Chords for 6 LPs: Ahead of Their Time

_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Lists!
Hi everyone, Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest friggin' music nerd.
Not doing a review today, not doing a question or a track review, anything like that.
We're doing a list.
A list that I compiled with somebody who's been hanging out with me on a regular basis
for the past several months.
His name is Chris.
He's the Needle Drops intern.
He's over there right now in the official TND _ intern pen.
I am not an intern!
This is my zone!
Just share the space!
I'm going to list off three albums from this list.
And Chris over there is going to be reporting over there from the intern pen because there's
clearly not enough room over here.
This is a list of albums which, in my opinion and Chris' opinion, are way ahead of their time.
I want to start this list off with_
Do you like this band?
Joy?
I'm very happy.
I know what you mean.
[F#] I mean, the Happy Feelings, is that a happy band?
Not really.
No, not actually.
Why would they name themselves Joy Division if they're not happy?
Oh, Divide!
Mass!
[N] _ I get it.
Okay, Chris.
Chris, get over here.
Over here.
Over here.
_ _ Nothing good [F#] can come of that.
_ Alright, we're going to start_
I'm [D#] going to let Chris start with an LP from his list.
Okay, Chris, take us off.
Album [N] that's ahead of its time.
According to you.
Go!
Well, the first album that came to mind when I was thinking of this list topic was the
Modern Lovers self-titled debut album, which came out in 1976.
But it was actually recorded three years prior.
The album is really a collection of demos that were just recorded by the Massachusetts
band in 1973, and then later were put together for inclusion on an LP.
But even for 1973, these songs are really punk sounding.
They are.
And not only punk sounding, but they actually have that kind of jangly indie rock style
that many bands would later use in the 80s.
Alright, so you're starting off with that.
I'm going to start off with the first Violent Femmes LP.
Self-titled Violent Femmes album.
I don't know if anybody's heard the entire LP, but I figure most people have heard Blister
in the Sun.
That album was so ahead of its time, that band didn't actually get popular until the 90s. That's right.
I mean, the record is so 90s that it didn't get popular until the 90s, when I believe
they came out with a compilation of their best songs, and Blister in the Sun just instantly
became a radio hit.
I remember growing up with that song, and until I really researched the Violent Femmes,
I always assumed they were just a 90s band.
But then I totally freaked out when I heard that this album was recorded in 1983.
It's like this folk punk, post-punk record, but also has these really whiny, angsty emotions
that you really wouldn't hear in regular rotation in the indie scene until guys like
Elliott Smith, Conor Oberst, and Simon Joiner.
Or even The Mountain Ghosts, or something like that.
Okay, what's the next record for you?
Talking Heads' 1980 album, Remain in Light, is definitely another album that came to mind
when I was thinking about this topic.
That came out in 1980?
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
I thought it was just maybe a few years later, too.
No, it was 1980.
Alright, so what puts that album ahead of its time for you?
Well, it's interesting that you mentioned that you thought it came out later, because
that album has a lot of new wave sounds that didn't really become popular until later in the 80s.
But I think what's actually most revolutionary about it is the way that it was produced.
From what I understand, from when I researched the LP before, he used a lot of looping on that LP?
Yeah, that's right.
So they just took a lot of riffs and they just repeated them over and over and over again?
That's exactly right.
The band would go into the studio and record simple loops that would just be looped over and over again in the song.
And when you think about how difficult it was to implement those techniques at the time,
it's really admirable.
They went on, and David Byrne went on to do the same thing the next year with My Life and the Ghosts.
Alright, I'm going to move on to my next pick.
Not really an album, kind of a collection of singles.
It comes out from two guys, two New York guys, Double D and Steinske, Lessons 1 through 3.
These were like Girl Talk before there was even Girl Talk.
They were making dance mashups of hip-hop songs at the time, of dance songs at the time,
just pop music songs, radio pop at the time.
Not only did this stuff set a bar for albums that would come on later that also extremely, extremely used sampling
to get by, like Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique.
Definitely something ahead of its time in hip-hop.
Well, my last pick was actually one that took me kind of a while to think of.
It was a record that sort of struck me as odd when I first heard it,
but never really gave it that much thought in terms of how it's influenced _ what came afterwards
or how ahead of its time it sounds.
Scott Walker can do that to you.
Of course I'm talking about Scott Walker's third album, Scott 3.
Many people regard Scott 4 as sort of the magnum opus of his more accessible early career period,
but I actually think Scott 3 has a more experimental edge.
When listening to a group like Radiohead, if you take an album like Kid A,
I remember hearing those strings on How to Disappear Completely after listening to the Scott Walker record
and thinking, wow, that really sounds exactly like some of the strings on that Scott Walker album.
Alright, here's my last pick for this list, something that's ahead of its time.
Gotta Be the First, Mission of Burma EP, Signals, Calls, and Marches.
These guys, if I remember correctly, are a Boston, Massachusetts band.
A lot of the sounds, a lot of the tempos, and the capes and sonic experiments that were happening
in the background of some of those tracks, just a lot of the abstract [C#m] lyricism coming especially [D#] from
_ [B] Roger Miller just reads to me as artists like Sonic Youth.
To _ think that the songs on this EP came out in 1981 is just really kind of difficult for me.
This is just really out of place, [Fm] considering what year this stuff was coming together.
[G#] Those are our six releases of note that we thought were incredibly ahead of their time.
Just gonna leave it at that.
Anything else to say?
[G] Well, thanks to the guys on the forum who ended up suggesting that topic.
That was a good one.
I'm positive that there are more releases [F#] that are ahead of their time, but maybe that's a list for some other time.
Anthony [A] Fantano.
[C] Chris.
_ _ [Am] _ _ _ [F] _ _ [G] _ _ _ [C] _ _ _