Word: albums
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Grim prospect. All summer, the fan looked about for reassurance. There were familiar sounds all around. Van Morrison, a favorite since the early '60s, released yet another album, Avalon Sunset, a lyrical, ruminative shard of spirituality that he refused to push or publicize. The Grateful Dead persisted, a whole band of Peter Pans camping out in a hippie never-never land. The Bee Gees returned; so did the Jefferson Airplane and the Doobie Brothers. These weren't revivals; they were exhumations...
Paul McCartney issued a sprightly new album, Flowers in the Dirt, on which he collaborated with Elvis Costello, and announced a world tour to begin Sept. 26 in Oslo. And Ringo Starr, fresh from an alcohol rehab, hit the road backed by a peerless band of studio all-stars. Strawberry Fields forever...
Richards made a solid solo album last year, which was helpful. It got him a piece of the cynosure that has always been Jagger's property. Mick turned out two solo albums himself -- the second enterprising and entertaining -- but neither enjoyed superstar success. Jagger, when interviewed, had put the Stones in a coffin, but never lowered them into the ground. When rapprochements were reached and offers tendered, he was ready to listen...
Neil Young, who has a new album coming out in October, isn't bothered about restrictions of form, or of age. "Rock 'n' roll is about life, and age is a state of mind," he says. "The music's still wide open. All you need is the nerve, the nerve to do what you want to do." It takes more than nerve, though, to get played on the radio. Ken Barnes, editor of the industry trade magazine Radio & Records, figures that at least 40% of what is available to the whole American radio audience is "classic" or "oldies" rock. Demographics...
Peter Case, a wondrous songwriter and singer whose recent album The Man with the Blue Postmodern Fragmented Neo-Traditionalist Guitar is good enough to carry like a talisman into the uncertainties of the '90s, sees the difficulty in broader terms. "Rock 'n' roll has just become a new form of Disneyland," he says. "The whole thing has got mythologized to the point where it's just a bunch of rubbish." Greil Marcus, who writes formidably on popular and radical culture (the recent Lipstick Traces), talks about the "suicidal nostalgia" surrounding a lot of contemporary music: "People have been sold...