Daveportivo's Cultural Evaluation Facility

The nineteen eighties would be a golden decade for Springsteen, the seventies were good Born To Run is arguably his best album but the eighties would give us his three master works. One would be his mainstream masterpeice, one would be his accoustic songwritting genius moment, and the other The River would kind of be the combination of the two. Combining big hits with great serious songwritting sometimes both at once. The culmination of Springsteen's powers was show cased as the title track. It's Springsteen at his best a huge ballad, but it's not pompous, it's earthy heart breaking song writing. It's a lovely story a couple of youngsters have fallen in love, unfortunately the girlfriend gets pregnant, they're forced to marry, and he has to give up his life to work and support his family for the rest of his life, but at night they go down to The River and remember their love and their lost youth. It sounds cheesey but as always Springsteen sings with such earnesty and fragility in his voice and with such an eye for detail that it's utterly believable. Ultimately it's this earnest forthright honesty that allows Springsteen to get away with being so lame, it's also why we love him, and why The River is so darn irresistable.

It's a nice transition to go from Springsteen to Maiden as they both in many ways have the same qualities. They're both larger than life stadium rockers, they're both cronically uncool, they both have a tendency to be cheesey and silly, and they both base their reputations of amazing live shows. Now just like Bruce Iron Maiden are forgiven for writting cringe inducing songs (Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter, Waitin' On A Sunny Day) and it's for the same reason, there's something utterly believeable about their delivery. While its clear and apparent that Springsteen is a eastern blue collar guy, he writes blunt sentiment because he's a blunt guy who just likes playing guitar, it's clear that Maiden just love playing guitar, watching horror movies and performing. There's no illusions, they don't pretend to be something there not, you'd never accuse Bruce Dickenson of being Morrissey, so rather than rolling our eyes we are all happy headbanging and jumping up and down while Bruce Dickenson wails about Native Americans and Devil. It's ridiculous but it rocks, there not trying to be Bon Jovi but some how they've ended up just as big, and there's something glorious in that.

I always love going back an listening to Murmur because it's easy to forget just how good R.E.M. used to be. There not terrible now by any means, but when I say describe R.E.M. you'd say safe, mild, radio-friendly, dad rock, old, legends, Automatic For The People, etc... See back when Murmur came out R.E.M. were intelligent first and foremost, tricky to decifer, honestly you used to listen to Stipe's every word to try and "get it", they were arty, edgy and exciting. R.E.M. were never scary, they weren't even particularly rocky, but they were incredibly intriguing and exciting, this was the best art pop around. Radio Free Europe was such a contrast to everything else out there, so what if it was mellow it sounded fantastic and it was way more interesting than a load of metallers screaming. The odd thing is now people who like R.E.M. these days look back on their back catologue as something scary, something exculsive, for nerdy fans only, and this is bizzarre because every track has a gorgeous guitar line and a big smooth Stipe hook. It's a shame more people don't discover this Murmur because they'd like it, from track 1 to track 12, the won't be skipping to singles, this is wonderfully complete album, in fact it's R.E.M.'s most complete and consistant album to date.

When I do these lists I normally right down the albums that have to be on this list and listen to them as I write their entry incase I need to jog my memory. When it came to Graceland I knew instantly it had to make the list somewhere or other, and then I thought; when did I last listen to this record. So I instantly sat back and listened it through in its entirety and I was left totally speechless. What I had in my head was washed away and I decided that I should talk about how I felt. Listening to Graceland I was amazed by it's originality, there are influences (Dylan) its not a true original in that sense, it's just so different to the pop music today. An album so sweet, so charming with such lovely textures and such quaint little storytelling you couldn't imagine it today. You couldn't imagine it from anyone other than Paul Simon, we miss him today, this kind of joyous humerous pop is missing. I love Lily Allen (in more than one way) but it's so cynical it makes you laugh but its snarky, Paul Simon just makes you laugh a genuine heartfelt laugh. Now this is hardly talking about Graceland at all but I can honestly say I've never heard a pop song as glorious as I Know What I Know, or transition between tracks as charming as that between Gumboots and Diamond On The Soles Of Her Shoes. Graceland is a staggering album, we won't be seeing an album of it's ilk again, and this is a great tragedy.

Strangeways Here We Come would be the last Smiths album of original materiel and while it would be impossible to expect them to top their earlier work their finally album allowed the Smiths to retire with the legacy of having never released an album that was anything less than great. When it comes to Smiths records there's one thing that we all expect and that's the great singles and while it didn't reach the heights of The Queen is Dead, Strangeways didn't dissapoint spawning some of their most beloved tracks. The stomping rock of I Started Something I Couldn't Finish the killer Stop Me If You That You've Heard This One Before (yes the track Mark Ronson would go on to ruin), and the sublime pop of Girlfriend In A Coma. Elsewhere we get some classic if slightly crunchier jangle Smiths rock (Death At One's Elbow) and it also spawned to huge ballads that have become staples of Morrissey's live sets to this day the epic Death Of A Disco Dancer and Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me. So of course the Smiths couldn't do anything other than go out on high, what else did you expect honestly? A sublime endnote.