The first concert I ever went to was in Wolverhampton Civic Hall on May 22 1977. It was part of the Clash’s White Riot tour and the first major Punk gig ever to be held in Wolverhampton. Three days before the gig, The Jam who were supposed to be one of the supports, pulled out. Not that that mattered too much because The Buzzcocks, Subway Sect and The Slits were still on the bill and anyway it was The Clash that everyone really wanted to see. 

So the bottom-of-the-bill Slits turned out to be the first group I ever saw play live. 

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Can’t believe we’ve reached ABON 0049 without posting a Fall track.

Without a doubt The Fall are one of the most important and influential groups of the last 30 years. They released their first single in 1978 and whilst there have been several points at which they looked like they might implode, they are currently still firing on all cylinders – 28 studio albums, 51 live albums and 24 John Peel sessions into their recording career.

I say ‘their’ career but actually since their inception there have been over 50 members of The Fall and only one of those has featured in every line-up. Come on down, founder, singer, Manchester City fan, lyricist, poet and Greatest Living Englishman Mr Mark E. Smith.

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As mentioned in ABON 0009, for comparison purposes here’s a version of ‘Cast Iron Arm’ recorded straight from John Peel’s own 78rpm copy. It’s taken from a CD compiled by John’s wife (‘Pig’) after his death.

Compare this version recorded from John’s 78 with the version on ABON 0009 which is recorded directly from (I presume) Master tapes and is therefore ‘clean’.

The Peel 78 has clearly deteriorated over the years. However, as is often the case the deteriorated 78 has a charm and sound to itself. And in this case that sound is heavier and fuzzier. Like a wine that has been layed down for years it has developed its own unique character. Available on ‘The Pig’s Big 78′s’. Amazon

Everyone is at least vaguely aware that Rock’n'Roll in the ’50′s was about rebellion. But it wasn’t just about that. R’n'R was also a liberating force. The advent of R’n'R seemed to inspire a horde of people to believe that they could make music and even release a single or two. People who in a previous generation would not have felt confident or skilled enough to take the plunge. So, whilst the ’50′s R’n'R boom created many of the most famous names ever in rock music, it also spawned a whole generation of recording artists who recorded one or two brilliant singles and then disappeared.

Now Punk in 1976 and 1977 was also about rebellion. But to my mind Punk wasn’t just about rebellion either. Early Punk, the early spirit of Punk, was all about refusing to accept the idea that you needed to be musically expert or well trained or well produced in order to create great music. Punk, before mohicans and tartan took over and turned it into a fashion, made creating your own record a legitimate aspiration for anyone who could hold a guitar or a microphone and (ideally) had an idea. And as a result a horde of young people began to put out a single or two – often a brilliant single or two – and then disappear without trace.

So I’d argue that R’n'R and Punk had far more in common with each other than either had with anything that happened in the intervening 20 years. They had very similar values. They were both brilliant cleansing and empowering agents. And I’d even go so far as to say that musically they were quite similar as well.

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The first of many reggae tracks from the golden period of Jamaican reggae, the 1970′s, that will appear on ABON.
By 1978 Culture had already recorded one of the most influential reggae albums of all time, 1976′s ‘Two Sevens Clash’. That album inspired the reggae loving Clash to name themselves, er, The Clash. It was also one of those very rare events in the 1970′s Britain – a genuine Jamaican-produced roots reggae album that sold in numbers to a white audience. Admittedly most were Punks who took the lead from the Clash or John Peel, but it was also because of the sublime harmonies and wonderful tunes.
It was in some ways a weird success story. Punk was championing unpolished rawer sounds in rock and ridiculing over-production. Culture’s first album was layered with production, was highly polished and very glossy. In particular, the heavy rhythms of the best Jamaican reggae – with the bass featuring more as a physical phenomenon rather than just a musical instrument – was missing from the Joe Gibbs-produced ‘Two Sevens Clash’. It was – God forbid – quite trebly. Punks didn’t seem to mind, although when DJ Don Letts played ‘Two Sevens Clash’ at the punk venue The Roxy, as far as I can tell he always seemed to play it through a graphic equaliser with the bass turned to max.

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An unashamedly subjective review of the most extraordinary music tracks from each year since 1912. Posted one by one daily.

