And now we enter Michael Jackson's golden age. This song and other tracks from Off the Wall were everywhere, and irresistable as hell. As strange and sad as the latter part of MJ's life turned out, he was a massive, massive talent.
Tusk was a brilliant album and a brilliant song. I thought the single was amazing as a kid - like nothing else on the radio and completely unexpected from Fleetwood Mac. The release of this album was a big deal at the time - in fact, it's the first album release I can recall seeing so much hype for. PM Magazine, a syndicated 30 minute evening news television program from Group W, ran a big feature on the record the week it was released and I think played that video, plus a making-of video. I think this is some of the raw video that ended up in their segment: Many of their fans weren't ready for the album - I liked the singles but couldn't absorb the rest as a kid. About a decade later while I was in college - during a period where I was commuting 90 minutes each way to campus by bus - I picked up the CD of Tusk to play in my Discman (welcome to the late '80s). That's when I finally fell in love with the album. It's a completely disjointed and ramshackle mess of a record, but somehow that just adds to the experience. Visually the album was also a fascinating mess. You can see the earthtone, organic '70s here starting to transition into the edgier, brasher but also minimalist '80s, in both the graphic design and the photography. It was an extensive package as well, a gatefold as I recall with art also included on both sides of each disc's sleeve. The designers and photographers definitely picked up on the surreal nature of the album. I've always thought this collage (there were actually two of them) was an obvious nod to The Beatles. Maybe the most iconic shot of the entire band, save perhaps the back cover of Rumours. This one though might better catch their dynamic...
It had been 15 years or so since that. An eternity. Hardly mattered to them if they were aware of it.
What I loved about the collages was that the line scores of the 1978 National League Championship Series games were embedded in there (Dodgers vs. Phillies).
It depends on where you lived. I'll agree that the day aspect was much bigger in peoples minds. After all, most of the disco D.J.s, many night club owners, and many disco record producers were gay.
Just a hint: "Don't Stop" was on the "Rumours" album before it. I don't care for the album "Tusk" that much, but I really like the song. It was Lindsay Buckingham's accusation of Stevie cheating on him with Mick Fleetwood. I'll bet Mick was all too happy to play that drum part. And, i'll bet there was a reason he wanted to use the USC Trojans! Hell, I didn't even know he produced "It's My Party" and her other hits until the CD age. His longtime friend and music partner Bruce Sweden recorded and mixed them, too.
That drum solo, however, shows that Fleetwood was no Gene Krupa or Buddy Rich . . . if Rich did a cover of "Tusk" he would have blown Fleetwood away for sure.
Earlier in the '70's, Bruce Swedien worked as an engineer in Chicago, where he engineered records by a couple Brunswick/Dakar acts including the Chi-Lites and Tyrone Davis.
I liked parts of the Tusk album but thought it was a terrible disappointment after Rumours. Then, one late night in my dorm after a party and I was feeling uh, not of this Earth, I put on headphones and listened to the entire album at a high volume. It finally clicked. I still like Rumours better, it's a much more professional album that is just about perfect in every way, and Tusk still has its faults, but after that listen in the dorm, I could easily claim that it is a brilliant album that is still underrated to this day. As far as Michael Jackson goes, I recognize his immense talent, and I like a lot of his earlier stuff (the Motown years, solo and with the J5) but for some reason, Off The Way left me cold. I think part of it was that I couldn't understand 85% of the lyrics. Is he singing "Keep on with the door stop, don't stop till you get enough", and I couldn't make heads or tails out of any of the verses. The little grunts and ughs and other inflections thrown in there irritated me too.
Don't Stop Til You Get Enough- I think this song has gotten bigger over the years (current MJ scandal aside) as it only hit # 91 for year-end. It had one foot in the present and one in the future. One of his best! Also to note- Commodores- Sail On stalled at # 4 with this # 1.
No. I dunno. Maybe some people thought disco was over from all the recent posts, got all excited when they saw "My Sharona" then it went to the Commodores and Michael Jackson. There' isn't much action on the Billboard R&B or country #1 threads, either. I thought for sure that the younger guys who have been waiting for the second Michael Jackson solo era to kick in would have shown up by now.
