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[April 15, 2007]

It was a good year...for music 1984: A blockbuster era - with 'Purple Rain' everywhere

(Sacramento Bee, The (CA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Apr. 15--Let's rewind to 1984, the year when Big Brother was supposed to be watching, when Ronald Reagan chomped on jelly beans in the Oval Office and pop music was being showered with "Purple Rain." The year produced plenty of blockbusters, including "Born in the U.S.A." by Bruce Springsteen and Madonna's "Like a Virgin." But 1984 was also intriguing for all the underground sounds that started to infiltrate the mainstream, from hip-hop to punk and indie-rock. Emerging musical technologies also fueled a robust synth-pop scene, and MTV (then just 3 years old) was nurturing the video revolution.


Whether by synthesizer, acoustic guitar or cranked Marshall amplifier, 1984 was a great year for music. Here are 10 albums to make this case.

1. Prince & the Revolution, "Purple Rain": Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today ... to acknowledge the album that made Prince a king of pop music. "Purple Rain" is the movie and accompanying album that summed up Prince's musical vision: a kingdom where blistering rock, funky R&B and pop could all groove together -- and get a little freaky. The songs still don't sound like period pieces. "Let's Go Crazy" never fails to get a house party shaking, the outro solo in "Purple Rain" is air-guitar nirvana, and "Darling Nikki" will still wrinkle some parents' foreheads. Prince, we bow to you for drenching us with "Purple Rain."

2. The Replacements, "Let It Be": "Let It Be" (not to be confused with the Beatles' swan song) is a beautiful mess of an album. The guitar strings on "We're Coming Out" are on the verge of breaking, and Paul Westerberg's mental state is going to snap while he wails on "Unsatisfied." Westerberg's voice on "Answering Machine" is utterly ragged, like he's been yelling on the phone all night and then picked up a guitar. The album's sentiments are worn on the sleeves of the Replacements' thrift-store shirts, and that's what makes "Let It Be" one of alternative-rock's ultimate expressions.

3. Bruce Springsteen, "Born in the U.S.A.": Nationalism was in full effect during 1984, with the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and Ronald Regan's vision of the country as a giant Norman Rockwell painting (but with a huge splash of "voodoo economics"). Bruce Springsteen took a more somber view of the American Dream, with factories closing down and leaving ghost towns in their wake ("My Hometown"), and a Vietnam veteran fighting the rat race in postindustrial America ("Born in the U.S.A."). The music rocks with a spirit that's straight from the heartland -- and the Jersey shore -- but there's no jingoism or good 'ol boy flag waving here.

4. Hüsker Dü, "Zen Arcade": Punk rock hadn't sounded so personal or progressive until the release of "Zen Arcade." The concept was something out of the 1970s: a double-album with a stream-of-conscious story about alienation and angst. Hüsker Dü's labelmates at SST Records, the Minutemen, also released a fantastic double album in 1984 ("Double Nickels on the Dime"). But Hüsker Dü roared with the double-album idea like a proper punk band should, blasting sheer emotion through Flying V guitars, and taking trippy detours into folk and psychedelia. The result was a "Quadrophenia" for Generation X, and the foundation for such future "punk rock operas" as Green Day's "American Idiot."

5. Los Lobos, "How Will the Wolf Survive?": "How Will the Wolf Survive" sums up what it's like to grow up American, in neighborhoods where Tex-Mex corridos blare from backyard barbecues while the Rolling Stones play from passing cars. The album launched Los Lobos to a career that included a No. 1 hit (a 1987 cover of "La Bamba") and a live show that still rocks after all these years. Viva Los Lobos and "How Will the Wolf Survive?" It's an album of genre-jumping that sounds fresh two decades later.

6. Run-D.M.C., "Run-D.M.C.": Hip-hop was still seen by the hoi polloi in 1984 as a passing fad. But Run-D.M.C. hammered the idea home that hip-hop was here to stay, with a debut album that's now deemed a classic. The beats were spare tracks including "Hard Times" and "It's Like That," but built with enough boom to bug the neighbors down the block. The album was also ahead of its time for bridging rap and rock with "Rock Box" (guitar crunch courtesy of Eddie Martinez). But everything that the masses would eventually love about hip-hop -- the swagger and the attitude, the beats that go "boom" -- could be found on "Run-D.M.C."

7. Metallica, "Ride the Lightning": The early 1980s were the salad days of heavy metal's popularity (think: Scorpions, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard), but Metallica took the genre into overdrive with "Ride the Lightning." Metallica's debut, "Kill 'Em All," set new land-speed records for metal, and "Ride the Lightning" crushed just as hard but expanded its intensity into different tempos. "Fade to Black" was no sissy power ballad, even with its acoustic guitars, and "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is metal at its most epic and awesome. Who cares if Metallica wore mullets back then? Heavy metal was all the better for "Ride the Lightning."

8. R.E.M., "Reckoning": What's Michael Stipe singing about on "Reckoning?" Who knows, but that's precisely the point. "Reckoning," the follow-up to 1983's aptly titled "Murmur," is all about the texture of language and the jangle of Rickenbacker guitars.

The lyrics and delivery may be oblique, but the band's influence on alternative-rock (or "college rock," as it was known back then) was really starting to gel on "Reckoning." And the songs are great, like the slow, burning build in "Camera" and chiming guitars in "Pretty Persuasion."

9. The Smiths, "The Smiths": Fans of the Smiths are still trying to get over the fact that the band broke up in 1987. So they go back to where the sullen times started, the Smith's self-titled debut with such songs as "Pretty Girls Make Graves" and "This Charming Man." But mope-rock never sounded so good than with the Smiths, with Johnny Marr's pulsing guitar lines and the croon of pain from Morrissey. Because life just hurts sometimes, you know?

10. Depeche Mode, "Some Great Reward": Sampling and synthesizer technology reached its golden years in the 1980s. But in all the "bleeps" and "bloops," something was often missing: good songs.

Depeche Mode's attention to songwriting craft gave the band an edge over the era's "gutless" synth-pop (the kind Nicolas Cage's character dissed in "Valley Girl"). "Somebody" is stripped down to piano and Martin Gore's voice, with lovelorn lyrics that were scrawled on a nation of Pee-Chee folders. The uptempo tracks are tubular, too: "People Are People," "Master and Servant," "Something To Do." Now flip up that Polo collar and dance.

Copyright (c) 2007, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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