Category: music

• '70s Soft Rock Essentials: Feeling a little melancholy, here's a whole decade of melancholy.

Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong
Was I unwise to leave them open for so long?
—Jackson Browne, "Doctor My Eyes"

One album a year (a couple of these are more hard rock, but I steered it away from hair metal mostly):

• Ace of Spades, by Motörhead: 1980
• Diary of a Madman, by Ozzy Osbourne: 1981
• Number of the Beast, by Iron Maiden: 1982
• Show No Mercy, by Slayer: 1983
• Defenders of the Faith, by Judas Priest: 1984
• We Care a Lot, by Faith No More: 1985
• Peace Sells, by Megadeth: 1986
• Appetite for Destruction, by Guns N Roses: 1987
• Operation: Mindcrime, by Queensrÿche: 1988
• Conspiracy, by King Diamond: 1989

I started off today with Sound System, by The Clash, but quickly dumped it. Aside from their top 40 hits, they all sound the same and their lack of singing talent and failure to discover anything past three chords on the guitar, really gets on my nerves. They're like the worst caricature of "punk" you'd do as a joke, but carried on for a decade and roughly 500 "best of" albums. You can't listen to any '80s playlist without 25% of the songs being Clash, 25% being teeny little Prince (or whatever he called himself as he crawled further up his tiny butthole), neither of whom I want to hear more than one track a day from ever. And I suppose my Anglophobia doesn't help; English wankers preening about English mob politics. I ain't even mad right now, or this rant would go on longer.

• Stillbirth, by Oneiroid Psychosis
• Forever is Forgotten, by Oneiroid Psychosis
• Unquiet Grave, VA
• So Comes the Yawning Darkness, by The Unquiet Void
• InBetween, by The Unquiet Void
• The Secrets of Vanished Aeons, by The Unquiet Void
• Darkness and the Machine, vol II, VA

a previous Unquiet Void playlist

• Isolation playlist by Apple Music: One of the better incarnations of this downbeat playlist. Like they say in the description, it updates often so save any songs you want to hear again.

"I've been looking so long at these pictures of you
That I almost believe that they're real
I've been living so long with my pictures of you
That I almost believe that the pictures are
All I can feel"
—The Cure, "Pictures of You"

• This Year's Model, by Elvis Costello & the Attractions
• The Fine Art of Surfacing, by The Boomtown Rats
• Parallel Lines, by Blondie

• Beautiful Life, by Rick Astley
• The Very Best of Johnny Hates Jazz
• Four Winds, by Tangier: Switching to more bluesy here.
• Freeways, by Bachman-Turner Overdrive

What always amuses me about the Rick Roll is I grew up with Rick Astley's music, he's a really good R&B-pop singer. "Never Gonna Give You Up" isn't my favorite of his songs, but he also sang way too much about love and romance and sometimes "god" (whatever that nonsense is), not my favorite subjects. Anyway, haven't heard his new album, post 50.

• Flamingo Drive-In, by Quixotic
• Stray, by Diskette Park
• Trackpoint, by Diskette Park
• PS-EXE.exe, by System ST91
• VaporDisk, by System ST91
• Better Than Reality, by LukHash
• Akuma II, by Alex & Tokyo Rose

Several of these /via xtheo, which is a fantastic synthwave & '80s tumbleblog/moodboard.

Note with Soundcloud, you need to hit the hamburger menu at the bottom right of the page, and turn off "Autoplay Station" or it'll randomly insert other artists. Which might be what you want other times, but not when listening to one artist. Bandcamp works like a sane thing.