Yeah, you'd think . . . I sho' did . . . won't give too much away, but only to say the next single I prefer the mix with the added percussive effects that were missing from many LP pressings.
Once again, this thread doesn't give me notifications (even though it is clearly marked to do so), so I'm hopelessly behind--I mean back to Leo Sayer's "When I Need You" in 1977 kind of behind. I may do a mass note to catch up, and then again, who here would really care? As for the Michael Jackson song, I liked it OK on the radio the few times I heard it. In October of '79, I was in law school, and the radio stations I listened to the most in Fayetteville Arkansas were what we now call AOR (and may have been called that 40 years ago) and the college station. Therefore, I didn't get burned out on it. I know I had the 8-track tape in my car for awhile--I think I borrowed it from my brother--and I liked the title track and "Rock With You" better than this one. JcS
I graduated high school in '75, so disco wasn't that much of a thing for us in my 90% or so white high school. In college, it was played at the dances after football games, and of course was on the radio a lot if I wasn't on the AOR station from Little Rock--but I was listening to it most of the time. I didn't dislike it because it was predominately black, since as others have said, I listened to a lot of Hendrix, Chuck Berry, the Motown singles, War, EWF and other black artists. I didn't dislike it because it was gay (I didn't make the connection at the time--I thought those going to the disco were there to make a hetero connection!). I didn't like most of it because it was mindless and highly repetitive. I mean, I like the first three or so minutes of "Disco Inferno" but I didn't really need it to go on and on and on... Songs about dancing generally bore me; "Get Up And Boogie?" Ok, one listen through it, and I've got the message down. Now, I quite understand that is the nature of the genre, and when on a dance floor, thoughtful lyrics aren't necessarily a plus--I have the same problem with dance pop throughout the decades, though. I just don't want to listen to it any more than I want to hear Ernest Tubb--it's just not my thing. Some of it was absolutely wonderful, though. "Don't Leave Me This Way" by Thelma Houston, for example, is sublime. "Dim All The Lights" by Donna Summer is another one I liked. I've come around to some of the Bee Gees stuff that I didn't like too much when it was out--still can't stand "Tragedy." I like some of the forays into the genre by arts that did it sort of as a tribute ("Miss You" by the Rolling Stones and "Goodnight Tonight" by Paul McCartney are two that come to mind) but those just served to show how a disco song didn't have to be a stupid song. JcS
' Tusk' is a great album. Much more adventurous than ' Rumours' . Always like to see artists stretch out on double-albums and not go for the expected. The ones who don't like it are record executives who wanted another huge seller loaded with Top 40 hits. This wasn't that.
"When I Need You". That's pretty far behind. Well, let me bring you up to speed. After that one we had the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac hitting #1 and then this Star Wars song and then some other stuff before this really bad song called "You Light Up My Life" was #1 for about 50 weeks. Then the Bee Gees hit #1 and kept doing that, and then their friends all had number one songs with Bee Gees' songs and their brother too, of course. I think their maid even had a number one song with a Bee Gees' song. Somewhere in there the Rolling Stones had their last number one song by trying to sound like the Bee Gees. That was pretty much 1978. Then there was a lot of disco songs until my my my my my Sharona. Then some other stuff and here we are!
@Joey Self , try clicking "unwatch thread" and then "watch thread". Sometimes that notification alert has to be kicked in the buttocks (aka restart) to make it work again.
It was only No. 91 because it hit rather late in the year and was subject to Billboard's cut-off rules. The song actually had a fairly lengthy climb to the No. 1 spot - based on the number of weeks it was on the charts, it probably should have been a top-20 year-ender. I like this song but didn't buy the album until the summer of 1983, when another of his albums was in the news...
Yeah, those guys were all about jumping way ahead to the Michael Jackson second coming when we were way back in the early 70s, but they have disappeared. And, maybe the punk fans are disappointed that their favorite music wasn't as huge as they thought. And I prefer the original mix of the first pressing. But, more on that later.
