10 'Best' Albums of 1977

As ever, these are my 'best', not the best.

There are a LOT of great records kicking about in 1977. I'm not sure why but this was evidently a period of phenomenal creativity. Quite often, the big story is held to be the proper arrival of punk. I'm not sure how true that is, to be honest. Punk finally has the momentum, but there were plenty of signs of this in '76 and even before. We could just as easily say that the big story was disco. Similarly, it had been developing in the background for a few years and finally became super-massive in '77. The high-cheese factor in disco often obscures the fact that there were some great records to be had. Reggae blossomed in '76, but '77 is, if anything, even better. Classic rock is still, as it always did, producing some killer records and some genres, often regarded as being in the process of slipping back into the shadows (southern soul, for instance), still have plenty of life in them.

I listened to 111 albums in total and the overall quality is incredible. These are all records that I have bought so it's obvious that I am predisposed to liking them, but there are surprisingly few that I would consider anything less than 'pretty good' (only 20 albums scored less than 7.5). This is a bumper year. If you do go and look at the long list and see that your record is lower than you think it ought to, please don't think that I consider it poor.

Anyway...

Iggy Pop - The Idiot

I suppose that this is a spoiler and that I should alert you of such. Low by David Bowie is possibly my favourite record by anyone ever. So it probably oughtn't be much of a surprise that this album also figures very highly on this list. I read an interesting piece in The Quietus that argued that The Idiot should be regarded as a piece with Bowie's Berlin period. This was recorded just before Low and there's a case for describing it as a dry-run. There are certainly similarities.

Again, like Bowie, this was not Iggy's only album in '77 - Lust for Life was released also. The latter album is better known on account of the title track and The Passenger. It is also more plainly an Iggy Pop record. It feels more organic and freer - more spontaneous. It's a great album and one that has grown on my over time, but despite feeling incredibly compressed and contained, this is my favourite. In fact, it is those qualities that appeal to me. Iggy never sounded so menacing, so tightly wound. On Baby, Iggy is apparently trying to be comforting, whilst at the same time being the opposite (We're walking down the street of chance/Where the chance is always slim or none). Nightclubbing (perfectly covered by Grace Jones, by the way) captures the nihilistic nothingness that is familiar to anyone who has spent time in nightclubs for no other reason than to spend time in nightclubs. By the time we get to Mass Production Iggy sounds as lost as ever he did with The Stooges. It's different, though. He's been beaten and processed and the craziness of youth has been replaced by something darker and more deranged. Well, it all sounds pretty depressing and I guess it is, but it's cathartic and liberating and exhilarating. It's very beautiful.


Donna Summer - Once Upon a Time

Donna Summer had an incredible year in 1977. She released two albums (one a double) and contributed to a soundtrack (The Deep). One of the singles released was one of the greatest singles ever released ever (I Feel Love). Frustratingly, that single is on the weaker of the two albums - what can you do? Suffice it to say that when Brian Eno strides into the studio to Bowie and declares it to be the sound of the future, he was right and 43 years later he still is.

Once Upon a Time is produced by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte; it is a double album and a concept album and remarkably it works on that score better than most. It concerns a young girl who moves to the city, struggles, has bad times, finds love, lives happily ever after. It's not the highest concept ever, but it'll do. Musically, it covers the bases from the softer, lusher, organic disco of MFSB, for instance, to the more futuristic, electronic sound we associate with I Feel Love.

One of the most remarkable things about this record is how much it prefigures the 80s. It has a sheen and gloss as well as that brittleness, edge, glassiness we associate with new wave electro-pop. We should hardly be surprised given that it comes from Moroder, but over 14 tracks, Donna Summer is perfect at adding the warmth and natural tones needed to bring it life. Because of it's poppy overtones and the throwaway nature of disco, I think that this record is far too easily disregarded - please don't. Every time I listen to it, I love it more.


Chrome - Alien Soundtracks

This was the surprise. I'd not listened to this for years and when I saw it on the long-list I felt pretty confident that it would run at the lower end of the pack. How wrong I was. Almost immediately it grabbed my attention and refused to let it go. After I listened to it once, I put it straight back on again to double-check.

How to describe it? Draw a line from punk, Hawkwind and Can, plot the point where they meet, and then douse it in acid - the corrosive kind, not the fun stuff (although that might work too). It's rough and abrasive and might have been recorded in the cheapest studio ever, but it is full of ideas, menacing humour, and importantly, for all of its unconventionality, it's a surprisingly fun listen. In that there are echoes of the Butthole Surfers, especially on Slip It To The Android. There are moments of serenity amidst the dislocated chaos - Nova Feedback is spacey and mysterious. I'll not leave it so long before I give it the next listen...


