SUBCULTURE FEATURE - Nick G's Best Albums Of The 1970s & 1980s

Music journalist Nick Gardener chats to Subculture about what he feels aret he best albums of the 1970s and 1980s.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well, listeners, we are going to continue our look now
at nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties music. We have got
Nick Gardner, who has been on this show before. He
is one of the most trusted music journalists that I know.
And if Nick doesn't know something about music, that it's
not worth knowing. Nick of course presents his own show
called Built for Speed on Southern FM in Melbourne, and

(00:26):
we thought today we would actually get him on the
phone and hear his thoughts about the top albums of
the seventies and the eighties. So welcome to the program.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Nick, Hi, Dave and Manby. Thanks for a very flattering
you production I have, but Manby thanks for that.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
So Nick, we're doing this very special day to day
on the show because we of course have Sharik Hurry
as a guest on the show from The Runaways. I
was wondering if before we got to your top list,
tell us your thoughts on the Runaways, because of course
they have been such an influential band. Apart from the
fact they're only around for four years, they've had such

(01:05):
a a push towards pop culture and everything in today's society.
Of course, with the Kristen Stewart movie a few years ago.
But also they're a band that's that's really spoken to
artists like the Super Jesus and Lash and the Donners
in the modern day landscape. So what are your thoughts

(01:28):
on the on the Runaways and what they've done for
the music industry in particular.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, a hugely influential band, and I think probably underrated
in a lot of ways. They've got some really good
hard rock music, and they were kind of musically between
hard rock and punk, and they've collaborated with bands in
both those genres. I think they might have done some
stuff with John Lydon as well, said Mawaw Steve Jones,

(01:57):
and as a movie showed interesting personalities and got together
in a pretty volmatile time and one that wasn't particularly
the idea that producer by music, and yet and now

(02:21):
receiving the kind of accolades and respect that they were doing.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Definitely, So we've been as well, I said before, we've
all been talking about our favorite nineteen seventies and nineteen
eighties tracks and albums on the show today. So let's
get into your list of your top albums for that period.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, have you look at the nineteen seventies. Of course,
it was an amazing time for music, the diversity of
sort of genres that came out of First up, we
had the big rock bands from the sixties, inventive and
diverse in sound, that had all sorts of influences. Then

(03:05):
you had different subgenres developing in the seventies of metal,
hard rock, glam punk, new wave, reggae, disco, and power pop.
So it's a nominal time for music and all those
millennials and gen z's. When you listen to an old

(03:25):
gray gen X saying how good the seventies were, well,
they're actually right. They were actually a really amazing time,
and in a lot of ways more familiar to people
broadly because there were kind of central hubs of Countdown
on certain TV shows and radio stations that probably more

(03:46):
people across a spectrum of society listened to say, there
was kind of a broader knowledge of a lot of
the music. Whereas it's very fake mented now. There's still
just as much good stuff, but everyone's sort of in
their little, sort of gated community of preferred music. But
in terms of favorite albums, of course, as I mentioned,

(04:08):
just find you at the top five, just that a
few mentions. I was saying that some of the really
big bands of the sixties put out some of the
best work in the early seventies. Two really good examples
were the Who with Who's Next from nineteen seventy one,
which is a remarkable still sounds really inventive and fresh

(04:28):
when you listen to it now you think it couldn't
be from fifty five years ago. And also, of course
the classic Rolling Stones album Exile on Main Street from
nineteen seventy two, and also in there you had Radio
Birdman and that nineteen seventy seven with one of Australia's

(04:49):
earliest punk albums and still absolutely rocks today the album
Radios appear. Just having me look at my first top
five of the nineteen seventies, and this is obviously, you know,
leaving out a ton of really great influential stuff. And
I don't exally have a Bowie album in here, but
I do like his stuff. But number five six Pistols

(05:12):
never mind, the Bollocks had to be in the top five.
Just revolutionized music and such a corrosive sound. I remember
hearing that the first time and I thought my brother
was playing. I thought he was playing some Daraleks from
Doctor Who was that they'd sort of done an episode
where they grabbed electric guitars, just a phenomenal sound, had

