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Author Topic: 1986 in Music  (Read 18118 times)
Ovi
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« on: December 21, 2016, 04:22:21 AM »

Can we talk about this fascinating year?

On one extreme it seems to be the year in which most 60s legends hit their absolute nadir: we have Paul McCartney's Press to Play, Rolling Stones' Dirty Work, Eric Clapton's August, Neil Young's Landing on Water, Lou Reed's Mistrial, Bob Dylan's Knocked Out Loaded and Kinks' Think Visual. All except maybe the last one generally regarded as not only bad, but the artist's worst work ever.

In completely unexpected fashion comes Paul Simon's Graceland, not only a good album but a huge commercial and critical success. Simon not only survived the year without embarrassing himself, but he actually reached his solo peak. The album was not only acceptable, but original and influential.

The alternative scenes seemed to be peaking as well. We have The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead, Sonic Youth's EVOL, XTC's Skylarking, Talk Talk's The Color of Spring and R.E.M's Lifes Rich Pageant, all important milestones in the discographies of the respective artists.

The thrash metal scene was definitely peaking, with Metallica's Master of Puppets, Slayer's Reign in Blood and Megadeth's Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?.

We also have hip-hop losing much of its funk/disco roots and entering the golden age with the commercially successful Run DMC's Raising Hell and Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill, both produced by Rick Rubin.

So what do you think? Was it a year of extremes? A good one? A bad one?
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JK
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« Reply #1 on: December 21, 2016, 04:50:37 AM »

Hi Ovi. Being from an older generation, I must first check out a list of what was going down musically in '86, just to remind myself.

I do know (and love) the albums you mention by Paul Simon, Metallica and Talk Talk...

I'll get back to this later...
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« Reply #2 on: December 21, 2016, 05:55:12 AM »

Guns N' Roses made their debut in 1986, with their EP "Live Like A Suicide", and then with their album "Appetite For Destruction". It took a few months, but "Appetite" eventually ended up being a major success, and a new sound was born. I know, that last bit was a little corny.  Grin But it's true. Hearing something like "Welcome To The Jungle" was new and exciting.
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Ovi
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« Reply #3 on: December 21, 2016, 05:57:59 AM »

Guns N' Roses made their debut in 1986, with their EP "Live Like A Suicide", and then with their album "Appetite For Destruction". It took a few months, but "Appetite" eventually ended up being a major success, and a new sound was born. I know, that last bit was a little corny.  Grin But it's true. Hearing something like "Welcome To The Jungle" was new and exciting.

Appetite was 1987.
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« Reply #4 on: December 21, 2016, 06:20:18 AM »

Can we talk about this fascinating year?

On one extreme it seems to be the year in which most 60s legends hit their absolute nadir: we have Paul McCartney's Press to Play, Rolling Stones' Dirty Work, Eric Clapton's August, Neil Young's Landing on Water, Lou Reed's Mistrial, Bob Dylan's Knocked Out Loaded and Kinks' Think Visual. All except maybe the last one generally regarded as not only bad, but the artist's worst work ever.

In completely unexpected fashion comes Paul Simon's Graceland, not only a good album but a huge commercial and critical success. Simon not only survived the year without embarrassing himself, but he actually reached his solo peak. The album was not only acceptable, but original and influential.

The alternative scenes seemed to be peaking as well. We have The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead, Sonic Youth's EVOL, XTC's Skylarking, Talk Talk's The Color of Spring and R.E.M's Lifes Rich Pageant, all important milestones in the discographies of the respective artists.

The thrash metal scene was definitely peaking, with Metallica's Master of Puppets, Slayer's Reign in Blood and Megadeth's Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?.

We also have hip-hop losing much of its funk/disco roots and entering the golden age with the commercially successful Run DMC's Raising Hell and Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill, both produced by Rick Rubin.

So what do you think? Was it a year of extremes? A good one? A bad one?


Don't forget Anthrax's Among the Living.  Often thought of as the lessor of the Big Four, I'd put Anthrax second only to Metallica.

Also, it's interesting while thrash was peaking, the big three of heavy metal were trying their hardest to be commercial.  Black Sabbath (essentially a Tony Iommi solo project by 1986) had a power ballad with Glenn Hughes on vocals, and a young Denise Crosby in the video. 

