[…continued from last post]

The third category of note is one near and dear to the Post-Punk Monk’s heart. Possibly the raison d’etre of my mission as Post-Punk Monk; reissues. And there are almost as many of them vying for my attention as with current albums. There were many this year that we didn’t buy due to the curtailing of budget as we are in savings mode. As usual, Rubellan Remasters have issued numerous CDs that we will hope to get sometime later this year. But for now the top spot was locked into a disc that they reissued last year that I immediately bought multiple copies of!

REISSUES OF THE YEAR

1. Cristina: Sleep It Off DLX RM
2. Jerry Harrison: The Red + The Black 2xLP
3. Ultravox: Quartet BSOG
4. Blow Monkeys: Animal Magic BSOG
5. Model Citizens: NYC 1978-1979
6. ABC★★★: The Lexicon Of Love Dolby Atmos Blu-Ray
7. John Foxx: Annexe red LP
8. B.E.F.: Music For Stowaways DLX RM
9. John Foxx: The Golden Section clear LP
10. Restaurant For Dogs: Restaurant For Dogs
11. The Higsons: Run Me Down
12. Tomek: Fairlight + Funk green LP
13. The Satyrs: Don’t Be Surprised yellow LP
14. The Pragmatix: Anthology

There were many great reissues that I made the effort for this year, but the clear winner out front was the long-awaited Cristina “Sleep It off” disc that went a long way to eradicating the flaws of the first such disc from the early years of this century. Everything about this latest edition was spot on. The writing, the playing, the production were unimpeachable, of course! Every time I listen to it I marvel that I bother with any other music! But for the first time on the silver disc, we have the original track order, cover, and the disc itself was wonderfully mastered from an actual professional tape! The brickwalled ugly vinyl rip of the first disc was swept away.

My number two pick was an album that was almost as great! But the tragedy of Jerry Harrison’s “The Red + The Black” was in that beyond the album itself, there was nothing else to buy. My mind spent long decades imagining all of the promo 12″ mixes that had not happened in 1981…but instead manifested as a dub mix of the album [7/9 tracks, anyway] 42 years later!! Sure, sure. I would have preferred a CD. Sadly it was on 2xLP [red + black wax, natch] for RSD only, but beggars can’t be choosers!

The long-awaited remix of Ultravox’s problematic “Quartet” album by Steven Wilson still managed to paint that album; the last of Ultravox’s “New Romantic” trilogy’ in a kinder light that it had been needing for decades. The irony of Wilson using the latest in digital software to reduce the early digital era artifacts from the music was not lost on me.

Right behind that gem was the best deal of the year! I was stunned that The Blow Monkeys managed a 4xCD box of their breakthrough “Animal Magic” album with nothing missing from the plethora of mixes that surrounded that period like a cloud of bees. Leave it to The Blow Monkeys to issue such a definitive box with nothing missing, in an autographed CD box for under $20.00 from their webstore! Yes, please! It was another title I bought multiple copies of!

Model Citizens were new to me; obscure New York City Art Pop from the Golden Age of New Wave, but they were definitely appreciated! Their single John-Cale produced EP had blossomed into a full album of music over the years. If the Steven Wilson remixed/Dolby Atmos Blu-Ray of ABC★★★ “Lexicon of Love” weren’t on a disc that only plays in my living room, it might be higher up the list! High Trevor Horn with Martin Fry bursting from the head of Zeus given the sort of exacting detail and loving care that it fully deserved.

We have a pair of John Foxx catalog titles; one of them a new selection of non-LP material and the other the lush Zeus B. Held production that marked the last time that an outside producer was entrusted with Foxx’s music. Well, Held was German! I used to have the “Music For Listening To” CD from B.E.F. but it had apparently vanished and the new 2023 remaster was a welcome sight in my mailbox, courtesy of my old friend chasinvictoria.