(05:36):
a sort of corrosive political consciousness and attitude as well.
That just really shook up the music business and still
has that impact today. On a completely different note. At
number four, I had Neil Young's After the Gold Rush,
which took those sort of pastoral, kind of folky influences

(05:59):
that he really size on the Harvest album, but combined
it with that darker I suppose Vietnam watergate eras kind
of cynicism and sensibility, And yeah, it was sort of
gloomier songs, but melodic as well and really affecting and
track the track I reckon. It's his strongest album. Number

(06:22):
three and this might be a bit controversial as Zeppelin fans,
but I've led Zeppelin three from nineteen seventy probably stands
up as my favorite Zeppelon album, as they had lots
of great displayed up hard rock songs on there, like
the Immigrant Song and Celebration Day, but also experimented with

(06:44):
some different sounds. They expanded their sort of folky stylings
on that and did some unusual kind of production and
studio tricks and has I reckon what probably my favorite
Zeppelin song since I've Been Loving You, which is a
great kind of bluesy epic that probably my all time
favorite guitar solo from Jimmy Page on that one at

(07:07):
number two. This one's not normally in your sort of
Rolling Stone Pitchfork kind of lists of the greatest albums
of all time, but in terms of the nineteen seventies,
this is one of my absolute favorites. And I'm kind
of cheating a bit here, I must admit I've got

(07:27):
the complete Bulacann album of Cheap Trek. Now, admittedly the
original Budacard album this one actually came out in nineteen
ninety five, but this from a concert from nineteen seventy eight.
The original Blood of Budacan just had about half the
concert and then they sort of filled that out with

(07:48):
a double CD. So I'm going to treat a bit
and have the complete Bootacan, which is Cheap Creek's real
greatest hits when they're at their absolute peak, and they
were sensation alive and the tracks, most the tracksand better
live than non record, and they just defined power up
in the late seventies, combining those big sort of ACDC

(08:09):
style risk with the beatlesque melodies and their own sort
of wacky sense of humor. Number one an album that
Rolling Stone Magazine whacked into the nineteen eighties in their
list from many years ago. But I'm going to have
it as a seventies album because it came out in
nineteen seventy nine, and that's London Calling by the clash

(08:33):
I've got as my number one album of the nineteen
seventy's just a bit like the sort of punk white album.
I think it might have been a triple disc in
the original vinyl version, and covers an amazing range of
musical styles, some punk tarn't rock, but also sort of

(08:55):
reggae and scar and all sorts of different sounds. I
think they've sort of been a bit strained the real
sort of music, I suppose Fishynados, and probably a bit
constrained by the limitations of the paint template. Then they
just unleashed with this one and crowded one of the

(09:16):
most amazing albums of all time, and then Why Money
the number one album of the seventies.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
Which also got a real boost as well when they
did The Friends London episode as well, which was one
of the most watched episodes of Friends, of course, with
London Calling playing as the cast were running across London Bridge.
And I think a lot of younger generation people back
then discovered them for the first time because of that.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Yeah, absolutely, think well, that's a really sort of raw
and different sound, and so, yeah, that can happen with
the use of different media these days, like brisall with
Kate Bush in the Stranger Things.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, definitely, yep, and I'm sure a lot of people
are eagerly anticipating the new season of Stranger Things because
they've promised even more nineteen eighties music, which leads us
to the next part of your list, the nineteen eighties albums.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah, absolutely, And of course the nineteen eighties were starkly
different from the seventies in a lot of ways. It's
remarkable to think about how much of a cultural change
there was over that period, given that if you haven't
look at people from about two thousand and fifteen or

(10:34):
two thousand and five, it's not much different to how
they look today. That's just the fashions and cultural style.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah, it's interesting like that as well. We were having
a discussion with a musician. Yeah, we were having a
discussion with a musician on our show a few weeks
ago that said that it's kind of weird where we
are now because it's forty years since the eighties, which
for most of the artists during the eighties was the
same period of time that had come from World War Two.

