Bloodless Coup

1979 seems too early for Pat Benatar - but she's who I'll guess.

Not only was 1979 also the year I bought my first album, but it's on your list. Guess which one? (No hints from Baltar.)

Armand: incorrect.

Jacflash: I'm thinking you and I might have bought the same album, even though I am surprised yours wasn't the Stones.

Naah, I didn't really get into the Stones until the late '80s, when I was playing in bands with a couple of people who were Stones freaks. As for the album I bought, let's just say Heaven Tonight was better.

(And I'm guessing yours was Floyd?)

Dream Police. Really. I didn't acquire that taste until later. And yes, you are correct. Binky grew up on Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Van Halen etc. until she discovered indie much much later.

I kinda went the other way. I went from Cheap Trick etc to AC/DC to Ozzy to Zep to Sabbath to Deep Purple, and thence to college where I discovered all sorts of interesting things.

See, with you, I would have guessed to start with Deep Purple. Living abroad shifted my evolution dramatically toward indie and international, but I had already been bitten by the "progressive" vibe in college (the Smiths etc). And before that the New Wave and New Romantics. I was thinking about the first five albums I owned: The Wall, Back in Black, Moving Pictures, Pyromania, Duran Duran. I went from stoner rock to "I love me some pretty androgynous boys with eye liner!"

And speaking of pretty androgynous boys, the cover of Heaven Tonight.

Well, lots of my local peers were into the New Wave stuff, so going in a different direction meant going in a different direction. Also remember that I was learning guitar at the time, and that was driving the evolution of my tastes. While I adore Rick Nielsen, in terms of guitar fireworks he really isn't fit to mop Ritchie Blackmore's floor, y'know?

Wasn't Rick Nielsen originally a bass player?

Jacflash wrote:

While I adore Rick Nielsen, in terms of guitar fireworks he really isn't fit to mop Ritchie Blackmore's floor, y'know?

Eh. As I grow older I seem to appreciate songwriting more than guitar pyrotechniques. While Blackmore was good (better, say, than Yngwie), I am prepared to argue that Cheap Trick wrote better songs than Deep Purple.

I suppose (being a social scientist) that I should be more precise: Cheap Trick wrote a few really, really good songs that exceed (for me) the output of only moderately good Deep Purple songs. Thus, Cheap Trick means more to me than Deep Purple.

Though, of course, Ritchie Blackmore is at the center of the Rock 'N Roll universe.

Oh, and everyone should love this.

Yeah, he may owe a debt to Elvis Costello (and Joe Jackson), but he's doing OK. And Binky should have put up "Peace, Love, and Understanding".

Actually, now I'm thinking it was Tom Peterssen who was a guitar player, and switched to bass.

And sorry, Peace Love and Understanding was not 1979.

Gosh. Poor Norbizness if you give him this much of a hard time over his musical ranking schema.

Peace, Love, and Understanding should have been 1979. That's all that matters.

And while Rush catches much shit in the blogosphere these days, The Spirit of Radio remains a great song. The fact that the album came out on January 1, 1980 makes it basically 1979. That's my line, and I'm sticking with it.

Rainbow, Since You've Been Gone, 1979.

You can't escape Ritchie Blackmore.

Nobody has so far. But All Mod Cons was 1978, and it's coming up next.

I'm beginning to think you're like Beetlejuice, but you only have to say your name once. :)

I'm holding my own "Top 100" until the 'biz finishes his. Don't want to steal his thunder, and all.

Still 1979 (technically, 1978 in England): Dire Straits, Sultans of Swing.

Well, the last good thing I will say about 1979, is that it was the year this man dropped out of high school to devote himself to music (and, at the time, Long John Silvers).

Steal away, mine is likely to be anticlimactic and disappointing for all involved. Who likes Ministry?

hah! That's what I put on in my office when I am trying to drive the grad students away from interrupting me.

I'm declaring "1979 Nuclear War". You may all surrender at your leisure. Journey: Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin', 1979.

Don't make me come over there.

Oh, and Baltar, I know you love Rush, and I will grant you that Neil Peart bangs the shit out of his kit with those trees he uses, but check out the minimalism of the majesty that is Bonham.

Journey: Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin', 1979.

Foul! Foul! Red card!

This was supposed to be good, or at least influential and personally significant music. Don't even give me the argument that Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin' is any of those things.

Talk to me about "significant" and "Journey," and I'll reminisce about Open Arms, junior high school dances, and my first boyfriend who looked just like Ben Orr from The Cars. Now that's significant.

I lied: one more. Meatloaf: Bat Out Of Hell.

Pompous. Serious. Operatic. Silly. If this isn't 1979, I don't know what is.

Red card! RED MOTHERFUCKING CARD!

Yeah, Baltar dude, Meat Loaf is foul territory.

Oh, and re Purple: I've been getting back into guitar playing lately, and in search for something to motivate me to work on technique have been revisiting DP. (You know I've been playing Lazy wrong for 21 years?) You're right that they never wrote a pop song to stand with, say, 'Surrender', and they weren't exactly studio wizards, either. Really, they were all about the live shows. The songs were just jam platforms. The best ones (Highway Star, Lazy, much of In Rock) were worked up in live shows long before they were recorded.

A lot of their studio stuff sounds dated now, but Made in Japan still blows me away.

It really is too bad you aren't local... we have been semi-thinking about activating Bloodless Coup the band. We even went to far as to make a couple of CDs of covers for initial practice. And, I have seen Baltar's bass. It is quite the thing of beauty.

Which bass? The Guild? That was a really nice instrument.

It is too bad we're not geographically closer. I even -- for the first time in ten years or more -- have an amp big enough to gig with. A friend is trying to drag me into his blues band, but I'm kind of feeling done with white boy blues crap. (In fact, that's why I started my project of learning Purple songs -- I picked up my guitars and found myself in the same SRV-retread rut I was in in 1994, and felt I needed to do something completely different to shake it off.)

I don't know from basses, but it's burled wood?

Yeah, that sounds like the Guild.

And if we want 1979-vintage guitar fireworks, you really can't top these guys.

The Guild is "Flame Maple", or so I ordered it.

I looked up VH for the 1979 stuff, but the only album of theirs that came out in 1979 was II, and that's not my favorite. Not a bad song, however.

The top twenty... I knew he'd come through with some Flaming Lips action. Good taste will out.

And 40% of that list was the line-up that took me to Coachella 2004. And I've got a 70% percent ownership match with that segment.

40% of 11-20? Really?

Radiohead, Kool Keith, Flaming Lips, Pixies. And, also Kraftwerk (amazing live) which Norbizness previewed as being in the top ten.

Maple? I dimly recall it being a nice burly mahogany or similar. I might just be gettin' old, though.