40 Records In 40 Years (11/40 - 1984)

As said we started last year to play football for our favorite pub. We used to meet once or twice a week in the late afternoon to play with other football-mad lads on a public playground for a match. During the weekends we played a lot amateur competitions that took place in near era. Finally there were four teams that dominated these competitions - ours was one of them. Throughout the following years we had a lot of great games at different places. Many times we won the competitions and we used to play the semi-finals as a minimum. I remember the evenings when we celebrated our success in our local pub. One evening I took the chance to move to the turntable to present the audience my musical taste. One hour later another mate from our team wanted to go  on put some records on by his own choice. This was the start of our DJ-circle - long before the DJ-cult started. From this time on we were six lads and we used to play our music alternately on Friday and Saturday. It was a wide spread of music that reached from Funk and Soul over classic rock and rockabilly onto the new and older stuff from Britain and the USA. Every DJ grabbed his own records and played it for five/six hours. One day the owner of the pub mad us an offer that each of us could buy a few records each month on his calculation when we play them in the pub. That's one of reason I my record collection expanded this days.

1984 was also the year I first fell really in love with a girl. After some affairs all over the last years I met Susanne who was a close fried to a female college. She knew me from playing my records in the pub but was to shy to get in contact with me. So she took the way over her girlfriend. We got really quick in contact and fell in love to each other. After a short trip to Italy we decided to life together. A few month later she pulled to me. It was the start of another chapter in  my life. More next.

And here again a small choice of songs that dominated the charts or mean a lot to me::

George Michael - maybe the smoothest song of the year in the charts (or was it Stevie Wonder with I just called to say I love you?)

Frankie Goes To Hollywood - with a big bang and attitude from  Liverpool

Ultravox and their version of the last day on earth

Alphaville from Germany with their second smash hit

Chaka Khan - back in the charts again

Echo and the Bunnymen - some of my all time favorites

The Style Council - music of quality and distinction

Sade - perfect combination from jazzy moods and a great voice

Prefab Sprout - Paddy McAlloon appears

Icicle Works - Also a song I listened these days

Let go over to the records that was released in 1984:

The Smiths - same: Their first record. I'm a fan since then

Joe Jackson - Body and Soul: Perfect mix of pop and jazz - timeless

The Style Council - Café Bleu: Paul Weller arrived at his new sound

R.E.M. - Reckoning: Perfect College Rock from Athens GA

Echo and the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain: Good to have Ian McCulloch back

Nick Cave - From Here To Eternity: Their debut - something big and dark from down under

The Waterboys - A Pagan Place: Not only because of the trumpet solo on the title track

Sade - Diamond Life: This years sound most of could agree to

Minutemen - Double Nickels On The Dime: Their monument. A perfect combination of punk rock, funk, country and jazz. Also statements to the American way of life

Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade: Another monument of post punk released on SST

The Go-Betweens - Spring Hill Fair: Just good music and great songs

Scott Walker - Climate of Hunter: The man and his voice is back after long years

Cocteau Twins - Treasure: Superb reduced music

What we saw when we went to the cinema:

Amadeus - Milos Forman shows what happened when the great composer Salieri meet the genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Birdy - One of the best post Vietnam war movies with a great Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage

Blood Simple - The Cohn brothers appear with a great movie

The Company of Wolves - British gothic horror and fantasy

The Hotel New Hampshire - Great movie based on a novel by John Irving

Paris, Texas - Arty movie by Wim Wenders

Stop Making Sense - Unforgettable The Talking Heads in Concert

And of course: Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop and Gremlins

What was in the news this year::

Apple places Macintosh personal computer on sale in the United States; the Winter Olympics are held in Sarajevo/Yugoslavia; German minister of defense retires general Kiessling because he was suspected of being assessed homosexual - some month later he was found innocent; Konstantin Tschernenko get the president of the USSR; the former boxer Gustav 'Bubi' Scholz get arrested under suspicion to shot down his wife and killed her under heavy influence of alcohol; Ronald Reagan announces the bombardment of Russia during a microphone test and regrets behind his 'joke`;Assassination of Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh security guards - Anti Sikh riots breaking out and more than 10.000 Sikhs were slaughtered; Band Aid records the charity single 'Do they know it's Christmas'; Bhopal Disaster A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, kills more than 8,000 people outright and injures over half a million (with more later dying from their injuries the death toll reaches 23,000+) in the worst industrial disaster in history.

Talk Talk released their second record in 1984 and it was the breakthrough of the band around her founder Mark Hollis. There was a lot of commercial successful singles like 'Dum Dum Girl', 'Such A Shame' and 'It's my life' which are recommended as their best. But I prefer more songs like 'Renée', 'Does Caroline Knew' and 'It's you' for them reduced speed and their arrangements. The best versions of these songs came out a few years later on a live-record called London 1986 released in the last year of the last century. While I write these words I listen to the record once again and I find new little things I didn't realized the last times. It is one of these timeless records you would take to a lonely island.

Talk Talk - Renée
Talk Talk - Does Caroline Know
Talk Talk - It's You
Talk Talk - Tomorrow Started