40 Record in 40 Years (4/40 – 1977)

My first year in business was not spectacular. I was oscillate between vocational school and education company. School was easy because I was used to it for long years. The learning contents formed the only difference. Much harder was to serve the customers, because you should be always friendly and cooperatively, say yes Sir or Madam. But month for month I have got used more to serving the customers. And after all it made more fun than I had to suffer.

In 1977 was also that year in which I could take my first big vacation.  Together with my younger brother with the train to Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium for less money with nothing else but a backpack. Leaving Germany behind, exploring new countries and cultures is one of the things I love from then on. I remember the days in Copenhagen staying in the youth hostel, flirting with some Swedish girl and one night we went to a concert. Walking through the city we saw some posters promoting a concert by the Sex Pistols. Never heard much  about them than her first single ‘Anarchy in the U.K.’ in which they attack conformity and deference to the crown. So we got some tickets and went to the club where the concert will take place. One hour before the whole place outside was covered with big Harley Davidsons and bikers with their typical outfit beside their bikes. My younger brother (there at the age of 16) got scared about them and didn’t want to go inside. So I placed him in pub near by and told him to wait until I come back. Then I have also used all courage pass the bikers and get inside the club.

The club was without windows of course and the DJ played from a little loft four meters from the floor ‘Faith Healer’ from The Sensational Alex Harvey Bank in full volume. So I decided that this was a good place and got me a beer at the long counter waiting for the headliners to appear. Nearly 40 minutes later the music stopped and the band appeared with a ‘Good evening, arseholes’ and started playing their three-chord-thing. It was fascinating seeing Johnny Rotten building up an angry attitude to the audience that answered this with throwing filled plastic mugs to the stage and starting to pogo. This concert manifested my decision to follow the new kind of music and I wasn’t disappointed in this decision the forthcoming years.

As said before this year were a totally break in music. On one side the followers of mainstream rock and on the other side the ones who listened with open ears to the new sound who came mostly from Great Britain. We, the listeners to the new sound, were blamed as punks even we didn’t look like them a bit. They said this music is so simple and not enough for higher claims. We answered them as the BOF’s who still suck in their old fashioned way of thinking. Even though there were a lot of good songs from 1977 that I like to hear nowadays too.

Commodores – Brick House: Great bass line

The Clash – Complete Control: Any word about this is already spoken

Cheap Trick: I want you to want me: Typical BOF, but nice to hear again after years

Talking Heads – Psycho Killer: Very new sounds from over the ocean

Rod Steward – You’re in my heart: Listen to the first part of the lyrics you think it’s just another love song but the end with ‘you’re Celtic United and I decided you’re the best teams I’ve ever seen’ is fantastic.

Billy Joel – She’s always a woman to me: One of the best love songs ever.

Remarkable records published in 1977:

Fleetwood Mac – Rumours: Album of the year that everybody could agree with. Fantastic voices from Mrs. McVie and Nicks.

Television – Marquee Moon: Another band from CBGB’s. Not a regular punk band in its textured, more a guitar-based interplay with long improvisations (punk turned into New Wave and art).

The Clash – The Clash: Rise of the giants. Every song’s a winner.

Dave Edmunds – Get it: Welsh guitar player appears back on the scene with a record that shows the tradition in Rock ‘n’ Roll played with nowadays drive. Great songs, great records that was on heavy rotation this year. He also brought us back Nick Lowe who made great things the following years.

The Jam – In the city: Another giant appears. Paul Weller brought us back the mod style and their attitude. 

Dr. Feelgood – Sneaking Suspicion: May only for the title track that is typically for Wilco Johnson playing riffs and lead guitar at the same time.

Motörhead – Motörhead: Debut of the giants of heavy metal rock

Meat Loaf – Bat Out Of Hell: Another big selling record that many people could agree with. Many people played ‘Paradise by the dashboard light’ but less understood what’s the meaning of the song.

Talking Heads – Talking Heads 77: New Wave from over the ocean again but with more influence of funk and soul.

Ian Dury – New Boots And Panites!!: Hit me with your rhythm stick; Wake up and make love with me – Great songs that I don’t wanna miss.

George Thorogood & The Destroyers – same: If Mark Knopfler is the sultan of swing than Thorogood is the satan of slide. Seldom heard blues with this power. Awesome.

