Keira-WitherKay
keira'a play list of my favourite era in pop ...love the slick sounds ... almost jazzy/soul sounds when players were super hot and singers sang melodies ......
Bob-Dubery
That's quite a span of time actually. Joe Jackson had a hit with "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" in the late 70s. Level 42 got big when... 86, 87? Weren't Tears For Fears a little later still? Wet Wet Wet were early 90s yes?
Joe Jackson used bass very well on his early albums. It didn't hurt that he had Graham Maby playing for him. Maby is pretty unsung these days, but I thought he was a very fine player. Jackson's early stuff often had Maby driving everything with the guitar taking a bit of a back seat, and even Joe's not inconsiderable piano chops kept in the background. The other band from around the same time that I thought made good use of bass and had a pretty good player was Ian Dury and the Blockheads. Bass player there was Norman Watt-Roy. There was a great bass riff running through "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick".
AlanRatcliffe
Yeah - I think of Jackson as "smart punk" - deceptively simple music, but impeccably arranged. He later proved he had the chops to write smart jazz, through big band and even orchestral. His later live stuff was really creative.
As an "old rocker" teen in the '80s I thought that popular music was a complete and utter wasteland. Looking back a little later I realised there was a lot of great, durable music too - add Howard Jones, Yazoo, Talk Talk, Eurythmics, Kajagoogoo and the odd rock brilliance like Dave Lee Roth's Eat 'em and Smile with Steve Vai and Billy Sheehan. Even the '70s - which seemed to have nothing but wall-to-wall disco if the radio stations were to be believed - came up with a lot of classic rock and occasional unusual and innovative artists like Laurie Anderson.
Squonk
Keira, I am picking up a bit of an 80's thing over here!
I didn't care much for the 80's but Level 42, Joe Jackson and The Style Council were good acts.
We used to frequent a club called DV8 which later became Legend in Joubert Park, that's where I discovered The Cure. Lovecats is still one of my favourites.
Mark King and Graham Maby are very good bassists. Another good bassist from that era was Pino Palladino who played with Paul Young, have a listen to "I'm gonna tear your playhouse down"
Marti Pellow from Wet Wet Wet also had a very powerful voice.
Good stuff
Keira-WitherKay
heheh yeah guys. to be honest this is a time i liked cos it appealed to my taste............ every song was melodic..... the entire band were good musicians from the bassist to the singer who could actually hold a tune not just monotonous vocal riffs ....... and yeah they did it live.....this era was the last phase of pop music before the 'machines" took over.......
remember i'm talking about pop here all these songs were top 40 or top 20 in those days hits......... so they all radio songs...... sure people still do great music today but ussually it doesnt make the top 40 .........
these days i seldom listen to pop radio...... truly nothing to get excited about......
yeah but i'm sure it'll come full circle and back to bands and melodic songs.........
ohhhhh i missed out some Bon jovi on my list i loved that band and i really loved their songwriting...and the boy could sing a 1st class set of lungs on our boy .... and beautiful melodic solo's too...
peace and light
keira