Rounding out the Top Ten was Barry Andrews’ precursor to Shriekback; Restaurant For Dogs! What he did after Fripp’s League Of Gentlemen, but before the Shriekback we know and love manifested. But the building blocks were certainly apparent in this collection of early recordings that sounded as if they made perfect sense that Shriekback would ultimately get signed Y Records; the label of Disc O’Dell, who managed The Pop Group.

A pair of funky obscurities were in there as well. The Higsons were outliers to nowhere in particular on the Two Tone label but their rambunctious funk sides made for a fun and tasty EP. Tomek Lamprecht was originally in Model Citizens, but his original avant Funk EP with early sampler usage has like Model Citizens, been reissued with more material for a full album.

Finally, The Satyrs were a 60s Garage Rock band from my own adopted city of Asheville, North Carolina! As with many others, what was a single decades ago, was now a full album. I spent the 90s listening to s lot of Garage Rock, so this material was a reminder of the halcyon days of my childhood with the sort of music that was a motivating force for the whole New Wave movement. I always said that New Wave was the 60s with new technology. And The Pragmatix CD-R was from Mr. Ware’s New Wave cover band that he played with his son in. They finally managed to make me enjoy the music of Australia’s Men At Work with their great cover of “Overkill.”

EPS OF THE YEAR

There were not many EPs this year, but the top pick was the clear winner with miles of smiles and an impetus to play it compulsively. Aberdare’s finest Synth Punk combo might be scraping album territory with eight songs and 26 minutes but the concept of their [initially] tape was that one side had four original tunes and the other had four covers. And what covers! I roll over like a puppy for Mi-Sex’s “Computer Games” so give me a sterling cover like Head Noise have proffered, and I can’t stop playing it! Then Steven Jones + Logan Sky once more teamed up with secret weapon Jan Linton to craft a new song with three other thematic picks to make an EP for a winter’s day. And the tireless Metamorph, did a brief roots check before sprawling out in decidedly different directions in his other projects this year.

1. Head Noise: Head Noise V.S. Metric Squid
2. Steven Jones + Logan Sky: Silver Rain
3. The Metamorph: Skylab

The live music this year was down to two concerts. The frankly astonishing that it happened Jerry Harrison/Adrian Belew “Remain In Light” tour, and another outdoor event with Kishi Bashi playing with the Asheville Orchestra in a very select concert that was only given in one other city this summer on Bashi’s tour. I was stunned that I was actually getting to see Jerry Harrison live as I had not even a glimmer of hope that such thing would ever occur. That I got to see the show with chasinvictoria was even more amazing. We’d not see each other since before the pandemic.

I’m still not hanging out in record stores all that much. I’d prefer to mail order the things that I really want instead of spending on what’s simply available. But I’m not doing much of the former either. The impetus to splash hugely on music is less viable with every passing day on the calendar. If I did nothing but listen to music I have for 8 hours a day straight, I’d be here for over two years playing it all. I’m in culling mode now and we’ll see if I can bump up the outflow. I’ve been selling stuff off that’s more valuable than records [surprising but true] and CDs but even after the big vacation happens in April, I still need to thin out the racks. My unmet goal is still to have all of my music freely accessible on my racks so that I can play it at will, not have to worry about moving half of the Record Cell simply to begin accessing it. Hopefully I can make some headway on it this year.

And the blog has been down by a quarter in posts this year due to the many trips [like the one tomorrow, actually] to the UPS store and the Post Office with packages to mail out biting deep into the sacred lunch hour when I hastily type this blog. Another factor is that professionally, I have been in the weeds for a few months and that also makes me likely to trim my lunch hour down to nothing; leaving the blog out in the cold. And the elephant in the room this year were the five trips to Ohio for family concerns. All of these factors whittled down the blog, but people are still reading it, so I thank you for coming anyway to see what this grizzled veteran of the New Wave is thinking about this day. I can only promise that when and if I actually retire [it’s nowhere near the horizon yet!], the uptick in free time should see this blog transforming into something really interesting. Wish me luck and I’ll do the same for you. In the meantime, there’s over 2700 posts to get lost in here.

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