Both Judas Priest and Iron Maiden introduced synths in their sounds to try to appeal to the MTV crowd.
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« Reply #5 on: December 21, 2016, 06:32:01 AM »

It' seemed to be a year (era?) of "popification." Thrash began heading mainstream as noted above, while full-on pop metal really ascended: Bon Jovi's massive hit Slippery When Wet.. R&B? How about Janet Jackson's enormous breakout Control[/]? World music on Graceland.. Indie--then "college"--groups as noted, like R.E.M. Art like Peter Gabriel's gigantic hit "Sledgehammer."

Not often for the best: op noted a lot of sh*t by legacy artists. But especially with MTV's dominance, if artistic purity suffered, more diverse niches seemed to find mass audiences even if in that new, slick, arguably watered down form.
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« Reply #6 on: December 21, 2016, 06:36:38 AM »

1986 was a weird year for sure. What I do remember well is the music just didn't have much of a vibe to it, with a few exceptions. A lot of Bon Jovi on the radio. Lot of really bad popped-out makeup-and-hair sleaze metal, although it would explode even more shortly after then be decimated a few years after that, thankfully. Motley Crue...no. Poison...no.

But if you were tuned into it at the time, the effect of Appetite For Destruction on a generation of teenagers and on music in general cannot be understated. It felt like real rock and roll with no apologies.

What was also odd as 1986 went into 1987 was how The Monkees started to own MTV, and if it seems odd consider that "Daydream Believer" was the number one most requested video on their pre-TRL (man, what a sham TRL was...) video request show for weeks if not months. And another #1 video that owned MTV was Paradise City, even well after the album it came from had been released.

There were glimmers of hope in the morass of blah releases and miscues by classic artists.

But imagine a 20-year old song being number one in requests among the 13-19 year old crowd in 2016. That was the Monkees.

Bizarre times. Glad we survived. And happy to have had my yard sale and flea market finds of Beatles and Monkees albums to keep me going.



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« Reply #7 on: December 21, 2016, 06:43:47 AM »

Addendum: I think it was 1986...but MTV had a show called "Closet Classics" where they would play videos mostly from the 60's for an hour block or something, and this was something I remember watching with other friends who had similar musical tastes, and who had no time for Bon Jovi or the fucking "Crue". Great to see the classic artists who at that time were only 20 years or so beyond their original release. It was jarring to hear the difference in the music from the current to the classic on the same channel.

I will say this too: Thank you for the reminder of Gabriel and "Sledgehammer". That song has aged very, very well and still grooves like a motherfucker. That song was everywhere on MTV and maybe a little less so on the radio, so chalk it up to a breakthrough video driving what was a solid song musically. I doubt it would have been noticed as much without the video.

Add "Miami Vice" to this too. It was still cresting in '86, and a lot of songs became hits because of that show. I'll have to check the broadcast dates and such, but I remember Smugglers Blues had a prominent placement in the plot of one of that show's best episodes that also featured Glenn Frey. They knew what they had going.
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« Reply #8 on: December 21, 2016, 06:44:01 AM »

I loved Poison. No shame either. 10-year-old me heard big hooks, decent melodies, and seemingly scandalous subject matter all wrapped in a visually transgressive wrapper, like an 80s version of 70s KISS.
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« Reply #9 on: December 21, 2016, 06:45:27 AM »

Well I had a look through.

Saw a further three great albums listed (Queen's A Kind of Magic, Zappa's Jazz from Hell and Gary Numan's Strange Charm) and some classy singles ("Rock Me, Amadeus", "West End Girls", "The Captain Of Her Heart", the aforementioned "Sledgehammer" and "Walk This Way")

That said, much of the rest means nothing to me. I'd never heard of half of the artists! A generational thing, no doubt... 
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« Reply #10 on: December 21, 2016, 06:46:52 AM »

To each his own. They had a few decent songs that I appreciate for the craft of writing and production, but "Unskinny Bop" is and always will be one of the worst damn songs I've ever heard.