(11:06):
So it's like, it's so weird nowadays that the eighties
or forty years ago.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah, it's interesting that we've had such technological change in
up people, but in terms of sort of popular culture
and the way people look that it seems to have
slowed down the extent to which that changes.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Of course the eighties, Yeah, different sounds emerged. A lot
of it was of course early on music was influenced
by new waves and keyboards coming into music a lot
more and different sort of vocal styles and new romantic
as well, and a sort of dance pop. It became

(11:51):
sort of I suppose that the standard model from a
lot of eighties music. I had to say at the time,
that's one really gone into the alternative stuff. I was thinking,
what the hell is going on? Like it's had a
plastic y kind of feel A lot of the Ahes,
and I really disliked some of the real mainstream production

(12:12):
techniques of that gated read the drums, which sounded sort
of cannon shot drum sound and sort of wimpy electric keyboards.
It sounded like they weren't plugged in and yeah, but
built back even into some of those mainstream tracks now
you think, actually they were actually pretty good, some pretty

(12:34):
decent songwriting. And of course there was this vast kind
of underground reservoir of alternative music that was siloed off
from the mainstream, where you said, the phenomenal range of
artists just doing really inventive things, and that's where obviously
a lot of my third albums come from. I'll just

(12:57):
mention again a few runners out before I get into
top five. One you and I were talking about the
other day, and this is a big mainstream band, The
Bengals first album called all Over the Place from nineteen
eighty four, completely very much overlooked because they followed it
up with The Manic Monday and walked like an Egyptian,
which would beg hits. But I think this is a

(13:19):
much better record. It's a very much like a Beatles
album from about nineteen sixty five.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, and of course there's a very very strong Runaways
connection there as well, with Mickey going from the Runaways
to the Bengals.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
That's right, Yes, I had that crossover of talent there.
Of course, Comes and Hoses became probably the biggest man
in the world during the nineteen eighties and really kind
of not so much heralded, but it ensured that main
kind of breakthrough into the mainstream of metal. Suddenly metal

(13:53):
was the biggest thing in the world in the late eighties,
which felt a bit odd, but it was good to
see and probably yeah, still the strongest album I reican
of that sort of late eighties metal appetite for destruction.
The Smiths, of course were sort of the emblematic British
band of the nineteen eighties and divisive in a lot

(14:16):
of ways and still are in quite a few ways,
but really defined a sort of a very witty kind
of Oscar Wild influenced lyrical style and brought back some
of the sort of jangly pop sounds of the late
nineteen sixties with Johnny Maher's great guitar work. Just a

(14:37):
couple of Mothers frog into the top top five. Of course,
we had the jam who were hugely successful sort of
emerged from punk into new wave and lots of great records,
particularly Sound Effects is a big favorite of mine, and
You Too maybe the biggest band of the eighties the
first I Reckon The first four albums are actually still

(14:59):
really strong and come up really well, and really nice
mixture of some pop sensibilities, but also a bit of
punk and new wave in there as well, and different
sort of guitar sounds from the Edge and great vocals
from I Do like the Boy album of nineteen still
track the track my favorite there is, but also unforgettable

(15:22):
buyers great as well, and public Enedy of course redefined
rap and hip hop with it takes a nunch of billions,
really inventive record too, but just my top five. Probably
the sort of transatlantic equivalent of the Smiths over in

(15:42):
the US was Ram in terms of defining a particular
alternative music sound at the time, and their album Murmur
from nineteen eighty three is probably still comes up as
as again track the track the best one of the
nineteen eighties, great atmospheric record and great songwriting had album

(16:04):
I Had at number five, number four, an album that
not too many people would have heard of. It's Johnson
by the Pontiac Brothers, and they were a and who
are kind of influenced by the Rolling Stones and punk
at the same time, so that their sound is a
bit like that, a little bit of cowpunk in there,
I suppose. But Johnson from nineteen eighty eight is just

(16:28):
a great hard rock record from start to finish, really
good wrists and tunes. Has guest appearance from Ian Plagant,
who is a keyboardist with the band The Faces, Rod
Stewart's old band, so it brings that a bit of
a classic rock and these sort of rollicking kind of
padow sound to that record and definitely worth checking out.