Bob Marley & The Wailers - Exodus

I said, on my '73 post, that for a long time I passed on Bob Marley. I'd thought him a bit obvious,
favouring rootsier, less polished, more 'authentic' artists. A few years ago, I retired this opinion and admitted that Bob was pretty awesome and I was engaging in some pointless snobbery. Even so, part of me was a little sad when this album came up trumps and not The Congos or Culture. Both of their albums are incredible, but, you know what, this is the business. It's deep, thunderous and it has some killer singles on it.

Production wise, perhaps it is more polished. As my taste has changed and developed, I increasingly thing that that is no bad thing. Rougher production is fine sometimes, but then so is smoother. But then, this collection is deep - it's hardly as though Bob sold out and started producing exclusively 'silly love songs'. These are as rootsy as anything Burning Spear had to say. The players that he has along with him here are first class and the production has kept up to date with what Lee Perry has been up to. Younger James was an ass - this is too good an album to miss. Outside of Legend or some other compilation, no Marley album has as many great songs on it. If you want a straight roots reggae album, this is always going to be one of the best - hands down.


Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express

A different view of the future again. Just an aside, but isn't it interesting that six out of the ten albums this year all have an eye on the future? They are all, in quite different ways, operating in a way that is plainly distinct from even the albums from '76, let alone earlier. Also interesting, and possibly relevant - of those six, five have a German connection....

Anyway, back to Kraftwerk and the future. At first glance this seems a sterilised view of things. The sounds are all crisp and precise. There is no room for error or confusion. The vocals too are delivered with stereo-typically Teutonic distance. Even on their 'tour' of Europe, where they meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie, there's a lack of passion, a disconnect. But this is all misleading. For all that what I have said is true, there is, I think, a wonderment at European-ness and an implicit critique of the apparent triumph of reason over nature. I think that in embracing the illusion of artificiality, Kraftwerk are really romantics. Because even here, it is beautiful; even here, there is transcendence. Technology will, in the end, become the tool of nature.

Enough of that - I was becoming pretentious. What's also worth noting is how these guys provided an integral building block to one of the least impersonal and inhuman art-forms: Hip Hop.


Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue

Dennis Wilson was the hidden jewel in The Beach Boys. He was there for the looks and for the fact that he was the only one of the group that actually surfed. He didn't even play on many of the early records. But as the wheels came off the Brian Wilson bus, Dennis suddenly stepped up as a songwriter and provided some of the most interesting post-Pet Sounds records. (Check out Celebrate the News, Slip on Through or Forever.) He was the first of the band to produce a solo album, and although this is his only one, it's incredible.

Pacific Ocean Blue both is and is not like The Beach Boys. The production is lush and rich and many tracks feature vocal harmonies, although not all in Beach Boys style - some have an almost Gospel fervency. But there is a depth and a darkness of tone that is hardly ever reached on Beach Boys records. Brian Wilson, ever the heart and soul of the group, held close the standpoint of the teenager; Dennis' record is very grown up. Coming at it another way: this the hardest soft rock you'll ever hear. Dennis lived a tough life; he had a drinking problem, a marriage grounded in conflict as much as love, not to mention his earlier dealings with the Manson family. And this album bears those scars. It's an album about maturity; navigating the knocks that life throws at you, learning from them, and moving past them. It celebrates that growth. And that's the thing - for all there's a darkness about the record, it's about the light that breaks through it. Listen to the final song, End of the Show: it begins slow, almost mournful, and then it breaks, angelic harmonies slip in, hope saves the day.


Giorgio Moroder - From Here to Eternity

First of all, how cool is that cover? That's one hell of a moustache...

I said earlier that Once Upon a Time was looking towards the future. It was indeed. But whereas Donna Summer was taking her time in getting there, Moroder didn't want to stop and enjoy the scenery - he wanted the future and he wanted it now. And that's what we have here. Eight tracks resolutely set on defining what future music should sound like.

Unsurprisingly, Moroder had learned the lessons of Kraftwerk. The coolness of automation is here, but so is disco and a far more developed pop sensibility. It's a short album - only 30 minutes - but over these eight tracks, he includes pretty much the whole template of electro-pop. They are intentionally, sometimes goofily, fun. Track titles contain stupid puns (Utopia - Me Giorgio) but this does nothing to take away the sense that we are stepping into a new world. Again and again, I hear sounds that would re-emerge in 80s pop stalwarts, or New York, or Detroit House, or Sheffield's Warp Records. The 80s began in 1977 apparently.


Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

What can you say about this album that hasn't already been said? I love it and it isn't even my favourite Fleetwood Mac album - that's Tusk. I first heard it in about '86 or '87. I was right at the apex my goth period. A friend came 'round; she was staying at her aunt's and brought a clutch of records, as you did in those days. This was amongst them but she told me that I probably wouldn't like this one...

Maybe I took that as a challenge or maybe it was reverse psychology. Or maybe, with a record like this, it was inevitable that she was going to be wrong. With Andrew Eldritch keeping me company, how could I resist the charms of Dreams? The essence of Stevie Nicks is the witchy woman that is at least one archetype for the goth girl. And there's nothing goth boys like more than goth girls. I'm pretty sure that's half the charm of the whole subculture. When I started playing guitar, I needed to master the bassline of The Chain. And so on - in other words this was an album that I kept coming back to. And with every listen the clarity of great songs became clearer and more impressed upon me. It wasn't long from being an album with two or three great songs to just being a great album.


Television - Marquee Moon

You might have noticed that there are none of the obvious classic punk albums on this list. Truth is, while I think that they are good enough records, and certainly, as in the case of Never Mind the Bollocks, interesting or important, I just don't love many of them that much. I think that the most interesting things about punk where what happened next; and in certain places, what was happening next was already happening. Bands like Wire and Throbbing Gristle were already taking the energy and ethos of punk, along with their own ideas, to produce (with very different results) new ideas. New York punk was already pushing ahead into new territory. Richard Hell, Blondie, Talking Heads, and others were producing music miles ahead of The Clash or Pistols.

(An interesting side debate: what is punk? Is it a genre or an ethos? My answer is it is both, depending on the context. The sense in which I am using it here is the former sense. Punk as a style of music exemplified by The Clash, The Ramones or The Damned. Also, what is New Wave and where are the parameters for that?)

In 1977, once of the clearest pointers of the ways that punk could move forward was given by this album. First up, it has vitality and nervous tension. Straight from the off See No Evil bursts out the gates with a twin guitar line that wouldn't be so out of place with Thin Lizzy. But it is more brittle and Tom Verlaine has a different energy to Phil Lynott. The solo is simple and unrefined but it does what is required. The songs are bright and vibrant, they chime out. And on it goes. The title track itself is rightly legendary. It is ten minutes and that's something right there for a band associated with punk. And it's exhilarating. The album, like the song, from beginning to end is revelatory and rewards repeated listening more than so many contemporaries. It's a new type of blues. And that's what punk opened up.  Many new avenues were made clear. Television may have only explored one, but down this route came R.E.M., Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smiths, The Gun Club and many more.


David Bowie - Low

I hate being forced to give an answer to this question but for the last few years, if push came to shove and I had to declare my favourite album of all time, it would be this. I'm not sure I've ever put it on and felt anything less than total joy and excitement.

A lot of people prefer "Heroes" and I feel like I ought to say something about that. First up, the title track is legendary and I love it. However, the rest of the album leaves me a little cold. Bowie's doing a thing and I am not sure it's gelling for me. I wonder if I prefer Bowie when he's grasping more than when he knows he's onto something. Alongside this, my favourite Bowie albums are (not in order of preference) Hunky Dory, Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Lodger and perhaps, Let's Dance. In all of them, it is arguable that Bowie was trying to find the next thing or, in the case of Lodger, trying to shake something off, or both. With Low, he seems to have found a direction from Station to Station, but he doesn't quite know where he's going to land. He's experimented some ideas with Iggy on The Idiot, and sketching them out here for himself with fellow pilgrim, Eno. On "Heroes" Bowie feels more sure of himself. That's no bad thing, of course, but I just don't feel the same way about it. I don't what else to say... Maybe I'm full of shit.

But this. Track by track is a dream to me. Speed of Life has these incredible sounds. I, for one, am glad that Bowie was suffering from writer's block. It's a glorious instrumental with truly spectacular sounds, as has all of the album. Breaking Glass always makes me giggle. Given that I think it's about someone in a pretty bad place I probably oughn't laugh, but the couplet Don't look at the carpet/I Just drew something awful on it amuses me every time. The whole first side feels so urgent and craven and desperate. Each song is short - even the relative languor of Sound and Vision is keen to keep proceedings brisk and not to outstay its welcome. The second side, made of four longer extended instrumentals, does pivot to a different mood. They are longer, sombre, contemplative. For all that, though, they remain lush and engaging, more open to interpretation.

As I said at the top here, I never tire of this record. It's a joy.

