Music of the Weak: Unfinished Business

For those of you who have been wondering, these are the Top 5 albums from 1983:

5.  ESG – Come Away With Me

4.  Minor Threat – Out of Step

3.  U2 – War

2.  R.E.M. – Murmur

1.  Metallica – Kill ‘Em All

Now:  You’re looking at those five albums, and you’re thinking a couple of things.  First of all, you’re thinking that this is a pretty fucking badass top five for any year.  But then, once your brain has released the images of Tucker and I dressed in full purple suede suits with feathers in our hats and aquarium shoes (we’re pimps, see) that you’ve conjured because there is NO better Top 5 for 1983, unless you count Violent Femmes’ debut album, which you can’t because it was released in 1982, suckas, you’re asking yourself why the fuck did they count down (or almost count down, as it were) the Top 25 Albums of 1983 in the first place.  And that’s a good question.

This is not a topic Tucker and I have actually discussed much on the site, despite the fact that there have been four (4!) album countdowns in TFO’s short history, and that’s not counting the Top 25 Albums of 2000 list that Tucker published in his proto-Factual writing space.  The categories are taking up a pretty satisfying little section of that sidebar to your right, and if we have our way there will be more.  Plus, prior to the unveiling of Music of the Weak, my participation here at The Factual Opinion headquarters, aside from the occasional liturgy on the brilliance of Spank Rock’s sex pulse, was relegated to these countdowns.  So, while it pains me to admit that you, dear reader, deserve to know the who, what and why on me—the list-loving, Norwegian-baiting douchenozzle that’s skimming the new releases and mp3 blogs and riffing on music he finds interesting and/or irritating—perhaps taking a look at our somewhat healthy list-obsession will give you a bit of insight into Music of the Weak, and hopefully get you pumped for the next countdown event.

First, let’s look at why these five albums ended up at the top of our list:  Each one is absolutely unreplicatable; each of them were unprecedented in their time; each still sound mind blowing today; each of them make good on their far-reaching ambition; and, finally, we doubt that any one of you readers has heard every single one of them.  Those first three criteria—unreplicatability, unprecedentedness, and ambition—are incredibly important.  They’re essentially what make timeless music, and the reason you should still listen to music from 1983—not because of any historical significance (though it’s interesting to note that 4.4 of those artists are still releasing music), but because it’s actually Really Fucking Good.  Most people intuit that picking up Kill ‘Em All would give them endless amounts more pleasure than Death Magnetic, but how many people actually follow through on that?  We would like to encourage you in that direction.

So, great, you’re going to start listening to more of the good old shit.  But there’s a second step in the process, and this is where I feel like our countdowns of years past really put us in the game.  For years, the pop/rock canon has been dictated by a small number of publications.  In the broadest possible terms:  Rolling Stone, then SPIN, then Pitchfork.  Again in the broadest possible terms:  Rolling Stone rooted their canon in “classic” rock, SPIN in “alternative” rock, and Pitchfork in “indie” rock.  I’m not going to digress into nitpicking each publication’s point-of-view, mostly because I don’t disagree with any of them, but I will say that the word “rock” appears in that last sentence three times, which gives you one idea of the problems of having a limited canonical perspective.

We’re in an age where multiple voices (alright, maybe too many voices) speak out about what’s good presently, but very few voices are talking about what’s good historically in popular music.  Artists like Metallica and ESG deserve to be part of the discussion, not just relegated to the ghettos of their genres.  You deserve to be reminded that U2 have actual great music in their catalog, not just overplayed shit.  Minor Threat deserve to be heard, not just name-dropped.  And, though everyone seems to agree that Murmur is a stellar album, we’re guessing that only a few of you have actually listened to it—and even fewer have listened to it lately, since for ten years R.E.M. have seemed intent on dismantling the good will they built up in the fifteen before that.  The real fun starts with the artists even further down the list—everyone should at least be able to consider lining up John Cougar Mellencamp between James Blood Ulmer and The P-Funk Allstars in their iPods.  (And, while we’re at it, Uh-Huh, Odyssey and Urban Dancefloor Guerillas are all in serious need of some re-release.)

This kind of shit circles back to the artists—if you don’t think artists are reading Pitchfork, you’re fucking crazy.  And that means a couple of things—yeah, they’re getting steered in the direction of some great music, but they’re also learning to adapt their sound toward getting a good review.  When there’s only one strong voice in music criticism, it’s easy to do that.  Now more than ever, it’s one big circle from us to you to the artists back to us (the circle also runs in reverse.  Physics!)  Tucker and I aren’t necessarily going to start any revolutions here, but we might open a couple of doors you might not have known were there.  If you start listening to better music, it’s better for all of us.  These things are important.

-Martin Brown, 2008

Comments

[Tom Spurgeon]

Didn't the first Run-DMC album come out in 1983 and then get re-released in 1984? Or do you just not have it anywhere in your top albums from that year?

[tucker Stone]

I had the Run album proper as actually getting recorded in 83, but officially produced and getting release as 84. A lot of 8 inch singles dropped in 83, but I wasn't aware that the 84 was a full re-release.

Marty and I can be a stickler on when the album officially comes out, and when something like DMC came up, (which, I think, it did) we usually decided to err on the side of caution. Even if there was some form of release of that album, which I couldn't confirm at the time, 1984 seems to be the more general agreement of when it came out.

[Tim O'Neil]

This is a horrible list, because Murmur only appears once.