & South America too.

Then there was all the disco, jazz-funk, soul jazz, gospel disco and boogie that keeps coming from Japan, America, Britain and wherever else for all your good vibe needs. Disco was my go to 2020 genre as it was last year too. Plus the line of history where it originated from ie. Latin, gospel, soul, funk, Afro-Cuban, European electronic music pioneers etc.

There were so many terrific Japanese reissues and compilations of archival material this year (and the last 4 or 5) I'm starting to think it needs its own category: BEST JAPANESE REISSUES! Tokyo Dreaming is worth singling out as a supreme slice of Japanese, synth pop, ambient, jazz funk, soundtrack and city pop Japanese stylee. These tracks were taken from the cult label Nippon Columbia and its subsidiary Better Days, most of which were issued outside Japan for the first time. Classic. 

But then there was Gohan Ga Dekitayo, Akiko Yano's visionary classic 1980 double LP epic with backing from various Yellow Magic Orchestra alumni. It might very well be her finest record. I've seen ignorant people online compare her to Kate Bush but Akiko had LPs released several years before ole Kate debuted so it the other way around. Kate Bush is the British version of the wonderful Akiko Yano with the bonus of cooler musicians plus not a David Gilmore in sight. I know this is sacrilege but one does wonder if Kate did ever hear Akiko in her formative years?

I could keep going but I'll just give one more special mention to a Japanese reissue even though they all deserve it. Jazz Rock by Tadao Sawai, Kazue Sawai, Hozan Yamamoto, Sadanori Nakamur, Tatsuro Takimoto & Takeshi Inomata! Did these guys oppose band names or something? Anyway this piece of esoterica which I think bypassed Julian Cope's book Japrocksampler is gold. The title while tangentially thematic is totally misleading. Perhaps in Japan at the time though these sounds may have been considered very western or rock? I mean there's no guitar on Side-A at all. Maybe pastoral spiritual funky jamz with some ye olde atmospheric Japanese instrumentation would have been a better title. Anyway it's hard not to say this is a unique meditative sonic palace and if so inclined you will find yourself back here again and again. Glorious!

Habibi Funk continue their great run of killer releases with this year's The King Of Sudanese Jazz from Sharhabil Ahmed! Don't let the title fool you this is just good old fashioned Rock'n'Roll/Boogie Woogie/Rhythm & Blues from er... Sudan. This is so infectious it hard not to just keep reeeewinding and playing it all over again. 

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BOOK well the TALKING BOOK

John Cooper Clarke is so clever and funny. He's honed his craft to beautiful poetic perfection. Don't read it! Have him read it to you. After all he is a performance poet of the highest order. One of a kind!

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TELLY

The Crown

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Inside No 9

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BEST THING

Tofu Chan aka Tofu Pudding Jones aka Toff Pupper aka My personal spiritual Guru! He can be found on instagram & youtube spreading his love via cheese & bread spirituality!