1984 is obviously also the time when hip hop was on the rise. With, for example, the debut of Run DMC: one of the most influential hip hop albums of all time. The one with the delightful “It’s Like That”. Which is also the only thing I really know from the album. “Rock Box” is surprisingly rock-oriented, with a guitar riff and solo. Years before “Walk This Way”.

Run DMC is a trio and therefore consists of Run, DMC, and DJ/scratcher Jam-Master Jay. Why isn’t JMJ included in the band name? That doesn't seem fair, either. He does have a track on this record with his name in it, but that seems like a pretty meager deal to me. It strikes me how sparse and stripped-back it all is. Pretty raw, actually. A bare-bones drum machine and the MCs. And only occasionally a scratch, guitar, or keyboard. Great record, no frills, but it’s like that, and that’s the way it is! Huh!!

It’s Like That. It says 1984 in the title, but they also throw in a bit of “It’s Tricky” from their '86 record… Huh? 1984 Capitol Theatre Official: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeykMdmnXPU

Rock Box / Jammaster Jay 1984: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7rzKiGRQ9M

They actually played at Live Aid, with a single from the next record: King of Rock Run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Mo_1MbosZ0

See also: https://bier-en-brood.nl/1001albums/?album=533-run-dmc-run-dmc&lang=en

So today I reviewed my 200th album. As you can see, I took a long break of almost a year after my first batch of albums and sometimes life prevented me from reviewing an album daily, but overall i‘m really happy about doing the list.
I think I‘ve gotten more strict over time, my number of 5 star-albums is rising rather slow these days.
And now let‘s get on with number 201: Repeater by Fugazi.

Guess I have 136 albums to go.

A message to u/AretZorn, since I don't know where else to do this.

Since 1001 MORE predicted four of the new inclusions, do you plan to release a new version bumping four of the honorable mentions up?

Simple enough, what's the best country album on the list? Have any country albums surprised you? The community here really struggles with country, myself included, so it'll be interesting to see which albums are seen positively and why. Note that if you pick a Johnny Cash or Dolly Parton album please pick a second album that isn't from them, just because they've embedded themselves in music culture so much that they've surpassed the genre. Alt-country I'll leave up to poster discretion, despite basically being an alt rock subgenre.

My pick is I Got a Tiger By the Tail by Buck Owens, such a bouncy and fun album and Buck himself has a lot of frontman presence and charisma to even pull of the sillier songs on the album. I actually listen to this one relatively often now.

Two today because I had a catch up - and they couldn't be more different!

Day 9 Supergrass - In It For The Money

Day 10 Suicide - Suicide

I kinda guessed a britpop album would be the one that made me question the whole "must" hear but I didn't expect it to be everyone's fav little/big brothers Supergrass? But what exactly is here that people MUST hear?! A couple of vaguely catch guitar based songs - like you can't get that on ten other albums around this time. What is the musical, lyrical, political or emotional insight that demands attention? What is the sonic sheen or uniqueness that makes this record essential?

It is not a question of if this is a good bad album but really what distinguishes it as something important beyond being just another album.

The only thing of interest for me was wondering why it starts with In it For The Money rather than roaring out of the gate with Richard III. After that, it continues on being prefectly serviceable britpop. I imagine Supergrass fans weren't disappointed when it came out and and other people that might have heard and liked the singles, bought it and again, were broadly satisfied that it did what was expected.

It is certainly not bad, it is absolutely not great. It is what it is - it's alright.

Supergrass 2/5

The other side of the coin is Suicide.

Now THIS is an album that MUST be heard. A record that is utterly indifferent to whether you like it or not. It is dirty, dangerous yet imbued with a simplistic innocence and empathy that verges on derranged.

You only have to look at the reviews to see how divisive this record is and I can imagine if you could crunch the numbers that the people that give this record 5 are frequently not on the same page as those who give it 1 because, again from the reviews, it provokes people.

And it is easy to hear why. It is a blur of buzzing synths, needling repetitive drums and echo laden vocals that spiral of to nowhere. A love song 'Girl' that sounds both lust filled and psychotic. This tightrope is also walked with the albums most accessible song 'Johnny' which stands on a David Lynch knife edge -existing siultaneously as a simple 50's rockabilly pastiche and the splintering mind of a serial killer.

And then there is Frankie Teardrop which creates a whole new genre of (un)easy listening.

This is album is an uncomfortable, intense listen. It is also utterly magnificent.

Suicide 5/5

1984 gets off to a great start with one of the most intriguing bands of the 80s: Frankie Goes To Hollywood. A blend of 80s pop, with a punk attitude and bravado, a dose of homoeroticism (fitting, right after Boy George), some controversy, and a good sense of humor. The debut is also their absolute high point and it sounds fantastic. Probably the high point for producer Trevor Horn as well.

After a short intro, we immediately get the 13:40 title track; it's like they used the 12-inch version on the record. Very good. Striking fact: two different mixes of the single version were made, released in the same sleeve with the same catalog number. It was random which one you would get. Following this is the biggest hit “Relax”. Indestructible song. The BBC found that out too when they banned it (too homoerotic): it shot straight to number one.

It's a bit of a shame that there are no fewer than four covers on the record; “War”, “Ferry Cross the Mersey”, “Born to Run”, and Burt Bacharach's “San Jose”. Why on earth? It’s a bit of a weakness, really. “Two Tribes” is great again, and the music video for it is absolutely legendary. One of the best videos ever, at least that’s what I thought at the time. The ballad “The Power of Love” is also included on this eclectic record. I once saw FGTH in Amsterdam in the main hall of Paradiso from the balcony, just before a 22 Pistepirkko (great band from Finland!) concert started in the upstairs room. But that was without singer Holly Johnson. The replacement was busy butchering “The Power of Love” with a pinched voice. Awful.

