1978

So here is when people really start moving beyond punk.  Anyone with any intelligence would want to get away from all those self-identifying clowns that ruin loud, fast rock and roll even today.  Innovation and disregard for rules attract members of many of the greats resulting in timeless music that sounds different.  How un-punk.  Needless to say this year kicks ass.  VERY hard to place these in any order.

10.  The Rolling Stones - Some Girls
And it wasn't just the kids.  The so-called dinosaurs relocate  to Manhattan and embrace change on this later-period (in a perfect world) masterpiece.  With their best album cover in years the band experiments with as many styles as there are  vintage wigs.  Country of course, but how about something new...  Of course there is punk, easy enough considering their roots, but they manage more towards the "new wave" side of it with the closing tribute to their temporary home "Shattered."  Disco lovers such as myself also embrace "Miss You," justifiably so with its funky bass and harmonica that keeps their London blues  roots intact.  "Beast and Burden" is  the best-remembered for some reason, but "When the Whip Comes Down," is the best showing that the Stones were back  and able to do anything, including being the same band that ruled the harder side of the 60s (to most).

9.  Kate Bush - The Kick Inside
After years finely tuning her craft the David Gilmour-discovered Anglo-Irish prodigy (19 at the time of release) makes her debut.  Led by the single "Wuthering Heights," her otherworldly talents and extraordinary vocal range  are startlingly apparent upon first listen.  This album is much more accessible and down to Earth than her later work, but must have been hard to find any point of reference at the time.  Perhaps only in future collaborator Peter Gabriel.  The songs are piano and vocal dominated with a standard rock/pop backing far removed from her later work, but there is still an obvious air of fantasy and beyond-human perspective.  The eerie drama of opener "Moving" and "The Saxaphone Song," hint at what is to come, but still this is more "eccentric" than "frightening" or "just plain weird."  It is a relatively safe set of great songs from one of the greatest musical talents of the last forty years, a perfect place to begin a career and a love of her music.

8.  DEVO - Q:  Are We Not Men?  A: We Are DEVO!
Ohio's theatrical prophet-rockers had been together for six years already.  Forming in the wake of the Kent State Massacre, the brothers evolved from from Van Der Graaf-esque prog into post-punk before they had a word for it.  Along that time they earned such fans as Neil Young, David Bowie, Robert Pollard, and Brian Eno, who produced this debut.  While thought of as a synthy group, they have plenty of punk fury, particularly on "Gut Feeling," and "Uncontrollable Urge."  The group does  hint at the electronics  of the future on "Shrivel Up" and of course, "Space Junk," but they are first and foremost a cohesive rock band capable of the character sketch of the common man "Mongoloid."  The first side is anchored by their statement of purpose "Jocko Homo," a shortened  version of their score to self-made film The Truth About De-Evolution.  It is the future, and it's bleak.  ...but also fun.

7.  The Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food
After 77 the New York quarted begins to prove themselves one of history's greatest groups with the addition of producer/collaborator/pretty much fifth member Brian Eno.  He had expressed this wish on Before and After Science's "King's Lead Hat" and his influence begins here, a string of three masterpieces.  The band goes far beyond the growth hinted at on their debut with their genre-bending going in every direction possible, best known on their cover of "Take Me To The River."  They would be even  more adventurous with sparse and funky arrangements as Byrne, Eno, Frantz, Weymouth, and Harrison discovered more music around them and in  themselves.  Even present is the still dirty word "psychedelia" on the swirling "Warning Sign."  The  nervous energy may still dominate over the adventurous approach on "The Girls Want to Be With the Girls," and "The Big Country" is  a little pretentious, but  it may not be Byrne's fault.  Regardless, it is clear this collaboration is a good one.


6.  Pere Ubu - Dub Housing
The band most set on never sounding the same moves into far different territory from their fantastic debut The Modern Dance.  Though opening track "Navvy" might not show much divergence, the title track takes their expressionism into, obviously, reggae-influenced territory.  The group's five members put together an angular disjointed sound with  imagery as high-contrast black  and white as their album art, most evident on the concise "I Will Wait."  Still with urban decay a major theme the darkness of "Thriller!" conveys its title much better than Michael Jackson's dance classic.  Ubu offer their own bizarre  dance classic on "Ubu Dance Party," a humorous, and non-ironic little jam.  The chilling and obsessive "Codex" finishes off with only the memory of  Alan  Ravenstine's abrasive synthesizer and Dave Thomas' yowling voice to remind you why some considered Ohio the collest place in the world at the  time.