THE FULLER VERSION

Over the last 30 years or so I’ve been compiling a collection of what I regard as the absolutely best music from each year since the start of commercial recording. This now amounts to around 4000 tracks dating from 1912 to the present. That’s an average of about 40 from each year. There are some years with far less depth – come on down 1962 and, lurking in the shadows, 1985. And there are some with so much it’s a little difficult to know exactly where to draw the line – 1977 of course and a little more surprisingly perhaps, 1928 and 1930 being prime examples.

Of course there is an almost infinite amount of recorded music now available and try as I might I haven’t listened to it all (yet) so the search for another elusive gem is never ending and no year’s selections will ever be complete. And anyway there are always beautiful tracks from the current year to be added to the list. So whilst this blog is a gradual reveal of the entire collection – posting one track every weekday and occasionally at weekends too – the collection itself keeps growing.

The tracks are posted in no particular order but once posted they are filed in the year vault of their release.

Every track is (in my opinion) a worthy contender to be included in the best of that year. However ‘best’ is a tricky concept. I believe that in music ‘best’ can only be defined in terms of totally subjective personal judgment and taste. The whole collection therefore is quite unashamedly based on my subjective personal taste. So from now on I will drop the ‘in my view’ and switch to highly opinionated personal comment.

While the tracks come from a very wide range of genres, musical traditions and countries there is a common link: each and every track, whether well known or obscure, relatively new or ancient is a wonderful piece of expression that not only stimulates the senses more than is fair to expect 3 minutes of sound to be able to do, but does so as well now as when first recorded.

Nevertheless the selections bear little relationship to the ‘Charts’ or what sold or what was or is fashionable now or at time of release. I’m not too worried about that because I seem to have Professor Stephen Hawking and a whole raft of very clever scientists on my side. One of the current theories about the structure of the universe is called string theory. Admittedly I’m no expert but if I understand it correctly the theory suggests something like…the universe is actually made up of an infinite array of strings, each string representing a sequence of events from Big Bang to now and beyond. Each string is different as it contains a different sequence of events. All of these strings exist – all at the same time – all marching forward in time in parallel. There are infinite numbers of strings and there are many you’s because you are an event on many strings. And you just didn’t occur on another infinite number. More ‘likely’ events, by definition, occur on more strings than less ‘likely’ events. But, and here’s the key point, according to the scientists it’s the less common strings that tell us most about the universe – the strings at the edge of the probability spectrum.

I’m not sure Professor Hawking intended it this way but string theory therefore seems to prove what I’ve always believed – that music that sells in large quantities tells you very little about what’s really going on. It’s the stuff that never got near the Charts, the stuff at the edge of the probability spectrum that really matters.

So I take great pleasure in inviting you to sit back and imagine you are another version of you enjoying life on another string, where the Charts never caught on, Captain Beefheart was elected President, John Peel is still alive and Prime Minister till 10pm when he still does 2 hours on the radio and Dave Lee Travis and Simon Bates had very successful careers as plumbers. Welcome to abarrelofnails.com

abarrelofnails is NigelMichaelJones

London
June 2010

Some (fairly arbitrary) abarrelofnails guiding principles and rules of engagement:

1. There’s no classical music included – that’s another project I haven’t got around to yet. However the boundaries between classical and non classical are not distinct so forgive me if I stray a little.

2. I’ve only allowed an individual artist or particular group a maximum of 2 tracks in any one year. This is not always easy to enforce because: a. on the one hand some artists have produced masses of outstanding stuff in a single year (so I’ve been harsh here), b. on the other, particularly in the era of remixes it’s often quite difficult to determine who exactly should be given credit on some tracks (so here I’ve allowed multiple tracks if the credits are or should be significantly different), and on the…er…third hand, some artists crop up in a number of disguises and groups these days all at the same time (so here I’ve allowed multiple tracks when I’ve felt that the groups or collections of musicians were sufficiently distinct).

3. Tracks are usually filed in the Vault in the year they were released. There are exceptions: a. very old tracks tend to be filed in the year they were recorded and b. anything that has been released for the first time many years after it was recorded has been filed in the year of recording rather than release.

4. In addition to the yearly vaults there are other fairly random vaults, e.g. The Art Of The Cover Version. The criterion for entry into these is similar to the yearly vaults – the best tracks I’ve ever found that fit the definition of the Vault. When a track is filed in one of these vaults it will also be found in its year vault.

5. That’s enough rules for one day

OWNERSHIP RIGHTS

MP3s are for streaming purposes only. You cannot download from this site. Please buy the song if you like what you hear. We have provided purchase links for your convenience. If you have ownership inquiries regarding a track we have featured, please contact ABON directly. We will be happy to take it down at your request