It must be said, though, that I'm also not a fan of KISS although I wore a KISS Halloween costume at age 8 or so, and have photo evidence to prove it.  LOL
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« Reply #11 on: December 21, 2016, 06:50:12 AM »

I don't mean to go to the grave over them, by any means! Just a thing I was the right age for, probably. Agree on Unskinny Bop btw. By then I would've been 14 or so and had high hopes for the next album...and there it was, built on an OK riff over eighth-note As in the bass. A A A A A A A A killmenow...
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« Reply #12 on: December 21, 2016, 06:57:13 AM »

The problem with going by year is that the years blended into each other and some albums released in 1986 didn't catch fire until '87. The mention of Run DMC/Aerosmith doing Walk This Way triggered this thought. Rick Rubin did that one, and he also did License To Ill...and I remember License To Ill being more of an '87 jam, and it was.

I can vouch for having heard a lot of boom boxes blasting License To Ill in the summer of 87 and even into 88, that album was HUGE. Yet the historians will say "1986" as the release, even though it was late '86 and it wasn't an instant smash until the Fight For Your Right video blew up on MTV. Again, the power of video at this time on full display.

I also had to go back and think about another groundbreaker that some people got at the time and others didn't know what to make of it. "Pump Up The Volume" by MARRS. I thought that was '86, late '86 like the Beasties, but no - it was '87 and was still getting played into '88. So the memory of these years and release dates can be deceiving. I put "Appetite" into that bag as well, it kept gaining momentum into 1988 even though it's tagged as an '87 release. So at some point the years don't matter as much as when the albums were affecting people.
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« Reply #13 on: December 21, 2016, 07:03:26 AM »

I don't mean to go to the grave over them, by any means! Just a thing I was the right age for, probably. Agree on Unskinny Bop btw. By then I would've been 14 or so and had high hopes for the next album...and there it was, built on an OK riff over eighth-note As in the bass. A A A A A A A A killmenow...

I do respect a songwriter or band who can write a song which becomes timeless, no matter what parameters of that are applied, from Karaoke favorite to one that gets played every Christmas. So for that reason, I think "Every Rose Has It's Thorn" is a solid song, and it's still heard and played today. It's a good song, and even the often-bashed CC DeVille gets in a good lead guitar break. It was one of the better G-C-Em-D metal power ballads out there because it was a good song. I also liked "Something To Believe In", that was a good tune. So it's not all bad stuff, obviously, but I just remember a ton of bands like Poison getting a wake up call from GnR in terms of real rock and roll, then of course 1991 and '92 put the nail in the coffin for good.

It was perhaps an overdose of glam metal, too damn much of it. Poison, Warrant, Cinderella, Winger, etc etc etc. Not that all of it was bad, but it was just an overload of it.
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« Reply #14 on: December 21, 2016, 07:06:08 AM »

So called "hair metal" has its fans and detractors.  I'm a fan.

One thing that I don't think can be denied about hair metal is the element of "fun" that is missing in so much rock music post 1992. 

That's why I thought The Darkness was such a breath of fresh air in 2003, as the world of rock had become so boring and morose in the post grunge era. 

But, like GF said, thank goodness for the older stuff. 
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« Reply #15 on: December 21, 2016, 07:29:37 AM »

I have to say a lot of my own memories of that time and the music also carry a personal side too, which I guess would be an obvious reaction to associate this stuff with things you remember personally versus release dates and chart data.

I remember having friends who were still wearing Diver Down 3/4 sleeve t-shirts going into 1987, and of course at this time Sammy Hagar had taken over lead vocals for VH. I never dug the Sammy stuff, it just didn't hit me. But I loved and still love those first 5 VH albums up to and including 1984. That was the fun in hard rock and metal, and Eddie was always amazing. But as soon as Sammy got in there, I lost them. They had #1 albums and tons of success with Sammy, but it just never hit me like those first VH albums.

But I say that too because "metal" for me didn't include Metallica because their music simply wasn't a part of my friend circle at that time, and you couldn't hear them on MTV or the radio. That was until the first time I heard them, really heard them, when MTV first played the long-form "One" video. I never heard anything like that, and same goes for the video. I couldn't get enough of it, it was new and disturbing and the way Kirk went from a clean guitar tone to the classic Metallica grind floored me as a young player.