5.  Magazine - Real Life
Howard Devoto departs the  Buzzcocks with the riff that would give his old band the chorus for "Lipstick" and this band's breakthrough hit "Shot by Both Sides" its hook.  With a band comprised of some of the best musicians in post-punk this LP was released shortly afterward.  Opening with the funky sci-fi rocker "Definitive Gaze," it contains a set of dramatic rock and roll with all the spacey weirdness the cover would imply.  The first side follows with the homoerotic "My Tulpa" and a remake of the single, but the second side is where it really gets going.  Here the band excels in making a synth-heavy brand of dark post punk that is too light and sincerely fun to be goth.  "The Light Pours Out Of Me," thuds and builds its way into the perfect-slow paced post-punk raver and "Great Beautician in the Sky" has as much camp as anything  the Kinks made in their less-respected era.  With "Parade" the record concludes on a softer, darker note so deliberately that it proves Magazine one of the most intelligent bands on the post-punk scene.

4.  The Adverts - Crossing the Red Sea wit the Adverts
For some reason, maybe their brief career, maybe their interest in other stuff, maybe just because they're too good the Adverts are not remembered as well as other UK punk acts.  Too bad since they're one of the best.  With titles like "One Chord Wonders" and "Bored Teenagers" TV Smith and company show that they really get it.  So it is no surprise that their LP is one of the most consistent punk albums of all, surely thanks to producer John Leckie.  Without any pretense, the band cuts to the political core of punk rage on "No Time to be 21" and the monumental closer "The Great British Mistake."  Smith's songwriting is some of the best in the field and his delivery outdoes all but Rotten's.  With the intro to "Bombsite Boy" they keep in line with Stooges roots, with the look backward coupled with all the forward-thinking proving them one of the most relevant bands of the punk movement.

3.  Wire - Chairs Missing
Wire take a massive jump forward from their debut on this one.  There are quite a few less songs, but that is a result of a lot more space.  Longer songs like "Mercy" allow the band to drone even more and really go  beyond the simple punk format which had proven to be clearly too conforming for the creative band.  While the style is a lot less predictable the shorter songs are  still some  of the best.  "Outdoor Miner," one of the finest songs they would make with its explicit goal of traditional beauty and refreshing atmosphere in contrast to their usual and still present tension.  "Another the Letter" shows them unafraid to incorporate electronics, as well as the amazing effect they can add to the tense and explosive drone that defines Wire.  "I Am The Fly" and "French Film Blurred" are bizarre exercises in space, though Chuck Berry's comments on the former further prove that Wire is merely  innovating upon an already tried and true formula.  The record ends with the droning fury of "Too Late," one of longer tracks that begins to prepare the listener in anticipation for what would come only one year later.

2.  Krafterwerk - The Man Machine
Jesse describes Kraftwerk as "so German they're Russian," and this album, even without its artwork is the best example of this.  With the four members taking on the life of robots and announcing it quite explicitly, the are programmed to be Cosmonauts on the stunning instrumental "Spacelab."  The song perfectly conveys the image of rigorous science experiments being performed as the stars quickly pass by.  The members may look like Data at this point, but the music is much less human than TNG's sex symbol.  Even their tribute to perceived human beauty "The Model" is a cold factual tale barely approaching romance.  The German roots are intact on "Metropolis," the closest thing to a continuation of their last record.  Despite all the dark mechanism the title indicates, this album is very pretty in a highly original way, rather than borrowing from their classical training and influences.  The nine-minute "Neon Lights" is the best example of them capturing the beauty of the machine with human honesty and amazement.  Percussionist Karl Bartos may be responsible for this achievement, having joined Ralf and Florian int  he songwriting, and most  likely conceptual process.

1.  Nick Lowe - Jesus of Cool
An unusual clever and diverse pop record.  Also, absolute perfection.  Lowe and occasional collaborator Dave Edmunds were well-established in the pub rock circuit and the bassist puts all his talents forward on his solo debut.  The hilarious album art captures what this album is all about with all the different personas the singer-songwriter takes on.  At times it is purposefully derivative, with each example a loving tribute more than a "Music For Money" rip-off.  He expresses his affection for Low "I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass" (which actually sounds more like "Sound and Vision") and beats Phil Lynott at his own game on "So It Goes" - a song that moves its  subject with great fluidity from rock and roll excess to international diplomacy.  Classic pop is all over the place, but always with a snide sense of humor on the likes of "Little Hitler" and the gorgeous romance "Tonight."  It rocks hard throughout the album with the live recording "Heart of the City" and the heavy record industry criticism "Shake and Pop."  In the US it was called Pure Pop For Now People which is an accurate layman's description, but it changes the track order, wisely including "Rollers Show," but sadly replacing "Shake and Pop" with its sped-up rockabilly version "They Called It Rock."  Still in that form it would make this  list.

I changed around the  order  here a lot!  This was a hard list to make!