I’ve long seen The Replacements’ 1984 album Let It Be lauded as one of the best alternative rock albums of all time, but I’d never listened to it closely enough to test that theory.
The band had released three albums of loud, reckless punk before lead singer/songwriter Paul Westerberg decided to try his hand at some songs with actual structure and melody. The result was this 11-track collection that features some softer, more contemplative songs among all the thrash.
Before now, I’d never heard a Pretenders album all the way through. I finally made the leap with Learning to Crawl, the latest album I’m including in my ‘Decades’ exploration of the year 1984.
Learning to Crawl was the rock band’s third album, and their first with a new lineup, after two of the original four members died of drug overdoses. Lead singer/songwriter Chrissie Hynde and drummer Martin Chambers eventually enlisted guitarist Robbie McIntosh and bassist Malcolm Foster to flesh out the band for the album’s recording. But first, another duo recorded the single ‘Back On the Chain Gang’ backed with ‘My City Was Gone,’ two songs that would number among the band’s most popular.
Sticking with the classic rock era this Random Weekend, we jump back from yesterday’s 1975 track to this one from 1969.
‘Beginning to See the Light’ is the opening song of Side Two of The Velvet Underground’s self-titled third album. This record marked a shift in the band’s sound toward more melodic and acoustic songs. It’s by far my favorite Velvet Underground album.
‘Elegie’ is the final track on Patti Smith’s celebrated art-punk classic Horses. It was written as a tribute to rock stars who died before their time, including Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin.
The principal inspiration, however, was Jimi Hendrix. Smith quotes two Hendrix lines in the song, including the final lines “I think it’s sad, it’s much too bad that our friends can’t be with us today.”
Every time I hear a song by The Cars, I vow to dig deeper into the band’s work. Their New Wave power pop sound is right up my alley.
1984 saw the release of The Cars’ fifth studio album, Heartbeat City. The album spawned six successful singles, including the band’s all-time biggest hit, ‘Drive,’ as well as two other MTV staples in ‘You Might Think’ and ‘Magic.’ That trio of songs defined the mid-80s for my tween self as much as anything I’m featuring in this Decades installment.
Meet Me In Montauk 