Here's a Spotify playlist too!

I'll be back soon with 1977 Part Two. There'll be more pointless discussion there! Hurray!

Oh, yes - here's the long list

10 Classic Albums from On-U Sound

On-U Sound is without doubt one of the most influential British independent labels, and one of the least well known. The label is surprisingly diverse, despite it's being ostensibly a reggae label. It both is and is not that. The label's founder, genius producer Adrian Sherwood, began the journey firmly within the dub tradition of King Tubby. Within a a year or two, the radical experimentation of his production went much further and incorporated far more of the post-punk aesthetic - deconstructing the form of dub into something that only bears a family resemblance. Later albums, from about '85 onwards, begin to embrace more of the digital reggae sound as well as elements of dancehall.

I've focused on the most influential and productive period of the label - roughly the first ten years. On-U Sound has continued to this day, but it is fair to say that, until recently when it has had a period of resurgency and reorganisation, the '90s and early 2000s were sporadic in terms of new releases. I've also selected from amongst the most well known releases. I definitely recommend digging deeper. There are some fascinating and thrilling records to be found back there as well as a few surprises.

Creation Rebel - Starship Africa (1980)

Creation Rebel was the first On-U Sound studio band. It was made up of touring reggae musicians who would typically accompany visiting Jamaican singers around the country. Sherwood would book some down time in local studios and they would record some tracks with Sherwood applying whatever trickery he could.

Strictly speaking not an On-U Sound record. It was initially released on one of Sherwood's earlier attempts at setting up a label. (It did, later, get an official On-U release). Sherwood is still firmly within the Tubby school of dub but the expansiveness of his production is beginning to show. The motif of space was both figurative and literal as Sherwood made more use of the gap between musical elements. Not the most experimental On-U release, but direction of travel was clearly marked out on this record.


New Age Steppers - New Age Steppers (1981)

Another mostly studio based band but the blending of dub and post-punk influences starts here. Alongside members of Creation Rebel and the future Dub Syndicate, were a collection of post-punk luminaries. Mark Stewart, Steve Beresford and Bruce Smith had come over from Bristol pioneers The Pop Group. Ari Up, Viv Albertine and Palmolive are here from The Slits. There's even a very young Neneh Cherry in the mix.

Unsurprisingly, the post-punk aesthetic is to the fore, especially in the vocal stylings. Ari Up's interpretation of the Junior Byles' classic Fade Away is awesome, but only if you also like The Slits. Ditto Stewart's Crazy Dreams and High Ideals - Stewart's caterwaul is an acquired taste. Aside from this, you can see that the intention here is to dismantle dub in similar fashion to how these artists had dismantled elements of rock in their original bands. There's a degree of roughness to the sound here, but the willingness to go out there and try things is what made this period of On-U so influential and radical.


Creation Rebel & New Age Steppers - Threat to Creation (1981)

Given what we've said about the previous two albums, you can pretty much predict the outcome here. Sherwood employs rhythms, in classic dub-style, from their previous releases and adds layers of production and additional instrumentation. The outcome is one of the finest records from this early period.

African Head Charge - My Life in a Hole in the Ground (1981)

Bonjo I was a percussionist from Jamaica employed in a number of touring bands in the UK. His speciality was Nyabinghi drumming as well as other Rastafarian and African modes. Bonjo I formed the nucleus of another On-U 'band', African Head Charge, alongside a growing family of players from other On-U projects. (In fairness, they did, in time, begin to tour and play live a far amount.)

The album title was intended as a snipe at Eno and Byrne's My Life in a Bush of Ghosts. Sherwood had taken exception to a comment from Eno regarding a vision of a psychedelic Africa. The reggae quotia is dialled back here in favour of providing a vehicle for the percussion. The same cannot be said for the weirdness quotia. Tracks are taken apart and reassembled before your eyes (ears) - trumpets like a hoard of elephants enter and exit; atmospherics are added and removed. The net result is both more out there, but also more straightforwardly listenable than The New Age Steppers above. It's a monster - especially the haunting and slightly terrifying Far Away Chant featuring Prince Far I (credited as King Cry Cry)


Dub Syndicate - Pounding Systems (Ambience in Dub) (1982)

Dub Syndicate picked up around the time that Creation Rebel dismantled. It was largely the same collection of musicians but this time coalescing around drummer Style Scott. Until Scott's awful murder in 2014, Dub Syndicate were, along with African Head Charge, one of the longest lasting On-U bands.