David Bowie – Heroes: His Berlin years with some of his best later songs on it

Iggy Pop – The Idiot and Lust for Life: Both records in one year featuring his collaboration with David Bowie. Lust for life is program. 

Elvis Costello – My Aim Is True: Hard to decide that this is not the record that impressed me much this year. From all the new bands that appeared on the scene Mr. Costellos record was my favorite. His ability to write love songs that made my hairs stand up like ‘Alison’ or songs about the boredom in someones little world like ‘Watching the detectives’. Also his political statement in ‘Less than zero’, which he wrote after he saw Oswald Mosley the former leader of BUF. This record spreads his wings over the many influences we would her from him in the next years.

What happened in the rest of the word:

Gary Gilmore’s executed by firing squad in Utah (the first execution after the reintroduction of the death penalty in the U.S.).. Snow falls in Miami (despite its ordinarily tropical climate) for the only time in its history. Tenerife Desaster: A collision between KLM and Pan Am Boeing 747s at Tenerife, Canary Islands, kills 583 people. This becomes the deadliest accident in aviation history.  A federal court in Stuttgart sentences Red Army Faction members Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe to life imprisonment. Some 200,000 protesters march through the streets of San Francisco, protesting Anita Bryant‘s antigay remarks and the murder of Robert Hillsborough. 16-year-old shop assistant Jayne Macdonald is murdered by the Yorkshire Ripper in Leeds, England. Somalia declares war on Ethiopia, starting the Ethiopian-Somali War. eft-wing German terrorists Susanne Albrecht,^] Brigitte Mohnhaupt and a third person assassinate Jürgen Ponto, chairman of the Dresdner Bank in Oberursel, West Germany. Elvis dies in his home in Graceland at age 42. Groucho Marx died in case of pneumonia at the age of 86. South African activist Steve Biko dies after suffering a massive head injury in police custody  in Pretoria. Marc Bolan dies in a car crash in Barnes, London. German Autums: Four Palestinians hijack a Lufthansa Airlines flight to Somalia and demand the release of 11 Red Army Faction members (see Lufthansa Flight 181).GSG 9 troopers storm a hijacked Lufthansa passenger plane in Mogadishu, Somalia; three of the four hijackers die.Red Army Faction members Andreas Baader, Jan-Carl Raspe and Gudrun Ensslin commit suicide in Stammheim prison; Irmgard Möller fails (their supporters still claim they were murdered). They are buried on October 27. Jean-Bedèl Bokassa, president of the Central African Republic, crowns himself Emperor. VfB Stuttgart back in Bundesliga again.


What’s in the movies?
Nothing big to remind: Saturday Night Fever (for those who need cocaine to stand the night), The Deep (Richard Dreyfuss, Nick Nolte and the fantastic Jaqueline Bisset – allways worth to watch again and not only for the wet T-Shirt).

From all the great records that was published this year I’ve chosen Steely Dan with her album ‘Aja’ as the record that I connect with this year.Why? Because the songs on this album gave me rest and balance in contrast to the music I listen all over the day. It is a record I used to listen later at the evening to. 

Wikipedia tells us about this record:

Describing the album in 1999, British musician Ian Dury said: “Well, Aja’s got a sound that lifts your heart up.. and it’s the most consistent up-full, heart-warming.. even though, it is a classic LA kinda sound. You wouldn’t think it was recorded anywhere else in the world. It’s got California through its blood, even though they are boys from New York.. It’s a record that sends my spirits up, and really when I listen to music, really that’s what I want.”

Analyzing the band’s song-writing style, Dury said: “They’ve got a skill that can make images that aren’t puerile and don’t make you think you’ve heard it before… very “Hollywood Flimic” in a way, the imagery is very imaginable, in a visual sense” and of their musical style: “Parker, Mingus, Blakey, I can hear in there.. Jazz Messengers I can hear in there, Bobby Timmons… the subject matter doesn’t matter, it’s the sound they’re making.” 

Thank you Ian, no more words necessary from me to say.

Steely Dan – Black Cow

Steely Dan – Aja

Steely Dan – Peg

Steely Dan – Home At Last

Steely Dan – Josie

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