30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 23: Gang of 4, Hard.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen / 30 records in 30 days Gang of 4, Hard

30 records in 30 days goes into the 23rd round: A piece of your heart can be found in every good car.

Today we will close my musical new wave era with one of the best albums from my whole collection, Hard by Gang of 4. As always, I took a quick look at Wikipedia to get an assessment of the music genre. It was quite surprising what I found about Gang of 4:

“The band played a stripped-down mix of punk rock, funk and dub, with a lyrical emphasis on the social and political ills of society. Gang of Four are widely considered one of the leading bands of the late 1970s/early 1980s post-punk movement. […] Their early 80s albums (Songs of the Free and Hard) found them softening some of their more jarring qualities, and drifting towards dance-punk and disco.”

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Four_(band) )

As audacious as it sounds, it’s a very good description of the sound of this LP. Have fun listening to it.

Man with a good car: https://youtu.be/XvNmQGol9FM
Woman town: https://youtu.be/bR-y-I9qTUk
Is it love: https://youtu.be/xQOJ6Va03B0

Stay tuned

30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 22: Joy Division, Substance 1977-1980.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen / 30 records in 30 days Joy Division, Substance

30 records in 30 days goes into the 22nd round: love will tear us apart, and then we travel to Warshaw.

After talking about the commercialization of punk yesterday, today we’re going to take a step back. Joy Division is for me – similar to Alien Sex Fiend – a missing link between the synthesizer-heavy new wave music and the punk of the seventies. This album is really good, but the group lacks the anarchistic sound and synth experiments of Adrian Sex Fiend.

Don’t misunderstand, this in no way devalues the group’s sound, they are just different. Joy Division are so unexcitingly punk-oriented to me that this album is simply a joy to listen to. Quite typical for me: “Leaders of man” and “Warshaw”. It is also not aggressive (nice sample “Love will tear us apart”), like some other punk records, where you would like to tear down the neighbor’s house after two times listening.

Love will tear us apart: https://youtu.be/zuuObGsB0No
Leaders of man: https://youtu.be/s4prQ11orEM
Warshaw: https://youtu.be/gtSFtvXgeRk

Stay tuned