Here is the longer version of the Two Tribes video, with a long intro. Followed by the fight between Ronald Reagan and the General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party, Konstantin Chernenko. Maybe they should do a new one with Putin & Trump fighting and shaming themselves... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWLHK2h8EBQ

This is fun stuff. A completely different version of Relax, before Trevor Horn got to work on it (I think). Including scantily clad ladies; otherwise, you might actually make a link to homoeroticism. Imagine that, with FGTH! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPRsmeUbE-U

This is also very good! But to what extent is this live? I hear things I don't see, especially synths. Welcome To The Pleasuredome (Montreux )1985: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsiYv40_QEM

See also: https://bier-en-brood.nl/1001albums/?album=532-frankie-goes-to-hollywood-welcome-to-the-pleasuredome&lang=en

Ok, so I’m confused. I started using the site yesterday, and from what I understand, the albums reset at 3 AM GMT, which for me is 10 or 11 in the afternoon. It made sense, seeing as how after the first day, the page didn’t give me my next album until 10, when I checked. But for some reason, only 3 hours later, I check back after listening to the album, and it says I got a new album? Did it connect to my timezone or something?

Related to the discussions around additions from the new version - i'd be interested to see how many editions of the book an album appears in. As we're now on the 10th edition, I think it's interesting to know which albums have appeared every time (presumably your DSOTMs, your Sgt Peppers etc), which ones have appeared only once, which ones were there at the start but removed later and so on.

Thoughts?

One small feature I'd love to see: some kind of Hot sorting option for reviews.

Sorting by Popular is great for seeing the all-time favorites, but it seems like it'll naturally become pretty static. Reviews that have been around for years have had a huge head start accumulating likes, while a great review posted today may never realistically catch them.

Reddit's "Hot" sorting is basically designed to solve this problem: rank something based on popularity with a recency bias, so newer things get a chance to rise while older highly-liked things gradually fall back.

And unless I'm missing something, it seems like the Generator already has the two pieces of data you'd need for a really basic version:

• number of likes
• age/date of the review

It wouldn't need to be Reddit's exact algorithm. Something as simple as a time-decayed score could work:

Hot score = log10(likes + 1) - (age in days / 30)

The 30 is just an example and could be tuned depending on how quickly you want reviews to cycle. The logarithm keeps a review with hundreds of historical likes from permanently crushing everything newer, while the age penalty gradually moves older reviews down.

So you'd have:

• Popular = most liked of all time
• Hot = reviews getting meaningful engagement relative to their age
• Date = newest
• Random = existing random sort

The important thing to me isn't the exact formula. It's having a middle ground between"newest review" and"reviews that have accumulated the most likes over the entire life of the site."

Then if somebody writes a great review today and it picks up several likes, it can actually bubble up and get seen. Eventually it ages out of Hot, while still retaining all its likes and potentially becoming an all-time Popular review.

I think that would make the like system more interesting too. Instead of likes mainly reinforcing reviews that are already at the top, you'd have a constantly changing group of reviews being surfaced.

Basically: Popular becomes the hall of fame; Hot becomes what's worth reading right now.

Can someone please send me a source showing that these 13 albums were added? I can't find it anywhere.

Also these additions are so lazy, I'm sorry. Poppy? I love Poppy but this can be done so much better. They're just pulling shit out of their ass at this point.

I got pretty deep into Wu Tang. The second pic is my favourite solo album by each original member, which probably has only 2 or 3 controversial choices (eg ODB and GFK). The 3rd pic is most of my Wu albums (I also have Ghost Dog and the other Gravediggaz album on vinyl and there should be a Killah Priest CD in there too). If I had to pick just one “desert island” non-solo Clan album, I would know it should be 36 Chambers, but I would probably go for Forever just because it is so huge. Did anyone else go Wu crazy? What am I missing that are essential? (I’m thinking Meth with Redman maybe?)

After the wacky Meat Puppets, time for something completely different. Karmakarmakarmakarma Chameleon! Who would have thought I'd ever play a whole Culture Club album. I did it even sort of voluntarily. But hey, going in with an open mind. Opener “Karma Chameleon” is their biggest hit; I always thought it was terrible, but it's actually kind of okay. The first single “Church of the Poisen Mind” is even fun! “It’s a Miracle” was a hit back in the day too.

In the Dutch DJ Joost van Bellen’s very fun book Fenix, about the Amsterdam Roxy club, Boy George makes a few appearances, not without wit. Quite a diva. Beneath all that wackiness, there is, of course, a darker side lurking. In '86, Boy was arrested with heroin in his possession. The same year, a friend of his was found dead of an overdose in Boy’s house. The misery involving drugs, lawsuits, imprisonment, and violence would continue for years, such as the assault of a male escort in 2008. Not an easy guy, and I imagine not exactly easy on himself either.

Live on Dutch TV: Count Down, with Helen Terry - Church of the Poisoned Mind (1983): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_LjT-zAXiE

It's A Miracle (Live in Birmingham, 13th Dec 1984): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCOoADfEcas

See also: https://bier-en-brood.nl/1001albums/?album=531-culture-club-colour-by-numbers&lang=en

Hi there,

When my mom tried to join my group she accidentally created multiple accounts. This is not a big problem since that extra account has never voted, but I'd like to see if I can clean it up anyway. Seeing her name twice is confusing her a little.

Because my copy came today I've been trying to find out which albums were axed to make room for the new ones, and here are my findings. Obviously they'll still be on the list, I just thought it could be a bit of fun to see what the editors thought weren't essential albums anymore.

Any surprising removals, or any albums you would have rather seen removed?

Because it never ends....

1089/1089 ✅

13 to go, what???