This is one of my favourite On-U releases. (Most of this are also favourites.) It is back to a more traditional dub format, but despite this, and Sherwood's commitment here to the form, it has some of the most radical production. Sherwood tried everything to manipulate the sounds to disorientate and draw attention. The result is incredible.


Singers & Players - War of Words (1982)

Singers and Players was yet another studio band, but this time with the intention of allowing various singers to come to the fore. On this album we have the much missed Bim Sherman and Prince Far I, but on other releases there are Mikey Dread and Congo Ashanti Roy.

This is another favourite. This album contains some of Sherwood's most deranged production choices but miraculously he never lets it get in the way of the purposes of the songs. Singers and Players records are amongst the most straightforwardly listenable On-U records and this is no exception. But check out that backwards interlude in Quante Jubila or the pounding rhythms of World of Dispensation on which Bim Sherman never sounded sweeter.


Mark Stewart & Maffia - Learning to Cope With Cowardice (1983)

Talking of deranged production... This is one of the most challenging listens in the On-U Sound canon. Stewart and Sherwood produce a literal monster of an album that manically and violently assaults the listeners with rhythms and sounds layered upon rhythms and sounds. It is bewildering and distracting. On paper this should be a disaster, especially when you add to the mix Stewart's discordant vocal style. Vocals jump back and forth, rhythms chop and change, depth of echo effects twist and turn. It ought to be unlistenable, but it is not. If you're willing to go with it, it's invigorating and exciting and downright thrilling. The cover of Jerusalem ought to required listening for anyone.


Dub Syndicate & Lee 'Scratch' Perry - Time X Boom De Devil Dead (1987)

It was inevitable that Sherwood would eventually work with Lee Scratch Perry. Although I would place Sherwood firmly in the King Tubby dub tradition, he shares an adventurer's spirit with Perry. A willingness to go beyond and travel somewhere more instinctual.

In the mid-80s, Sherwood began to include more digital techniques to his production and unsurprisingly, you can date On-U records accordingly. This is no criticism mind - he managed to establish a distinctly On-U aesthetic that continues right to this day. It was less 'out there' and more danceable - a much easier sound. This was already firmly in place by this release and consequently, it's fairly light and breezy affair. Substantially, it is Perry singing over Dub Syndicate rhythms, but both producers are all over the record. Perry is as insane as you'd want him to be, but it's On-U at it's most accessible.


Gary Clail & On-U Sound System - End of the Century Party (1989)

On-U Sound had picked up all sorts of participants over the previous decade. Amongst the most influential within the stable were Skip McDonald, Keith LeBlanc and Doug Wimbush - previously Sugarhill Records' house band. Bonjo I credits McDonald in particular as integral for the sound of the label. Sherwood joined McDonald and so to form Tackhead. Tackhead were more electronic and funkier, operating with break-beats and samples. It was more American, less Jamaican. Tackhead Sound System was formed as a way of using Tackhead rhythms to perform at different events and venues. Gary Clail (apparently an ex-roofer from Bristol) used these rhythms to shout political slogans over. It was awesome. In 1988 Tackhead's Tape Time was released; this was Clail's second release with the label.

This was less stark and funky and more in line with the classic On-U sound but just as stridently political. It was also very clearly an attempt to align the sound with the growing rave culture. The single Beef, which is the closest On-U ever came to direct chart success (although in a revamped form from Clail's subsequent Emotional Hooligan LP). Two Thieves and a Liar and Privatise the Air are also second period On-U Sound classics.


African Head Charge - Songs of Praise (1990)

By 1985 African Head Charge's sound had also developed into something more coherent and less jarringly 'out there'. Off the Beaten Track had found the balance between showcasing Bonjo I's drumming and Sherwood's experimentation and excursions. (It's probably my favourite On-U record of all time, in truth.) Songs of Praise further develops that. The production is tight and controlled but without overly constraining. It is easily the most professional and polished that On-U Sound had ever sounded to this point. Again, like most things on the label from this period, it is danceable even when it is space- and forboding.

I saw African Head Charge this year at Glastonbury. I'm not a dancer but I danced to that. The crowd was floating and undulating about six inches above the mud. The electrics kept cutting out and all that remained was the booming drumming. A great gig.

Bonus: Sherwood at the Controls Vols. 1 & 2 (2015 & 2016)

There are loads of very good On-U compilations kicking about. The Pay It All Back series are good as they include different versions and some oddities. The two Discoplates compilations are cool too as they compile the series of 10"s the label produced in the early 80s. These two focus not on Sherwood's production within the On-U stable alone but show his work for other artists. Again there are some really interesting bits and bobs here including The Fall, The Slits, Medium Medium and The Beatnigs.