PEAK POST-PUNK!
by BK Munn
It's taken me over 40 years, but I've finally whittled down my list of the Best Albums of 1982!
As I wrote in my notes for 1986, the first one of these I attempted, this list comes with a number of caveats and blindspots, and I think I'm going to stick with the same quirky, personal format. So: this is a largely English-language, rock-oriented list reflecting my continued fetish for post-punk and garage rock sounds. There are a couple German records here, but that's about it. In part, this is a nostalgic list, but as usual most of the records here were totally unknown to me at the time. Some are new to me this week, but most have crossed my path at some point over the last four decades, and many I even own in vinyl format!
In 1982, I was only 12 but obsessed with not only Top 40 radio but also the synth pop and New Wave sounds coming out of Toronto's fm station CFNY. I distinctly remember hearing the dj for Hamilton's CKOC introduce Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue" for the first time. I was a year or two away from real teenage rebellion and the discovery of our local college radio station CFRU, but nevertheless I thought I was cool because I had discovered David Bowie and listened to Scary Monsters and the ChangesOne compilation incessantly (Let's Dance didn't come out until 1983, I think). My tastes have changed since those days, but some of the records I liked back then I still like, meaning I can still stand to listen to them without too many unpleasant associations.
This is not true for most of the big hits of the day. 1982 was the year of Michael Jackson's Thriller and despite it's continuing centrality to our culture and Western Civilization, I feel close to blowing my brains out whenever I hear the opening notes of any of the megahits from that album these days. I was pretty much burned out on that record by 1983, even as a kid. Ditto for most of the 1982 Top 40.
1982 was a year that funk and hip-hop started to register with white people, post-Disco, but my list has very little of either. I decided to eliminate jazz from the list as well, even though there are excellent records from giants like Ornette Coleman, Nina Simone, and Alice Coltrane that year, as well as jazz-inflected things like Rip Rig and Panic, and Indian and African stuff like Rupa and Manu Dibango that interest me. No soundtracks on this list either, even though Morricone (The Thing) and Vangelis (the amazing Blade Runner soundtrack) were out there (David Lynch released his soundtrack for 1977's Eraserhead in 1982 as well).
I'm pretty proud of my curation of the first 30 or so records on this list, but to be honest, the rest of the list is more or less a random assemblage, with not much thought given to rankings. I have another 20 or so records that I could easily substitute for any 20 of the records in the bottom 52. Maybe I'll post those separately. For now I'm sticking to the gimmick of matching the number of slots with the year, so I'm limited here to 82 in total. I'm sure I've missed something! Let me know!
- The Fall, Hex Education Hour
- Lilliput, Lillput
- Kate Bush, The Dreaming
- English Beat, Special Beat Service
- Gang of Four, Songs of the Free and Another Day/Another Dollar
- Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, The Message
- Trio, Trio aka The Album/Da Da Da
- REM, Chronic Town
- Daniel Johnston, Don’t Be Scared
- Prince, 1999
- Cocteau Twins, Garland
- Sonic Youth, Sonic Youth
- The Clean, Great Sounds Great, Good Sounds Good, So-so Sounds So-so, Bad Sounds Bad, Rotten Sounds Rotten
- Gun Club, Miami
- The Clash, Combat Rock
- The Cure, Pornography
- Blue Orchids, The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain)
- Siouxsie And The Banshees, A Kiss In The Dreamhouse
- Dead Kennedys, Plastic Surgery Disasters
- Waitresses, Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful
- Simple Minds, New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)
- X, Under the Big Black Sun
- Talking Heads, The Name of This Band is Talking Heads
- Chic, Tongue in Chic
- TV Personalities, Mummy Your Not Watching Me/They Could Have Been Bigger than the Beatles
- The Birthday Party, Junkyard
- Wall of Voodoo, Call of the West
- Fleshtones, Roman Gods
- Judy Nylon and Crucial, Pal Judy
- Laurie Anderson, Big Science
- XTC, English Settlement
- Familie Hesselbach, Familie Hesselbach
- Lee "Scratch" Perry and the Majestics, Mystic Miracle Star
- Tom Verlaine, Words from the Front
- Nightingales, Pigs on Purpose
- Misfits, Walk Among Us
- Nurse With Wound, Homotopy to Marie
- John Cooper Clarke, Zip Style Method
- Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers, D.T.K. (Live At The Speakeasy)
- The Jam, The Gift
- Marine Girls, Beach Party
- The Sound, All Fall Down
- Pere Ubu, Song of the Bailing Man
- Romeo Void, Benefactor
- D.O.A., War on 45
- Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast
- Eddy Grant, Killer on the Rampage
- Tall Dwarfs, Louis Likes His Daily Dip
- Bauhaus, The Sky's Gone Out/Press The Eject and Give Me the Tape
- Cleaners from Venus, Midnight Cleaners/On Any Normal Monday
- George Clinton, Computer Games
- The Psychedelic Furs, Forever Now
- African Head Charge, Environmental Studies
- Material, One Down
- Duran Duran, Rio
- Culture Club, Kissing to Be Clever
- Bad Brains, Bad Brains
- The Descendents, Milo Goes to College
- Mission of Burma, Vs.
- Brian Eno, Ambient 4: On Land
- Neil Young, Trans
- Thomas Dolby, The Golden Age Of Wireless/She Blinded Me With Science
- Lou Reed, The Blue Mask
- Flipper, Album Generic Flipper
- King Sunny Adé and His African Beats, Juju Music
- Yazoo, Upstairs at Eric’s
- Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska
- Grace Jones, Living My Life
- Madness, The Rise and Fall
- Rick James, Throwin Down
- Go-Go’s, Vacation
- Devo, Oh No! It’s Devo
- Nina Hagen, NunSexMonkRock
- Motorhead, Iron Fist
- Fear, The Record
- Men Without Hats, Rhythm of Youth
- Peter Gabriel, Security
- Bow Wow Wow, I Want Candy
- Hunters and Collectors, s/t
- Strange Advance, World’s Away
- Dream Syndicate, The Days Of Wine And Roses
- A Flock of Seagulls, s/t