I had to go back later and rediscover all the classic albums and songs with Cliff Burton, because it simply didn't exist in my music world in 1986. But that, to my ears, was metal as soon as I heard it. When MTV was playing Winger and Cinderella as "metal", and just before that Quiet Riot and the fucking Crue...to realize what was going on but not being heard, after the fact, it was like the real deal versus an overly processed and calculated copy of the real deal. I literally had no idea a song like Master Of Puppets or The Call Of Ktulu even existed while Cliff was alive and MTV was playing the Crue as metal. Again, the power of video and commercial media to completely ignore what was really happening while instead offering watered down versions for mass consumption and labeling it the same.
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« Reply #16 on: December 21, 2016, 07:51:49 AM »

One metal band I didn't mention, who often gets overlooked, is Queensryche. 

In 1986, the released their 2nd full length LP, Rage for Order.  It's a very good album, though, IMO, they peaked two years later with the outstanding Operation: Mindcrime.
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« Reply #17 on: December 21, 2016, 08:11:04 AM »


One thing that I don't think can be denied about hair metal is the element of "fun" that is missing in so much rock music post 1992. 

i agree entirely. The same concept is actually why I defend some modern pop or critically sneered upon bands or music. It's only rock and roll (and I like it).
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« Reply #18 on: December 21, 2016, 12:52:27 PM »


One thing that I don't think can be denied about hair metal is the element of "fun" that is missing in so much rock music post 1992. 

i agree entirely. The same concept is actually why I defend some modern pop or critically sneered upon bands or music. It's only rock and roll (and I like it).

I can follow your logic there, but to me, it's hard to compare modern pop with 80s hard rock / hair metal as, for the most part, the bands from the 80s wrote their own material, and while they never get credit for it, the level of musicianship of those bands is actually pretty high.   And when I say musicianship, I'm also including vocal talent (which I think is mostly missing from modern pop). 
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the captain
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« Reply #19 on: December 21, 2016, 01:00:56 PM »

Yeah I just meant it from the fun/not highbrow sense.
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« Reply #20 on: December 21, 2016, 01:08:45 PM »

Yeah I just meant it from the fun/not highbrow sense.

Right, and from that POV, it makes sense. 
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« Reply #21 on: December 21, 2016, 02:05:24 PM »

Guns N' Roses made their debut in 1986, with their EP "Live Like A Suicide", and then with their album "Appetite For Destruction". It took a few months, but "Appetite" eventually ended up being a major success, and a new sound was born. I know, that last bit was a little corny.  Grin But it's true. Hearing something like "Welcome To The Jungle" was new and exciting.

Appetite was 1987.
I stand corrected. It came out in July of 1987. "Live Like A Suicide" came out in 1986.
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« Reply #22 on: December 21, 2016, 02:08:10 PM »

I think Neil's Landing On Water was seen at the time as somewhat of a return to form after several years of albums like Trans, Everybody's Rockin' and Old Ways. Bob's Knocked Out Loaded was absolute rock bottom; I know it's fashionable these days to pan Down in the Groove, but that album at least saw him stripping away some of the production excess - I like it. I had enjoyed Macca's Tug of War, Pipes of Peace, even the Give My Regards to Broad Street soundtrack. But Press to Play just left me cold. Maybe it was that cold 80's production. Sounded too much like a Phil Collins album to me. John Fogerty fell victim to this, too, with Eye of the Zombie. As for the Kinks' Think Visual, it's easily the weakest of their 80's albums, but I don't think it sucks (or blows). At least 3 songs rank among their best: Ray's Lost and Found, and Working At The Factory, and Dave's When You Were A Child.
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« Reply #23 on: December 21, 2016, 02:11:34 PM »

The Bangles hit it big in '86 . . . and Heart had a good ballad with "These Dreams."

In the '80s, rock 'n roll was still a thing. You still had bands with virtuoso musicians, like Van Halen and Rush . . . and I would put the Police in that category as well.
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« Reply #24 on: December 21, 2016, 02:21:34 PM »

Stewart Copeland was, and is a hell of a drummer. Very underrated.
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