Completely Conspicuous 296: These Important Years

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Brian Salvatore as we look back at the music of 1987. I've also got the Bonehead of the Week and music from Okkervil River, Beachwood Sparks and Midlake.

Show notes:

- Recorded via Skype

- Brian: Birth of the cassingle

- Inexpensive way to buy singles, B-sides

- Brian: Collecting 45s for a jukebox

- Jay: 1987 was big for female pop artists

- Madonna, Bangles, Belinda Carlisle, Lisa Lisa, Heart

- Older songs like "Stand By Me" were re-released

- Young Brian bought his first album in '87: The Monkees' Greatest Hits

- New Monkees TV show came and went

- Jay: Made two top 5 album lists, Then and Now

- Jay: Then list (#5 to #1): Def Leppard's Hysteria, INXS's Kick, Cult's Electric, Whitesnake's s/t and U2's Joshua Tree

- Whitesnake was the hard rock version of Ringo Starr's All Starr Band

- Brian's #5: George Harrison's Cloud Nine, despite Jeff Lynne's heavy handed production

- Jay's #5: Husker Du's Warehouse, not their best but still pretty great

- Incredible run of albums over a short period

- Brian's #4: Prince's Sign o' the Times, maybe his last great album

- Jay's #4: Replacements' Pleased to Meet Me; Westerberg's focuses on songwriting and less on aggression

- Brian's #4: Tom Waits' Franks Wild Years; did Izzy Stradlin play on this album?

- To be continued

- Bonehead of the Week

Music:

Okkervil River - Stay Young

Beachwood Sparks - Make It Together

Midlake - Antiphon

Completely Conspicuous is available through the iTunes podcast directory. Subscribe and write a review!

The Okkervil River song is on the album The Silver Gymnasium on ATO Records. Download the song for free (in exchange for your email address) on Goodbye Summer: ATO Records 2013 Fall Sampler at ATORecords.com.

The Beachwood Sparks song is on the album Desert Skies on Alive Naturalsounds Records. Download the song for free at Soundcloud.

The Midlake song is on the album Antiphon on ATO Records. Download the song for free (in exchange for your email address) on Goodbye Summer: ATO Records 2013 Fall Sampler at ATORecords.com.
The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Find out more about Senor Breitling at his fine music blog Clicky Clicky. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.