(16:50):
I haven't heard of those guys, the Pontiac Brothers. The
number three you had the Stone Roses and their self
titled debut out which they never better the follow it
was sort of a bit of a guitar workout, not
much more, and they weren't great live, We're going to
say when I saw them in about ninety five. But

(17:11):
that first album, which combines eighties alternative and nineteen sixties
psychedelia with great tunes and interesting guitar work from John Squire,
still stands up as a great record. Another one that's
pretty well known from that period. I had at number
two the Pixies with Too Little and you could affect

(17:35):
Surfer Rosa or a few other Pixies albums, but I
think this still stands up as their strongest one, with
cracks like making Going to Heaven and Here Comes Your
Man at this day sensational record with that Faint Blacks ExM.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
Chris it sounds but really important a lot of bands,
but at.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Number one for me, the man who in many ways
defined the nineteen eighties is the Replacements, who were again
influenced by the Rolling Stones and probably the Sex Pistols
in terms of the rebellious attitude, and they combined also
a bit of classic rock with more of a punk found.

(18:25):
Their first album from about nineteen eighty one was kind
of like a mix of Black Flag and the Ramones,
but then, as we mentioned, with The Clash, they broke
out of the punk template and lead singer and guitarists
and songwriter Paul Westerberg to shape what an amazing kind
of Paul McCartney esque songwriting talent he was on their

(18:47):
subsequent albums, and probably my favorite of their's is Tim
from nineteen eighty five, which was their first album on
a major label. They had this big groundswell of bought
from alterned in music fans, and the mainstream record companies
picked them up, and yeah, I think put out their

(19:08):
best record. It's kind of ragged heart rock and post
punk and power blom, but also with moving ballots and
a few sort of snarky novelty tracks as well, a
bit of a quiet taste, but one that I certainly acquired,
and you know, just about all their stuff and if
mine maning, that probably wouldn't necessarily be on those people's

(19:32):
list of best hospit Tim by the Replacements stands up
as my favorite of the nineteen eighties.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Well, that is an absolutely brilliant listen, Nick, it was
funny when you were reading out some of those bands
and the albums and the tracks for those albums. It
took me back to a compilation album that I had
bought when I was a kid called Techno Sucks, and
it had the Pixies and it had guns and roses
and the Stone Roses on it. Yeah, it's just it

(20:02):
was a weird time of music for the eighties because,
of course, as you said, it was like just about
every genre was living together, but they were seen to
be this this real divide. When techno music came in,
that kind of like really pushed the rock bands to
start doing pompilations like Techno sucks.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
It was a weird Yeah, there's a weird use that
we're spends made about divisiveness recently, but it was a
strange sense of the separation between genres. Remember when I I.
Smith collaborated with run DMC and various sort of middle
bands collaborated rap artists, was like, oh my god, this

(20:43):
is unbelievable. Yeah, now you've got this sort of hybrid
of all sorts of different styles.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Definitely. Yeah, you think of bands like Lincoln Park and
body Count and artists like that where they've really incorporated
different different genres into their music, and that's definitely been
a move forward. Well, Nick, I want to say thank
you for coming on the show today and giving us
those lists, because they are absolutely brilliant lists, and I'm
sure a lot of our listeners out there are going

(21:13):
to go out and hunt down some of that music
and hopefully we'll get you back on the show now
that we're back doing music lists and things like that
because we know that you love to put a good
list together.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
I do love a self indulgent list.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
All right mate, Well we're going to play some of
the tracks now from some of those albums that you
just mentioned, so thank you so much and we'll get
you back on the show very very soon.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Thanks all. Dave